A Strong Sense of Community

One amazing thing about Bolivia is the sense of unity that Bolivians carry with them. I learned quickly that the proper etiquette for eating in a group is to first offer to those around you. For example, if you have a bag of potato chips you would open the bag and make a general offer before taking any yourself. I thought at first that maybe this was just a way to get free food off the foreigner but then I noticed the Bolivians doing it themselves. You would think that when you have less you would be more likely to horde but it is quite the opposite. There is an unspoken expectation that if you have today then you will share with those that don’t because tomorrow you might need to rely on those very people.

I was reminded of this recently in my computer class. Now that classes are out on summer vacation I am teaching the teachers to use the computers. With my first group I decided to do a trial run of an idea I have for next year’s students. My idea is to give little stickers to the kids if they win a game or can do something the fastest and the student at the end of the term with the most stickers will win a prize. I thought the teachers would be a good group to try with because they are older and more laid back. Apparently when it comes to stickers teachers are anything but laid back. They were incredibly competitive and telling on each other in hopes that I would take away a sticker as punishment. The whole week they were obsessed with the whole sticker activity. At the end of the week it came time to count them up and give the prize (a cake made by the women in the bakery). I could no sooner deliver the cake to the winner before she was asking for a knife to cut the cake and split it amongst us all. A week of fierce competition and the winner ended up sharing her cake equally with everyone and there weren’t even leftovers for her to take home.

I really admire this trait in Bolivians and I think there is a lesson we can learn from their selflessness and strong sense of community as opposed to the individualism we see so prevalent in the US.