Going Back to Bolivia – or – Reflections on Being Middle Class – or – An Unapologetic Ask for Money

by mikey on December 1, 2009

I have a confession to make. I grew up in a middle class white Bolivian family.

I love my family, they are amazing people that I really admire. However, growing up in this environment has it’s issues. One of the problems that can happen when growing up middle class is that you live in a culture-bubble that insulates you from the rest of your neighbourhood and the world. We literally had people dying all around us, and we often didn’t do much.

Doña Pety and Don Pety lived just a few blocks away. Their nicknames mean Mrs. and Mr. “Tiny”, because well, they were small. Don Pety was our garbage collector. He would bring his horse and buggy to our house once a week and load it up with our garbage, and we paid him for disposing of it. He would then take it to his house, and burn it in his front yard. Doña Pety would usually come to our door about once a week and ask for money or food. Sometimes we would give her some money, other times she would have a meal in the kitchen with Asunta, our maid.

Eventually they both died from being really sick. I remember near the end of her life, Doña Pety didn’t come by nearly as often. When she did come by, she would come to the door and stick her hand through the iron gate and start mumbling and shaking her open hand like she was asking for money. I would go out to try to talk to her, but I didn’t understand what she was saying and I wouldn’t even open the door. She was so frail and sick that she probably was using all of her energy to beg for whatever we could spare. And that’s the problem, she was giving all of herself, penetrating the iron gate that kept her out of our property, and there I was being a 14 year old kid, scared of her because she smelled bad. I was not giving any of myself, I would go inside, find some spare change, and she would thank me and leave. I wasn’t inviting her into my life, I was trying to keep my life comfortable by keeping her out.

The middle class has many ways of avoiding the reality around them. Here are some tactics I have learned from being middle class:

“If you can’t see it, it’s not there”.
Simple enough, right? Live in nicer neighbourhoods designed to keep poverty out, build large gates and fences around your house, and segregate yourself! If you don’t see it, it’s probably fixing itself, and probably not there anymore. I think this is why suburbs were invented, and why they have so many church buildings.

The “Well, it’s their fault that they are poor” logic.
This allows us to suddenly have no guilt and no need to do anything about it! Simply put, it’s their fault, not mine. When in reality, it’s our fault more than we want to admit it. We forget that our greedy choices, our materialism, and our power, doesn’t just give us luxury but it also directly causes poverty. Having more than we need is robbing someone else of having enough.

The “I did my part already” lie.
This one is great, because it makes us look good while at the same time we can wash our hands of anything else we have to do. For example, you donate some extra cash to a charity, and you feel really good about yourself. It’s a start, but it’s certainly just that, a start. I think a big problem we have in Canada is that we budget our generosity. Generosity is not a line in your budget spreadsheet, it’s a form of living, a way of sacrifice where you purposely choose to have less so that someone else may have more.

And my personal favourite: “Be careful, you don’t want to be too involved”
I say favourite because it’s the worst. What we really mean is that we need to care for people as long as it doesn’t disturb our comfort. Once my roommate and I decided to invite a guy to come stay in our house for a while and he eventually ended up going to jail. Was it a bad idea to have a man involved with sexual offences living with us? For us it was our best way to love him. If we don’t risk being too involved, we will never learn anything. I think the only way to really love is to be too involved.

I grew up this way, and I still have these patterns I can default back to when I don’t think or I’m too tired to care. When I think about Don Pety, I see a beautiful metaphor of how the rich often deal with the poor. We give them our garbage. What would happen if instead, we became friends? What would happen if instead of giving him our garbage, we gave him our treasure? Sometimes I can’t believe I didn’t open that door for Doña Pety. I was afraid of her. She was smelly, incoherent, and dying, and I was proud, entitled, and scared. Only now do I realize that it was really me who was dying, and not her. I can only pray that Jesus continues to rescue me from the ghetto of the rich into a life where doors are open and love abounds.

Part II: Going back to Bolivia (Warning: I ask for money in this part)

When I went to visit Bolivia in August, I wanted to learn about what a few communities are doing to love those in poverty. There was no way we were going to learn about and understand every organization there, so we picked a couple and spent time with them asking a lot of questions. One of the questions we had in our minds during the whole trip was, “what does it mean for us, those that are rich and living in Canada, to love and be friends with these communities?” I don’t really know yet.

One of the communities we visited was Word Made Flesh (Palabra Hecha Vida) Bolivia. Even though we only spent 2 days with them, we were amazed by their hearts and their friendships. They are a group of people who in community “desire to see holistic transformation through Christ Jesus for those who prostitute in Bolivia.” Since my visit I have kept in touch with them and as I have gotten to know them a bit, they have asked me to come and do an internship with them in 2010. So, I am going back to Bolivia for about 4 months next year, to tag along some really amazing people and learn from them.

This is the awkward part where I have to tell you that I need money. The way this internship works is you have to raise your own support that will cover the cost of your flight, food, and housing while you are there. I am quite excited to offer my friends and family the opportunity to be able to partner with me as I go and learn from and serve with this community in El Alto, Bolivia. I need to raise $5,000 of support, and it is a great way to remind me that I cannot do any of this by myself and I really need the support of a lot of people to be able to do something like this.

If you are at all interested in supporting me, I would love to talk to you more in depth about it. Email me, facebook me, leave a comment, come visit me at my house, any of those work. Thank you for reading all of this and being interested.

Mikey Arce

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The danger of the single story

by mikey on October 8, 2009

If you didn’t watch the TED video at the top, you should do that now.

I remember being really upset as a kid because of the video’s I would see about Bolivia. I saw documentary bits, ads, and fund raising campaigns that would feature Bolivia, but not the Bolivia that I knew, at least not all of it. I remember seeing a lot of starving children on these videos, and they always went to the worst parts of town. As a kid I had a dream to make a documentary about all the stuff that they missed. I would film happy children playing in the parks, old people having tea together while teenagers play soccer, and it would all take place in a train station. I’m not sure what my fascination was with the train station, but I thought it would make a good backdrop to my documentary.

“All I had heard about them was how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor. Their poverty was my single story of them.”

The problem I saw with many good intentioned people and organizations was that their portrayal of Bolivia stopped at a single story, the story of people who had nothing. I was at a conference last year where they were talking about sponsoring children around the world, and right before they asked for money, they showed a 5 minute video clip of some of the work they were doing around the world. The video started and I was really surprised that it was a video about Bolivia. We usually never get picked, we’re the underdogs in poverty. Usually countries in Africa get more attention, so we’re all a bit jealous of them. The video had a couple of Dutch Christians who were very tall, sitting in a small shack with a Bolivian family in extreme poverty. It was awkward to say the least. The foreigners had guitars and were singing English spiritual music to them while the mother of the family cried. The tallest man reached for the smallest little child and held him, and the boy cried. He said “what is this man doing? I’m scared”, which was translated as “thank you.”

I’m glad they tell part of the story of Bolivia, and I know in a 5 minute clip you are never going to be able more then that, but we need to tell more stories, different stories. When we just see Bolivians as people crying in small shacks, we miss their beauty. When we see people just for what they lack, we forget what they can offer. And when we don’t see people as having something to offer us, we rob them of their humanity.

When I was 9, I had a friend named Peter Pan (seriously, that was his name) who lived a few houses down. Although the term house might be a bit of a stretch. He lived under a makeshift house made of garbage with what seemed like thousands of other people. We always played soccer together on the street, and we would do stupid things like throw rocks at birds and see how far we could kick the soccer ball. He was a friend, a good soccer player, he had a family, he was talented and occasionally funny. And when he was hungry, he’d come over and I’d share my food with him and his little sister. If I had just thought of him as the poor kid down the street, our friendship would have never existed.

Stories inform our culture, they shape our practices, and they determine our focus. When we tell bad stories we end up with bad culture, bad practices and out of focus. We start believing that these poor Bolivians in the video have nothing to offer, that they are defined by poverty. When we see someone as only hungry, all we can do is feed them. Our focus ends up being misguided from the person to the problem. But when we tell better stories, when we share people’s beauty, their dignity and their humanity, their talents and abilities, their humour and quirks, we not only want to feed them, but we desire to be in relationship together, and that’s the beginning of community.

“When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise”

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strange stories

August 26, 2009

The Midnight Scalp Massage
When you travel in Bolivia, you usually travel by bus.  And when you travel by bus, it’s long, smelly, unpredictable, and occasionally dangerous.  Once as a family we drove from Santa Cruz to La Paz and it was the scariest thing I have ever done in my life.  This time around, Louis [...]

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Photo Update

August 8, 2009

1. Ceci comes to visit

2. Ceci, Louis and I drive to Vancouver
and jump in the Pacific Ocean

3. We go visit with the Erstads

4.Drive to Seattle
(Photo not available – we were very tired and it was dark)

5. Fly to Las Vegas, Nevada

6. Fly to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

7. and sleep at the airport for the night
(visual approximation [...]

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Welcome to The Bolivian Circus!

August 2, 2009

A hearty welcome to all!
I always think of beef soup when I hear the word “hearty”.  A thick beef soup with some big chunks of beef that are almost as rubbery as starburst. Alas, I digress…
As most of you know, I am Bolivian.  I was born there, raised there, and then journeyed over to Canada [...]

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