I am thirty three years old and have not once seriously considered moving to Bolivia.
It’s weird, because normally I wouldn’t even mention that.
But here we are. Most women do end up moving to Bolivia.
And by my age, you’re pretty much expected to have already moved there or at least you’re supposed to be trying really hard to get there.
To be clear: I have nothing against Bolivia. It seems like a lovely place. Just not one that pulls me. It has never called my name.
And even though I don’t talk about my relationship (or non-relationship) to Bolivia, we will talk about it today.
Because I have words that need to be said about loneliness, power and the extremely problematic word: “choice”.
Loneliness.
There is so much of it when it comes to this hard topic of Bolivia. Or maybe it’s not so much loneliness as isolation.
Every woman has her own experience, her own relationship with moving or not moving to Bolivia. These relationships are often painful, challenging, hard to express.
So you have the women (like my dear friend E.) who are desperate to get into Bolivia. They wait in lines, jump through endless bureaucratic hoops, do what they can.
Sometimes dying inside from the frustration of seeing how other women end up there with such ease.
Then those women — the ones who weren’t even planning Bolivia — they’re isolated too. An extra glass of wine and bam. Welcome to Bolivia.
There are women who aren’t in Bolivia and are happy. Women who aren’t in Bolivia and are unhappy. Women who wanted to move to Bolivia but now wish they hadn’t. Women who didn’t want to move to Bolivia but are now delighted to be there.
And the ones who don’t know if they’re going, but determined to be happy either way.
It’s hard for us to find each other and talk to each other, because each of us is having such a different experience. It gets lonely.
“Choice.”
This word. I have no more patience for it.
I feel frustrated and helpless when people ask me why I’ve “chosen” not to move to Bolivia because I don’t know how to answer.
And I feel uncomfortable when people support me, saying they defend my “choice”, because I need to know support is there even when choosing is irrelevant.
What choice? There has never been a question of choosing or deciding anything.
This concept makes no sense to me.
I didn’t choose not to move to Bolivia.
I didn’t choose not to move to Bolivia any more than I chose not to become obsessed with traditional Armenian embroidery.
I didn’t choose not to move to Bolivia any more than I chose not to take up water polo.
It’s not that anything is wrong with life in Bolivia or Armenian embroidery or water polo.
It’s this:
If it were not for the fact that so many of the women I know are either moving to Bolivia or talking about moving to Bolivia, it never would have occurred to me to even think about it.
The only reason I think about Bolivia is that so many of my friends now live there. And that so many people have opinions about me not being there.
But to say that I chose this life of Not Living in Bolivia? Impossible.
What is choice?
To me, choice generally implies at least some of the following characteristics:
[+ consideration]
[+ giving active thought to something]
[+ both sides have to be appealing or compelling in some way]
[+ caring about the outcome]
[+ weighing the odds]
[+ pros vs cons]
[+ following intuition]
[+ being pulled towards something]
[+ wanting]
It isn’t that I decided against Bolivia. That never came up. It didn’t need to.
There was no decision-making process, because Bolivia exerts no pull over me.
I heart Bolivia.
The food, the culture, the art. The warmth and friendliness. Yay Bolivia.
And I know a lot more about life in Bolivia than I’d ever planned to, now that so many friends and colleagues live there.
To be honest, certain aspects of life there sound pretty distressing to me. But then after they tell you about the awful parts, they gaze at you intently and wish it for you.
So who knows. It must be like when I lived in Tel Aviv for a decade and people thought it had to be awful when actually it was sublime. So I can be pro-Bolivia. And still not feel the desire to ever move there.
Things that are hard about not moving to Bolivia.
The social pressure. The assumptions. The way people ask you when you’re moving to Bolivia and you explain that you aren’t and they say “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
As if you’ve just said you were dying when you are actually expressing completeness.
Losing friends. Some of my friends who have moved to Bolivia are amazing. Like Pam and Naomi and Jen.* You can talk to them about Bolivia but also politics and business and art and creativity and seven thousand other things.
* Other neat people in Bolivia: Jesse and Amber and Jenny the Bloggess!
Other friends are full-time evangelists for Bolivian life. And while I’m happy to spend an hour looking at pictures or admiring the landscape, I can’t do all-Bolivia-all-the-time. I miss the opinionated, curious, hilarious women I used to know.
And the vocabulary of choice. The way it has to be about “decisions”. I don’t want to identify as “Bolivia-less by Choice”. Where are my people who also didn’t choose?
The pull of Bolivia.
I know this mysterious pull that Bolivia exerts on women must exist, because I keep hearing about it.
My biologist friends insist it’s a thing. Maybe.
Maybe a biological thing that not everyone is susceptible to, plus cultural programming and expectations that people are mostly unaware of. I don’t know.
All I know is that I have never felt it.
And that I have girlfriends who are considerably older than me and who also have never felt it.
And that they, like me, heard those hollow words over and over again: “When you’re older, you’ll change your mind about Bolivia.”
Without the pull, there’s nothing.
“Changing your mind” is another one of those choice things. Like decision. As if all I have to do is stop being so determined not to go there.
But I’m not “determined”. I just don’t understand why I should. And I’m pretty sure that if it were about choosing, and I weighed the pros and cons, my non-Bolivia life would win every time in the categories that matter to me.
Of course, if I had a burning desire to be in Bolivia, those other needs wouldn’t matter as much. They would pale in comparison.
And I’d find a way to make it work. Believe me, if I wanted to live in Bolivia, I would move mountains trying to get there.
But since there’s nothing that instills in me a desire to move there, it’s not about choices and choosing. It’s about living my life.
I’m living my life.
And loving my life.
Not because I made a choice. But because I’m here, and here — for me — is good.
And comment zen for today.
I’ve been wanting to write this post for years. And not wanting to at the same time.
Because I know that some people are not really capable of encountering a different way and still understanding that we are both allowed to have our way. Of knowing that my way doesn’t imply that your way is wrong.
I get my way. They gets theirs. Also, the entire culture supports the way that isn’t mine, so trying to tell me I’m wrong in what I know to be true for myself? Not cool.
Anyway. All that to say that this is a hard, sensitive topic. With so much potential for pain, misunderstanding, distortion.
I hope it is clear that I have love in my heart for women who live in a variety of ways. And that I am not picking on Bolivia. All places have their own charm.
We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We let people have their own experience. And we don’t give advice, unless someone asks for it.
What I don’t want: “I support (or don’t support) your choice”. This is not about choice for me. It’s about mindfulness and trust and many other things, but not choice.
What I’d love: Your stories. What you know about isolation and about completeness.
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This is really awesome.
My partner’s grandmother once tried to pay us $500 to move to Bolivia and live on a street with a particular name. We found ways to say “That’s so nice of you!” without ever quite coming out and saying that there is no way in hell we’re ever living on any street in Bolivia at all.
When a friend of my mother’s found out that we weren’t planning to move to Bolivia, he said, “If my kids said that, I wouldn’t stand for it!” My mother politely pointed out the impossibility of bundling us onto a plane, getting us through immigration, etc. against our will. I love my mother. She really wants reasons to visit Bolivia again, because she loved it so much when she lived there, but she also understands that I didn’t inherit her passionate desire to be there and she’s come to terms with it. And I have friends in Bolivia now, so she visits them with me sometimes and that works out very well.
For that matter, I really like visiting my friends who live in Bolivia, and sometimes they help me and my partner arrange little vacations there. We’re always so glad to come home, though. My friend D. housesat for our friend S. in Bolivia for several months while S. was in the army. I think D. had a good time–it’s a lovely house–but she came home swearing that she would never EVER move to Bolivia now. I get so tired of people saying that you don’t know what Bolivia is really like until you move there for real. I don’t need to know what it’s really like to know that it’s not for me.
.-= Rose Fox´s last post … Award News =-.
oh thank you. i’ve never felt the bolivian urge either. i love love my bolivian friends, and if it were a place you could visit twice a year, I’d be in, it sounds like fun for a few days. But it’s not something I feel like I need, in any way. I’m 30, and people still tell me i’ll get the urge too late and regret the “choice.” I won’t, please stop implying that I’m damaged, because I’m not.
Anyway, not sure how I missed this first time around, but thanks for posting the link because it was good for my soul on a Friday morning. Now – if only I could find a place to meet the nice men who also don’t want to go to bolivia, that would be swell. Cause that’s an urge I *do* still have. 🙂
Thanks for writing this. I love some of the ways you put things and I may use them when discussing Bolivia down the road. I’ve never really considered moving to Bolivia, so I don’t feel comfortable calling myself Bolivia-free. It makes no sense.
I’m neither Bolivia-free nor Bolivia-less. I’m just not there. I’m elsewhere. It’s an entirely neutral state of being. My husband & I occasionally call it “non-Boliviad.” I’m happy some of my friends have moved there so I can experience it vicariously, but sharing their joy hasn’t even made me sit down & give it serious thought.
Could that change? Sure. One of my friends recently turned 36 and she and her boyfriend decided that Bolivia was not in the plan. Another suddenly wanted to go…and did. Boom. Can’t rule out I’ll be one of them.
Anyway, thanks for writing this, as so many other women have said…it’s a great take on the whole Bolivia issue.
.-= Ruth´s last post … Read This Before Ordering Battlestar Galactica Personalized Dog Tags from QMX =-.
At 36 I am wondering if I will ever go to Bolivia. I have never wanted to travel there alone and haven’t found a suitable travelling partner, so at the moment I feel like the choice has been taken away from me. Whilst I don’t feel a desperate need to go there, I constantly fear that I will regret not visiting.
Interestingly, on a post on metafilter (which led me to this post) someone suggested that not getting yourself into the right circumstances to decide whether to get on the plane is in itself a decision not to travel. I had never thought about it this way and am sure I will be thinking about it more over the next few days.
I think my feelings about Bolivia are complicated by watching my grandmother and how much she relies on her only Bolivian, and whilst I realise it is not itself a good reason to go to Bolivia – or a guarantee that you will stay on good terms with your Bolivians into your old age – I do worry how I would cope in her position without any Bolivians to help me. I know it sounds selfish but it scares me. I have no idea what the answer is to this.
Fabulous post, thanks Havi!
I am not physically capable of moving to Bolivia, as someone else said I don’t have a valid passport. My husband found out a former one-time travel partner moved to Bolivia without telling him until she’d been there three years and run out of money to live off down there. Now he pays for her stay there.
Neither of us really wanted to move to Bolivia, but mostly we tell people we’ll probably take in some Bolivian refugees on a temporary basis sometime in the future when we’re financially able to support Bolivian refugees. That usually shuts people up. We’re not actually certain we intend to do that, it’s just become something we say to people who ask us why we’ve never been to Bolivia. However, we shouldn’t have to. It shouldn’t be an automatic question. “Hey, been to Bolivia? No? Well, do you want to? No? Why?” I love this post. There should be an anti-Bolivia for all of us to live and hang out together.
.-= LilyFyrestorm´s last post … Beaches II- Ill Be There by Iris Rainer Dart =-.
I’m 36 and knew I didn’t want to go to Bolivia by age 15. At 33, I had surgery done that made it physically impossible to ever go to Bolivia, and I’ve never looked back.
Also, I think this post made me fall in love with you. 🙂
I can’t believe I missed this post. Where was I in August?? Anyway…Now that I’m in my 40s, people don’t ask me anymore if I’m going to Bolivia and if not, why not. That’s something you can look forward to!
I always thought I’d go to Bolivia, but never made any specific travel plans because I never had any burning desire to go. I guess I just figured when the burning desire hit me, I’d make plans, and it never did, so I didn’t.
What bothers me most about people who have moved to Bolivia is they often say, “Until I moved to Bolivia, my life didn’t have a purpose. Now my life has meaning.” I take offense to that!! By implication, they’re saying that since I didn’t move to Bolivia, my life has no purpose, no meaning. That’s a very hurtful thing to say. What I think they mean to say is, “Wow. Huge responsibility, this little Bolivian! But I’m embracing that responsibility and I’m happy about it.”
And then there are the people who assume that my dogs are substitute Bolivians and that’s not even close to being true. I just like dogs more than I like most people, Bolivian or not.
.-= Sherron´s last post … An early dose of holiday blahs- with a spoonful of hope =-.
I don’t want to go to Bolivia, mostly. Most of the time, I’m adamantly against moving that far. It’s too crowded there, I’m not that fond of Bolivians, and I just have terrible jeans.
But once in awhile, I feel the urge to go. I entertain the notion for a day or week and then say, “No, not for me”. I can never admit that to my friends and especially family, lest they all try to vehemently sell the trip to me. It disturbs me I have to avoid saying maybe, kinda of, might to avoid the Bolivian rabies many people I know seem to have.
Not female, but have often been mistaken for it on the internet (who knows why?).
I thought about the whole Bolivian questions a long time ago, and concluded that I’d be fine not moving there. A decision which, yes, gets less flak if you’re male. (Apart from the occasional “Oh, you’d make a great Bolivian.” Um, I checked my psychology and no, I wouldn’t.)
I’m more than happy for other people to make up their own minds about Bolivia. I have a brother and partner who moved there a couple of years back. I have another brother and wife who might be considering it. I have cousins there. But it’s not for me. I was there once on visa when I met my first gf, who’d already lived there quite a while, but it never really had an effect on me.
If a partner of mine expressed a sudden interest in moving there, I would support them completely, wish them the best of luck, and even assist in finding them someone to move there with, if they wanted. But me? Happy where I am, thanks all the same.
A friend of mine e-mailed me a link to this post, so here I am. (I have to say, as someone with a graduate degree that encompasses metaphorics, this post thrilled me in a way that very few things ever do.)
I have known from a very early age that I never wanted to even go anywhere near Bolivia. Even when I was a little girl, when the *other* little girls were dressing up in Bolivian costumes and playing with toy llamas and practicing their Spanish, I was playing with die-cast airplanes and writing stories. Once when I was about two years old, I got a toy llama, and I turned to my parents and said, “Oh, yuck, a llama! Just what I never wanted!”
I’m happy living here in Canada. We’re solitary by nature and we like our personal space, and we like getting deeply devoted to our work, in a non-exuberant kind of way. Bolivians are too hot-blooded and up-close-and-personal for my taste. Also, even though I like to travel, I am a difficult person to travel with because I am so solitary and introverted (and I can’t stick to a tour itinerary worth a damn because I’m always getting distracted by something I think is more interesting than what I’m supposed to be doing), and you can’t get to Bolivia without a sponsor anyway. Which is fine with me; I’ve never much been interested in going. I halfway considered moving to Israel for a while, but then I changed my mind, and for right now I’m really enjoying being Canadian. Fall is a great time to be Canadian anyway; if I had to move, I’d miss the topaz-blue skies and scenery that just begs to be photographed…
I unexpectedly won a trip to Bolivia six years ago now, but I had to cancel. I mean, I was totally not ready and it was just not appropriate to pack up and leave right then. Plus my (now official) travel partner was fairly new then and, well, we didn’t really know if we wanted to commit to a trip to Bolivia. I hear it’s pretty hard to get back once you move there.
I’ll be 30 shortly and I’ve never felt that burning desire to move to Bolivia. I mean, I like the idea of taking the trip and going through immigration, and I like the idea of being settled there because it sounds like a pretty amazing country even with the ups & downs, but at the same time, that settling in period over the first two to three years doesn’t make me jump for joy. I hate packing. Moving’s not bad once you’re done, but having to unpack and figure out where to put everything just sucks.
I’ll probably end up moving to Bolivia, but only if the opportunity arises in the next five years. My understanding is that it’s pretty difficult to move to Bolivia after 35 and honestly, if I haven’t moved to Bolivia by then, then I’m perfectly happy to stay where I’m at and travel to different places.
What irks me is that when I talk about how I don’t want to move to Bolivia after 35, I have to hear (even from my travel partner) about how that’s irrational and how plenty of people move there when they’re older and adapt perfectly well and have normal llamas. Well that’s great for them, but I don’t want to retire IN Bolivia. After about 15 years Bolivia can get even more expensive than it already is and I do have other places I want to visit. I don’t want to move to Bolivia late and then not be able to go anywhere else.
My wife keeps saying we should go to Bolivia, but she agrees it may be for the wrong reasons. She’s stubborn, you see, which is sometimes a good thing, and sometimes not so much.
She’s had medical issues for a while, and the doctors tell her she may not be able to make the trip without major assistance. This gets her dander up, and when she talks about going to Bolivia, she focuses less on how wonderful life is supposed to be there or how happy the other folks are who have gone, and more on how wonderful of a Bolivian she thinks I’d make, and how she owes it to her parents to go.
Her only sibling (and older sister) is unlikely to make the trip either, so she feels that it’s up to her. Apparently, not only has her mother visited Bolivia, but her mother’s mother also — and so on, for as many generations as I’ve been able to track. So my wife has imposed this pressure on herself despite not being a big fan of Bolivian food, or Bolivian sports, or the lack of regular naps for adults in the Bolivian culture.
Me, I could take or leave Bolivia, except for the part where I’m not sure we have the resources to see my wife’s favorite doctors while learning a new language. Plus she’d have to lay off some of her more useful medications during the first few months of the trip. And I’d want us to have greater motivations than my indifference and her trying to fulfill the (perceived) expectations of other people before we go to all the trouble of packing and hopping on the plane.
I think if there weren’t any hurdles to her making the Bolivia trip, she’d probably choose not to make it, but since the universe is trying to make the decision for her, she’s finding it pretty hard to throw away the brochures.
This is a beautiful post. Thank you!
I had never wanted to go to Bolivia. Then one day I thought it might be nice, and the next thing I knew, I was on a plane to Bolivia! When I told my friends, some were overly excited, and one said “Cool. When I was 19, I got myself deported from Bolivia, because I knew I would never want to go there.” My response was “Cool. How did you do it? I have a friend that wants to be deported from Bolivia, but can’t find someone to help until she has been there at least twice.” Everyone else was shocked. How could we be so blase about going to Bolivia!? They didn’t realize that each of us, Bolivia-bound and Bolivia-less, were happy in our own states of being, and weren’t offended by each other’s differences. Then, of course, there were those completely appalled that I would move to Bolivia alone… but that’s a different subject. 🙂
I can never fly to Bolivia. It isn’t a choice or anything. I just wouldn’t survive the trip, and if I did get there, I’d be too sickly to enjoy the scenery for the time I had left. I may not arrive at all, and would just be sickly with no photos to show.
When I was younger, this didn’t bother me much. Now, it’s an ache I can’t heal. I wish I could go there too. I’m trapped here, and I can’t change it. I don’t have the money or the health.
I have many friends who are there already, and a fiance who desperately wants to go, but I just can’t handle the flight. My health is poor, you see. He won’t leave me, and I can’t fly. It makes him sad.
I wish I could.
Lately, my two best friends have come forward and are doing their best to get me boat tickets instead of plane tickets, so that I can live with them. They’d take the flight, and I would meet them in Bolivia. I won’t have taken the flight, but I’d be there.
Some folks are kind enough to fly for you.
I may not ever get to take that flight, but I’d be in Bolivia all the same.
I never thought much about Bolivia, that is not until Rotary International arranged for my daughter to visit Bolivia for exchange program schooling for a year.
Nine months later, based upon her and her host family’s urgings, we visited Bolivia (early 2003–pre-Morales) and have returned twice since.
Initially, it took me less than a week to overcome my US State Dept.-induced fears of all things Bolivian, and another week to fall in love with Bolivia and her amazingly varied climates, topographies and especially her incredibly forgiving, generous, courageous, hard-suffering and hard-working people.
What is most amazing to watch is the progress I’ve witnessed of Bolivians gradually overcoming the oppression they have suffered until recently, especially the oppressive pillaging of the last 500 years.
They have a long way to go, but they will ‘make it’, despite a multi-generational-entrenched oligarchy fed by many millions of US taxpayer dollars spent to infiltrate Bolivian movements and other attempts to defeat Morales’ peaceful communitarian-socialist movement.
Since Morales’ election, the changes he has helped implement have been beneficial to all but those who previously benefited from positions of Spanish/Catholic/corporate/US (Monroe Doctrine-driven) overt and covert corruption, influence and power. (Think–Bolivian military/police: SOA/WHINSEC grads, and think also of the Catholic/corporate-controlled media–almost 100% against Morales’ efforts.)
Now I think of little else, including the possible application of the emerging Bolivian way of life and the potential application of those lessons to others whose governments/ways of life are even less-sustainable, especially when the effects of peak oil/over-population really hit.
In this life-aspect, Bolivia might prove to be way ahead of the rest of the world–exciting times indeed.
I can’t wait to return, perhaps next time to stay–if they’ll let me.
locoto
“I’m likely telling you something you already know, but instead of defining yourself as where you don’t live, how about defining yourself as where you DO? :)”
For the most part, it isn’t us non-Bolivians who define ourselves this way. It’s just that so many pushy Bolivians insist on seeing it this way. The world really upholds Bolivia as the ultimate destination to the point where there is Bolivia and there’s everything else. People even think if you’re not with Bolivia, then you’re against it!
Also, Bolivia is so hard to avoid that managing not to go there can really be seen as an accomplishment in its own right. I’ve known since early childhood that I did not want to go to Bolivia, but since most doctors are Bolivian, they felt like they knew what was best when it comes to Bolivian citizenship.
I have been trying to get to Bolivia for years. (I have an entire blog about it, in fact.) It’s becoming more and more clear that I will never get there, and it is the hardest thing I have ever had to accept.
I feel that pull. I want to be there. I burst into tears when others talk about what it’s like there in the summer.
And yet everyone around me tells me how smart I am, how brave I am, how unique and focused I am, and what a good “decision” it was not to go there.
Again with this “choice” business. If I had my choice I would have arrived there years ago.
.-= gingerandlime´s last post … this is going to be loud =-.
I only just learned about Havi’s post (from Carolyn Hax’s column) and I love it. And my heart ached reading this, so I followed your link to see whether you ever got to Bolivia. What do you know–you’re there now! I hope it is as beautiful as you expected, and that the summers are making the winters worthwhile.
I’m someone who has been yanked around by my feelings towards Bolivia. Most of my life, like you, I had no desire whatsoever to go to Bolivia. I didn’t even think there was anything remotely appealing about Bolivians, what with all the bodily fluids and all (I still feel this way for the most part). Moreover, I simply never thought about a trip to Bolivia.
Then one day at the age of 32, I woke up suddenly DESPERATE to go to Bolivia. I bought a ticket and boarded the boat. My boat sank and I swam back to shore, even MORE desperate to get to Bolivia than ever.
I bought another ticket and again, my boat sank, again I swam back to shore. This time I was certain that all my boats were defective, and I may never get to Bolivia. That REALLY made me desperate to see Bolivia, and boy was I jealous of women with less rickety boats!!!
The third time, I had to wait an agonizingly long time for a ticket to Bolivia, and finally boarded the boat. As soon as the shores of my homeland were out of sight behind me, and I seemed to be truly on my way to Bolivia, I began to wonder why the hell I had ever wanted to go there in the first place???
I still am very much looking forward to Bolivia (not that I know what to expect), and should arrive there soon, but feel nothing like the desperation to get there that I felt prior to boarding this boat! I blame hormones for most of this whole Bolivia debacle that has taken up the last couple of years of my life!
Plus, I HATE the conversation on the boat– yes, we are clearly going to Bolivia. Do we have to talk about it ALL the time???
Now that I am 55, the question seems to be, “are you sorry you never moved to Bolivia?”
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But, more importantly, why do people ask these questions? I’ve never understood the intrusiveness….
great post!
Interesting Post. Its nice to see not everyone immediately wants to move to Bolivia as if it’s just done and there’s no question.
I’ve always known I wouldn’t be going to Bolivia. Other places held much more interest. That and, well, I don’t have travel partners much and Bolivia’s not a place to go alone, so I haven’t really wasted much time on learning about it. Strangely, just because I’m a woman people think I know every aspect of planning a trip there. What’s that?
The mass exodus is a bit scary though. It’s like one plane is called the terminal is suddenly empty but for you.
I hear you on the mass exodus/empty terminal thing. Sometimes I feel like I must be a foreign exchange student in Bolivia. I don’t know the language, I don’t understand the customs, and I’m frequently standing around awkwardly silent while surrounded by happy Bolivians talking about their llamas. Sometimes I try to fit in by talking about other people’s llamas, only to be told that it doesn’t count if they aren’t YOUR llamas. Man, I hate Bolivia. I don’t want to move there, but I feel so awkward for not wanting to.
I’ve never wanted to move there. I had a former travel partner who was very insistent about it, i.e. “WHEN we move to Bolivia,” even though I’d told him otherwise (and as it turned out, his travel visa got revoked. Oh, the irony.). He wouldn’t listen to me about that no and it was scary.
The nice thing about being single for a long time (I consider myself permanently single by now) is that people have a much harder time nagging you about moving to Bolivia when you don’t have a husband to get you a green card to move there, and you haven’t even been able to scare up a date in forever.
I think I’m the one who said on Metafilter that you make choices not to go there. Well, yeah. If you keep up your travel insurance and deliberately date people who also don’t want to go to Bolivia, that seems to me to be choosing otherwise. I think technically I fall into the “not a choice” category at this point because even if I wanted to move, I couldn’t find a guy to get me that visa. But since I don’t want to go, that’s fine with me. If I ever date again, I’ll have to have the Bolivia conversation again and dear god, I dread it. Especially since I’m over That Age and that will only up the Bolivia drama. Great.
My mother used to say that if you haven’t moved to Bolivia by a certain age then “there must be something wrong with you”. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to reprogram that thinking for myself. I don’t think I’m a native Bolivian at heart. I suspect I have more of a feeling for other places instead.
Still, the social anxiety gnaws at the edges of my life and I know my sister prays that one day soon I might soon join her in Bolivia. She has a very comfortable pad over there, all decked out these days. I’m happy for her but I’ve never once seen myself in the traditional Bolivian dress.
And that ceremonial outfit people wear to transition to becoming citizens of Bolivia? Yeah… gives me the creeps in some ways. Looks nice on others but for me? Naw…
Thanks for this lovely and inspiring piece which is, well… expressing a lot of things I’ve been working through in recent times. 🙂
Bolivia, huh? Yeah, I live there (sort of), but I’m not obsessed. Still, it’s a touchy subject.
It was never about choice. I’d considered going there, even discussed it at length with the spouse–our hopes, our concerns, our opinions on things like neighborhoods, etc.–but then my doctor told me that I’d probably never go to Bolivia. And, hey, that was okay, too, I was a little wistful, but also a little relieved; after all, it’s not like I could really afford to go to Bolivia.
But then I found myself on the way to Bolivia. Even though it was impossible, right? And I was more than a third of the way there, and not at all prepared, and had even been in the process of packing and moving somewhere else at the time. And it was awful, not having ‘chosen’ to go to Bolivia. But the spouse was supportive, although also uncertain, and the reality was not perfect, but live-withable.
Then spouse and I found out that we’d been fooled: for five years, we thought we’d been living in Bolivia, but we had really been living in Holland. (Google ‘Welcome to Holland.’) And that was a huge shock! And how could I not realize that I was in Holland? Well, I’d never been to either country, and I apparently ended up in some place without obvious signs, like tulips and windmills. And it was also a live-withable situation, with its troubling moments, but also its moments of joy and beauty. We lived there for eight years, mostly happily.
Then, unexpectedly, we got on the flight to Bolivia again. And ended up in Holland again. This time, I suspected right away that it was Holland; all those tulips were a dead giveaway. But I already knew quite a bit about Holland, so I didn’t panic. Still, it seems I moved from one town in Holland to another, with different ways and customs and even city streets that I get lost in sometimes. But after another seven years, there are still places to explore and things to do. Still, I try not to live and breathe Holland twenty-four/seven, either.
The biggest problem with Holland is knowing that no one is having the same experience. It’s very isolating. Those who went to Bolivia feel sorry for you. Those who never went to either Bolivia or Holland don’t really get it, although sometimes they try harder, possibly because I’ve always had this policy of “feel free to come over and visit my country; I promise to welcome you to stay as long as you like, but I also promise to not try to convince you to live here. Enjoy what we have to offer, and leave when you’re through.” Those who live in Holland are sometimes the hardest to deal with, because the all think their towns are the best and that their neighborhood associations have the right idea. Most of them do not live in the same part of Holland as I do, and I don’t want to relocate. I’m comfortable here.
I’m comfortable here. For me, it’s live-withable. But it was never a choice, and I will never presume to tell any other woman that this is where they belong, whether it be Bolivia or Holland. Maybe we all just end up more or less where we’re meant to be? Maybe not. But life is rarely about choices.
ohmigoodnessYES.
When I was younger, I always assumed I’d go to Bolivia one day. I got married and my husband and I assumed we’d be going to Bolivia together. We separated, and my new boyfriend had already been to Bolivia with his ex-wife, so I figured it wouldn’t be necessary for me to go after all. And then we separated, and over the next year of singlehood, I realized I really had no real urge to go to Bolivia at all, and in fact, I’d rather get a dog, so that’s what I did.
There was never a major decision moment, no “choosing” or anything. It was just a realization of what I actually did or did not want to do with my life.
Five years later, and I have two dogs, still have never been to Bolivia, and have been happily goofing off with a man (who I *swear* is not my type) for four years now, who also doesn’t want to go to Bolivia. It’s funny, but absolutely NOTHING in my life is anything like I imagined it would be when I was a kid. And I’m generally quite happy with that.
Ok, so, I have never planned on going to Bolivia. Just wasn’t going. And now I find that someone has bought me a ticket without my permission. And… I don’t know what to do about it. I can’t do what I’ve always done and throw away the ticket because I really love the guy who would be going to Bolivia with me. And Bolivia doesn’t seem so remote and horrible with the idea of him going with me. But that doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t want to go and didn’t plan on going and now have to rearrange my life entirely (which I don’t want to do). I don’t know how to deal with this forced immigration to Bolivia.
I do feel a slight pull toward Bolivia (like a wimpy neap-tide kind of pull), and have agreed that I will move there someday for the time required by my visa and study abroad program, but I have stipulated that I will maintain a vacation home in the States. I am somewhat annoyed that my visa will expire eventually, though—I prefer to book my own flight, and ignore all those “Hurry—This Once-in-a-Lifetime Offer Ends Soon!” advertisements.
And I really, really hate the taste of Bolivian Kool-Aid (or is it Fanta?), so I don’t plan on drinking any—either before, during, or after my trip. I don’t like the effects Bolivian Kool-Aid could have on my conversation skills, and I really try to avoid processed food and powdered beverages anyway. So I’m going to have to plan ahead and pack my own lunches.
The thing that really gets to me, though, is how convinced so many naturalized Bolivians tell me they are that all of my quirks, convictions and general personal attributes will—poof!—disappear as soon as I cross the border. Oh, and that while traveling to or abstaining from Bolivia is a *choice*—all the souvenirs sold at the airport in La Paz, and all the gear hawked by REI, and all the Bolivian Kool-Aid sold in Sam’s Club-sized pallets, are *mandatory.* No thanks, I won’t need to add a rental minivan to my travel package. I hear there’s a great public transit system.
Glad I finally read the travelogue about not moving to Bolivia. I too hadn’t really chosen not to go there (unlike moving to Oz…but I digress…). Funny thing is I ended up falling for a woman who lived there so I packed my bags and moved over there. Still, I didn’t really choose residence in Bolivia but since she lived there and her moving back wasn’t an option off I went. Like any move there were ups and downs but on the whole I’m glad I moved to a place I had never considered living and now 9 years later most everyone thinks I’m a native (maybe it’s ’cause I’m frequently seen with Bolivians). Not moving here would have been fine but have to say I’m good with the view now and can’t really imagine moving back, so I never do.
Oh my Gosh!!! Duh,I JUST got it!
Anyway, I moved to Bolivia, not because of some big dramafied episode, We just got the stuff and went. Even though I’m living in Bolivia, I know people who are waaaay too Bolivia-fied. I mean, just because you live in Bolivia doesn’t mean you can’t eat Chinese food or socialize with Egyptians. I have lots of friends who don’t give a rat’s ass about moving to Bolivia, but they still love to visit and goof off with me. Bolivia is nice but it ain’t all that. I’m sure your life will not be lacking just because you didn’t move here. I love having good friends who do not live in Bolivia.
When I was younger, I was adamantly opposed to moving to Bolivia. I couldn’t understand the appeal.
When I was in my 20s, I read a book about women who had never been to Bolivia and realized that some of them in fact had wanted to go but couldn’t board the plane. It had never occurred to me that the choice, er, not-going-ness could be decided for you.
When I was 31, I married my wonderful co-pilot. At 33, we bought our tickets to Bolivia, but didn’t think we’d want to visit more than once. We were still getting used to the idea of living there.
At 35, we decided we wanted to go back after all. Our new Bolivian was amazing and we were settled in for good. At 36, the plane crashed shortly after takeoff. Turned out the wings were defective. I had to have them repaired, twice. But now we needed some mechanics to help get the plane in the air. We found a wonderful crew; finally, at 39, I caught another flight, but it didn’t last any longer than the first.
After three more rounds of repairs, I am nearly 41 and I have one last chance to visit this year. It will take all of the mechanics and an additional crew member, but we think this will be the ticket for us.
If not, then we’re content to stay here with our passport and our one visa stamp and our view of the hills.
What a great post – thanks Havi.
I’m 53 and not living in Bolivia. I did attempt to go there once but the boat sank and I had to swim back home. I was okay about not going and also okay about maybe going one day.
Then I met my husband and decided that he really wanted to go but we never seemed to get it sorted. Having had our passports and visas checked, it seemed that his was defective. So I thought that we could maybe have some Bolivian friends come to stay with us instead, but he decided that he didn’t want that. Then he left me to find a younger woman to go to Bolivia with. It seems that his passport is still defective!! Hmm…
Since being on my own, I have decided that I’m quite glad we didn’t get there as I may have ended up on my own and that could have been difficult. Instead, I have now become a virtual Bolivian to 55 young friends who live there. It’s the best way to go for me. Life is good being who I am, where I am, doing what I’m doing.
My brothers and their wives have gone to Bolivia, and my parents obviously went there, but came back once my brothers and I grew up. They have always been quick to tell us we should do what makes us happiest, and make sure that we take precautions so that what makes us happy doesn’t take us unexpectedly there, or to any other places where we’re not ready or willing to go, like Holland, or Azerbaijan. As my brothers and I have aged, we’ve taken different paths. My brothers, once they met their wives, felt that pull south of the border, and have ventured there, henceforth to stay (thus far, anyway). I, on the other hand, have spent filthy lucre to make sure my feet stay on these shores on a permanent basis. So did my fiance. Our friends know and most of them are not headed there either, but we’ve thus far kept the news from our respective parents and families, because we don’t feel the need to justify our reasoning to them. We haven’t decided how or if we’ll break it to them, whether we’ll tell them we’re intentionally staying here, or whether we’ll lie by omission and say we simply can’t move there (technically, that’s the truth, but they don’t have to know that we both elected to cancel our visas). We have our reasons for not ever wanting to go to Bolivia, but we don’t feel compelled to have to justify them to people who cannot comprehend how anyone could not WANT to go there. Although I must say that while my mother never pressures me to move there, many others (particularly in my workplace) seem to obsess over my travel plans, and they really shouldn’t. After all, don’t they know who’ll be picking up the slack for the women who DO move to Bolivia?
Don’t know what to say except that all should be advised regarding what some will do in their secret primal desire to go to Bolivia. Yrs later, since you were instrumental in partnering w/ them so they could get their passport, it is discovered that, revealed gradually during life situations over time then subsequent observation & enlightenment on your part that you have been manipulated – revealed is that someone had no real desire to have a friendship, rather only to get to Bolivia & make Bolivians – as long as you’re there to do the work & make the decisions regarding the little citizens. Love (for the little Bolivians) & duty cause one to do the job in the face of personal emotional deprivation – difficult but not impossible – even if you suspect early on that you are being manipulated. And maybe you concoct some ridiculous hope to keep yourself going that things will change once the little Bolivians become big citizens & move on to their own pursuits & countries. Over time manipulation amounts to cruel deprivation & your personal emotional starvation & you find yourself seriously emaciated – let’s face it, in a living arrangement in Bolivia, the biggest rigid narcissist wins.
Good luck to Heids & kudos to Ettaline.
Thank you so, so much for this post, and for making it NOT about choice.
I reluctantly identify as Bolivia-less by Choice, even though I really feel the way you describe about it. I’d never really thought about it for most of my life. I just pictured myself in 5, 10, 25, 50 years, and there was never a picture of myself in Bolivia. Maybe I’d visit friends who’d moved there, after they’d been there a while, learned the language, been settled in…but I never saw a future which included moving to Bolivia myself. None of your criteria for choosing, just…no Bolivia. My husband and I discussed it briefly, because I think if you’re entering a long-term commitment it is important to make sure you’re on the same page about where you might like to live in the future. After all, if he had a burning desire to go to Bolivia and I didn’t, that might present a challenge in our relationship. But it was very simple for us. “Do you think you’ll want to move to Bolivia?” “No, I’m not interested in Bolivia at all.” “Me neither.”
Until.
Until I grew up and realized that there were some people who wanted nothing more out of life than to move to Bolivia. I don’t mean these people just had a strong pull to Bolivia. I mean literally wanted NOTHING out of life, at all, but just wanted to move to Bolivia in a very extreme way. Until I got married, and realized that a lot of people jumped straight to “So, how soon are you two moving to Bolivia?” Until I said, “Actually, we don’t plan to move to Bolivia at all,” and got The Look, like I had three heads. Until I realized that if I wanted to take permanent steps to prevent myself from accidentally moving to Bolivia, I’d be treated like a child by my doctors and denied my rights over my body and its, um, citizenship. (Apparently, if I got on a plane to Bolivia, I’m entitled to a parachute and everyone will pitch a fit if I’m denied that right to choose, but if I prefer not to parachute and instead want permanent protection against getting on the plane in the first place, I can’t make that decision for myself. This isn’t a statement on anyone else’s parachutes. It’s just an observation by someone who would prefer not to parachute.) Until I was told by someone I considered a friend that I clearly was deficient as a human being because I had no inclination to ever move to Bolivia.
Then I chose. I was dragged to the choice, kicking and screaming, by those narrow-minded folks who don’t think a woman who is old enough to vote, drink, have a Master’s degree, and get married is old enough or smart enough to know whether or not she wants to move to Bolivia. I thought, “Finally, no one can tell me that I’ll ‘change my mind’ when they see that I’ve given due consideration to moving to Bolivia. They won’t be able to treat me like an idiot anymore when they see I’m not dismissing it out of hand.”
But no. Instead, all I get is, “Why do you hate Bolivia? What did Bolivia ever do to you?” I don’t hate Bolivia. I’m not very interested in Bolivia, and I don’t even like to visit friends in Bolivia as much as some people, but I certainly don’t think we should stage a coup and get rid of Bolivia entirely. I’m not out to convince anyone else not to move to Bolivia. I can understand why people are concerned about the fuel costs and overcrowding in Bolivia, but I think that if you’re really drawn to Bolivia, you should just try to be responsible in as many ways as you can about it. Maybe someday society will realize that moving to Bolivia isn’t something one can be right or wrong about, and we can all focus on the things we’d rather be thinking about.
I know what you mean. Been there my whole life but in the opposite way, I think. I don’t get the “oh, so sorry for you” or the “you are so naive” thing because I don’t want to move somewhere but because I want. People don’t get it, when you feel pulled toward something or somewhere, you just feel it and it’s all you can explain. I get it when you say “this is how it is, what I feel”, there isn’t really an explanation for what you feel, and people don’t understand that moving or not moving somewhere is about feelings too, not only life-changing decisions. When you feel comfortable in a place, you stay there. When you don’t feel comfortable, you leave. At least, that’s the way it should be.
Also, people have always told me “you’re gonna change your mind when you grow up” (I’m 16), and you know what? I’ve been longing to move to USA since age 4 (no kidding, my mom told me I used to talk about it on my way to kindergarden) and 12 years have passed and I still feel the same way towards it. I see a picture and I FEEL it, that pull, the same way that you DON’T FEEL it. It’s about feelings not about decisions. Because you can’t decide what you feel, and at the end of the day, that’s what makes life interesting and that’s what makes you, yourself.
1) This is wonderful and amazing.
2) I am one of those people who has ALWAYS thought I would go to Bolivia! I love it – the people are the best people, even if they are really small! But now, as I am exactly your age and still haven’t made it there, and as I am looking around and realizing that I would have to take that really long, hard trip on my own, and pay for it, I am less certain that going to Bolivia would make me happier than, well. Not going to Bolivia.
3) For all of you ladies out there who have no interest at all in ever going to Bolivia, may I suggest moving to NYC? A good number of my friend here are happily living without a whiff of Bolivia in their lives, and many don’t even understand my strange yearning to go there.
I’m just now having my Bolivia crisis – it’s just going the opposite way from everyone else’s.
For me, the isolation is coming from both sides, I guess – I have the lure of Bolivia that seems just out of reach, and I have friends who don’t understand why I might ever want to go there in the first place, so they can’t really comfort me when I think I might never make it. And more and more their “stay here with us and lets have cocktails every day!” approach seems easier.
Bolivia is a really, really complex place…
I so very recently became hyper-aware of the culture and celebration of the pilgrimage to Bolivia, and it freaked me the hell out. Somehow, all the banners and gifts and presents and parties changed the image of Bolivia in my head from an expected, inevitable rite to a thing that a lot of people happen to do but I’m not really sure why; kind of like witnessing a ritual as an outsider/anthropologist. So as soon as I started *noticing* the trip to Bolivia, I realised that I didn’t want to go there at all.
So this post was immeasurably comforting for me. Especially when my mother laughs at me, saying, “I bet you’ll change your mind when your older.” How much older do you want me to be? Also, no thank you.
Though I am really excited about my friends who are moving there; I love seeing their photos and listening to their stories. A little part of me thinks that they’ve been drugged and probably aren’t thinking clearly, but the rest of me lets them have their stuff, and me mine.
I know there are other places I want to live. I don’t know where they are yet, but I know they’re not Bolivia. That doesn’t mean my life lacks direction, purpose, meaning, or whatever other nice-sounding-but-not-really-that-nice words well-meaning people use. I also enjoy the comfort in knowing that I can pack up at any point and move *wherever*, because that is important to me.
I commented about ten months ago, whilst on my first preemptive journey to Bolivia. My visa’s been revoked three times now, and part of me’s thinking, eh, I can always move back to New Zealand. I was a temporary Kiwi for a year and I enjoyed it.
My traveling companion would like to try to get our visas reinstated and wants to jump through a few of those hoops, to give it one last college try, but I don’t know if I can. I’m just tired. And maybe I’m giving up. But I’m glad to know that I’m not the only one who wrestles with this concept of moving to Bolivia or not. The issue of Bolivia does not get easier as you get older. Sometimes I wonder if it’s harder. If we’d applied for citizenship five years ago, or even eight years ago, would it have been easier? I’m thirty-two, halfway through a PhD program, and can’t imagine my life beyond next year, much less what it would be like in a foreign country, with new rules to learn.
Thank you, again, for this post. And for it bringing new meaning to my life and helping me wrestle with my own ‘choices.’