Bolivian Rainstorm

It’s inevitable. Rainy season in Bolivia and walking as your only mode of transportation. You’re going to get caught in the pouring rain at one time or another. And you’re not going to have a raincoat nor an umbrella. It happened to me today. After English class around 8:30 pm, I decided since I was having a particularly WTF-am-I-doing day that I would traipse over to the internet café to read my email and check Facebook and see if I still had any friends that loved me (indeed I do! and my mommy called me while I was there to boot). By the time 40 min was up I was ready to go home and I looked outside and saw it was raining. No biggie, I’ve walked places in the rain many a time and I’ve even gone out running in the rain voluntarily (not pouring let me remind you). So the internet café owner told me I was going to get wet, and I responded “voy a correr” (I’m going to run). Hah. Not that it would have helped anyways. Apparently it was raining a lot harder than I thought and by the time I got to the plaza (a 2 min walk away) I was wet, so I decided to wait it out a bit under an overhang. After about 10 min in the rain (and it was freezing cold by Bolivian standards as well) and I saw it let up a tiny bit…so I made a dash for it…which in Tarata means I plodded along through the flooded cobblestone streets like a turtle, choosing to remain upright with no broken ankles rather than get home just a teeny bit drier. By the time I got home (which requires a 10 min walk but in the rain jumping over the streams in the road and mud is more like 13 min), I was probably more soaked than I ever have been before. At some point I gave up on trying to avoid the puddles (and some I can honestly say I was trying to avoid but was unsuccessful) and just trudged and slogged my way through it all. Now I am fearful that I am going to catch some kind of foot disease (I would compare soaking your sneakers and socks in the water running through the streets to doing the same thing on a NYC street corner after it was raining – aka gross, not something that is good for your podiatric health). When I finally made it back to my house I ducked in the bathroom to see the damage and saw mud splotches all over my sweater sleeves (?!)…I’m at a loss at how the mud could come up to my arms, but then again, this is Bolivia where crazy things do happen. All I have to say is that all those clothes are getting washed tomorrow morning (if it’s not raining…remember, doing laundry is dependent on the weather) and I’ve learned the valuable lesson to carry a raincoat and/or umbrella anywhere you go during rainy season. That way maybe your shirt with stay dry. Shoes, socks and pants are s*&^ out of luck.