Hello shakers and groovers,
Life here in Cochabamba, Bolivia, is pretty good.
I've had my ups and downs but the last few weeks I quite enjoyed. The weather kicks arse as it's always sunny which makes for a good vibe with all the palm trees in the city.
Work has been very interesting. Been working with blind kids who are a lot of fun. It's very interesting to see how they get by in life. A few of them are amazing musicians.
A few highlights :
- I bought a new guitar
- I was a judge in an English singing competition (I’ll never forgive the group that put Backstreet Boys in my head).
- On the 4th October I celebrated my 3rd sobriety anniversary by getting absolutely blind. I played goalball with the kids at school. It’s a game for the blind. I played blindfolded. It was a lot of fun. You can check out goalball on youtube.
- I appeared live on Bolivian television with the blind students playing two sticks of wood.
Something worth mentioning about the Good Morning Bolivia gig, and it's something I didn't realise until people who had seen me on telly pointed it out, but it didn't look like I was playing anything. I had toyed with the idea of going in to the studio wearing sunglasses. I mean, why not? My sunnies are prescription and I was with blind people, some of whom were wearing sunnies. But instead I wore my normnal glasses. I wish I'd gone with the sunnies though because as we lined up in the studio I was in the sedcond row and everyone else was playing the recorder or the guitar so it was obvious they were playing something. I was playing this zeppelin type pierce of wood that you scrape a stick over and it makes a cool scraping wood sound (funny that) . But no one could see me playing it as I was standing behind someone. and no one could see what i was doing from the chest down. So all the viewers thought I was just some sighted gringo hanging out in the background .
Ah well. Rock On.
I did some work in braille. Have you felt the strain when you have to write something really important without making a mistake - a document or something? Well if you make a mistake you can at the very least use white out. When you're writing in braille though if you make a mistake - you've fcked it. Once you've punched that whole through the paper you can't erase it. So I had a bit of fun playing around with that.
Some of the kids live at the school and a few weeks back I spent the night at the school with them as 'the sighted adult'. It was pretty coool . They were all well behaved and went to bed without me telling them. Thank fck. Im not the best at dishing out the discipline to kids.
I played at an open mic night for other volunteer workers like myself. My set list was:
Umbrella – Riahanna
Bad Romance – Lady Gaga
The Cat’s Mole – my own composition
Horny German Truck Driver – my own composition
Hurt Feelings – Flight of the Conchords
Business Time – Flight of the Conchords
Life can be a bit weird and wonderful over here. I don't carry ID around with me but managed to get in to a night club the other week with an old Irish Club membership card from 2009. I couldn't believe it. It doesn't even have a photo on it.
TV is a bit different here, An armed robbery was caught on CCTV including when one of the staff tried to be a hero and subsequently was shot in the head and killed. The lunch time news bulliten replayed the incident a hundred times. I don't think Auz would show a murder on the news.
Also been hanging out with people through couchsurfing which has proved a great resourse to meet some of the locals.
Someone gave me a bracelet as a gift with the word Bolivia on it. If I get drunk again and change my name I could end up being Lake Titicaca Bolivia.
My work with the blind children has come to an end and I'm currently travelling around some other countries for the next five weeks. Im going to go to Argentina, Uruaguay and Brasil including Rio de Janeiro for New Year. Then I'll be back in Cochabamba, for January to start work on a new project where Ill be working for a magazine as a journalist. Hopefully, I´ll go well at that.
Last day of school for the year. The band , including me on bass and vocals, performed the Wall by Pink Floyd, . Very fitting I thought despite the English lyrics being lost on 99.9% of the audience.
I got a tattoo a few months back in Costa Rica and there was an earth tremor whilst I was getting the tattoo. I had one this week, and again there was an earth tremor, just as I arrived at the studio.
Anyway, that's it for me, holidays await.
ciao for now
Spaceman 8 )
I've added a video of the students and teachers at the centre for the blind I worked at. I make a brief appearance at the 58 second mark.
