… if your neighbor puts up the horns of a bull next to his gate.
(Photographed in the very peaceful village of Tiwanaku in Bolivia.)
We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
I highly recommend Elie Wiesel’s book Night, a short but powerfully moving biography-novel.
(Recorded in Chapada Diamantina National Park in Brazil. And yes, I really wear shirts like that when I go hiking in the jungle.)
Photographed at Tipnis National Park in Bolivia.
I hate the jungle. Heat, humidity, mosquitoes, mud, piranhas, butterflies, leeches in the water, snakes in the forest, crocodiles on the riverbanks, malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, no orientation, no views, just trees after trees, from which all kind of crazy animals lower themselves down to devour you. No, I can fully understand why not many people live there.
On my last trip to Tipnis National Park in Bolivia, there was only one aspect which reconciled me with all the hardship. Most surprisingly to myself and to anyone who knows my general opinion towards children, it was the children of the remote village of Buen Pastor.
The small group with which I went were the first foreigners that had ever come to Buen Pastor. The children were initially rather shy, obviously a bit disturbed by the sight of men with beards (the Mojeños don’t grow beards), an Asian guy, a black guy and a girl with glasses (nobody in the village wore glasses). They looked at us from afar, didn’t respond when we spoke to them, walked away or, at most, indicated a very shy curiosity.
Other children were very dedicated to school and education and therefore didn’t really have time for us.
But it was also useful that we hung around the school because there, the children were in a group and they grew bolder. The ice (which is of course another thing these children have never seen) broke when some of the people in our group joined a football match and others sang and played with the children.
I have neither talent for football, nor for singing, nor for playing with children, so I used that opportunity to sneak into one of the empty classrooms and read a Bolivian history textbook.
But I didn’t have much time to be surprised by the depiction of German and European history in these textbooks, because as soon as the children discovered me, I was surrounded by them.
And then they surrounded the photographer to inspect the photos.
As soon as they saw someone else taking photos, they were rushing to him. Or to me, in that case.
It was like a reverse paparazzi situation. As soon as the children saw me with a camera, they surrounded me with their laughter or even chased me as I tried to escape:
And these children had energy, wow! They were playing football, running around and laughing all day, no less tired after a full day of activity. What I also liked is that they had a lot of freedom. There were no over-protective parents taking them to school or picking them up or telling them what to wear. They will probably become more mature than pampered city kids. And they know how to fish, hunt, navigate the rainforest and row boats.
In the village of Buen Pastor which is an arduous one-day march from the last track which can still somehow be navigated by a vehicle, the day begins – in typical Bolivian fashion – with drums. This is the wake-up call for the children who have their small school in the middle of the jungle.
The drum roll was repeated after about 15 and 30 minutes. The second alarm apparently signaled that it was time to leave the house, while the third alarm meant “you should already be at school by now”.
The teachers had more drums and a gong to indicate the breaks and the resumption of classes. On one of the evenings, I attended a village meeting, which had of course also been called by a drummer.
In Bolívar – American Liberator, Marie Arana writes about the Congress of Panama:
The conference was to take place on June 22, 1826, on the Isthmus of Panama […]. Bolívar had decided not to attend the proceedings so that it couldn’t be said that he had influenced its outcome. But it was precisely to influence the outcome that the Peruvian delegation arrived six months early, hoping to lay the groundwork for its point of view. As deliberations opened, the nations represented were Peru, Greater Colombia (which now consisted of Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador and New Granada), Mexico and the Federal Republic of Central America; that is to say, only four of the seven Latin American republics. The Argentines had declined outright, saying that they had “a horror of too early a union,” especially one advanced so unilaterally by Colombia. Chile had been too wrenched by internal conflagrations to participate; Bolivia had been willing, but its delegates arrived too late. The kingdom of Brazil, a monarchy with far stronger sympathies for Europe, had also refused, using its war with Argentina as an excuse.
Bolivia was not the only country to miss their flights to Panama.
The United States […] sent two delegates, but one died on the way, the second reached the meeting hall only after the congress was over.
Because the “Treaty of Union, League and perpetual Confederation” was ultimately only ratified by Greater Colombia, rendering Bolívar’s idea of a unified Latin America dead before it could get off the ground, Bolivia’s absence probably didn’t make much difference. But it’s interesting how such coincidences can shape politics and economics: Because Great Britain was present with observer status and the United States were not, Britain secured several trade deals with Latin American countries.
“I had a really nice idea there.”
The real Bay of Pigs is not on Cuba, but on the eastern shore of Isla del Sol in Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. Here, the pigs have the beautiful beach to themselves.
And even when a human being passes by, it doesn’t bother the pigs. They keep enjoying the sun, the cool breeze and the view of the Cordilleras in the background.
That’s how you enter: shaved, clean, excited.
That’s how you come back after three weeks: with a beard, dirty, exhausted, and only alive thanks to a rifle purchased from an indigenous tribe.
When I came back home from a trip to the Bolivian jungle yesterday, I had already received dozens of e-mails from Britons along the lines of “my grandfather was from Germany, can I get a German passport?” As an expert in German citizenship law, I get these kind of questions all the time, but the increase in volume was significant after 23 June 2016. And never before have I gotten so many requests from Britain.
You can also see this in the statistics for my blog:
Clearly a significant spike after the result of the Brexit referendum was announced.
What did people look for? The top 3 posts all deal with German citizenship law.
And where do these questions come from? The overwhelming search volume was from the UK, and I bet that many visitors from Spain, France and the Netherlands were Britons who live there.
As a European, I am sad about Brexit. But for lawyers, these are going to be a few prosperous years.
Here are just a few samples of the questions I received in the days after the Brexit decision. You can enlarge them by clicking on the photos. Answers can be found on my FAQ page about German citizenship.
The Happy Hermit 