baggies and soy cheese

Every Monday afternoon I go to the mom’s club in my neighborhood to hang with a group of Bolivian women who get together to chat, crochet, and sip on nescafe. I joined their group as soon as we moved here and have made some good buds over the last year. Wanting to make a contribution with my basic sanitation job in mind, I taught them how to cut up plastic bags to make string that they could use for knitting. Plastic bags are all over the ground here, and this is just one small way to help keep the streets cleaner and plastics from going into the burn pile. Plus, the ladies often can’t afford any yarn, and the baggies, which come with every purchase of tomatoes, t.p., rice, etc, are free. The women loved it and have since made the most astounding things out of recycled plastic baggies: purses, hats, tablecloths, handbags, doll dresses, and more. And while they give me crap every week for being such a terrible crocheter, I love their company and dig sharing a few hours of sugary coffee, cutting up bags, and failed attempts to learn to handle that little metal stick.














This week I gave a vegetarian cooking lesson to the club: tofu and lentils over rice. Tofu, another one of those perks of living in a Japanese colony. The Bolivians generally don’t touch it and skeptically call it ‘soy cheese’ (makes sense). I did my best to sell them on the health and cost benefits of using tofu instead of meat (it’s a third of the cost of beef or pork and has lots of protein, which most families don’t get enough of here, plus a lot less fat, which they get way too much of). Soy cheese with lentils turned out great! They ate it up, and I gave each woman a floppy slab of tofu to take home and try in another recipe.











I get a lot of blank stares in my work here (Sure, Anna, we’ll be glad to ruin our food with the white, tasteless stuff). But you know, sometimes the bizarre ideas I present actually catch on, and blank looks turn to smiles and nods. And they keep on trying to teach me to crochet, and I keep putting in my plugs for an improved diet, ways to recycle, and the importance of washing hands. And maybe in another year I’ll be cranking out table cloths and handbags, and they’ll be cooking up tofu pot pie for dinner. Doubt it, but maybe.