I am indwelled by joy.

I am exhausted. I am under-rested. I am ridiculously behind in my final class. I am scraping together my shekels to last through my first paycheck of my upcoming job. I cannot decide whether my love of the classroom and library is greater than my burnt-out will to study. I grieve for the mental illness of a beloved, aged relative. I fear that I am insufficient. I live outside my well-rehearsed plans.

and I am indwelled by joy.

My parents led a total of 31 Christians, mostly teenagers, through the streets of a Texan town yesterday. 1,300 families were invited to participate in a fresh ministry and a loving church family. 31 people reached 1,300 families. 1,300.

My friends each stand at the precipice of new life-points. They each face, in different ways, those points at which they are choosing to move forward and surrender to the future in spite of their fears.

My fellow patriots spend their waking hours calling for liberty and denouncing tyranny. We are succeeding. We will not cease.

In two days I collect the keys to my new home. In five days I watch a friend complete one of her dreams. In ten days I begin the most important job of my career thus far and will spend the next six months striving to unseat an agent of tyranny. In thirteen days I graduate from seminary.

In this moment I am in a forest with laptop and books, very tired and busily working, and I am indwelled by joy.

I stumbled onto this recipe a few months ago: chips or crisps made out of kale.  The leafy superfood is, well, super. Vitamins, good things, protein, and blah blah blah. Read this for more information about the crazy goodness that is kale.

More importantly, it bakes up to a very crispy-crunchy snack with no gluten or starch. Brilliant.

1. Wash and dry oodles of kale. Really dry.

2. Chop the leaves off the hard stem and try to keep the leaves in fairly medium-large pieces.

3. Toss with olive oil and sea salt. Alternatives: add lemon juice, garlic powdered or minced, or other spices. I add enough oil to coat the leaves. I used an extra virgin olive oil that’s flavored Tuscan Herb to add an Italian taste.

4. Arrange on a non-stick cookie sheet (or sheet plus parchment paper). Single layer!

5. Bake at 300 degrees for 10–25 minutes. The time depends on the amount and type of kale. Just poke it and see. If it’s mushy, keep baking. The leaves will shrink up and darken, and if you bake it too long (like I always do, with everything) they turn brown. The flavor just gets a little smokier as it bakes so the brown kale chips are fine.

6. Store in a zip-loc or mason jar. Enjoy!

In Ecclesiastes, Qoheleth struggled with a perceived gap between that which he believed and imagined and that which he observed and experienced. Much of human experience seems incongruous with itself, and Qoheleth sought understanding. Qoheleth initially concluded that the incongruity meanth that life was a pursuit of futility and hopelessness. Life is the “vanity of vanities”, hevel, he claimed. Yet his final resolution of his study was that beyond this perceived hevel is the security and hope of God the Creator. The despairs of this world, its fleeting pains and pleasures, drive men closer to God.

Ecclesiastes is one of the proofs of the truth of the Bible. C.S. Lewis noted in Mere Christianity that Christianity is unique in that the Bible does not seek to answer every element of every question. The answers exist and a logical order exists for all things, but we are not necessarily privy to those answers and the Bible does not pretend that we are. This stands in contrast to the utterly human trait of seeking to explain every jot to the detrimental avoidance of the glaring truth. Ecclesiastes, and its canonicity, acknowledges our humanity and the experience thereof for what it is rather than what we would prefer it to be. In depicting our convoluted perceptions it depicts the frank reality. Our emotional extremes are tempered by the reminder that the limited shades of our experience have a time but that time is fleeting. Our understanding of God and the universe He created is not as definite as we instinctively want. Our faith must be rooted in deeper truths.

The root of the incongruity between that which is and that which should be is sin. The fall of man and, with him, creation, has set us and our world at odds with what we feel deeply in our souls to be the true order. The incongruity, the void of rightness, is what can only be fulfilled by God. Ecclesiastes, in exploring human perception of this ultimate incongruity, serves to bridge the gap between our flounderings and God’s offer of redemption.

The Daily Mail has published an article about yet another retro-living woman who has spent a week pretending to live with the resource limitations of another era. We’ve seen women of the 1930s and 1940s, and couples of the 1950s… today, however, we are graced with the attempt by one woman to live in the 1970s of Britain. Not the full range of retro elements, mind you — no bell-bottomed leisure suits for her! Just the cooking.

The woman in question bemoans the loss of her microwave, her bread maker, her coffee maker, her electric scales… and even her food processor. Apparently she’s reliving the very early ‘70s, since they were certainly available later in the decade. But, then, this was pre-Thatcher Britain, and people still ate twigs.

I’ve lived in Bolivia for two years. I cook two meals a day in a world without the benefit of a microwave or prepared goods. Macaroni and Cheese in boxes is considered a serious splurge in our Bolivian household (it does, after all, cost more than making a beef roast stew).

She babbles on about how dreadfully difficult, how mindnumbingly time-consuming, it all is. To listen to her, cooking from scratch would seem to be a miserable all-day task.

She’s right, in a sense. Everything does take longer. The way she whines, however, sounds as if she spent hours slaving away each day for a week only to collapse at the table in exhaustion. Comparing her tales with reality, I can only conclude that she’s just lousy at it.

Bolivia lacks easy fast food, and what exists is just as expensive as it is in the United States. How can one casually go to the one Burger King in town when it costs just as much as going to El Porton, the nicest steakhouse in the city? Processed greasy fast hamburger or Argentine steak? Dilemma.

We do have a microwave and it has worked for a collective six months of the twenty-six months I’ve been here. The microwave has one teensy problem: plug it into the wall and it burns out.

In fairness, we do also have a food processor and a Kitchenaid stand mixer. Each appliance saves at least fifteen minutes off each major project. This is necessary when one has to cook two separate entrees at each meal to cover the needs of eight people, three of whom have violent allergies to the key elements which make food Taste Good.

We do not, though, have a bread maker or an ice cream maker… and I fail to see the use for electric scales in day to day cooking. Or Thanksgivings, for that matter.

We buy sandwich bread, but we bake regularly regardless. Then we’ve the cookies. Why would we buy cookies from the store when we can bake them for half the price? Our Bolivian grocery bills are already the equal of our American grocery bills, thanks to Bolivia’s political mis-leadership.

And yet… unlike the Daily Fail’s frazzled idiot-cook, I still manage to get around town, take grad courses, and, in the case of this past Tuesday, watch seven episodes of Buffy.

I’d like to see the article’s author dropped into my great-grandmother’s world of 1930s-40s coal mining West Virginia. A special room meant for keeping hand-salted meats stored away for the winter, endless days spent canning vegetables in glass jars…

… but, then the universe would collapse in one great big collective whine.

I’ve decided that Katherine is not allowed to come to Bolivia. This is a significant change in plans, since Katherine is scheduled to arrive in Bolivia on Friday and she intends to stay through August.

Here’s the problem.

I will lose the Katherine Card.

The Katherine Card works all manner of magic. Observe:

Convincing Teenage Sister to Accept Medicine

Lorien: “Staton, you have to take this medicine.“
Staton: “Um, no. It does nothing for me.“
Lorien: “It doesn’t matter if you think it does nothing for your symptoms, because it’ll stop you from being contagious.“
Staton: “So?“
Lorien: “Katherine will be here Friday. If we get her sick, her first two Bolivian Weeks will be miserable.“
Staton: “Oh. Okay. Can I have the pills?”

Convincing Eleven Year Old Brother to Bathe

Lorien: “David, take a bath.“
David: “Nope.“
Lorien: “You stink.“
David: “Yup!“
Lorien: “No, seriously, you smell really bad.“
David: “[snicker] Yeah, I know!“
Lorien: “Katherine will be here in three days! You don’t want her to smell you like this.“
David: “Oh. Yeah.“
Lorien: “You’ll need to bathe more than once a month, you know.“
David: “True. Like, every day. Oh man, I need to go do my laundry, too!“
Lorien: “Um, okay, yeah, definitely.“
David: “GOTTA RUN, I SMELL BAD.”

Admittedly, the Katherine Card is less effective on the elder of the younger siblings, Thomas and Nicholas. They’re very much, “eh, whatever, I’m doing my own oh-so-cool-and-suave thing.” I suspect this will change when they stumble out of their rooms, like any other grumpy early morning, and realize, “POPE’S POOP! THERE’S A GIRL IN THE HOUSE. WE HAVE TO BE NICE!“

On second thought, Katherine should still come to Bolivia. That reaction will be worth the loss of the Katherine Card.

Update! Jeff McMorrough made his own version of the Katherine Card:

A ridiculous amount of time has been spent baking this week. Breads with and without yeast (with is superior, apparently), plain breads, flavored breads, sweet breads. I’ve stumbled upon a great crispy olive-oily bread twice now, and I can’t replicate it. Bolivian ovens are just plain bonkers. The temperature never regulates, the heating is irregular, and quite frankly I can’t even figure out if the listed numbers are in Fahrenheit or Celsius. I’m guessing Celsius. Not that it really matters, of course, since it LIES. Add to that the fact that I live in a valley bowl surrounded by mountains 8500 feet above sea level. The rainy season has just begun, which means that this time last month it was 0% humidity and right now it’s 0.0273% humidity. I probably didn’t pick the best spot in the world to try to figure out how to bake breads. I’ll return to the States — and subsequently a location with more water and more oxygen — bake a bread, and find that it’s exploded all over my kitchen.

Right, so, yesterday I went with a Monkey Bread. Sweet, gooey, etc. The monkey bread turned out reasonably in that the flavor was there but, going right back to the temperature issue, the middle was too doughy. Still, the sugary doughy results were sufficient to send the household into a carbohydrate-induced foggy haze.

I’ve had to alter the water measurements significantly… about double that of all of the recipes I’ve found online. I don’t know if this is due to the flour available here, the lack of humidity, the altitude, or a combination thereof. I just mix the lot until it looks how it’s supposed to look.

This may have something to do with my exceedingly irregular results.

Ingredients:
(note: this was to feed 7 people plus possibly a few tea-guests.)

Dough:
7 cups Flour
2 Tbsp Yeast
1 Tbsp Salt
6.5 cups Water

Cinnamon Sugar:
5 cups Sugar
4 Tbsp Cinnamon

Glazey Stuff:
1 cup Butter
Arbitrary amount of Honey

Tools:
Monster-Sized Baking Dish to hold it all (greased)
Small baking dish
1 big mixing bowl
1 medium mixing bowl

I mixed the dry dough ingredients — flour, yeast, and salt — together in the big mixing bowl. and, um, I do mean big. Thanksgiving Turkey Big. Texas Big.

I then mixed in the water 1 cup at a time until the dough was sufficiently fluid. Very sticky and gooey. Mine is much clumpier than the recipes I’ve found for this dough mix tend to indicate online. It’d be smoother if I were using a mixer, but that would involve tracking down a transformer to ensure I don’t burn out my mother’s American current KitchenAid.

The dough was then left to rise for an hour. I covered it with a well-floured cloth (handful of flour on the cloth, rubbed the flour in, lightly shook off the flour) during that time.

After an hour, the dough had risen significantly. Bubbles were evident on top. Incidentally, this dough works as any general extra-yeasty bread dough. I’ve added more flour to make it bake like a normal bread, kept it flat and baked it in olive oil for a crispy rich bread, etc.

Meanwhile, the sugar and cinnamon were mixed in the medium sized bowl. Very cinnamon heavy. The monster-sized (still thinking Texas Big) baking dish was thoroughly greased with shortening and then floured.

I took fist-sized dollops of the dough and rolled/tossed/shook it in the cinnasugar mix until thoroughly coated. Those dollops were laid out comfortably in the baking dish until the dish bottom was covered. Poured butter and drizzled honey on top. I then layered more dollops on top, added butter and honey. I kept layering until I ran out of feasible space in the dish. Extra butter and honey on top with the remaining cinnasugar.

The monkey bread went on the top rack in the oven. Again, I live in crazy-high Cochabamba, Bolivia, South America, so I filled a small baking dish with water and put it on the bottom rack. That helps keep the oven humid. Or it would, were the air not so dry that it sucks every bit of moisture out of everything. Y’know.

Baked it for 30–45 minutes-ish at I-Haven’t-the-Foggiest temperature. It just looked right. With the unevenness of our oven, I should have turned it at least halfway through the process.

and, of course, the finished Monkey Bread of sugary foggy brains.

We heard some fascinating political and legal analysis on current events from a top-notch specialist in Bolivian law. I’m not naming him here simply because I didn’t get his express permission to do so. Kindly, deal with it. I’m posting the analysis, and then we can all go about researching it as we wish.

Prior to the Ambush in the Pando, Evo expelled almost all of the press. That is a significantly contributing factor as to why we have so little visible evidence and sound accounts of what really happened.

Earlier today on a radio station in Cochabamba it was announced that evidence had been found and confirmed that all individuals who fired weapons at the violent clash were Venezuelan troops. This is believable, because it is well known that the Bolivian military is fiercely uncomfortable with attacking other Bolivians. (This matches an article I saw yesterday. I’ll add a link to that here soon. Need to track it down again.)

Legal Consequences of the Pando Conflict:

After the attack in the Pando, the Pando government was disbanded and Martial Law was instigated in that department. Martial Law is limited by the current Constitution of Bolivia to last no more than 90 days. Under Martial Law, no arrests or charges can be made.

Also under the current Bolivian Constitution, no official can be arrested under any circumstances. Let’s backtrack and define this. Until relatively recently, the Constitution defined Prefects of Departments as being members of the President’s cabinet, government officials, whom the President personally selected. Under President Mesa, however, the Constitution was legally amended so that the Prefects are elected by the people of the departments. The definition of a Prefect remained the same: Prefects are government officials and members of the President’s cabinet.

Current context:

The Prefect of Pando has been detained by the national authorities under Evo’s leadership. He has not been arrested or charged. He is informally accused, but legally he is only under armed/guarded confinement. He is not at liberty to leave. When a Bolivian citizen is under confinement, the normal response is a writ of habeas corpus. He has not been arrested or charged, however, so habeas corpus does not apply. But! In situations in which a confinement has been initiated but no arrests/charges have been made, the Bolivian Constitution offers a protection: an automatic visa to leave the country.

The legal Constitution of Bolivia promises the Prefect of Pando an automatic visa to leave Bolivia. That’s Latin American legal systems at work if I’ve ever seen it. His family have today filed the case to have that visa processed.

Evo’s team is arguing that because the Prefect was in rebellion, he cannot be considered an “official of the government”. However, this doesn’t hold up legally:

• The Constitution has no provisions for situations of rebellion. That status does not legally exist.
• The Prefect was elected by the people of the Pando. Therefore, he is an official of the government of Bolivia as designated by the people of his department.
• The Prefect is legally a member of the President’s cabinet, but is not subject to the President’s selection or preference (reserved by the department, as shown in point 2). The Prefect is as much of an official of the Bolivian government as every other member of the President’s cabinet.

Unfortunately for Evo, by placing the Prefect of Pando under confinement he has given him a free exit from the country and from possible prosecution. This is what happens when people do not respect their own laws enough to know their own laws. If you make a law and/or if you claim the authority of a law, then you need to know that law and follow that law. Evo’s team does not, and that’s a significant weakness for his leadership and his factions.

Evo can continue this fight against the Prefect. Attempting to keep the Prefect in the country by denying his constitutional claim to an exit visa forces a case into constitutional courts. In Bolivia, cases can take months and sometimes years. Consitutional cases will get heard much faster than civil cases, but they can take just as long… and that’s a long time. IF this case goes before the constitutional courts, then due to its high profile the new Constitution proposed by Evo, which has not yet been approved and put into place by the people of Bolivia, cannot be approved. Evo can fight to keep the Prefect, but his Constitution will be delayed inevitably, and with it his political ideals.

Ouch.

International Support and the Limits thereof:

We keep hearing about the overwhelming solidarity of the continent, represented now by UNASUR and the OAS, for Evo Morales. That may well be an exagerration, and the inclusion of international authorities may prove to be Evo’s political downfall.

Evo set the schedule for negotiating with the opposition leaders in Bolivia. He picked the dates. At the last minute, Evo attempted to change the negotiations for one day earlier than planned. This would have caused the opposition leaders to be unprepared. UNASUR and OAS said, emphatically, “No.” The schedule had been set, it was not appropriate to change it.

August Referendum — Bogus?

In addition, the international agencies are going through the election results from August with a fine-tooth comb. They are being extremely strict. Under these strict counting procedures, Evo’s “mandate” is adding up to be approximately 32% — that is 35% lower than the 67% claimed by the Bolivian government. A more moderate counting which allows for a reasonable amount of casual error suggests that Evo would have earned the necessary 52% to stay in office, but only just, and certainly not a 2/3 mandate.

A more obvious limitation to the security of the election, especially valuable for those of us who are distrustful of even third-party agencies counting votes (it’s scary, when you think about how easily shaded our counting systems are, regardless of nation!), is that in a normal election every polling location is monitored by a representative of every single party in the election. In those situations, if any of those representatives point out a possible problem, then the whole polling table in question is shut down! In August, however, the referendum did not involve specific parties and a selection between candidates — it was a simple Yes / No vote. Representatives from multiple parties were not present at the polling places, thus eliminating one of the more significant protections of the electoral system in Bolivia.

The international agencies are going through the records and finding thousands upon thousands of voters listed as “Mama AAA”, “Papa BBB”, and so on — clearly fraudulent names. Reports are also being submitted of citizens who appeared at their polling location to vote but were informed that someone had already voted that day in their name! Awkward. Now, be rational, guys. In the United States of America wwe have elections upon which the entire world looks because our elections affect the entire world… and yet, we still have dead guys voting in Chicago. Election fraud in Bolivia? Believable.

The Compromise:

UNASUR and the OAS, however, are not demanding that the August election be thrown out. They’re going much deeper than that. Now that they’ve been invited in, they’re staying. Evo’s “mandate” will stand, but on their conditions. UNASUR and the OAS are demanding that all voters re-register. From now all, every voter must present their carnet (ID) and give their thumbprint in order to vote. That data will correspond with the data in the brand new voter registration database.

The rest of the continent really doesn’t want to deal with a country firing its legally and constitutionally elected President — and Evo’s presidential election was legal and valid. But forcing a just and accountable system of voter registration? That could solve a ton of future headaches.

The Bolivian Economy:

Bolivia’s national bank has been deliberately suppressing the U.S. Dollar. We’ve all seen this. When the dollar was going down, so did the exchange rate — obviously! When the dollar went back up, however, the exchange rate did not rise in turn… it even went down further. The Bolivian economy is still too tied to the dollar to play these games, and games they are. The economy is in a mess!

Worse still is that Evo was depending on high oil prices, circa $140/barrel, to pay for several of his major projects. He banked on being able to sell Bolivian oil for those prices. Unfortunately for him, oil has dropped back down to circa $100/barrel.

People aren’t exactly thrilled about all of this.

Evo’s Path to Success:

Please note: the following is not my idea! This, too, is coming from the brilliant legal advisor. He’s thought of two very simple and, shockingly, obvious answers to almost all of Evo’s problems.

First, regardless of which option he selects, he needs to give the opposition what they want. All of it. Halt the new Constitution. Give them “autonomy”. Stop interfering with revenues. All of it.

Then, he has two strategic options:

• One month prior to the next election, Evo could resign as president of Bolivia. His vice president would become president. Evo would be legally free to run for re-election.
• Alternatively, he could have made all of his concessions to the opposition conditional on an amendment to the current Constitution which would allow him to run for re-election. That’s it.

Why would these work? Because people are dead tired of the conflict. The opposition will not ever be thrilled with Evo, MAS, or any other socialist regime. They will be content, however, if they are given what they want — and that’s a return to normal without the demands of the new Constitution, the stolen revenues, etc. The moderates within Bolivia (who likely outnumber either faction) and the international community will praise Evo for his compassion, his wisdom, and his commitment to peace. His popularity will skyrocket. Due to the new voter registration systems, there would be no reasonable question of the validity of his election and democratic mandate. He would be elected by a huge majority, and he would have the political backing in his second term to force through the new Constitution (or at the very least a slightly milder version) without significant problem.

The strategy is brilliant. Appease the opposition. Get legally re-elected under the current legal system. Earn the love and respect of millions. THEN drive in the nails of reforms. The problem with all of this, though, is that it interferes with pride. Evo is far too proud to make the temporary, and frankly superficial, concessions. He’ll never do it.

So what will happen instead? Evo cannot take Sant Cruz and cause it to fall as it did Pando. The new Constitution will probably fail. Evo will stay in office, but he won’t be re-elected. He’ll be done, nothing foundational will be solved, and both sides — the indigenous people who experience discrimination and cultural abuse, and the property-owners who have to battle to keep their rights — will continue to suffer. A very boring, but very predictable, stalemate.

What follows is a video posted on YouTube which apparently aired on a Bolivian news channel. It involves gunfire, coffins, and people swimming across water in an attempt to flee.

I ask the following question in a genuine manner: what in this video indicates that a) the prefect began the attack and that b) the campesino group was peaceful? The video is extremely incomplete. The footage has been cut and/or blurred in vital moments. Overlaying the video are biased questions and assumptions of the prefect’s guilt. My Spanish is limited (I’m still trying and learning!) — is there important speech in the actual footage which provides clues? Also, I don’t know enough about the terrain, people, etc. — is there something visible which provides solid evidence?

Thanks to mgrace who posted the link to the video on his blog.