Perhaps in a year when I have to send such things to potential employers I will revise, but at present my teaching philosophy goes something like this:
Minimize boredom.
That goes for both the class and me. So I’ve tried to load my syllabus with readings that, yes, teaching something about anthropology, but also bring a little spunk or pizzazz to the discussion. So, today, in order to teach about the Anthropology of Religion, we took a little detour to Black Rock City, NV. I assigned Sarah Pike’s chapter Desert Goddesses and Apocalyptic Art: Making Sacred Space at the Burning Man Festival, from the book God in the Details: American Religion in Popular Culture.
She concentrates on the ways that Burning Man participants, or burners understand their experiences as life-changing or initiatory. During the festival, some burners mark these changes on their bodies. She Sam who shares in an online forum “I got my head shaved while I was there…and emerged a new person (6 September 1997).
This, of course, reminded me of a man named Adam that I know who once (was coerced and) shaved his head in a bar. That bar was in the Ekko hostel of La Paz, and Adam was the bar manager. Strangely enough I wasn’t there that night that all the mohawks were made. As the story goes, the bar was doing a special happy hour fundraiser for a local abused children’s home. But things got a little wild and one of the barworkers, a twenty year old British girl, decided they should continue the merriment past happy hour time, charging patrons 20 Bs. for a head shave. Jorge, an older Spanish barman ran upstairs to get his electric razor. When I stopped in the bar for lunch the next day, at least half of the patrons and staff had Mohawks. Even Emma, the originator of the idea, had shaved half her head.
Over the next two weeks, several of the bar workers who had originally missed out joined in. As some of the travelers continued on, usually to Cuzco, Perú, pictures would appear online of groups of Mohawk clad young people at la Isla del Sol, Machu Picchu, Lima, or surfing in Mancora. It was, in a way a glocalization in the most meta and palimpsestous way. A temporal but embodied mode of belonging. Of marking authenticity and legitimacy. Of claiming identity.
But this was not the only way Bolivia was temporarily inscribed upon traveling bodies. Freezing nighttime temperatures and cold showers leave an unshakable chill in the body. High altitudes leave one breathless and without appetite. And when one does eat, a particular form of aftermath is inevitable as well. And Ekko itself leaves bodily traces. Cramped backs from hostel beds. Bloated livers and pounding heads after a night of rum & coke, followed by dancing at Blue. It was while living in Ekko that the Spanish word for limp, cojera, became indelibly etched in my mind. There was always someone falling off the bar or stepping on glass.
But again, these are all temporary corporeal experiences. Other travelers wanted something more permanent. I first learned of the cult of the Ekko tattoo a few days before Easter. All around the hostel were posted scavenger hunt lists. Most items involved taking pictures in local attractions or finding items around the hostel. But number nine stuck out “Take a picture of a Ekko tattoo.” Upon inquiring I learned that there were four known Ekko tattoos. The most obvious was Jaff, the bar manager (who held the job before Adam). Sean, Jaff’s precursor had one also. Alek, the manager of the hostel had one nestled among about 30 other tattoos. And Mike, the events manager at the Ekko hostel in Cuzco had one on his bicep. With Sean gone and Mike a nine hour bus ride away, scavengers really only had two choices. But the next week, that changed when Dr. Joe decided to get one as well.
I met Dr. Joe my second night in the hostel. It was supposed to be his last. I was still battling the remnants of altitude sickness, and didn’t want to stray too far from my bed. I wandered into the bar around 7:30 just looking for a meal. I ordered pasta with vegetables (not exactly “authentic” cuisine), and waited at the bar for it to arrive. It was a busy Tuesday night, and there wasn’t a stool available, so I wondered around the short tables with bench seats looking for room. There was an empty space at the table in the corner so I asked if I could join them. I noticed Dr. Joe’s accent immediately. Pure Texas. We ended up drinking a fair number of rum and coke’s together that night, and bid farewell as we went off to bed, as he was leaving at 7am the next morning.
He left to go to the Sal de Uyuni, the Amazon jungle parts of Bolivia, and who knows where else. Two weeks later, I wandered into the Ekko bar for a snack again, and saw him standing in front of the counter. Though we had only had a brief encounter before, and hadn’t even especially connected, we greeted each other like long lost friends. I suppose this is something I learned about the traveling culture during the time I spent at Ekko. There are real friends and traveling friends. But when you’re traveling, you don’t have anyone around who knows you well. Who has been through important things with you, and knows your personality. So when you find someone with whom you are even slightly familiar, a sense of comfort is likely to emerge quickly. And so, Dr. Joe became my new best friend.
A week later, he announced he would be getting an Ekko tattoo on his ankle. I was surprised because all the other Ekko tattoo bearing people had been there for months if not years. But Dr. Joe, despite his legitimate MD, was playing a little fast and loose in South America and decided he should commission Diego, a Cruceño tattoo artist staying at Ekko at the time, to permanently emblazon the Ekko logo on his body.
The Ekko logo itself was a bit unexpected, but getting tattoos in general was actually quite a popular pastime for travelers in La Paz. Pete, a guy from the US who had worked for a deathroad biking company for a year, explained to me that he had always wanted a particular design on his chest, but could never afford it in the States. It would have cost him several hundred dollars at home, but in La Paz he paid only about $70. And this popularity was cyclical in a sense. Prices were cheap, so lots of travelers wanted them. The demand was there, so tattoo shops like the one down the street started to cater to travelers and advertise in hostels. As a result it became necessary for aspiring artists like my friend Alé to have a working knowledge of English. And the more travelers who got tattoos and showed them off, the more others were convinced of their need as well.
And despite both Diego’s and Alé’s insistence that I couldn’t leave La Paz without a tatuaje or at least a perforacion, I did.
But I did not leave unmarked. About a week before I left the city, I was helping clean up in the Ekko bar after it closed one night. Timoteo, a friend of Diego’s who was going to culinary school, but had been hired by the bar to help wash dishes and keep things tidy, was tired and overwhelmed, so I offered to finish off the dirty glasses for him. I shoved my hand inside one of the large pint mugs and pulled it out with blood trickling down my wrist. There was a chip in the rim of the glass and as I scrubbed it had cut my skin. It was a short cut, but deep, and it didn’t want to stop bleeding. I looked around for bandaids and couldn’t find any. There were none in the bar or in the hostel office. And it was late, so looking around for a guest with a first aid kit was hard as well. I ended up just taping some toilet paper to the wound and holding it above my head for a while. The next day when I removed the make-shift bandage it started bleeding again. I went across the street to Farmacia Amiga and bought a real bandage (if only Dr. Joe had still been around). It stopped bleeding for good that time, but took a while to heal. When it was still visible a month later, I asked a friend if that meant that it would scar. I couldn’t contain my smile when they said “most likely.”
That little pink line is still there on the base of my right thumb, and I smile every time I notice it. Most of my friends have suggested that I should probably make up a good story about being kidnapped by one of the lucha libre empresas and having to fight my way out. And maybe someday I’ll tell someone’s grandchildren a story like that. But for now I’m content with the truth. That La Paz couldn’t let me leave unscathed. That the mind can’t change so easily without the body following suit. Indeed, as Pike writes, my “body was simultaneously liberated and constrained.”
