{"id":5325,"date":"2017-08-01T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-01T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-09-12T15:32:03","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T19:32:03","slug":"so-your-character-is-from-bolivia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victoriagracehowell.com\/staging\/6258\/so-your-character-is-from-bolivia\/","title":{"rendered":"So Your Character is From Bolivia … Featuring Rebekah DeVall"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\nIt’s time for this week’s So Your Character is … Post! This is a weekly segment where I interview lovely volunteers from around the world to give you a firsthand account of being a citizen of their respective country or having a disability. I’m hoping to encourage international diversity, break stereotypes, and give writers a crash course on how to write a character from these different places on our planet. If you haven’t checked out last week’s  So Your Character Has a Broken Bone … be sure to hop on over there and give it a read!<\/span>
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\nI actually have a cousin who married a guy who grew up in Bolivia as a missionary kid. This is the closest connection I have to Bolivia besides some Bolivian currency for my collection. I’m so glad to have found Rebekah so I could learn more about this South American country!<\/span>
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\nDisclaimer: The content below may be culturally shocking to some. Each of these posts are as uncensored as possible to preserve the authenticity of the cultures of each of the interviewees.<\/span>
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Rebekah DeVall is an MK (missionary kid) who disagrees with the popular belief that paperwork defines one\u2019s home country. Though Dutch by ancestry and American by paperwork, she\u2019s Bolivian at heart. Find her on Facebook, her blog<\/a>, or if you\u2019re adventurous, Vallegrande, Bolivia, South America.<\/span>
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\nThank you, Victoria, for the opportunity to share! I\u2019d love to answer any questions y\u2019all might have!<\/span><\/p>\n


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\nWhat do you feel is unique to your country? Landmarks? Celebrations?<\/b>
\nBolivia is the heart of South America. One of only two land-locked countries, she\u2019s home to over 10,000 people. One main piece of her uniqueness are the two capitals, Sucre and La Paz (\u201cthe peace\u201d). La Paz is the administrative capital, located in the Andes. However, the largest city of Bolivia is neither, but rather Santa Cruz (\u201choly cross\u201d), with over a million inhabitants as of 2003.<\/span>
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\nAn event unique to Bolivia is the parade on August 6th, independence day. Schoolchildren practice their marching and traditional dances weeks ahead of time, and stores set up all along the main plaza of the city to watch the parade of every school.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nTell me about your country’s environment. What are some of your favorite places?<\/b><\/span>
\nA good portion of Bolivia is still rural, farming land, fields. Some of my favorite places are back in nature. A tiny little village called Vilcas, in the middle of nowhere. Their pascha, the twin waterfalls between them and the closest village. <\/span>
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\nTell me about your country’s food. What are some of your favorite dishes?<\/b><\/span>
\nBolivians use nearly every portion of animal bodies for food\u2014chicken feet (chicken foot soup), pig skin (k\u2019jaras), for a couple of examples. Also, humitas. A corn and cheese mush is either baked or boiled inside the husk. The left are boiled, tied with another piece of the husk to keep them from falling apart. Oh, and the far right is the standard bread of the country. Some bread can double as hockey pucks. \ud83d\ude42<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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One of my favorite Bolivian foods is majadito, fried rice (a chief staple) with diced vegetables and shredded chicken and meat. Salte\u00f1as  are a form of juicy meat pastry also with diced vegetables.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nTell me about any different speech patterns in your country. Slang? Idioms? Words for things such as \u201cbiscuits\u201d instead of \u201ccookies\u201d?<\/b><\/span>
\nBolivian speech patterns are an interesting topic, as she has three main languages\u2014Spanish, Quechua, and Aymara. The last two are native dialects. Where we live, in a smaller city, people speak a mashup of two or three. Only the older generations or people living out in the extremely rural districts speak only the native dialects, but even our Spanish is \u201cmutilated\u201d in a way by the native words. Babies aren\u2019t “bebes” (the Spanish), they\u2019re the quechuan “wawas.” Stools aren\u2019t the Spanish “banquitos,” but rather the Quechuan “toquito.” <\/span>
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\nNowadays, even English is making its way into Spanish conversation. Thanks to translations of some recent movies, the word “bye” is now a regular word, and English classes in school have taught kids words and phrases such as “Love you, baby,” the numbers in English, and other words I don\u2019t care to repeat.<\/span>
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