It is a well-known fact among Sharoll Fernandez’s friends, that throughout her life she has been part of every interest group imaginable. From adventist church to social volunteering, passing through hindu temples, shamanic rituals and zen meditation groups. In the latest installment of her personal saga, she has been challenged to explain to our readers what it means to search, to find, and sometimes to lose, in this spiritual quest towards finding one’s tribe.

I refuse to write. The experience could be worse than taking Ayahuasca, a Quechua expression which translates as the ‘rope of death’. This beverage, product of the boiling and filtering of various plants, is used in healing and cleansing spiritual rituals. It is believed that it lets the spirit leave the body without the latter dying.

How can I allow words to caress, or even attempt to fathom, experiences so sacred and intimate? Writing can indeed be seen as a ritual, of a different nature than those practiced by tribes in the Amazon. And I understand it is necessary, in some way, to surrender to this rite, as symbol of my being a part of a certain kind of contemporary tribe, that of those who seek to communicate. The tribe of those who have the dual burden and blessing of having a range of spiritual paths to choose from?

I’m a seven year old girl. Saturdays start on Friday nights, when instead of sleeping in my bedroom I move to my grandparents’ room to begin the Seventh Day alongside them. Early in the morning, before dawn has set in and the cold is felt more intensely, I am awoken by my grandfather. The ritual begins. We sing, someone reads a Bible passage, my father’s father comments upon it, we pray (which is not the same as saying our prayers), we have breakfast and we leave the house. It’s barely seven in the morning and there are already people in the temple. They wait for the sermon and they give worship through song. These songs don’t bother me, but I don’t feel they bring me closer to the Creator, as my grandmother says they do to her. Even so, I have my favourite, number 500 in the hymn book. Because of my age I cannot stay and listen to the pastor. I have to go to the children’s class where I am greeted by the young teacher in a long skirt. Her face is clean and her voice is sweet and soft, disturbingly sweet and exaggeratedly soft. Being an adventist meant to praise the Lord in word and through our actions. It meant not skipping Sabbath school, learning verses off by heart, doing charity, dressing and behaving appropriately, visiting the sick, knowing why it was necessary to keep Sabbath instead of doing so on Sunday. Among other things, it also meant being prepared to be seen as different, and even rejected. None of this, apart from the dogma, seemed negative. After all, showing consideration and using one’s memory were good things, I thought.

However, a childhood of light versions of biblical stories, and weekends of worship didn’t show sign of showing me the answers I was looking for. Something was missing.

This is when the journey begins. I’m going through adolescence, when what we look for is to belong. I discovered that going to the Temple on Saturdays wasn’t a given, it was a choice. And making use of my free will, confirmed by the teachings of Sabbath school, I decided to stay at home. Doing so gave me time which I spent, with increasing devotion, in front of the television. It later turned into time I used to find another nest. And this search continued to mutate. At first Saturdays were for leisure. Then I spent them wandering the streets. Later it was tango, and movies after that. Then I went on walks and started volunteering. One day I turn up at the Hindu centre, the Radha Krishna temple.

I’m fourteen and I have so many questions. I have looked for the address for over half an hour and, as is often the case, I find it just before giving up. The centre smells of Nag Champa and is inundated with images of gods that I cannot name but which I recognise as deities. The light is slightly lighter than normal. Someone comes up to me and asks me to take off my shoes. They whisper where, as a woman, I am to sit. They sing and dance at the same time. Simple movements, a simple toing and froing, but it is disconcerting and for seconds I feel ridiculous. Even so, I decide to pull myself together, and try to follow the choreography, leaving a foreign conviction to take over me.

After the chanting I am given a japa mala, a set of 108 wooden beads which I am explained, are to be used to recite Krishna’s name. They accept me without me having sought admission, and I commit without them having asked me to.

After some years I have not only wandered in and out of different congregations, I have even returned a couple of times to Sabbath school. I had become a vegetarian for three months when I was 10, and for three years and eleven months later in my adolescence. I had learnt to meditate in the mornings, reciting mantras in Sanskrit just before sunrise, and doing breathing exercises before bed. I had learnt the seven chakras of the human body, and knew of the various cleansing ceremonies for the body, mind, and soul. I had read about Zen Buddhism, the Sufi masters and Commander Ashtar, who I later discovered is the deity of a prominent UFO religion.

I had learnt how to read runes, the meaning of colours, and about the existence of salamanders, beings which inhabit fire. Like the fairies in the air and the gnomes of the earth, they taught me the secret of cinnamon rolls and how to best lay the table when you’re holding a tea party. I discovered that knitting with my grandmother was a price I gladly paid to hear her memories, and I learned that food tastes better when it is cooked for several people.

These spiritual groups, religions, and beliefs differed to an astonishing and catastrophic degree, but perhaps shared the notions that attachment to people or things can imperil your existence, and that we must fight against the fickle traps of our own ego, as well as the conviction that those who hold the deepest truths also have a duty to share them.

I had, effectively, gained acceptance into different tribes, each with its own rituals, language and demands for legitimate membership. I became an expert in watching behaviours, in understanding, or at least thinking I understood, what these people thought and believed. But most importantly, I was able to accept them with decreasing levels of disbelief in every new place I visited. Sometimes for seconds, or even months, this scepticism reached a vanishing point, allowing me to fully become part of worlds alien yet deeply familiar.

My journey through these different tribes, sometimes as a member, sometimes as an observer, has often felt like a primordial return. Meaning is found in people, and tribes are people at their core. Belonging to a tribe, however fleetingly, laces our existence with meaning and makes our lives worth living. A journey of this nature is an odyssey. As such, it presents us with a risk, in this case that of isolation, of never being able to return back to the mythic Ithaca and its people. In this journey, one can become lost, not in the world, but in oneself, given in to the intoxicating siren songs in the high seas. To elude them is to return home, to your friends, to your family, to yourself.

Eadem mutata resurgo, although changed, I arise the same. I return after the journey, not just home, but to my everyday life, the jokes, and the afternoon watching films. Throughout my life these various tribes have served as a refuge. They were mirrors where I could see my own image more easily, possibly because this mirror was more understanding towards my needs, as it suffered from the same ones. But they were a refuge because from them I was able to return to the world, to that place I didn’t feel was special enough to belong to. I was returned to this world to appreciate it, accept it and love it, because the world was there appreciating, accepting, and loving me.

At 27, I look back and understand why I was driven to go to the countryside to spend countless hours mantralising, and understand that this is the same reason I spent entire days in the kitchen with my grandmother deboning fish, or afternoons in my friend’s living room studying for an art history exam. I wanted to share and through doing so, belong.

Yet if I don’t find differences between these pastimes, and if my sensation of belonging and fulfilment are practically indistinguishable, what does it mean for me to be immersed in one community instead of another? How important is it, all things considered, to have meditated or to have cooked food for those I love? Everything can be sacralised, as my grandmother did with every meal she cooked, just as the most solemn of rituals can be trivialised when seen through the wrong set of eyes. I find the same mysticism in the overwhelming presence of the Sajama, as I do in an afternoon drinking tea and eating cake, or in Bhagavad Gita’s verses.

What does Steve Jobs, the founder of the world’s most valuable company, have in common with Walter Melendrez, a bolivian artisan who exports miniature clay figurines? Christian Rojas, organiser of Bolivia’s latest and largest TEDx event to date, explains what it takes to connect people through ideas.

It is 2 a.m., the temperature is 1° C but the thermal sensation is, I believe, -5° C. I am located in the Coliseum of the Universidad Católica Boliviana, which feels like it’s a freezer. The effects of fatigue have long since set in; I started working at 9 a.m. and have been concentrating on every detail of the next-day’s event. By that time I realized it was already Wednesday, July 31st, a very important day for us, the organizers, the university, and the city of La Paz. We were hours away from Bolivia’s latest and largest TEDx event.

A year and a half ago, I was feeling the same chills I did that night at the coliseum. Back then, I was walking around the University of Chicago in the middle of winter. A friend of mine, Güimar Vaca (who gave a talk at the latest TEDx UCB event, not that either of us imagined this back then), was showing me around the campus where he lived and studied for four years. He told me how he was organizing a TEDx event at the university. At the time, I was kind of a 'fan' of the TED Talks, and I didn’t know that a regular person could organize such an event. When I came back from that trip, I set myself the task of holding a TEDx event in La Paz, something which had never been done before.

TED is a non-profit organization devoted to 'Ideas Worth Spreading'. It started out as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: technology, entertainment and design. The success was such that later it gave a platform to such a variety of people and themes that it became an ideas-producing machine.

TED has become somewhat of a global tribe, where people are connected not physically or in creed, but through a shared ethos based on sharing ideas. Rather than marking its members apart from other people, it has brought them together by making the world aware of our commonalities, as well as what happens elsewhere on this planet. In the spirit of its mission of ideas worth spreading, TED created a program that gives communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue in TED-like experiences at local levels, creating smaller tribes, so more people can get involved in this global movement. Today, one story or idea can flow from a community in the middle of Africa, and be known by the whole global community in the matter of hours. This initiative was given the name of TEDx, where the x signifies that the TED event was independently
organised.

I was determined to organise this event in my hometown of La Paz, in order to bring this movement to the place closest to me. More importantly, I wanted to share with the world ideas from Bolivia worth spreading.

Once I obtained the license, after a two-month process, the first step was to gather a group of TED lovers capable of thinking big and making this dream a reality. One of them was Rodrigo Barrenechea, who was part of this initiative from beginning to end. Some months later the university got involved and offered to help with various aspects, from funding to logistics. The theme was later chosen: 'Entrepreneurs: New Ideas for a New World', and we set out to find 7 speakers whose ideas and life experiences embodied the spirit we were looking for.

By 7:32 p.m. on the day of the event, I realized that something big has just happened. TEDxUCB has just taken place. We received a warm and thunderous applause from the audience, and everyone who stepped out of the coliseum seemed inspired and energised by the experience. As Ivanna Moreira, an attendee at the event, pointed out, ‘people left inspired by the high quality of the event, which is something you don’t see everyday here in La Paz’. Another person remarked: 'this was an event of an international level, not a Bolivian level'. I’m proud to say we created an impact on that day. We inspired the audience, we left our mark in the university and the city, and we created a new local TEDx tribe, from where hundreds of bolivians are now entitled to feel part of this global movement. The best part is that through organising this event we shared with the world so many ideas from Bolivia, many of which may find an audience, resonate, and inspire elsewhere. These are definitely ideas worth spreading.

* Amaru Villanueva Rance, Founder and Editor in Chief at Bolivian Express was invited to give a talk at this event. The talk, titled ‘The Accidental Entrepreneur’ will be available online in coming weeks.

The number of Jews settled in Bolivia is declining, yet thousands of young Israelis continue to visit the country every year.
In a tribal sense, I have always felt rather anonymous. I don’t belong to any particular clubs, and my family aren’t religious, nor do we have any distinguishing traditions or customs. And yet, upon the passing of my grandfather in March this year, I realised that my previous perception of our lack of identity was a rather ignorant assumption. When my grandfather’s funeral was held in a Jewish cemetery, I had my first contact with a rabbi and I came to realise that, despite the fact that we are not practicing Jews, we are connected to something.

At first glance, it seemed that here in Bolivia the tribal element of the Jewish community is rather absent, partially because the Jewish population is so minute, so modest. With only an estimated 350-700 Jews in the country, it is unsurprising that many Bolivians continue to hold misconceived perceptions about the Jewish people’s lack of integration here. ‘It is a mistake’, states Ricardo Udler, the president of Círculo Israelita, the main Jewish organization in Bolivia. Udler is eager to explain that his community is not so esoteric as perhaps it is envisioned to be. ‘I am a Bolivian man’, he says. ‘I am also a Jew. The stereotype is that Jews only make money. That Jews live in ghettos only for Jews. This is what society thinks, but this is not true. Many Jews living here are in the professions, not only in commerce. We have doctors, lawyers, engineers. I myself am a gynaecologist. We work for the country, not for ourselves.’ Of course, Bolivian Jews hold close relations with one another as well: every Friday evening, many families congregate together for Shabbat, lighting candles and reciting blessing. Udler also believes that the size and dwindling nature of the Jewish population has made his community more religious, intent on holding together their tradition and beliefs. ‘Most Jewish families used to only go to the synagogue on a Friday night and a Saturday morning’, he says with pride. ‘Now, it is every Monday and Tuesday night as well.’

There are many different explanations for why the Bolivian Jewish population could be made to feel uneasy in the country. Most centre around Bolivia’s increasingly close ties with Iran, and stem from President Evo Morales’s relations with former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has made intemperate comments regarding Jews and Israel. These diplomatic ties are compounded rumors that Iran has provided funds for the new regional defence school of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas. There’s even speculation that trainers from Iran’s greatly feared Revolutionary Guard are consulting with the Bolivian Government. Closer diplomatic relations have also strengthened trade agreements, with both countries forming a partnership to exploit Bolivia’s vast lithium fields. These increasingly close ties, and Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israel rhetoric—not to mention his infamous questioning of both the existence and scope of the Holocaust—has worried Jews in Bolivia. (The new Iranian president, Hasan Rowhani, is more moderate, although some news sources claim that he was involved in the planning of the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed eighty-five people.)

However, Udler has a balanced view on this situation. ‘I respect relations between two countries’, he says. ‘There is no harm in Bolivia and Iran making deals for economical benefits, for example in transport and television channels. But Iranian penetration in Bolivia and in all of Latin America is a very, very dangerous thing. It is so sudden. Why now?’ Udler claims that Bolivian Catholics are being recruited for conversion to Islam, and that Islamic terrorism could make inroads into Bolivia, through Hezbollah. Despite these fears, Udler says that ‘politically, I have no Plan B. I was born in Bolivia, and I will die in Bolivia. My religion is Jewish, but I am a Bolivian citizen’.

Such political tensions haven’t yet deterred approximately 8,000 young Israeli men and women a year from making Bolivia their travelling destination of choice following their two years of compulsory military service—and unsurprisingly so, as they are well catered to. A synagogue located by the Witches’ Market in La Paz, near Plaza San Francisco, provides kosher food for travellers, while the nearby Hotel El Lobo has Post-it Notes on the walls that welcome visitors in Hebrew (although my monolingual ignorance meant that I could understand very little).

Sharon Malka, a young Israeli woman, describes her trip to Bolivia to me as a ‘right of passage’. Malka’s plans were to stay in La Paz before heading out to the ultimate Israeli tourist destination—Rurrenabaque, a tropical Amazon town that is the gateway for those wishing to visit Bolivia’s jungle region. Rurrenabaque was catapulted to Israeli fame in the ‘90s following the publication of Yossi Ghinsberg’s book Back From Tuichi. The book tells a dramatic tale in which two of Ghinsberg’s friends lost their lives in the jungle and, undefended, he encountered perils in the form of anacondas and jaguars. As a result, Ghinsberg is now a cult-like figure to young Israelis who come to Rurrenabaque specifically to follow his tracks.

There is a slow, inexorable diminishment of the number of Jews in Bolivia: Jews leaving for political reasons; Jews leaving for better opportunities in more developed countries; Jews leaving for a more secure religious base and a greater availability of families to marry into. This grim reality can be summarised by the words of an American Jew, Jonas Jacobs, who said that ‘there are more Jews in the cemetery here than in the streets’. But with an uncertain future for the permanent Jewish occupancy in Bolivia, it is somewhat comforting that some Jewish presence and tradition will continue to live on in Bolivia in the form of fresh and excited young Israeli travellers, eager to experience all that this fascinating and stunningly beautiful country has to offer.