6 de agosto

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6 de agosto

Yesterday was Bolivia's Independence Day. We celebrated as best we could from 6000 miles away. I miss Bolivia, it's been home for the last 5 years of my life. But Edson yearns for Bolivia in a different way - it is his home, it's all he knew for the first 7.5 years of his life. So I knew we needed to mark it, needed to celebrate the country that made us a family - the country that gave me him! (Plus, their food is just 😋)

So we celebrated all week long - I cooked his favourite meals (which I am steadily becoming more proficient in, although I'm counting down the days til we get back to Bolivia and I don't have to be the one to cook them anymore...) and he wore his Bolivia shirt as much as he could until it was dirty beyond all recognition, then switched to Wilstermann (one of Cochabamba's local teams - and our favourite!)

We started off with pique on Tuesday night, which aside from being mine and Edson's favourite Bolivian meal, has also become Grandad's. In fact I'm pretty sure he requests it more than anyone!
Edson had pasteles y api (cheese filled pastries served with a hot purple corn drink) all week long. He has asked for api just about once a week since we had it at a Bolivian restaurant in London in February, and then in June a friend came home from Bolivia to the UK and posted some over to us. It was a highlight of lockdown, and now he asks for it daily - so we're rationing it.

I laugh every time at the natural ability of Bolivians to fold the sides of pasteles and salteñas to make them look pretty. It's built into their DNA! I have practiced the last five years to be half decent at it (after being taught by a 5 year old using play doh) but Edson got it immediately.
We made Bolivian coloured cupcakes too. We went all out on the red, yellow and green - sweets, batter, icing. I may or may not have made Edson pick out the blue sprinkles because there is no blue in the Bolivian flag (I feel there is landlocked joke to be made here...) When he finished his cupcake, it left the colours of the flag on the cupcake case, which he then declared was his escarapela (rosette).


It's funny, because truthfully, we'd never celebrate this hard if we were there. And I would for sure not be making Bolivian food if there were Bolivians around doing a better job of it!

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