Roast chicken is served by restaurants lining the streets of Santa Cruz. I have indulged in this meal only three times since my arrival, and each time I have parted with a different feeling. My first meal left me with a greasy hangover, and my second, with a case of indigestion. But with my most recent food affair, I felt a twinge of gastronomical homesickness, a longing for the cultural buffet that I normally dine on in Edmonton.

My remedy has been a weekly "International Dinner" with fellow AIESEC interns to sample international cuisine throughout Santa Cruz. Scouring for Indian or Greek food in Bolivia might sound spotty, and on more than one occasion my palate has adjusted to a Bolivian interpretation of ethnic dishes.

Take, for example, one rendition of sushi. With limited access to the ocean and freshwater rivers, seafood is a pricey commodity. So, some locals have substituted fish with the cheaper hot-dog meat alternative. Nonetheless, I welcome this sushi as a delicious alternative to roast chicken. For a more authentically Japanese flavour, however, locals recommended I travel to the Japanese colony of Okinawa 1, a short two hours away. There, I was told, I would encounter the best sushi in Bolivia.

More than just a little curious as to why Japanese settlers took up refuge in the middle of jungle country, I set off with my pack, a day's worth of provisions, and a scrap of paper filled with basic Japanese expressions. I initially viewed my visit to Okinawa 1 as a sort of novelty day trip, a story worthy of being recounted at parties and gatherings of how I made peace with the reclusive Amazonian-Japanese-Bolivians by exchanging Canadian flag pins over tea and sushi. Instead, I became aware of the tip of the iceberg of the issue of multiculturalism in Bolivia - mainly its problems and attempted solutions.

Accompanied by a Romanian and a Bolivian friend, the latter speaking far better Japanese than I ever will, we descended upon Okinawa 1 early one Sunday morning. Unexpectedly, we encountered a humble, quaint-looking town more reminiscent of Alberta prairies than tropical rain forest. Furthermore, the first person to greet us was the local English teacher, an Education major from Connecticut. He recounted the history of Okinawa 1, 2, and 3, which were formerly plots of rain forest donated by the Bolivian government to Japanese settlers following the devastation of Japan in the Second World War. Arriving in 1954, the first settlers worked hard to cultivate the land - an incredible feat considering the jungle they inherited - and have since transformed Okinawa into a thriving agricultural town. Though racial divisions formerly segregated the colony, the ethnic Japanese now pride themselves on living in harmony with the camba of Santa Cruz. The town's annual celebration of its foundation is celebrated with both Japanese and Bolivian customs, and both cultures take pride in calling Okinawa 1 their home.

I fell in love with this hidden gem: a neatly tucked away, perfectly integrated community, which exemplified multiculturalism at its finest.

Reality Check

The story of Okinawa 1 as representative of Bolivia as a haven of ethnic diversity is a bit misleading, by Canadian standards, at least.

Though to outsiders such as myself, everyone appears as a Latino, over 40 minority ethnic groups inhabit the country. Bolivia's government enacts policy it deems just, sometimes without the appropriate consultation of different regions. This often results in disorder and chaos, worsened only by the response of the people, whose solution is to retaliate and take to the streets - protesting, blocking major transport routes for days, even weeks at a time, and striking out in violence. Negotiations are attempted but the government's patchwork solutions often falter within short periods of time. The country's last major conflict, about the over-representation of the indigenous communities in parliament, nearly erupted in civil war.

Epilogue

In light of Bolivia's ongoing cultural tensions, it seems that Okinawa 1 is a rarity in a country where people often do not co-exist in harmony. Age-old tensions between ethnic groups continue to flare up and it seems that no solution is in sight.

In the end, I, Bolivia's self-professed culinary expert, left Okinawa 1 without finding sushi in the restaurants, since the town accesses only a dried-up river and is even further from the Santa Cruz transport hub.

 "Anthony ... Anthony! Wake up! Did you hear that? What was that noise?"

Startled awake at 3 a.m., I hazily focused my eyes on the intruder who had barged into my quarters. It was the new intern, plucked fresh from Chicago, trembling, with a look of sheer terror on her face.

Groggy, I stumbled into the outer courtyard to investigate the sound - a drainage pipe knocked over by the wind and rolling around. As I assuaged her concerns by telling her that robbers had neither the interest nor the capability to bypass our heavily padlocked and spiked gate, I reflected on my first days passed here in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia.

After living here for one and a half months, the night sounds of blaring Reggaeton music, bursts of firecrackers, and muffled taxi engines no longer bother me, but I sympathize with how different this must seem to my new colleague. It goes without saying that life in Santa Cruz is the polar opposite of Canadian life. This contrast is most obviously found in the city's structure: a disorganized urban sprawl centred on endless rings of businesses and shops intermixed with humble houses. In every possible space one can find someone selling goods - jewellery, cigarettes, and gum are the most common. The traffic is incomparable, the buses filled to the brim with people, and crossing the road is akin to a game of Frogger. Amidst this chaos, I have trouble understanding how the locals find anything here; every other street looks identical to me - a cryptic puzzle that only the Camba people of Santa Cruz can solve.

While I am no longer afraid to venture through bustling markets and unnamed streets, I am always conscious of the stares I get when a Chinese-looking foreigner speaks English and dons summer outfits in the middle of Bolivia's supposed winter. But, day by day, I am unravelling this city's code. I feel more and more at home here, especially given the hospitality of my host family and my quasi-adoption as their third child. Moreover, I have adapted to the relaxed, nonchalant attitude toward day-to-day life.  Work starts at around 8:00 in the morning, there is a three-hour siesta from 12:00 to 3:00, and the day finishes at around 7:00. However, time is extremely flexible here. I mentally prepare for my days by expecting the unexpected and going along with whatever comes my way.

During the late afternoon and evening I work as an English teacher, teaching low-income students at Procavida, an umbrella organization whose overreaching ambitions are to improve the productivity and quality of life in Bolivia. Projects in this organization range from water purification in local villages, to increasing health-care access for the poor, to improving English proficiency in schools.

For the second phase of my project, I will be offering classes to the public-school English school teachers of Bolivia, to improve their level of literacy, and to pass on my knowledge to their students. I have come to learn, however, that things proceed at a snail's pace, and that proposed times and dates must be taken with a grain of salt. I have been waiting an entire month to enter the school system, but every week a new barrier delays our start date further and further.

At night, I explore the boisterous nightlife of Santa Cruz. Despite being the most expensive city in Bolivia, the 10 boliviano ($1.50) vats of Paceña beer flow endlessly, and the youth of the city party till the wee hours of the morning.

But what I find most captivating about Bolivia is the adoption of liberal ideas, which have migrated south from the States. Such is the case with the growing electronic music scene, viewed as "radical" by most parents, and to me, as slightly amusing. It is tremendously exciting to see a society react to the emergence of these "new" discoveries for the first time.

While I find the pseudo-Americanism of Santa Cruz endearing, this is not the image I first conjured when thinking of Bolivia. But it is in the poorer, indigenous, western part of the country, the Occidente, that one finds the traditions of the Andes. In my first weekend here, I witnessed this strange mix of tradition and modernism when visiting the capital of La Paz: where chola women wearing top hats, layered skirts, and babies slung in bright rainbow-coloured sacs on backs are mixed amongst a city of climbing skyscrapers.

The marked contrasts between the western Occidente and eastern Oriente perpetually fascinate me. While both sides are undoubtedly Bolivian, the commercial hub of Santa Cruz in the west resents the socialist supporters of Evo Morales in the east. Thus, the country is divided down the middle - Cambas from the Oriente versus Collas from the Occidente. Talk of separation always lingers in the air, but my Bolivian friends believe that this will never come to fruition.

While Santa Cruz's quest for separation is remarkably similar to the divide between Quebec and the rest of Canada, the differences between these two countries is so tremendous that it is difficult to draw any more parallels. Bolivia remains severely underdeveloped, and at times I feel as if I've travelled through a time warp. Nonetheless, Santa Cruz is industrializing at lightening speed and this is driven by its young and fiery soul. The spirit of Santa Cruz is infectious, and Camba pride is flashed in the white and green banners that adorn the city. And with every day I pass here, every moment I share with my Bolivian family, and certainly with every bite of delicious yuca I consume, I feel a transformation coming about ... I can't help but feel more Camba by the day.