Lost: Casa Perdida [Completed]

The Booklet

The Narrator

Shifaly had never gone out of Sri Lanka and Qatar before. This field trip — organized by the Bandaranaike Sri Lankan School of Doha for Year 10 — was her first vacation outside those countries and the furthest away from them.

From the moment she got out of the plane, walked through the immigration and boarded the bus that was to take her class to the hotel, she enjoyed grasping as much as she could experience from her first day in Bolivia. Ah! The unmatchable joy of going to a place for the first time. 

"Move faster, idiot," yelled Basura Samarasinghe, when she was carrying her carry bag to her seat, careful not to damage the contents within.

"Be patient, Basura. There are some fragile things I'm carrying."

"[Expicit] you!" He shoved her off the way and walked with his friends to the backseat.

"What the [Explicit]?" she asked, getting up and walking up to Basura.

"What?" he asked.

"Why did you push me?!"

"Go back, Shifaly, and sit down," he said. 

"I will, but first tell me why did you just shove me off the way? I politely asked you to wait for me and you just shoved me onto a seat."

That was when the teacher, Mr. Chandrasene Seneviratne yelled at Shifaly: "Silly girl, don't be an idiot, sit down."

"What?! He pushed me while I was walking, minding my own business, to my seat," she protested.

"Just shut up and sit down. I don't have time for your pathetic drama," he said in his thick, Singhalese accented English. 

It's a shame we have [Explicit] teachers like him, she thought. These are the kind of stupid teachers who dismiss victims of abuse even if they have a genuine case.

Shifaly looked at Basura who was wagging his tongue at her. Idiot. Yelling a thousand curses under her breath, she went to an unoccupied seat four rows behind the driver's seat, which was far from Basura's unlike the one she had initially wanted to sit on. 

After confirming that all students were present, Mr. Seneviratne and Ms. Dayani Wickremasinghe told the hotel staff (who assisted the bus driver) that they could proceed to the hotel. The driver then started the engine and drove out of El Alto International Airport's driveway towards their hotel in La Paz.

Amid thick traffic comprising of a multiple of motorcycles and vans of various colors, the bus passed through underpasses painted with murals, some of which were covered by political posters. They went below pedestrian overbridges that were so old that Shifaly feared that they may collapse onto the heavy traffic below. They passed by vendors who had set up carts, selling boiled corn and roasted peanuts. 

During the traffic jams in El Alto, there were plenty of occasions where the children received unintended introductory lectures on Spanish cusswords by the driver himself who lashed out at anyone who tried to cut him by surprise on the road. 

Within an hour, the bus had left El Alto and traveled through a highway flanked by hills on one side and gigantic trees on the other. The size of the mountains that emerged occasionally on the horizon was majestic. Never had she ever seen such mountains of that height. In Qatar there were no such mountains at all, nor were there those of such height in Sri Lanka. At that moment, Miss Dayani took the opportunity to tell the children that those were the Andes, one of the largest mountain ranges in the world.

At sunset, their journey came to an end in La Paz. They were at a hotel situated on a hill overlooking a valley of houses, restaurants, and other hotels.  After some sorting, Shifaly got her room: an entire room to herself, a pretty large one that could accommodate three people.