‘We do what we can with what we have’ - The daily life of people with disabilities and the long and complicated road to improve it in Pando Bolivia

Abstract: In the search for grasping how the everyday life experience for people with a disability is shaped in relation to the local social and political complexities in Cobija/Pando four themes are crucial to understand. Firstly, illustrating how the rhetorical definition of disability removes the wrongfulness or responsibility from the shoulders of the individual to an exclusive social environment. Even though this definition helps with empowerment and self-worth in reality the responsibility for changing the exclusive society is placed back on my interlocutor’s shoulder. The study highlights the most essential creative tool for the purpose I found to be the family and their willingness to do care work. Constituting the smallest economic and political unit found within the society, but at the same time the highest ranked in terms of responsibility of care, thereby becoming the unit of survival and solution. Thirdly, research shows that as in other low-income countries disability being the last to get a job if any opens, not getting to the hospital in time because of transportation costs, not having the money for the operations needed, or being kept from education because of lack of resources. Problematic for the general population, but even more so for a vulnerable group like people with disability – creating poverty within poverty. Finally, the need and value of organizing and collaborating in the Pando Department are evident but my research showed the practical difficulties of mobilizing people and the emerging internal conflicts. It shows the difficulties of having a diversity within unity. It is a mirror of the general complexities of social and political life in Cobija/Pando and shows that not every disability category has the same opportunity or position to fight.