I guess it's a little late to be updating this blog about the adventure that technically ended several months ago, but for the sake of posterity, and for the sake of remembering it myself, I think I need to write out the whole "mugging story." Despite it being a little frightening at the time, it actually contains some quite humorous elements.
So. The day before I had just met up with Carlos in Cochabamba, and the first (and alas, only) semi-touristic thing we decided to do was make a journey to the Cristo Blanco, a White Christ (there are several of these in South America) mounted atop a hill that serves as a lookout point over the city. Usually, there is a chair lift that brings you up there, but the lift was broken and we were happy to get a little more exercise using the stairs. I don't know how many stairs there were, but I'm estimating about 500. Carlos and I walked about half the way up before stopping to admire the view and take a break to eat some clementines. In the company of a 26-year-old Peruvian man, I wasn't exactly on my guard for getting mugged in the middle of the day, and evidentally neither was he. We sat down on the stairs and had just begun peeling the fruits when we heard two people coming down the stairs from behind us. Assuming they were just some more tourists wanting to pass, we both moved over to separate sides of the stairs. Before we knew it, we both had knives pointed at us and two burly men were telling us to give them everything we had.
Luckily, Caity's mugging story from Ecuador had prepared me for pretty much anything, and I didn't panic, but just let the guy search in my purse, repeating in Spanish, "I don't have anything," which was a total lie. Later Carlos told me that he might have considered resisting if it hadn't involved me, but he looked over and saw that my assaulter had a serrated kitchen knife (kind of unprofessional, no?) and thought, "Man, that would be a painful death." I actually got incredibly lucky because my assaulter idiotically did not realize that I had a digital camera in my bag, worth significantly more than anything I had in my wallet or even my bank account (it was the end of the trip, I was getting low on funds). He took my wallet and was satisfied. Meanwhile, Carlos was negotiating with his assaulter to leave him his passport, and somehow succeeded in that, but in retribution the guy just made off with his entire bag minus the passport. They told us to stay where we were and ran back up the stairs with our stuff.
We emerged from the incident pretty much unscathed; I had a few scratches that I would later refer to as "knife wounds," and Carlos had an unpleasant cut on his hand, but nothing serious. I was thinking kind of irrationally after the incident; for a few minutes I had the idea in my head that the guys had asked us to stay where we were because they were coming back, and so I cleverly hid my camera in a bush and sat there waiting. After a few minutes we both got over the shock and started heading back down the stairs. Finally, about 5 or 10 minutes after the incident, we spotted a couple of policemen. "Help! We just got robbed!" we yelled, waving our hands in the air. After explaining to the police what had happened and giving them vague and probably incorrect descriptions of the perpetrators (when someone had a knife pointed at your throat, the last thing you're usually concerned about is the shape of their nose), the police mounted their motorcycles and sped up the hill in pursuit of the villains.
Carlos and I went back down to the bottom of the hill and waited. Not too long after we'd reported the crime, an officer came and told us that they had detained two men who appeared similar to our descriptions. We would have to come to the police station one by one to identify them. So Carlos got on the back of one officer's motorcycle and they sped off while I waited with another female officer. While we were waiting, this heavy-set woman started asking me some questions. What was my name? What was my friend's name? Where were we from? What happened? What did my assaulter look like? I described him to the best of my ability. He was "gordito," I said, using a very common Spanish term that essentially means "a little fat," though it is not taken anywhere near as offensively as it would be in the U.S. Nevertheless, the female officer's response challenged my American standards of politeness: "REALLY fat, or just fat like me?"
"Well, I guess not THAT fat," I said awkwardly.
"Yes, I see, so was he fat like me?"
Finally I gave in. "Yes, fat like you."
So, after I called a police officer fat, the motorcycle cop came back and it was my turn to hop on the back of his vehicle (if you're imagining him taking some kind of safety precaution like giving me a helmet, don't). We arrived outside the police station, and there were two guys in handcuffs sitting on a bench, completely still and sedate, with stone-cold expressions on their faces. Having to decide whether to accuse these two men of the crime was almost as nerve-racking as getting mugged. I really could not remember one detail about the assaulters with certainty, other than the fact that one was "gordito," but I told the officers the truth to the best of my ability, which was that I thought I recognized one of the men but not the other. Apparently Carlos had recognized the same guy, but neither of us could even remember which one of us he had been assaulting.
Meanwhile, all the local friends and family members of the detained men had come to the station to defend their kin. They stood there ranting about how they knew these men and they were good people, that Carlos and I were just stupid tourists and scared so of course we would lay the blame on anyone, given the opportunity. Carlos and I just stood there silently, not knowing what to do or say. The officers kept asking to see our "wounds," but made no move to get Carlos a bandage or anything. "Look," said Carlos eventually to an officer, "we're not sure if that was one of the guys or if it's just someone that looks like him. We don't know anything else. Can we go now?" But no, we were absolutely not permitted to leave yet. Instead, we were taken inside the police station and asked the same three questions by at least five different people. After sitting there for about 15 minutes we started becoming a little aggravated, and Carlos said again, "Hey, we have nothing else to tell you, can we go?" The authorities kept objecting, but we were firm and eventually just announced our departure and walked out. That seems to be the nature of Bolivian bureaucracy: just be firm and you'll discover that most of the people in power actually have none.
After we escaped the police station, the most pressing issue was that we had absolutely no money, apart from 5 Bolivian pesos I happened to have in a little change pouch. I had stupidly been carrying my debit card in my wallet, and Carlos, being an artisan who lives off the money he makes selling his jewelry on the street on a day-to-day basis, doesn't even have a bank account as far as I know. Well, I decided to use the 5 pesos to call my parents. It was quite an interesting telephone conversation with my mother:
"Hello?"
"Hi Mommy, it's me. Listen, I don't have very long to talk right now, but it's kind of an emergency. My friend Carlos and I got robbed and I need money."
"You WHAT?!" [screaming and general panic]
"Why are you yelling at ME?! What was I supposed to do, they had knives!"
[more panic] "What the hell do you expect me to do? I don't even know how to send you money! And you're in the middle of Bolivia with some strange man!"
"OK, calm down. I'll go find a bank and figure out how you can wire me money, and then I'll call you back."
Well, that was the last of our money, so Carlos went and set out his jewelry on the street so that he would be able to sell enough for us to at least eat dinner, and meanwhile I went looking for a bank. By this time it was almost 6:00 and all the banks were about to close if not closed already, but I did manage to find out that it's pretty easy to send money almost instantly through Western Union. Considering it was kind of late though, it took Carlos a couple hours to sell anything, and evidently that was long enough for my mother to take me for dead. When I called home again my dad answered sternly.
"How could you wait two whole hours to call us back?! Your mother is in hysterics. She's over at the neighbors' house calling the Bolivian embassy."
Later I found out that my mother had spent at least $100 making phone calls to Bolivia, and all for nothing. The next day I picked up $200 from the Western Union office, and felt quite rich. And so ends my tale.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Friday, August 3, 2007
A kind of conclusion
Instead of trying to sum up my whole trip, and the meaning of everything, and how it all changed me (which would take more than a lifetime to do), I want to leave you all with an experience I had on my last day in Cuzco, which was all at once odd, disturbing, commonplace, and in some strange way an appropriate ending to this series of other-worldly events.
I spent the last couple days living in the house where I began when I first came to Cuzco, spending time with Rosita and reliving old memories in my head. Things had changed; the family was practically uprooting the entire house, redoing all three bathrooms. Mijael no longer works in the fish store underneath the house; his brother-in-law, who owned the store, decided to sell it. Rosita now sits at the table to eat with the rest of the family, instead of at a seperate table in the same room. She is almost finished her thesis and will soon be moving out of the house, but only once my host parents manage to find another maid (they really can't live without one).
At the same time, not much had changed. Erika, the maid in the house of my host mom's daughter, had off for awhile, the result being that Rosita kept being asked to come over and take care of the kids there. My host parents were away for the weekend in their house in the country while Rosita had to stay in the house and wait for all the different repairmen to come. Seeing as she was supposed to be taking care of the kids in the other house at the same time, I ended up having to stay in the house waiting for the repairmen to come.
Finally at mid-day on Monday Socorro and Ramiro returned from their weekend house. I left the house for a few minutes to buy something at the general store, and when I came back my host parents were gone, and at the kitchen table, like a ghost, was seated an elderly indigenous woman I had never seen in my life. It startled me, partly because she was obviously indigenous, in the characteristic sweater, hat and skirts, and for that reason I knew she couldn't have been any blood relation of my host family. It crossed my mind that maybe she had broken and entered, but I knew that was utterly ridiculous. Not knowing what to do, I entered the kitchen and just kind of stood there, looking at her, struggling to make some sort of connection but feeling as if there had never been two people on earth who understood each other less. Finally I said hello and asked her name. She said it was Juliana, and I introduced myself, explaining that I lived there. She just looked at me apprehensively and a little fearfully, and said she was waiting for la Señora Socorro. Mystified, I went up to my room.
Later it was explained to me what relation Juliana had to the family. When Socorro was growing up, Juliana had been the maid who took care of her. Yet it was impossible for me to imagine that this modest old woman had once had the authority to discipline Socorro. During lunch, which was kind of a going away party for me and in which I opened a bottle of wine from Argentina that I'd been saving, Juliana sat at the same table where Rosita used to sit. She was served a child-sized portion of wine and spoken to like a child. After lunch, Juliana sat at the table and waited there while Socorro went upstairs, watched some TV with the kids and took a short nap. I was waiting for Rosita to finish taking her shower so she could go out with me, so I came downstairs and sat at the same table as Juliana, neither of us saying a word to each other for several minutes. Finally Juliana asked me, "Is la Señora Socorro coming down, or has she fallen asleep?"
"She's not asleep right now," I said. "Should I tell her to come down?"
"No, she'll come down."
She sat and waited for another half hour or so, until Socorro finally came down, and started talking to her as if it were official business, about God knows what. During the part of the conversation I witnessed Socorro was giving Juliana a pair of earrings and saying they made her look so pretty--still speaking to her like a child. And to think, there was a time when Juliana spoke to her the same way.
I spent the last couple days living in the house where I began when I first came to Cuzco, spending time with Rosita and reliving old memories in my head. Things had changed; the family was practically uprooting the entire house, redoing all three bathrooms. Mijael no longer works in the fish store underneath the house; his brother-in-law, who owned the store, decided to sell it. Rosita now sits at the table to eat with the rest of the family, instead of at a seperate table in the same room. She is almost finished her thesis and will soon be moving out of the house, but only once my host parents manage to find another maid (they really can't live without one).
At the same time, not much had changed. Erika, the maid in the house of my host mom's daughter, had off for awhile, the result being that Rosita kept being asked to come over and take care of the kids there. My host parents were away for the weekend in their house in the country while Rosita had to stay in the house and wait for all the different repairmen to come. Seeing as she was supposed to be taking care of the kids in the other house at the same time, I ended up having to stay in the house waiting for the repairmen to come.
Finally at mid-day on Monday Socorro and Ramiro returned from their weekend house. I left the house for a few minutes to buy something at the general store, and when I came back my host parents were gone, and at the kitchen table, like a ghost, was seated an elderly indigenous woman I had never seen in my life. It startled me, partly because she was obviously indigenous, in the characteristic sweater, hat and skirts, and for that reason I knew she couldn't have been any blood relation of my host family. It crossed my mind that maybe she had broken and entered, but I knew that was utterly ridiculous. Not knowing what to do, I entered the kitchen and just kind of stood there, looking at her, struggling to make some sort of connection but feeling as if there had never been two people on earth who understood each other less. Finally I said hello and asked her name. She said it was Juliana, and I introduced myself, explaining that I lived there. She just looked at me apprehensively and a little fearfully, and said she was waiting for la Señora Socorro. Mystified, I went up to my room.
Later it was explained to me what relation Juliana had to the family. When Socorro was growing up, Juliana had been the maid who took care of her. Yet it was impossible for me to imagine that this modest old woman had once had the authority to discipline Socorro. During lunch, which was kind of a going away party for me and in which I opened a bottle of wine from Argentina that I'd been saving, Juliana sat at the same table where Rosita used to sit. She was served a child-sized portion of wine and spoken to like a child. After lunch, Juliana sat at the table and waited there while Socorro went upstairs, watched some TV with the kids and took a short nap. I was waiting for Rosita to finish taking her shower so she could go out with me, so I came downstairs and sat at the same table as Juliana, neither of us saying a word to each other for several minutes. Finally Juliana asked me, "Is la Señora Socorro coming down, or has she fallen asleep?"
"She's not asleep right now," I said. "Should I tell her to come down?"
"No, she'll come down."
She sat and waited for another half hour or so, until Socorro finally came down, and started talking to her as if it were official business, about God knows what. During the part of the conversation I witnessed Socorro was giving Juliana a pair of earrings and saying they made her look so pretty--still speaking to her like a child. And to think, there was a time when Juliana spoke to her the same way.
Is anything sacred?
A conversation between me and Carlos and a woman who sells vegetarian food in the market in Cochabamba, Bolivia, as we were sitting down to eat lunch. A little mean perhaps, but hilarious. It started with the woman saying something about me being Carlos's wife.
Carlos: We're not married, and we're never going to get married either.
Señora: [gasps] Why?!
Carlos: Because...because we're not. Why did you think we were married?
Señora: Well, because I saw you two together and I figured people from other countries couldn't be so different from us. We're all human.
Carlos: Well, we're never getting married. Naomi, tell her why we're not getting married.
Me: We're not getting married because we don't believe in love.
Señora: [gasps] Really?
Me: Really. My mother used to always tell me that love doesn't exist. Carlos, didn't your mother ever tell you that?
Carlos: My mother never told me anything. That's why I don't believe in love.
Me: See that?
Señora: They say that if you know God's love, you know the love of the universe...
Me: Shit! Carlos, we don't believe in God do we? That must be why we don't believe in love!
Carlos: Dammit, you're right!
Señora: And the president of the United States...he's a believer isn't he?
Carlos: In Satan. Yes. He worships Satan.
Señora: Good lord, he must, otherwise he wouldn't have started so many wars and killed so many people.
Me: Yeah, but that's normal in the Unites States. Lots of people worship Satan.
Señora: How horrible!
Carlos: We're not married, and we're never going to get married either.
Señora: [gasps] Why?!
Carlos: Because...because we're not. Why did you think we were married?
Señora: Well, because I saw you two together and I figured people from other countries couldn't be so different from us. We're all human.
Carlos: Well, we're never getting married. Naomi, tell her why we're not getting married.
Me: We're not getting married because we don't believe in love.
Señora: [gasps] Really?
Me: Really. My mother used to always tell me that love doesn't exist. Carlos, didn't your mother ever tell you that?
Carlos: My mother never told me anything. That's why I don't believe in love.
Me: See that?
Señora: They say that if you know God's love, you know the love of the universe...
Me: Shit! Carlos, we don't believe in God do we? That must be why we don't believe in love!
Carlos: Dammit, you're right!
Señora: And the president of the United States...he's a believer isn't he?
Carlos: In Satan. Yes. He worships Satan.
Señora: Good lord, he must, otherwise he wouldn't have started so many wars and killed so many people.
Me: Yeah, but that's normal in the Unites States. Lots of people worship Satan.
Señora: How horrible!
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
7/29/07 -- Roadblocks, assaults, etc.
So, just when you think Bolivia can't get any crazier, it does. What a country, I tell you--it makes Peru look like a very stable place. That said, now that I'm back in Cuzco my friends have been telling me that the strike of professors between Cuzco and Puno only got worse after I left--apparently the Peruvian president has proposed to give funding so that future teachers can take extra preparatory courses, but the teachers are protesting because they'd rather just be paid more. Meanwhile in Bolivia, there was a big controversy about the price of bread, which went up from 4 ´pancitos´ (little breads) for a peso to 3 pancitos for a peso, causing complete and utter chaos. OK, well maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but then add to that huge student demonstrations which resulted in universities in some areas being suspended for two weeks, a giant demonstration of 2 million people in La Paz protesting the proposition of moving the political capital back to Sucre (the country's historical capital), and an enormous mining strike that happened to be centered right where I was, in Potosi. Every single road out of Potosi was closed due to roadblocks, and I ended up being stuck there for five days, originally having planned to be there for two. Not that there's anything so bad about being stuck in Potosi, but there's something incredibly unnerving about not being able to leave a place and having no idea when the situation will change. I was staying in a small, very personal hostel and when I came down for breakfast the third morning the receptionist said to me, 'You seem to be suffering from a bit of anxiety.' I just nodded in consent.
So, I did go on my tour of a cooperative mine, but the day I went was the first day of the strike and not one miner was actually working. It was still an unforgettable experience though; the good thing was that I had my own personal Spanish-speaking guide, since the rest of the people on the tour were Belgian and had there own French guide. My guide was the same age as me, 21, and worked in the mines from the time he was 18 to 20, for lack of a better option. We ended up becoming friends and hanging out for the rest of the time I was stuck in Potosi. Anyway, a couple interesting things about the mines: first, I couldn't believe it when my guide told me that during the colonial period the miners were basically enslaved and would be forced to stay in the mines for up to 6 months at a time without seeing the light of day. When they came out, the sunlight was so shocking to their eyes that many went blind. The production of the coca leaf was supported in this time period because it decreases hunger and made it possible for the workers to go longer periods without rest. Another interesting thing is that in each mine, to this day, there is a little sculpture of a devil to which the miners offer coca leaves every Friday, which is said to watch over those who work underneath the earth. There is also a sculpture of the Pachamama, the female counterpart who watches over the earth (but not the underworld).
After Potosi I went on to Sucre, which is where Bolivia's independence was declared, and which was the capital city until La Paz took its place by sheer power of numbers, I guess. It's also said to be Bolivia's most beautiful city, and has a much different feel than the rest of the country, full of beautiful colonial buildings. The week when I was there there was also a fair of miniatures, which I was really excited about because several people in Peru had told me about this Bolivian phenomenon. It's basically a big market in which all of the vendors sell miniatures of pretty much everything you can imagine--foods, toiletries, clothing, money, alcohol, Bolivian passports, marriage certificates, etc. Other than that, I went to an archaeological site in which some dinosaur footprints have been found (which sounded more interesting than it actually was) and La Casa de La Libertad, the very place where independence was declared which is now a museum. Pretty cool.
After that I went to Cochabamba, one of the biggest cities in Bolivia. I can't really understand why it attracts so many tourists, but I mostly went there to meet up with a friend I met in Cuzco, Carlos, who is kind of a nomadic jewelry maker and happened to be travelling in Bolivia at the same time as me. I was in Cochabamba for three and a half days, during which time I did basically nothing. The first day I was exhausted from having taken an overnight bus, and the second day, well, Carlos and I had the idea of walking up to a lookout point in the city, which involves going up a few hundred stairs. About halfway up, around 3:00 in the afternoon, we stopped and sat down to take a rest, and kind of ended up getting robbed, and the assaulters kind of had knives. Neither of us were hurt and it was mostly just a scare (my assaulter was dumb enough not to notice I had a digital camera, and Carlos somehow convinced his to leave him his passport) but there was the slight problem that we were left with a total of 5 pesos between us. So Carlos, conveniently being an artesan, went to sell some of the jewelry he makes in the street, and we managed to scrape up just enough to get buy until the next day when my parents wired me enough money for both of us to get by in Bolivia for probably about a month (thanks ma and pa).
Anyway, that pretty much ended our desire to do touristic things in Cochabamba. A couple days later we were off to La Paz, and spent the good part of a day there walking around looking for a movie theater playing something decent and not finding one. Luckily Carlos is quite entertaining and somehow we managed to keep each other amused. I spent the next day in a bus back to Cuzco, and here I am, just saying my goodbyes to everyone, trying to explain why I was in Bolivia for two weeks longer than I originally said I would be (this is difficult with Peruvians, who like to ask you the exact date and time you will be returning to see them, despite the fact that they themselves are never on time), and preparing to return to the US on Tuesday.
So, I did go on my tour of a cooperative mine, but the day I went was the first day of the strike and not one miner was actually working. It was still an unforgettable experience though; the good thing was that I had my own personal Spanish-speaking guide, since the rest of the people on the tour were Belgian and had there own French guide. My guide was the same age as me, 21, and worked in the mines from the time he was 18 to 20, for lack of a better option. We ended up becoming friends and hanging out for the rest of the time I was stuck in Potosi. Anyway, a couple interesting things about the mines: first, I couldn't believe it when my guide told me that during the colonial period the miners were basically enslaved and would be forced to stay in the mines for up to 6 months at a time without seeing the light of day. When they came out, the sunlight was so shocking to their eyes that many went blind. The production of the coca leaf was supported in this time period because it decreases hunger and made it possible for the workers to go longer periods without rest. Another interesting thing is that in each mine, to this day, there is a little sculpture of a devil to which the miners offer coca leaves every Friday, which is said to watch over those who work underneath the earth. There is also a sculpture of the Pachamama, the female counterpart who watches over the earth (but not the underworld).
After Potosi I went on to Sucre, which is where Bolivia's independence was declared, and which was the capital city until La Paz took its place by sheer power of numbers, I guess. It's also said to be Bolivia's most beautiful city, and has a much different feel than the rest of the country, full of beautiful colonial buildings. The week when I was there there was also a fair of miniatures, which I was really excited about because several people in Peru had told me about this Bolivian phenomenon. It's basically a big market in which all of the vendors sell miniatures of pretty much everything you can imagine--foods, toiletries, clothing, money, alcohol, Bolivian passports, marriage certificates, etc. Other than that, I went to an archaeological site in which some dinosaur footprints have been found (which sounded more interesting than it actually was) and La Casa de La Libertad, the very place where independence was declared which is now a museum. Pretty cool.
After that I went to Cochabamba, one of the biggest cities in Bolivia. I can't really understand why it attracts so many tourists, but I mostly went there to meet up with a friend I met in Cuzco, Carlos, who is kind of a nomadic jewelry maker and happened to be travelling in Bolivia at the same time as me. I was in Cochabamba for three and a half days, during which time I did basically nothing. The first day I was exhausted from having taken an overnight bus, and the second day, well, Carlos and I had the idea of walking up to a lookout point in the city, which involves going up a few hundred stairs. About halfway up, around 3:00 in the afternoon, we stopped and sat down to take a rest, and kind of ended up getting robbed, and the assaulters kind of had knives. Neither of us were hurt and it was mostly just a scare (my assaulter was dumb enough not to notice I had a digital camera, and Carlos somehow convinced his to leave him his passport) but there was the slight problem that we were left with a total of 5 pesos between us. So Carlos, conveniently being an artesan, went to sell some of the jewelry he makes in the street, and we managed to scrape up just enough to get buy until the next day when my parents wired me enough money for both of us to get by in Bolivia for probably about a month (thanks ma and pa).
Anyway, that pretty much ended our desire to do touristic things in Cochabamba. A couple days later we were off to La Paz, and spent the good part of a day there walking around looking for a movie theater playing something decent and not finding one. Luckily Carlos is quite entertaining and somehow we managed to keep each other amused. I spent the next day in a bus back to Cuzco, and here I am, just saying my goodbyes to everyone, trying to explain why I was in Bolivia for two weeks longer than I originally said I would be (this is difficult with Peruvians, who like to ask you the exact date and time you will be returning to see them, despite the fact that they themselves are never on time), and preparing to return to the US on Tuesday.
7/16/07 -- Adios to my plans
Alright, that last email I wrote makes me laugh because just like usual on this trip, nothing that I mentioned has gone according to plan. It turned out I couldn't go to Quillabamba because there was a landslide blocking the only road that goes there from Cuzco. At that point I was a bit anxious to get out of Cuzco, so I told Braddy I was going to begin my travels in the Bolivia direction a bit early and that I would meet him in La Paz. On Monday I bought my ticket to Puno for Wednesday morning, only to arrive at the terminal and find that there had been a roadblock strike going on since Monday and that no buses were leaving during the day. I changed my ticket to that night and left at 10 pm. On a trip that was supposed to take six hours, the bus stopped at 5:30 am and informed all its passengers that it could not go any further and we were going to have to get off and walk. So at 5:30 am in the freezing cold with my little rolling suitcase, I walked about a half hour over a bridge, from where I had to take two mini-buses to get to Puno, finally arriving at 8:30 am. I was happy to finally be there.
Well, then my friend Braddy was busy for awhile with an art show and by the time he got done with that he informed me that he was sorry but he no longer had the time, money, or energy to come to Bolivia. Such is life.
But I will start from the beginning of my travelling adventures. As I've mentioned, my first destination was Puno, a small tourist city on the shore of Lake Titicaca, which is the highest freshwater lake in the world and was sacred to the Incas. The Lake is split between Peru and Bolivia, and a Bolivian friend I recently met on a bus told me Bolivians like to say that the 'Titi' belongs to Bolivia and the 'caca' to Peru ('caca' in Spanish means 'shit'). In reality though, the whole of the lake is quite gorgeous. Anyway, after a day spent wandering around Puno (in a day you can do pretty much everything there is to do in Puno) I took a boat to two different islands in Lake Titicaca, Amantani and Taquile. Taquile was particularly interesting to me because at Middlebury I wrote a paper dealing with the weaving tradition and tourism there. The paradox of the island is that it's both a fabricated tourist attraction and an isolated place where people really do still live somewhat 'traditionally,' if you ignore the island's many rstaurants and bars. Amantani is less touristy and people there live more 'rustically', but they do have one little tourist-attracting niche, which is staging little 'discotecas' for tourists at night in which they dress you up in the traditional clothing that they themselves don't wear anymore and everyone dances to a band playing traditional music. It's quite a show. While on the Peru side of the lake I also visited a couple of the Floating Islands, which are man-made islands built completely of reeds, no more than 20 meters in diameter. These communities were initially built as a way for people to escape from widespread tribal warfare, and people still live quiet lives there in tiny communities although they now get things like education and medical services in Puno. They're something you really have to see to believe.
After visiting those islands, I continued across the Bolivian border to Copacabana. On the bus ride there I met a fellow traveller from Morocco and another French guy that the Moroccan guy had met on the bus from Cuzco to Puno. The three of us decided to spend the night on the Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun), which is the mythical birthplace of the Incan civilization. Ironically, the first night there we got caught in a hail storm and ended up just sitting in our hostel drinking cheap, gross Bolivian wine and chewing coca leaves. The next day was a little clearer and Romain (the Frenchie) and I hiked to some really cool labyrinth-like ruins on one side of the island before taking the boat back to Copacabana.
After that I continued on to La Paz and spent two days there hanging out with Tarik (the Moroccan), visiting markets and museums, and the usual stuff you do in cities. While Lake Titicaca is the highest freshwater lake in the world, La Paz boasts being the highest capital, at something like 3800 meters above sea level. The main part of the city is situated in a bit of a valley, but like Lima, the outer boundaries of the city just keep growing due to people migrating there from the country, and from several lookout towers in the city you can see just how packed all the buildings are on the side of the mountains. It's pretty impressive.
It just so happened that Tarik was also planning on doing a tour of the salt flats and desert near Uyuni, so I decided to go with him. It was a very uncomfortable 12-hour overnight bus ride down to Uyuni, which is a freezing cold, isolated and desolate town which earns its livelihood almost completely from tourism. There are dozens of tour agencies that do three-day tours of the desert, and we ended up going with a different tour agency than we had made the reservation with, which apparently happens a lot. The tour group consisted of me, Tarik, two youngish Polish couples, and a local tour guide and cook, all packed snugly into a jeep. The tour was memorable both for the spectacular scenery (only my photos can describe that, which I unfortunately might not be able to posr online until I get home) and for the fact that the tour itself was comically bad. The guide and cook seemed intent on speaking to us as little as possible. The jeep arrived at the tour agency an hour late the first day, then stopped at several places around town to pick up a few personal items and some food items that our guides had neglected to pick up beforehand. Every time we arrived at one of the sites the guide would tell us we had 15 minutes to walk around, then after ten minutes would yell, 'Let's go, let's go, we're late!' On top of that, the cook made a hot dog casserole for the two vegetarians on the trip, then on the last morning when we asked for the scrambled eggs we had been promised, said that there were eggs in the bread. She finally brought us a bowl of scrambled eggs but without forks and plates to eat it with. Following breakfast we revolted and spent an hour and a half in the hot springs mostly just to piss of the guide. Because of this we arrived lateat the town in which we were apparently supposed to stop and get gas (the guide had told us nothing about this, of course) and the gas station was closed. But instead of telling us that he was going to try to find the owner of the gas station, the guide pretended we were at another stop in the trip and asked if we wanted to get out and see the local market or church. This resulted in all of us being quite confused when we ended up waiting 45 minutes for him to come back. We arrived back in the frigid Uyuni at 8:30, 2 and a half hours late. The good thing was that we all got along really well and were able to laugh at all the silly mishaps. Unfortunately we arrived back too late to stage a protest in front of the travel agency.
At the point of reaching the Chilean border on the last day we parted with Tarik, who was continuing on to Valparaiso. Coincidentally, me and the two Polish couples all had the same plan, which was to move on to the religious and mining center of Potosi, where I am now. On the bus here I was sitting next to and chatting with a Bolivian guy who is studying in Sucre, which just happens to be my next destination. The city of Potosi supposedly has a fascinating history, of which I know little because I unfortunately do not have the Lonely Planet Guide to Bolivia (this appears to be an essential). My Bolivian friend told me that at some point in history it was the biggest city in the world. Anyway, despite my ignorance, I am highly looking forward to taking a tour of one of the cooperative mines tomorrow. More on this to come.
Well, then my friend Braddy was busy for awhile with an art show and by the time he got done with that he informed me that he was sorry but he no longer had the time, money, or energy to come to Bolivia. Such is life.
But I will start from the beginning of my travelling adventures. As I've mentioned, my first destination was Puno, a small tourist city on the shore of Lake Titicaca, which is the highest freshwater lake in the world and was sacred to the Incas. The Lake is split between Peru and Bolivia, and a Bolivian friend I recently met on a bus told me Bolivians like to say that the 'Titi' belongs to Bolivia and the 'caca' to Peru ('caca' in Spanish means 'shit'). In reality though, the whole of the lake is quite gorgeous. Anyway, after a day spent wandering around Puno (in a day you can do pretty much everything there is to do in Puno) I took a boat to two different islands in Lake Titicaca, Amantani and Taquile. Taquile was particularly interesting to me because at Middlebury I wrote a paper dealing with the weaving tradition and tourism there. The paradox of the island is that it's both a fabricated tourist attraction and an isolated place where people really do still live somewhat 'traditionally,' if you ignore the island's many rstaurants and bars. Amantani is less touristy and people there live more 'rustically', but they do have one little tourist-attracting niche, which is staging little 'discotecas' for tourists at night in which they dress you up in the traditional clothing that they themselves don't wear anymore and everyone dances to a band playing traditional music. It's quite a show. While on the Peru side of the lake I also visited a couple of the Floating Islands, which are man-made islands built completely of reeds, no more than 20 meters in diameter. These communities were initially built as a way for people to escape from widespread tribal warfare, and people still live quiet lives there in tiny communities although they now get things like education and medical services in Puno. They're something you really have to see to believe.
After visiting those islands, I continued across the Bolivian border to Copacabana. On the bus ride there I met a fellow traveller from Morocco and another French guy that the Moroccan guy had met on the bus from Cuzco to Puno. The three of us decided to spend the night on the Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun), which is the mythical birthplace of the Incan civilization. Ironically, the first night there we got caught in a hail storm and ended up just sitting in our hostel drinking cheap, gross Bolivian wine and chewing coca leaves. The next day was a little clearer and Romain (the Frenchie) and I hiked to some really cool labyrinth-like ruins on one side of the island before taking the boat back to Copacabana.
After that I continued on to La Paz and spent two days there hanging out with Tarik (the Moroccan), visiting markets and museums, and the usual stuff you do in cities. While Lake Titicaca is the highest freshwater lake in the world, La Paz boasts being the highest capital, at something like 3800 meters above sea level. The main part of the city is situated in a bit of a valley, but like Lima, the outer boundaries of the city just keep growing due to people migrating there from the country, and from several lookout towers in the city you can see just how packed all the buildings are on the side of the mountains. It's pretty impressive.
It just so happened that Tarik was also planning on doing a tour of the salt flats and desert near Uyuni, so I decided to go with him. It was a very uncomfortable 12-hour overnight bus ride down to Uyuni, which is a freezing cold, isolated and desolate town which earns its livelihood almost completely from tourism. There are dozens of tour agencies that do three-day tours of the desert, and we ended up going with a different tour agency than we had made the reservation with, which apparently happens a lot. The tour group consisted of me, Tarik, two youngish Polish couples, and a local tour guide and cook, all packed snugly into a jeep. The tour was memorable both for the spectacular scenery (only my photos can describe that, which I unfortunately might not be able to posr online until I get home) and for the fact that the tour itself was comically bad. The guide and cook seemed intent on speaking to us as little as possible. The jeep arrived at the tour agency an hour late the first day, then stopped at several places around town to pick up a few personal items and some food items that our guides had neglected to pick up beforehand. Every time we arrived at one of the sites the guide would tell us we had 15 minutes to walk around, then after ten minutes would yell, 'Let's go, let's go, we're late!' On top of that, the cook made a hot dog casserole for the two vegetarians on the trip, then on the last morning when we asked for the scrambled eggs we had been promised, said that there were eggs in the bread. She finally brought us a bowl of scrambled eggs but without forks and plates to eat it with. Following breakfast we revolted and spent an hour and a half in the hot springs mostly just to piss of the guide. Because of this we arrived lateat the town in which we were apparently supposed to stop and get gas (the guide had told us nothing about this, of course) and the gas station was closed. But instead of telling us that he was going to try to find the owner of the gas station, the guide pretended we were at another stop in the trip and asked if we wanted to get out and see the local market or church. This resulted in all of us being quite confused when we ended up waiting 45 minutes for him to come back. We arrived back in the frigid Uyuni at 8:30, 2 and a half hours late. The good thing was that we all got along really well and were able to laugh at all the silly mishaps. Unfortunately we arrived back too late to stage a protest in front of the travel agency.
At the point of reaching the Chilean border on the last day we parted with Tarik, who was continuing on to Valparaiso. Coincidentally, me and the two Polish couples all had the same plan, which was to move on to the religious and mining center of Potosi, where I am now. On the bus here I was sitting next to and chatting with a Bolivian guy who is studying in Sucre, which just happens to be my next destination. The city of Potosi supposedly has a fascinating history, of which I know little because I unfortunately do not have the Lonely Planet Guide to Bolivia (this appears to be an essential). My Bolivian friend told me that at some point in history it was the biggest city in the world. Anyway, despite my ignorance, I am highly looking forward to taking a tour of one of the cooperative mines tomorrow. More on this to come.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Two ridiculous mishaps
Ridiculous Mishap #1: The case of the stolen cell phone.
After spending a lot of time bragging about how I haven't gotten mugged or robbed the entire time I've been in Latin America, the latter finally happened. Of course, it happened on the day of Inti Raymi, the biggest festival in Cuzco, when all of the robbers come out. I was on a bus going back from Sacsaywaman and forgot that I had my cell phone in my pocket. The bus was prety crowded and as I was getting off I felt someone behind me slip my cell phone out of my pocket. I yelled, 'Hey! Someone just stole my cell phone!' but no one did anything. It occurred to me that there was absolutely nothing I could do given that I didn't know who had taken it and everyone was getting off the bus. Well, if something had to get stolen from me, I figured, better my $25 cell phone than something more valuable.
The next day I went to one of the offices of the cell phone company I was using, Telefonica, to have them block my number. Seeing as Telefonica is the biggest and most well-established phone companies in Peru, you’d think they’d have their act together at least for issues as common as stolen cell phones, but no. I waited in line for 20 minutes just for the woman there to tell me to dial 123 on one of their phones in the office, and then to find that that number didn’t go through, and that the woman had no interest in listening to me anymore. Finally after waiting another ten minutes with her ignoring me and throwing a minor fit, she told me that the system was not currently in operation, that I’d have to wait an hour. In response to this I stormed out of the office and came back the next day only to find that the number still didn’t work.
In the meantime, I rented another cell phone from a friend and decided to call my old number just to see what happened. To my surprise, a woman answered. The conversation went something like this:
Woman: Hallo?
Me: Hi, who is this?
Woman: Hallo?
Me: This is the owner of the phone you’re using.
Woman: What?
Me: That phone was stolen from me a few days ago. The phone you have is a stolen phone.
Woman: Oh. Well someone sold it to me.
Me: Well, in any case I’m going to have to block the account because you’re using a phone that’s still in my name.
Woman: Name a time and place to meet and I’ll return it to you.
Me: OK, do you know where the Parque España is in Santa Monica? How about we meet there at 5:30.
Woman: OK.
I went with Rosita to meet the woman in the place we had arranged. We even told the local police about what had happened and asked them to hang around for awhile in case the woman tried to ask me for money for my stolen cell phone. By 6:00 she still hadn’t showed up, and when I called my cell phone again she said she would be right there. At 6:15 I tried to call again, and my cell phone was turned off. The next day I went to a different office of Telefonica and they blocked my number for me with no problem. I really don’t understand bureaucracy.
Ridiculous Mishap #2: Bad Water
Last night I went out dancing with Braddy and some of his friends, and decided that staying at his house was a better idea than coming back really late to my house and waking up my entire family. I was sleeping in the same room where he does his painting, and in the middle of the night I woke up really thirsty, saw a brand-name bottle of water on the floor next to his painting materials, and started to drink it. I drank about half the bottle. Well, the next morning when I woke up I looked at the water and realized it didn’t look so clean. It was slightly yellowish in color and there were some particles floating on the bottom. ‘Braddy, one little question,’ I said. ‘Where is this water from?’
Braddy: Oh, shit. Did you drink that?
Me: Yeah, I was thirsty in the middle of the night and didn’t realize how gross it was.
Braddy (laughing): That water is from the ocean in Chile. When my friends travel I always ask them to bring water back for me because I like to paint with water from all different places. It’s part of my mystique.
Me: Oh, well if it’s from the ocean in Chile that’s not so bad. I was afraid it was tap water from here.
Braddy: No, it shouldn’t be that bad, just a little salty.
Me: Strange, it didn’t taste salty.
Braddy (10 minutes later): Oh shit. You know what, I just realized, that other bottle is the water from Chile, the one you were drinking is water from Pisac. (Pisac is a rural town about an hour outside of Cuzco)
Me: Oh. Well, that’s not good.
Braddy: No, that’s kind of bad. You better start taking antibiotics. That water is loaded with little creatures.
Me: OK, I have some antibiotics here actually. What water should I use to swallow the pill?
Braddy: Use the Chilean water, it’s cleaner. No, just kidding, I’ll boil some.
And so I am temporarily back on antibiotics. I can only hope that my body doesn’t become a giant safe haven for antibiotic resistant bacteria by the time I get back to the states.
After spending a lot of time bragging about how I haven't gotten mugged or robbed the entire time I've been in Latin America, the latter finally happened. Of course, it happened on the day of Inti Raymi, the biggest festival in Cuzco, when all of the robbers come out. I was on a bus going back from Sacsaywaman and forgot that I had my cell phone in my pocket. The bus was prety crowded and as I was getting off I felt someone behind me slip my cell phone out of my pocket. I yelled, 'Hey! Someone just stole my cell phone!' but no one did anything. It occurred to me that there was absolutely nothing I could do given that I didn't know who had taken it and everyone was getting off the bus. Well, if something had to get stolen from me, I figured, better my $25 cell phone than something more valuable.
The next day I went to one of the offices of the cell phone company I was using, Telefonica, to have them block my number. Seeing as Telefonica is the biggest and most well-established phone companies in Peru, you’d think they’d have their act together at least for issues as common as stolen cell phones, but no. I waited in line for 20 minutes just for the woman there to tell me to dial 123 on one of their phones in the office, and then to find that that number didn’t go through, and that the woman had no interest in listening to me anymore. Finally after waiting another ten minutes with her ignoring me and throwing a minor fit, she told me that the system was not currently in operation, that I’d have to wait an hour. In response to this I stormed out of the office and came back the next day only to find that the number still didn’t work.
In the meantime, I rented another cell phone from a friend and decided to call my old number just to see what happened. To my surprise, a woman answered. The conversation went something like this:
Woman: Hallo?
Me: Hi, who is this?
Woman: Hallo?
Me: This is the owner of the phone you’re using.
Woman: What?
Me: That phone was stolen from me a few days ago. The phone you have is a stolen phone.
Woman: Oh. Well someone sold it to me.
Me: Well, in any case I’m going to have to block the account because you’re using a phone that’s still in my name.
Woman: Name a time and place to meet and I’ll return it to you.
Me: OK, do you know where the Parque España is in Santa Monica? How about we meet there at 5:30.
Woman: OK.
I went with Rosita to meet the woman in the place we had arranged. We even told the local police about what had happened and asked them to hang around for awhile in case the woman tried to ask me for money for my stolen cell phone. By 6:00 she still hadn’t showed up, and when I called my cell phone again she said she would be right there. At 6:15 I tried to call again, and my cell phone was turned off. The next day I went to a different office of Telefonica and they blocked my number for me with no problem. I really don’t understand bureaucracy.
Ridiculous Mishap #2: Bad Water
Last night I went out dancing with Braddy and some of his friends, and decided that staying at his house was a better idea than coming back really late to my house and waking up my entire family. I was sleeping in the same room where he does his painting, and in the middle of the night I woke up really thirsty, saw a brand-name bottle of water on the floor next to his painting materials, and started to drink it. I drank about half the bottle. Well, the next morning when I woke up I looked at the water and realized it didn’t look so clean. It was slightly yellowish in color and there were some particles floating on the bottom. ‘Braddy, one little question,’ I said. ‘Where is this water from?’
Braddy: Oh, shit. Did you drink that?
Me: Yeah, I was thirsty in the middle of the night and didn’t realize how gross it was.
Braddy (laughing): That water is from the ocean in Chile. When my friends travel I always ask them to bring water back for me because I like to paint with water from all different places. It’s part of my mystique.
Me: Oh, well if it’s from the ocean in Chile that’s not so bad. I was afraid it was tap water from here.
Braddy: No, it shouldn’t be that bad, just a little salty.
Me: Strange, it didn’t taste salty.
Braddy (10 minutes later): Oh shit. You know what, I just realized, that other bottle is the water from Chile, the one you were drinking is water from Pisac. (Pisac is a rural town about an hour outside of Cuzco)
Me: Oh. Well, that’s not good.
Braddy: No, that’s kind of bad. You better start taking antibiotics. That water is loaded with little creatures.
Me: OK, I have some antibiotics here actually. What water should I use to swallow the pill?
Braddy: Use the Chilean water, it’s cleaner. No, just kidding, I’ll boil some.
And so I am temporarily back on antibiotics. I can only hope that my body doesn’t become a giant safe haven for antibiotic resistant bacteria by the time I get back to the states.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Fiesta fiesta fiesta
It’s about time I write about the various festivals I’ve witnessed so far in both Cuzco and Ollantaytambo. Yesterday was the grand finale of all the festivals, but I’m still a little incredulous that the partying is really all over. We’ll see.
The first big exciting festival was Señor de Choquekilka (I can’t believe I actually remembered that name) which was an ongoing festival from May 26th-29th. I went with Jenny and my French friend Yacine to catch the last day of it. This festival is held in honor of an appearance of an image of Jesus in a lake to a campesino, which allegedly saved the man from falling off a cliff. The festival started with a bunch of dancing groups dancing down to the “pampa,” a large open space where the majority of the festival would be held. This was followed by an interesting spectacle in which a couple of live chickens were hung by their feet from a rope, then lowered onto a large cross float. Then a cob of choclo (corn) was hung from the same rope, and a bunch of men on horses had to ride under it and try to grab the corn. Every time someone grabbed one another corn cob would be hung on the rope. It was explained to us that for each corn cob a chicken was awarded, but the catch is that the person who ends up with the most chickens also has to be mayordomo for the next year—which means organizing the entire 4-day festival.
After that spectacle there followed much merriment, music and dancing, and a few of the dances we saw were really incredible. My personal favorite (and I think Jenny and Yacine would back me up), which I have also seen at other festivals but far inferior in quality, was a dance involving what Rosita calls “narizones”, or men with masks with long noses which in this case were meant to represent dishonest judges and politicians (I’ve also seen a similar dance done with the narizones representing drunkards, but now that I think about it, maybe the two dances are one and the same). The dance we saw in Ollantaytambo was particularly entertaining—there was a brass band playing rowdy music, and the narizones were dressed ostentatiously, many carrying books with the title “law.” The dance they did was very blatantly raunchy in a comic way, with the narizones stopping every few seconds to do some pelvic thrusts. Adding to the comedy was one boy dancer whose pants kept falling down, to the point where they were literally around his ankles, but who admirably just kept on with the dance in his tighty-whities as if nothing had happened. Another dance of the narizones featured more slapstick humor involving a cartoonishly ugly woman as well as a bull and several bullfighters.
Another interesting dance was a dance of ukukus, a type of traditional character that I think I have mentioned before. Ukukus wear knit masks that cover their entire face and animal-like robes with long fringes. They also carry whips. And use them. I keep asking people about the symbolic meaning of ukukus but all I’ve been able to find is what wikipedia tells me, which is that they are meant to be kind of an intermediary between the human and animal world. Ukuku dances are many and varied but most of them involve two or more ukukus snapping whips at each other. This whipping can be semi-comic at times (for instance, if the person getting whipped is a drunkard character) but in any case usually gets gasps from the crowd. Sometimes there will be one or two ukukus present in another kind of dance, and in this case they seem to be there to—symbolically or more literally—keep the other dancers in line.
Another one of my favorite costumes is a really creepy-looking mask which is made of kind of a screen-like material, so that it is semi-transparent but you still can’t see the person’s actual face. These masks are the most human-like but pretty scary, perhaps for that reason. I’m not sure what these masks are supposed to represent, but a lot of times dancers with these masks also wear a headdress of large feathers, which would signify a character from the jungle. Other times they wear a black scarf covering the rest of their head (scary) and an ornate, regal-looking suit.
There were several more kinds of dances, but those were the highlights for me. After the dancing was over the mayordomo made a really, really long speech on a loudspeaker, and then finally a procession to the plaza began, led by a handful of men carrying the cross. By this time it was already dark. The procession took at least an hour, but I was having an interesting time because two of the dancers had grabbed my hands, obliging me to dance with them all the way up. Things also got interesting when I had the marching band right behind me, and kept colliding with the drum player. I looked over at Yacine and saw the long end of a trombone barely miss grazing his ear. When we finally got the the plaza there were too many people to move. There was some more dancing and speeches, until finally the cross was retired onto a wooden platform that had been built for it.
Then commenced the real partying: the night was kicked off with the most incredible fireworks I have ever seen in my life, which I don’t even know how to describe. Earlier in the day a big wire structure had been set up in the plaza for the fireworks. Other than regular fireworks, there were fireworks that interacted with this structure in some way I cannot explain scientifically, so that, for instance, at one point there were colored sparks flying off wire spirals and later there was a golden wall of fireworks which were being shot down from a bar of same structure (sorry for that really bad description). Then, on a huge stage that had been set up that morning, with a giant advertisement for Corona in the background, there were two different musical acts that played all through the night. They were both chicha bands, the first being a bit Bakstreet Boys-esque with matching yellow suits and goofy dance moves. The second was even more timeless: a woman named Larita Pacheco was the lead singer, and came out dressed in a huge ostentatious red dress and playing an electric harp. We bought food from vendors (at these festivals there are always women selling beef shishkabob-type things with a potato stuck on the end for good measure) and danced until two in the morning, when we finally crashed in our hostel.
The festivals I’ve seen in Cuzco have been larger in terms of the sheer number of people attending them, but nothing has really rivaled my experience in Ollantaytambo. Even so, there are a couple important festivals worth mentioning. The first one, and the most important religiously, was Corpus Christi on June 7th. On this day, all of the saints of different parts of the city are taken out of their churches and paraded around the city before all converging in the Plaza de Armas. Hoards of people gather around the plaza to hear an outdoor Catholic service followed by a very slow procession of all the saints around the Plaza and eventually into the Cathedral. I actually changed my flight to Buenos Aires to a day later so that I could witness this festival, and every Peruvian I asked told me it was well worth the penalty fees. When all is said and done, however, most of my marveling was at the amazing capacity that Peruvians have to sit for hours on end listening to the same repetitive music and watching a few saints be moved a couple inches a minute around the plaza. I was with my friends Erika, Rosita and Vanessa and after about 3 hours had to start tugging on their shirts to make them leave.
Despite the religious significance of the festival though, I think the thing people get most excited about is food. On Corpus Christi the Plaza San Francisco is full of vendors all selling the same traditional dish, called “chiriuchu.” In Quechua that means “cold aji”, aji being a special type of hot pepper they have here. The dish consists of slices of a variety of cold meats including sausage, chicken, and guinea pig, served with toasted corn kernels, cheese, and a corn cake they call “tortilla”, and garnished with seaweed, a string of fish eggs, and an aji pepper. It’s really delicious if you ask me, but takes a good long time to pick apart the meat, and my inexperience was evident. For dessert, my friends treated me to coconut milk (which I drank out of a cocunut with a straw) and for the other hand, a piece of sugar cane to chew on (delicious). Yes, ok, when it comes to food, Peruvians know how to celebrate.
The third big festival, which took place right after I got back from Buenos Aires, was Inti Raymi, which is a semi-contrived reenactment of an Incan sun ceremony meant to offset the Catholicism of Corpus Christi and encourage pride in Cuzco’s Incan heritage. Unfortunately I missed a few of the festivities leading up to the main day of the festival, which included a night of a bunch of Peruvian bands that sounded a little like a Battle of the Bands type thing. The first night I got back there were a couple of salsa bands playing in the plaza and some fireworks, but the plaza was so crowded that I ended up just being driven insane by the quantity of people and going home in a grumpy mood. On Saturday, which was the day before the main Inti Raymi festival, was a huge procession of dance groups through the plaza that started at 1:00 in the afternoon and supposedly lasted until 2 or 3 am. It was actually quite entertaining, and I stood there watching for a good two and a half hours, which I thought was sufficient although everyone I talked to seemed to be surprised that I hadn’t staid for the entire thing. There were dance groups coming from all over Peru, the ones from the jungle being by far the most interesting costumes: one group even had people dressed as condors and lions, and some gnome-looking creatures with big masks made out of paper-mache. My favorite dance that I saw (unfortunately not in person, but I was lucky enough to catch it on TV) was one which seemed to be a comic representation of domestic violence among rural people. In one part of this dance the women literally wrestled their husbands to the ground and started beating them. Then the men retaliated by picking up their wives, slinging them over their shoulders, and carrying them off kicking and screaming. The parade also included groups of immigrants from various countries, which usually didn’t do dances but were there more symbolically, representing that aspect of Cuzqueñan culture. To top it all off there was a gigantic float in the plaza that everyone called the “Inca”, which represented an indigenous man blowing on a kintu, or three coca leaves. And when I say he was blowing on the leaves I mean his arms actually moved and he actually blew smoke out of his mouth. It was quite a spectacle. This night was also the biggest night for partying, and though I wasn’t in the mood to get completely smashed, I came home at midnight to find that even my host mom was still out partying.
Sunday was the main day of the festival. I didn’t see the first part of it, but the day begins around 8:00 am when there is a symbolic salutation of the sun in Qoricancha, a park near the center of the city. From there, all the dance groups come dancing up to Sacsaywaman (ruins of a big temple right on the outskirts of Cuzco) from four different directions, representing the four “suyos”, or districts of the Incan Empire. Then hoards of people gather in Sacsaywaman to watch the main part of the show. It’s a long, complex theatrical production in which the four suyos come out dancing, all gather around the Inca (the political leader) and his religious counterpart (I forget what the name of this leader was), and the two leaders address the four suyos. Then a llama is sacrificed and everyone rejoices. The problem with this spectacle is that it’s pretty hard to really see or hear anything unless you buy preferential seating for somewhere around 70 American dollars. If you’re me and not Cameron Diaz (yes, Cameron Diaz was there, it was front page news in Peru), it isn’t really possible to get seats where you can both see and hear at the same time. Even so, on the ridiculously crowded bus on the way there I met a guy who actually lives in Sacsaywaman, only a few yards away from the archaeological site, and he took me to a good spot that his friends had saved for him, where I could at least see the whole thing from afar if not hear a word of it. It was worth it to be there just to have it all explained to me by this guy, Elias, and to drink chicha and chew coca with he and his hippie friends. I also got into a couple arguments with him about how to say certain things in Quechua—his mother is a Quechua speaker but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t actually speak the language even though he seems to think he does. There’s nothing funnier than getting into arguments about people about their supposed native language and winning. I guess that’s also a little sad though.
The first big exciting festival was Señor de Choquekilka (I can’t believe I actually remembered that name) which was an ongoing festival from May 26th-29th. I went with Jenny and my French friend Yacine to catch the last day of it. This festival is held in honor of an appearance of an image of Jesus in a lake to a campesino, which allegedly saved the man from falling off a cliff. The festival started with a bunch of dancing groups dancing down to the “pampa,” a large open space where the majority of the festival would be held. This was followed by an interesting spectacle in which a couple of live chickens were hung by their feet from a rope, then lowered onto a large cross float. Then a cob of choclo (corn) was hung from the same rope, and a bunch of men on horses had to ride under it and try to grab the corn. Every time someone grabbed one another corn cob would be hung on the rope. It was explained to us that for each corn cob a chicken was awarded, but the catch is that the person who ends up with the most chickens also has to be mayordomo for the next year—which means organizing the entire 4-day festival.
After that spectacle there followed much merriment, music and dancing, and a few of the dances we saw were really incredible. My personal favorite (and I think Jenny and Yacine would back me up), which I have also seen at other festivals but far inferior in quality, was a dance involving what Rosita calls “narizones”, or men with masks with long noses which in this case were meant to represent dishonest judges and politicians (I’ve also seen a similar dance done with the narizones representing drunkards, but now that I think about it, maybe the two dances are one and the same). The dance we saw in Ollantaytambo was particularly entertaining—there was a brass band playing rowdy music, and the narizones were dressed ostentatiously, many carrying books with the title “law.” The dance they did was very blatantly raunchy in a comic way, with the narizones stopping every few seconds to do some pelvic thrusts. Adding to the comedy was one boy dancer whose pants kept falling down, to the point where they were literally around his ankles, but who admirably just kept on with the dance in his tighty-whities as if nothing had happened. Another dance of the narizones featured more slapstick humor involving a cartoonishly ugly woman as well as a bull and several bullfighters.
Another interesting dance was a dance of ukukus, a type of traditional character that I think I have mentioned before. Ukukus wear knit masks that cover their entire face and animal-like robes with long fringes. They also carry whips. And use them. I keep asking people about the symbolic meaning of ukukus but all I’ve been able to find is what wikipedia tells me, which is that they are meant to be kind of an intermediary between the human and animal world. Ukuku dances are many and varied but most of them involve two or more ukukus snapping whips at each other. This whipping can be semi-comic at times (for instance, if the person getting whipped is a drunkard character) but in any case usually gets gasps from the crowd. Sometimes there will be one or two ukukus present in another kind of dance, and in this case they seem to be there to—symbolically or more literally—keep the other dancers in line.
Another one of my favorite costumes is a really creepy-looking mask which is made of kind of a screen-like material, so that it is semi-transparent but you still can’t see the person’s actual face. These masks are the most human-like but pretty scary, perhaps for that reason. I’m not sure what these masks are supposed to represent, but a lot of times dancers with these masks also wear a headdress of large feathers, which would signify a character from the jungle. Other times they wear a black scarf covering the rest of their head (scary) and an ornate, regal-looking suit.
There were several more kinds of dances, but those were the highlights for me. After the dancing was over the mayordomo made a really, really long speech on a loudspeaker, and then finally a procession to the plaza began, led by a handful of men carrying the cross. By this time it was already dark. The procession took at least an hour, but I was having an interesting time because two of the dancers had grabbed my hands, obliging me to dance with them all the way up. Things also got interesting when I had the marching band right behind me, and kept colliding with the drum player. I looked over at Yacine and saw the long end of a trombone barely miss grazing his ear. When we finally got the the plaza there were too many people to move. There was some more dancing and speeches, until finally the cross was retired onto a wooden platform that had been built for it.
Then commenced the real partying: the night was kicked off with the most incredible fireworks I have ever seen in my life, which I don’t even know how to describe. Earlier in the day a big wire structure had been set up in the plaza for the fireworks. Other than regular fireworks, there were fireworks that interacted with this structure in some way I cannot explain scientifically, so that, for instance, at one point there were colored sparks flying off wire spirals and later there was a golden wall of fireworks which were being shot down from a bar of same structure (sorry for that really bad description). Then, on a huge stage that had been set up that morning, with a giant advertisement for Corona in the background, there were two different musical acts that played all through the night. They were both chicha bands, the first being a bit Bakstreet Boys-esque with matching yellow suits and goofy dance moves. The second was even more timeless: a woman named Larita Pacheco was the lead singer, and came out dressed in a huge ostentatious red dress and playing an electric harp. We bought food from vendors (at these festivals there are always women selling beef shishkabob-type things with a potato stuck on the end for good measure) and danced until two in the morning, when we finally crashed in our hostel.
The festivals I’ve seen in Cuzco have been larger in terms of the sheer number of people attending them, but nothing has really rivaled my experience in Ollantaytambo. Even so, there are a couple important festivals worth mentioning. The first one, and the most important religiously, was Corpus Christi on June 7th. On this day, all of the saints of different parts of the city are taken out of their churches and paraded around the city before all converging in the Plaza de Armas. Hoards of people gather around the plaza to hear an outdoor Catholic service followed by a very slow procession of all the saints around the Plaza and eventually into the Cathedral. I actually changed my flight to Buenos Aires to a day later so that I could witness this festival, and every Peruvian I asked told me it was well worth the penalty fees. When all is said and done, however, most of my marveling was at the amazing capacity that Peruvians have to sit for hours on end listening to the same repetitive music and watching a few saints be moved a couple inches a minute around the plaza. I was with my friends Erika, Rosita and Vanessa and after about 3 hours had to start tugging on their shirts to make them leave.
Despite the religious significance of the festival though, I think the thing people get most excited about is food. On Corpus Christi the Plaza San Francisco is full of vendors all selling the same traditional dish, called “chiriuchu.” In Quechua that means “cold aji”, aji being a special type of hot pepper they have here. The dish consists of slices of a variety of cold meats including sausage, chicken, and guinea pig, served with toasted corn kernels, cheese, and a corn cake they call “tortilla”, and garnished with seaweed, a string of fish eggs, and an aji pepper. It’s really delicious if you ask me, but takes a good long time to pick apart the meat, and my inexperience was evident. For dessert, my friends treated me to coconut milk (which I drank out of a cocunut with a straw) and for the other hand, a piece of sugar cane to chew on (delicious). Yes, ok, when it comes to food, Peruvians know how to celebrate.
The third big festival, which took place right after I got back from Buenos Aires, was Inti Raymi, which is a semi-contrived reenactment of an Incan sun ceremony meant to offset the Catholicism of Corpus Christi and encourage pride in Cuzco’s Incan heritage. Unfortunately I missed a few of the festivities leading up to the main day of the festival, which included a night of a bunch of Peruvian bands that sounded a little like a Battle of the Bands type thing. The first night I got back there were a couple of salsa bands playing in the plaza and some fireworks, but the plaza was so crowded that I ended up just being driven insane by the quantity of people and going home in a grumpy mood. On Saturday, which was the day before the main Inti Raymi festival, was a huge procession of dance groups through the plaza that started at 1:00 in the afternoon and supposedly lasted until 2 or 3 am. It was actually quite entertaining, and I stood there watching for a good two and a half hours, which I thought was sufficient although everyone I talked to seemed to be surprised that I hadn’t staid for the entire thing. There were dance groups coming from all over Peru, the ones from the jungle being by far the most interesting costumes: one group even had people dressed as condors and lions, and some gnome-looking creatures with big masks made out of paper-mache. My favorite dance that I saw (unfortunately not in person, but I was lucky enough to catch it on TV) was one which seemed to be a comic representation of domestic violence among rural people. In one part of this dance the women literally wrestled their husbands to the ground and started beating them. Then the men retaliated by picking up their wives, slinging them over their shoulders, and carrying them off kicking and screaming. The parade also included groups of immigrants from various countries, which usually didn’t do dances but were there more symbolically, representing that aspect of Cuzqueñan culture. To top it all off there was a gigantic float in the plaza that everyone called the “Inca”, which represented an indigenous man blowing on a kintu, or three coca leaves. And when I say he was blowing on the leaves I mean his arms actually moved and he actually blew smoke out of his mouth. It was quite a spectacle. This night was also the biggest night for partying, and though I wasn’t in the mood to get completely smashed, I came home at midnight to find that even my host mom was still out partying.
Sunday was the main day of the festival. I didn’t see the first part of it, but the day begins around 8:00 am when there is a symbolic salutation of the sun in Qoricancha, a park near the center of the city. From there, all the dance groups come dancing up to Sacsaywaman (ruins of a big temple right on the outskirts of Cuzco) from four different directions, representing the four “suyos”, or districts of the Incan Empire. Then hoards of people gather in Sacsaywaman to watch the main part of the show. It’s a long, complex theatrical production in which the four suyos come out dancing, all gather around the Inca (the political leader) and his religious counterpart (I forget what the name of this leader was), and the two leaders address the four suyos. Then a llama is sacrificed and everyone rejoices. The problem with this spectacle is that it’s pretty hard to really see or hear anything unless you buy preferential seating for somewhere around 70 American dollars. If you’re me and not Cameron Diaz (yes, Cameron Diaz was there, it was front page news in Peru), it isn’t really possible to get seats where you can both see and hear at the same time. Even so, on the ridiculously crowded bus on the way there I met a guy who actually lives in Sacsaywaman, only a few yards away from the archaeological site, and he took me to a good spot that his friends had saved for him, where I could at least see the whole thing from afar if not hear a word of it. It was worth it to be there just to have it all explained to me by this guy, Elias, and to drink chicha and chew coca with he and his hippie friends. I also got into a couple arguments with him about how to say certain things in Quechua—his mother is a Quechua speaker but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t actually speak the language even though he seems to think he does. There’s nothing funnier than getting into arguments about people about their supposed native language and winning. I guess that’s also a little sad though.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Baratillo 6/23/07
The easiest way to see Peru in a nutshell, I think, is by going to any outdoor market in Cuzco. There is a giant food market right near where I live in Santiago, which on the weekends extends into a kind of flea market called a “baratillo.” In this market you can find anything you would ever possibly need, granted it might take you hours to find it since the vendors and their things are not organized by any logic. I went to the market this morning just to walk around, but in order to make myself feel like I was doing something else there other than people watching I decided to make it my mission to buy a pen. The first one I found, after 10 minutes, was an American flag pen, and I bought it despite the embarrassing irony. With my American flag pen I wrote this list of some things I saw in the market, in no particular order:
-used school books
-remote controls
-curtains
-blenders
-jewelry
-cell phone covers
-used computer parts
-used clothes
-plastic baby doll heads (I swear, I saw several people with these, the bodies nowhere to be found)
-rusty old tools
-undergarments
-toothpaste and other toiletries
-cigarrettes
-shoe soles
-colored pencil stubs
-doormats
-various crafts
-“chicha” music video DVDs (these are just as funny as chicha music, but I would have to sit down and watch a bunch to be able to describe them well)
-DVD players
-framed pictures of Jesus
-used jars and beer bottles
-used corks and bottle caps
-funnels
-clothes hangers
-chess pieces
-old magazines
-ceramic sinks
-shoelaces
-wooden furniture
-single batteries, unpackaged
-toilet paper
-pirated CDs
-various foods including potatoes, chicha, custard, and ceviche.
-hundreds of people pushing past each other, all seeming to be in a rush to find something or get somewhere.
There is also no rule about specialization. There are some more professional-looking vendors who only sell, for instance, one type of craft (that they probably bought from other artisans), but there are others who might have a variety of things arranged in no particular order: maybe some chess pieces, some used books, some rusty metal tools, some baby doll heads, toilet paper, and a basket of potatoes, for instance. This would not be at all strange. It’s just Peru.
-used school books
-remote controls
-curtains
-blenders
-jewelry
-cell phone covers
-used computer parts
-used clothes
-plastic baby doll heads (I swear, I saw several people with these, the bodies nowhere to be found)
-rusty old tools
-undergarments
-toothpaste and other toiletries
-cigarrettes
-shoe soles
-colored pencil stubs
-doormats
-various crafts
-“chicha” music video DVDs (these are just as funny as chicha music, but I would have to sit down and watch a bunch to be able to describe them well)
-DVD players
-framed pictures of Jesus
-used jars and beer bottles
-used corks and bottle caps
-funnels
-clothes hangers
-chess pieces
-old magazines
-ceramic sinks
-shoelaces
-wooden furniture
-single batteries, unpackaged
-toilet paper
-pirated CDs
-various foods including potatoes, chicha, custard, and ceviche.
-hundreds of people pushing past each other, all seeming to be in a rush to find something or get somewhere.
There is also no rule about specialization. There are some more professional-looking vendors who only sell, for instance, one type of craft (that they probably bought from other artisans), but there are others who might have a variety of things arranged in no particular order: maybe some chess pieces, some used books, some rusty metal tools, some baby doll heads, toilet paper, and a basket of potatoes, for instance. This would not be at all strange. It’s just Peru.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
The story of how I was almost in 3 countries in 24 hours-- 6/19/07
My last day in Buenos Aires turned out to be, well, mostly not in Buenos Aires, and not really my last day at all. It all started when I was invited the night before by my Colombian friend from the hostel, who everyone calls “Juanito” (“little Juan”) to come on a day trip with him to Uruguay the next day, which was his day off from working like mad as a chef in a restaurant. I knew that I had to fly back to Lima in the evening the next day, but after looking at boat schedules online, we concluded that I would be able to get back just in time to get to the airport. So, the next morning at 6 am, off we were to a different country.
The boat ride took about 2 and a half hours, and when we got there we realized we had made a huge mistake: that day it was some kind of national holiday (I think everyone gets a day off of work for father’s day…crazy Argentinians), and for that reason the boat schedule was different from normal weekdays. The evening boat back would not leave in time for me to make my flight, and the only other boat back that day left at 12:30, which was exactly an hour after the time we had arrived. We realized that we had no choice but to go back on the 12:30 boat, leaving us a mere hour in Uruguay.
This realization happened after customs had taken a full 10 minutes to search Juanito from head to toe and ask him a bunch of impertinent questions. “They always do this to Colombians,” he said as he was summoned to come behind a white curtain. He told me afterwards they had asked him why he was with an American and where he had met me. They also asked him, of course, if he consumed any substances. He gave them his usual answer: “Yes.” “What do you consume?” “Oh, I love to smoke joints. But I don’t have any on me now.”
By the time we had rented a car, realized about the schedule change, and gotten our money back for the car, we had only a half hour to walk around Uruguay. Juanito had told me that the air is just different in Uruguay, and it was really true. It’s amazing how different it felt from the city just across the river, simply because of the lack of pollution and hustle and bustle of the city. It was profoundly peaceful, and full of bright pastel colors. That was all I could gather from walking just a few blocks, but it left me with a strong impression.
When we arrived back in Buenos Aires, we decided to have lunch at a “parrilla,” a traditional Argentinian restaurant that specializes in grilling up giant portions of various animal parts. We got a humongous plate of meat meant to be shared between two people, and could not finish it all. It included chicken, sausage, blood sausage, kidneys, intestines, ribs, and something that was apparently from the neck region of some animal. It tastes better than it sounds, but not something I would want to eat every day. Juanito requested that the waiter bring us a “penguino,” a hideous white ceramic pitcher shaped like a penguin, from which to serve the wine. I have to say that the wine was probably the best part of the meal, even if it was poured out of the mouth of a penguin.
After lunch we walked back to the hostel and I arrived just in time to frantically pack up my things and jump in a taxi to the airport. I was in a happy state from the wine and under the impression that everything had gone relatively smoothly; despite the fact that we couldn’t stay very long in Uruguay, it had still been a very interesting and eventful day. However, upon arriving in the airport and being asked by one of the airline workers what flight I was taking, and being given an incredulous look, I immediately realized my mistake: the flight time on my ticket was 20:10, which was not 10:00 as I had idiotically thought, but 8:00. “Oops,” was the single thought that popped into my head.
I changed my flight to the next morning and staid the night in an airport hotel. Then, at 5:00 in the morning, I woke up feeling really nauseous and soon turned into a vomiting machine. I don’t know how my body always picks the most inconvenient times to become sick: in the jungle, in a remote rural community with no way of contacting the outside world, and now just in time to miss my second flight to Lima. A doctor came and prescribed me some antibiotics, but when I still wasn’t feeling so hot in the evening I decided that, having also missed my flight from Lima to Cuzco, I might as well just stick around in Buenos Aires for a few more days. Of course, as soon as I decided that I immediately started feeling better. And everyone at the hostel was very surprised and happy to see me. It was almost as if I had planned it.
On a less pleasant note, the night I got back I witnessed the most homophobic and masogynistic behavior of my entire stay in Latin America thus far. In Peru, the idea of actually being gay and actually admitting it just seemed like an absurdity to most people, but since I never met anyone that seemed even close to being gay, I never witnessed anything incredibly offensive. However, I started talking about the subject with people here because of Juanito, who speaks with a lot of body language and in an expressive way that could be construed as a gay affect. Everyone in the hostel is constantly joking about it and doing impressions of him, which I at first laughed along with because the impressions were so accurate and seemed to be in good fun, but after seeing one of these impressions practically every five minutes the joke started getting old.
Anyway, when I got back to the hostel I found that apparently Alejandro, the crazy Argentinian man who lives by night and does nothing with his life other than drugs, had evidently decided that it was unacceptable for Juan to have gone with me to Uruguay but not made a move on me. And he was not at all afraid to express this opinion in front of both of us. It was late at night (I hadn't been able to sleep) and Juanito had just gotten back from working at his restaurant. I forget what context it was in, but at one point he said, "Where are my things?" and Alejandro responded by pointing to me: "Here is your thing. She's sitting right here. Why don't you do anything with your thing? Why don't you be a man and do something with her?" He said this in a tone that was not at all joking but rather, accusatory, glaring at Juan as if he had done him a personal offense. At the time I was so stunned that all I did was laugh nervously, but the more I think about it the more angry I am at having not only been used as a means to insult someone else but at the same time being called a thing. Juanito shot Alejandro an intense glare that took me by surprise because I never would have imagined a look like that coming from him. That didn't stop Alejandro though. A few minutes later he said to me, again in front of Juanito, "Naomi, you should give your man a back massage. He just got home from work and you have to make him feel better." Again, an uncomfortable silence.
Thankfully, things eventually took a bit of a humorous turn. A little later that same night the three of us were looking at photos on my computer, and every time Alejandro saw one of my female friends that he thought was pretty (at least half of them) he would say in English, "Who is that girl? Why don't you bring her here so I can make her a happy woman?" We eventually came upon a photo of one of my male friends with his hair done up in a goofy way as a joke. "Who is she?" asked Alejandro. "Bring her here." This was the moment of his downfall. Juanito and I both jumped on the opportunity to torture him the rest of the night by pointing to pretty much every male in my pictures and asking, "Do you like her? Do you like her?" This prompted an incredibly defensive response from him, also in broken English: "Listen me. I like women. I really like women a lot. I don't like men. I not like that. I like women." It is moments such as this that almost make you believe that there is justice in the world.
The boat ride took about 2 and a half hours, and when we got there we realized we had made a huge mistake: that day it was some kind of national holiday (I think everyone gets a day off of work for father’s day…crazy Argentinians), and for that reason the boat schedule was different from normal weekdays. The evening boat back would not leave in time for me to make my flight, and the only other boat back that day left at 12:30, which was exactly an hour after the time we had arrived. We realized that we had no choice but to go back on the 12:30 boat, leaving us a mere hour in Uruguay.
This realization happened after customs had taken a full 10 minutes to search Juanito from head to toe and ask him a bunch of impertinent questions. “They always do this to Colombians,” he said as he was summoned to come behind a white curtain. He told me afterwards they had asked him why he was with an American and where he had met me. They also asked him, of course, if he consumed any substances. He gave them his usual answer: “Yes.” “What do you consume?” “Oh, I love to smoke joints. But I don’t have any on me now.”
By the time we had rented a car, realized about the schedule change, and gotten our money back for the car, we had only a half hour to walk around Uruguay. Juanito had told me that the air is just different in Uruguay, and it was really true. It’s amazing how different it felt from the city just across the river, simply because of the lack of pollution and hustle and bustle of the city. It was profoundly peaceful, and full of bright pastel colors. That was all I could gather from walking just a few blocks, but it left me with a strong impression.
When we arrived back in Buenos Aires, we decided to have lunch at a “parrilla,” a traditional Argentinian restaurant that specializes in grilling up giant portions of various animal parts. We got a humongous plate of meat meant to be shared between two people, and could not finish it all. It included chicken, sausage, blood sausage, kidneys, intestines, ribs, and something that was apparently from the neck region of some animal. It tastes better than it sounds, but not something I would want to eat every day. Juanito requested that the waiter bring us a “penguino,” a hideous white ceramic pitcher shaped like a penguin, from which to serve the wine. I have to say that the wine was probably the best part of the meal, even if it was poured out of the mouth of a penguin.
After lunch we walked back to the hostel and I arrived just in time to frantically pack up my things and jump in a taxi to the airport. I was in a happy state from the wine and under the impression that everything had gone relatively smoothly; despite the fact that we couldn’t stay very long in Uruguay, it had still been a very interesting and eventful day. However, upon arriving in the airport and being asked by one of the airline workers what flight I was taking, and being given an incredulous look, I immediately realized my mistake: the flight time on my ticket was 20:10, which was not 10:00 as I had idiotically thought, but 8:00. “Oops,” was the single thought that popped into my head.
I changed my flight to the next morning and staid the night in an airport hotel. Then, at 5:00 in the morning, I woke up feeling really nauseous and soon turned into a vomiting machine. I don’t know how my body always picks the most inconvenient times to become sick: in the jungle, in a remote rural community with no way of contacting the outside world, and now just in time to miss my second flight to Lima. A doctor came and prescribed me some antibiotics, but when I still wasn’t feeling so hot in the evening I decided that, having also missed my flight from Lima to Cuzco, I might as well just stick around in Buenos Aires for a few more days. Of course, as soon as I decided that I immediately started feeling better. And everyone at the hostel was very surprised and happy to see me. It was almost as if I had planned it.
On a less pleasant note, the night I got back I witnessed the most homophobic and masogynistic behavior of my entire stay in Latin America thus far. In Peru, the idea of actually being gay and actually admitting it just seemed like an absurdity to most people, but since I never met anyone that seemed even close to being gay, I never witnessed anything incredibly offensive. However, I started talking about the subject with people here because of Juanito, who speaks with a lot of body language and in an expressive way that could be construed as a gay affect. Everyone in the hostel is constantly joking about it and doing impressions of him, which I at first laughed along with because the impressions were so accurate and seemed to be in good fun, but after seeing one of these impressions practically every five minutes the joke started getting old.
Anyway, when I got back to the hostel I found that apparently Alejandro, the crazy Argentinian man who lives by night and does nothing with his life other than drugs, had evidently decided that it was unacceptable for Juan to have gone with me to Uruguay but not made a move on me. And he was not at all afraid to express this opinion in front of both of us. It was late at night (I hadn't been able to sleep) and Juanito had just gotten back from working at his restaurant. I forget what context it was in, but at one point he said, "Where are my things?" and Alejandro responded by pointing to me: "Here is your thing. She's sitting right here. Why don't you do anything with your thing? Why don't you be a man and do something with her?" He said this in a tone that was not at all joking but rather, accusatory, glaring at Juan as if he had done him a personal offense. At the time I was so stunned that all I did was laugh nervously, but the more I think about it the more angry I am at having not only been used as a means to insult someone else but at the same time being called a thing. Juanito shot Alejandro an intense glare that took me by surprise because I never would have imagined a look like that coming from him. That didn't stop Alejandro though. A few minutes later he said to me, again in front of Juanito, "Naomi, you should give your man a back massage. He just got home from work and you have to make him feel better." Again, an uncomfortable silence.
Thankfully, things eventually took a bit of a humorous turn. A little later that same night the three of us were looking at photos on my computer, and every time Alejandro saw one of my female friends that he thought was pretty (at least half of them) he would say in English, "Who is that girl? Why don't you bring her here so I can make her a happy woman?" We eventually came upon a photo of one of my male friends with his hair done up in a goofy way as a joke. "Who is she?" asked Alejandro. "Bring her here." This was the moment of his downfall. Juanito and I both jumped on the opportunity to torture him the rest of the night by pointing to pretty much every male in my pictures and asking, "Do you like her? Do you like her?" This prompted an incredibly defensive response from him, also in broken English: "Listen me. I like women. I really like women a lot. I don't like men. I not like that. I like women." It is moments such as this that almost make you believe that there is justice in the world.
Buenos Aires: 6/9/07-6/22/07
It might be just me, but my initial and still strongest reaction to this city of Buenos Aires is that it is just a bizarre, incomprehensible place. Unlike Peru, where the customs are very different from ours but usually seem to make sense if you think about them, the things you see people doing in Buenos Aires generally provoke a reaction more along the lines of “What the hell are you doing?” or “Are you serious?” I came across an online list of the 30 best things to do in Buenos Aires, which helped me out a little, but I thought that a list of the weirdest things to do here would paint a much more vivid and accurate picture of the city. Yeah, maybe not EVERYTHING in the city is that weird, but it’s more fun to try to fit everything into this list. I’d say this pretty accurately sums up my impressions so far. Here goes:
The Top 15 Weirdest Things to Do in Buenos Aires
1) Take a walk to the Botanical Gardens, otherwise known as the “Cat Park,” where you can pet and feed hundreds of stray cats. If you are an old man and are looking for somewhere to gather with your contemporaries for a never-ending outdoor chess tournament, you’re in luck—this is also the place for you.
2) Dress your dog up in a sweater and take it for a walk. (Don’t forget to put a sweater on it before you go out in the cold, or other people might thing you’re mistreating it.) If your dog is suffering from blurry vision, you might also want to take it to the opthomological veterinarian and have it try on some prescription glasses.
3) Sign up for an internship in Buenos Aires (Caity), only to sit around your drinking “mate” (Argentinian green tea) for hours on end while awaiting instructions about what the heck you are supposed to be doing. Come to the eventual conclusion that Argentinians just don’t like working.
4) Go on a mission to buy an entire outfit in all different very, very specialized stores. Examples: the button store, the hair stick store. Go insane trying to figure out the arbitrary one or two hours a day when each of these stores is actually open.
5) For anything else you might need, you can make a visit to the Chinos (Chinese people) in one of the many Chinese-owned grocery stores popularly referred to as “en donde los chinos” (“where the Chinese people are”). If you’re lucky, you might even arrive during one of the few daylight hours when the supermarket is actually open. However, if you do decide to shop where the Chinese people are, beware that instead of giving you small change they will give you “caramelos,” or little taffy candies. Rumor has it that these “caramelos” will one day become an actual currency, so start hoarding them if you want to get rich.
6) If you get hungry, have a delicious lunch of Barfy™ Burgers, which can be found in any grocery store. You may even want to treat yourself and buy an expensive wine to go with it of over $10, even though you could get a lesser wine for a buck.
7) As an alternative, you can go out for a traditional Argentinian “parrilla” (meaning barbecue), including several different body parts of several different animals. If you’re feeling really in the traditional kind of mood you can request a white ceramic penguin from which to serve your wine.
8) If you are hungry but don’t feel like leaving the hostel, there’s always the option of getting delivery. Pleasantly, your delivery will not come in a box or a bag, but rather carried on a tray by a waiter for as many blocks as your hostel is from the restaurant. Tip him well.
9) Be offered to smoke illegal substances with a middle-aged Argentinian man with an unintelligible accent who appears to have no job other than living and breathing Boca Jr., the Argentinian soccer team, and a 21-year-old Colombian chef who calls you “mujer” (“woman”) and keeps saying that everything is “so beautiful.”
10) If you have kids, you can buy them a nice gift in the “supermarket of toys”, or for something a little more classy, another toy store that sells life-sized cigarette-shaped human dolls and plays seizure-inducing music to make you grab what you want and buy it before you go insane.
11) Go to the Recoleta Cemetery, a city of tombs that deserves its own zip code. Many tombs resemble miniature cathedrals and nearly all have stairs inside leading down to what you might call the “bedroom.” If you want to get a little more intimate with the locals, just knock on one of their homes with the brass knocker on the door (ok, so don’t really do that, that’s just spooky). If you want to reserve a space in this cemetery, it only costs $20,000 for a plot. And just think, once you get there you won’t even know it.
12) Visit the Recoleta Cultural Center, which features many interesting exhibits including a special show where you can fake your own wedding, and an independent sci-fi/documentary film which amazingly manages to link the themes of the U.S. occupation of the Philippines with something about Dykes on Bikes, with some kind of intergalactic thematic connection (don’t ask me).
13) Take a guided tour of the Palacio Paz, a mansion that used to belong to a really rich family but is now a military club. No, it is not government-owned, just a private club for people in the military. (???)
14) Take a beginner tango lesson with about 100 other people, but instead of actually learning the dance, just settle for tripping all over everyone else’s feet. You get to know everyone better that way.
15) Take a day trip to a pharmacy that advertises “injections all day.” A lovely outing if you have the time to spend. Or, take a day trip to Uruguay, and…I dunno, walk around Uruguay, just to say you were there. What else is there to do in Uruguay?
The Top 15 Weirdest Things to Do in Buenos Aires
1) Take a walk to the Botanical Gardens, otherwise known as the “Cat Park,” where you can pet and feed hundreds of stray cats. If you are an old man and are looking for somewhere to gather with your contemporaries for a never-ending outdoor chess tournament, you’re in luck—this is also the place for you.
2) Dress your dog up in a sweater and take it for a walk. (Don’t forget to put a sweater on it before you go out in the cold, or other people might thing you’re mistreating it.) If your dog is suffering from blurry vision, you might also want to take it to the opthomological veterinarian and have it try on some prescription glasses.
3) Sign up for an internship in Buenos Aires (Caity), only to sit around your drinking “mate” (Argentinian green tea) for hours on end while awaiting instructions about what the heck you are supposed to be doing. Come to the eventual conclusion that Argentinians just don’t like working.
4) Go on a mission to buy an entire outfit in all different very, very specialized stores. Examples: the button store, the hair stick store. Go insane trying to figure out the arbitrary one or two hours a day when each of these stores is actually open.
5) For anything else you might need, you can make a visit to the Chinos (Chinese people) in one of the many Chinese-owned grocery stores popularly referred to as “en donde los chinos” (“where the Chinese people are”). If you’re lucky, you might even arrive during one of the few daylight hours when the supermarket is actually open. However, if you do decide to shop where the Chinese people are, beware that instead of giving you small change they will give you “caramelos,” or little taffy candies. Rumor has it that these “caramelos” will one day become an actual currency, so start hoarding them if you want to get rich.
6) If you get hungry, have a delicious lunch of Barfy™ Burgers, which can be found in any grocery store. You may even want to treat yourself and buy an expensive wine to go with it of over $10, even though you could get a lesser wine for a buck.
7) As an alternative, you can go out for a traditional Argentinian “parrilla” (meaning barbecue), including several different body parts of several different animals. If you’re feeling really in the traditional kind of mood you can request a white ceramic penguin from which to serve your wine.
8) If you are hungry but don’t feel like leaving the hostel, there’s always the option of getting delivery. Pleasantly, your delivery will not come in a box or a bag, but rather carried on a tray by a waiter for as many blocks as your hostel is from the restaurant. Tip him well.
9) Be offered to smoke illegal substances with a middle-aged Argentinian man with an unintelligible accent who appears to have no job other than living and breathing Boca Jr., the Argentinian soccer team, and a 21-year-old Colombian chef who calls you “mujer” (“woman”) and keeps saying that everything is “so beautiful.”
10) If you have kids, you can buy them a nice gift in the “supermarket of toys”, or for something a little more classy, another toy store that sells life-sized cigarette-shaped human dolls and plays seizure-inducing music to make you grab what you want and buy it before you go insane.
11) Go to the Recoleta Cemetery, a city of tombs that deserves its own zip code. Many tombs resemble miniature cathedrals and nearly all have stairs inside leading down to what you might call the “bedroom.” If you want to get a little more intimate with the locals, just knock on one of their homes with the brass knocker on the door (ok, so don’t really do that, that’s just spooky). If you want to reserve a space in this cemetery, it only costs $20,000 for a plot. And just think, once you get there you won’t even know it.
12) Visit the Recoleta Cultural Center, which features many interesting exhibits including a special show where you can fake your own wedding, and an independent sci-fi/documentary film which amazingly manages to link the themes of the U.S. occupation of the Philippines with something about Dykes on Bikes, with some kind of intergalactic thematic connection (don’t ask me).
13) Take a guided tour of the Palacio Paz, a mansion that used to belong to a really rich family but is now a military club. No, it is not government-owned, just a private club for people in the military. (???)
14) Take a beginner tango lesson with about 100 other people, but instead of actually learning the dance, just settle for tripping all over everyone else’s feet. You get to know everyone better that way.
15) Take a day trip to a pharmacy that advertises “injections all day.” A lovely outing if you have the time to spend. Or, take a day trip to Uruguay, and…I dunno, walk around Uruguay, just to say you were there. What else is there to do in Uruguay?
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Qoyllur Rit'i 6/1/07-6/4/07
My trip to Qoyllur Rit’i was quite an adventure—getting there as much as Qoyllur Rit’i itself. On Friday afternoon Jenny and I met up in Cuzco with Nicolas, a professor from the school I taught English, and 3 hippies that we hadn’t met before: Violeta, a Chilean woman, who was dating an indigenous man from Apurimac named Basilio, and Violeta’s friend Ariel, also from Chile. Nicolas was kind of the leader of the journey and both Jenny and I had only a vague idea of what the plan was before we left. From Cuzco we all took a 5-hour bus ride to Ocongate, which is the name of a region in Peru and also a small community in which we stayed with a relative of Nicolas the first night. Immediately Jenny and I could see that we were with an interesting group of people. After eating a scrumptious dinner of boiled potatoes with the family we were staying with, there was kind of a spontaneous group bonding hour/ceremony which involved a lot of coca chewing, incense, tobacco smoking, Argentinian mate, a very strange twangy European instrument that Violeta played with her mouth, and everyone except Jenny and me saying a personal thanks to the Pachamama (mother earth).
We finally got to bed and woke up bright and early the next morning to begin the next segment of our journey. The plan was to travel to another remote community called Haku, stay there the night, and then travel with them to Qoyllur Rit’i the next day. The first stretch of the journey was three hours on a truck, which also was carrying, among other things, a bag full of (live) chickens and some sacks of potatoes. The ride was incredible; it would be futile to try to describe the natural beauty of the mountains, yet again, but I’ll just say that even for a relatively non-spiritual person such as me, it’s hard not to think that the mountains in Peru are gods. The landscape changes every moment, from jutting, rocky, snow-capped peaks to smoother, colorful mountains, dusty places that look like desert to places filled with fog that apparently comes from the jungle. And embellishing the landscape is a smattering of tiny sparkling freshwater lakes. Riding on the back of a truck with a bunch of indigenous people and hippies added to the surreal quality of the trip.
When we arrived at our destination (nothing more than a bend in the road) we all sat down on the grass to share a meal. Jenny and I had brought our own food, mostly essentials like cliff bars, peanut butter and cheese, but one thing we had to get used to during the trip was that everyone’s food was communal food. It’s a beautiful tradition in collectivistic societies and something that it’s really hard for Americans to get used to even if you tell yourself to be generous. So, we ended up giving away most of our food (except for the peanut butter, we just could not part with it) and eating mostly potatoes and coca leaves for the majority of the trip. There is also a specific way of offering and chewing coca leaves. Everyone sits in a circle and the leaves are usually set in a pile on a blanket in the center. Then everyone starts searching in the pile for the best coca leaves to make into k’intus, which are made up of three leaves. Once you find three good leaves, you put them together from smallest to largest, hold them with both hands, blow on them as an offering to the earth, and then with both hands, offer them to someone else in the group. When you receive a k’intu from someone, assuming they are a Quechua speaker, you say “Urpillay sonqoy,” which means roughly, “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.” Then you chew the coca leaves and eat them. On this trip I ate the most coca leaves I have ever eaten. They don’t make you high, but if you chew a lot of them they make your mouth feel kind of tingly and numb, and they also decrease hunger and help with altitude sickness.
After lunch Nicolas announced that we would be walking the rest of the way to the community of Haku. He said it would take two hours of we walked fast, three if we were slow. Factoring in that most of us were not used to the altitude and a couple of us, including me, were having some problems with it, and that the Peruvian sense of time is just not as exact as ours, the walk ended up taking over six hours, and we arrived in Haku just as the sun was setting. That having been said, it was probably the most beautiful hike I have ever been on in my life. When we arrived we were greeted with flute music by the members of the community, and of course, offered a bowl of boiled potatoes.
The next morning Jenny and I discovered that we would actually not be going straight from the community to Qoyllur Rit’i, but rather backtracking the entire way we had walked and part of the way we had come on the truck. Nicolas announced that since I was having trouble with the altitude and slowing us down, I would, along with a couple other people, be riding a horse. Or rather, sitting on top of a horse while its owner pulled it along by a rope. I wasn’t complaining about that. The journey back took about half the time it had taken us to get there, and the entire time the men in the community led the group with flute music. Every once in awhile we would stop to rest, the women sitting in one circle and the men in the other, and share potatoes, coca leaves, and whatever anyone else had to offer. When we got there, Jenny and I and a couple Quechua woman hitchhiked to where we needed to go in a passing van. The rest of our group staid to wait for a truck.
When we arrived at the town in which the road to Qoyllur Rit’i begins, to our surprise our fellow travelers led us not up the mountain but to a field with a circular rock wall (probably a corral for animals), which we were to use as a campsite for the night. This was a problem for Jenny and I because Jenny and I had been planning on returning from Qoyllur Rit’i the next day so that she could catch a flight to Lima. We came to the decision that we would have to go up to Qoyllur Rit’i that night or we would never get there. However, it was difficult to communicate this with our group members, considering that the majority of them were Quechua-speaking women who were busy preparing potatoes for dinner, and the only man who had come with us in the van had temporarily disappeared. We waited about two hours for Nicolas and the rest of our friends to arrive, but they were busy doing God knows what in the town. When Jenny and I awkwardly tried to explain to one of the semi-Spanish-speaking men that we were going to go to Qoyllur Rit’i that night, by ourselves, he didn’t quite understand and insisted that we rest for “a moment.” We waited ten more minutes and then told the men that we were going to the town to find Nicolas. It was already dark, and of course, the insisted on leading us there, which made an already awkward situation even more awkward. On the way we saw Nicolas and explained to him and a few other people why we were abandoning the group. They kind of looked at us like we were crazy but let us go. Realizing we didn’t actually know where exactly the beginning of the road to Qoyllur Rit’i was, we wandered around the market area for awhile looking for someone that looked friendly enough to ask. At one point we were laughed at by a group of pointing young boys, and I can’t deny that we must have looked ridiculous: two gringas in identical big poofy alpaca hats that all the tourists buy, each carrying a giant backpack, nibbling on a piece of bread, and looking lost. Aware of how idiotic we looked, we asked a woman vendor where the road to Qoyllur Rit’i began, and she pointed us in the right direction. By the time we began, it was already after 7, which was actually fine because at this time of year there are constantly people going up and down. On top of that, the road is wide and well-kept, and once the moon came out, it was bright enough to read a book by. The whole walk uphill took two and a half hours, which was shorter than we had expected.
Now comes the hard part: attempting to describe the spectacle that is the festival of Qoyllur Rit’i. It’s kind of like the Peruvian equivalent of Woodstock, except much colder and minus the drugs. The actual shrine of Qoyllur Rit’i is just a big cross that people light candles underneath, but the most important part of the festival is the dancing. Each community that comes has its own dance group, and there are several areas in which there is constantly some group dancing all day and all night, for the entire duration of the festival, which is over a week. The dancers start in one place and then move to the next, and the next, and so on. The whole thing is a raucous of music and explosions (not fireworks, but something else that just makes a really loud noise and a bunch of smoke). Then there are hundreds of tents set up which people generally avoid sleeping in because it’s much easier to keep warm by moving around. The backdrop of the whole thing is the snow-covered mountain peaks of Ausengate.
Jenny and I arrived there at around 10:00, by which time it was already freezing. We hadn’t had room to bring a tent so instead we just had sleeping pads, mats, and a couple of tarps to put over us and protect us from the frost. It probably got down to somewhere in the teens or 20’s at the coldest point of the night. We stayed awake and moving around as long as possible, watching the different dances and drinking sweet, hot “ponche” made from a powder of dried “haba” beans. When we finally went back “home” to sleep under our tarp, we kept being woken up by the explosions and dance groups that marched right by us with their bands and sometimes also horses. At around 4 am, we had an interesting encounter with a Quechua woman who was trying to tell us something that I couldn’t quite make out, except for the words, “Where did they come from?” It seemed as if we had taken her spot on the frozen ground. I couldn’t figure out how that could have happened seeing as none of the campsites were marked. Every so often the woman would pause in her Quechua tirade and try to connect with us by saying “Hi” in a very heavy accent. In any case, I was resolved not to move, seeing as I was not only exhausted but bundled up in my sleeping bag and freezing. Eventually the woman left us alone, and somehow Jenny and I made it through the night. We watched impatiently, shivering, as the sun came up over the mountains. After walking around a bit to see some more dances, which had not even let up for a second throughout the night, we started back down toward the town.
Of course, our bus ride back to Cuzco was not without incident. About ten minutes into the drip, the bus driver hit another car. There was only some minor damage to the back bumper of the car, so everyone in the bus waited for about twenty minutes while the bus driver negotiated with the other driver and eventually gave him 50 soles to repair the damage. After that, I’m not really sure what happened, but we kept stopping for 15 or 20 minutes in different places, and it seemed the two drivers wanted to fight. Then the whole bus went into mutiny and got off the vehicle, and finally a police car arrived and resolved everything. Add that drama to a really really hot bus (we couldn’t open the windows or the dust from the road would come in), street vendors periodically hassling us and selling boiled potatoes to people through the windows, and a bunch of rowdy passengers yelling at the driver to change the music, and you’ve got a real Peruvian experience.
But in order to really understand the music issue, I’ll conclude this entry by describing the horribly formulaic music I’ve been subject to in pretty much every public vehicle all these months. Most of Peruvian radio plays a random mix of songs from the 70’s and 80’s along with some hits from a few years ago, but the stations that cater to people from the “campo” (rural areas) is, as Jenny aptly observed, the Peruvian equivalent of popular country music. The genre (I believe it’s called “chicha”, but I could be confusing it with something else) has its roots in traditional Quechua songs called huaynos, but all the lyrics are in Spanish, and the arrangement is usually limited to a very high-pitched kind of harp, Andean flutes, electronic drumbeats, and a handful of strange synthesized noises. “Chichas” are always sung by women and the lyrics always have something to do with gender relations. They are usually along the lines of “Stop cheating on me, it hurts”, but they can also be cheesy love songs, such as “Remember my cell phone number, so that you can call me whenever you need to cry.” Every song starts with some electronic drum beats the singer singing some of these incredibly trite, usually unrhymed lyrics in a tone of voice that is best described as energetically desperate. As far as I can tell, there is only one melody for the verse portion of every single chicha song. Every verse is followed by a short chorus and every chorus is followed by the same 5 synthesized notes (again, the same ones for virtually every song) and a very odd noise that I can only guess must have been stolen from the noise of the twisty thing on the “Bop It” game (for those fortunate enough to have had a “Bop It” during their childhood). After two or three choruses and verses, the music continues and a man’s voice comes in, shouting things in roughly the same tone of voice is used in radio car commercials in the United States. Somestimes the man’s voice just repeats the main points of the woman’s song, emphasizing its triteness, or sometimes he enters into a very, very short argument with the woman, which consists of he contradicting her and she restating the message of her song, which automatically proves her to be in the right. Every so often the man will follow that up by yelling out instructions to the audience, such as “Men, raise your hands! Women, turn around, smooth now!” Just for good measure the chorus is repeated a few times. Then another song comes on that is barely distinguishable from the last. And that’s when you start adding to the song by banging your head against the wall.
We finally got to bed and woke up bright and early the next morning to begin the next segment of our journey. The plan was to travel to another remote community called Haku, stay there the night, and then travel with them to Qoyllur Rit’i the next day. The first stretch of the journey was three hours on a truck, which also was carrying, among other things, a bag full of (live) chickens and some sacks of potatoes. The ride was incredible; it would be futile to try to describe the natural beauty of the mountains, yet again, but I’ll just say that even for a relatively non-spiritual person such as me, it’s hard not to think that the mountains in Peru are gods. The landscape changes every moment, from jutting, rocky, snow-capped peaks to smoother, colorful mountains, dusty places that look like desert to places filled with fog that apparently comes from the jungle. And embellishing the landscape is a smattering of tiny sparkling freshwater lakes. Riding on the back of a truck with a bunch of indigenous people and hippies added to the surreal quality of the trip.
When we arrived at our destination (nothing more than a bend in the road) we all sat down on the grass to share a meal. Jenny and I had brought our own food, mostly essentials like cliff bars, peanut butter and cheese, but one thing we had to get used to during the trip was that everyone’s food was communal food. It’s a beautiful tradition in collectivistic societies and something that it’s really hard for Americans to get used to even if you tell yourself to be generous. So, we ended up giving away most of our food (except for the peanut butter, we just could not part with it) and eating mostly potatoes and coca leaves for the majority of the trip. There is also a specific way of offering and chewing coca leaves. Everyone sits in a circle and the leaves are usually set in a pile on a blanket in the center. Then everyone starts searching in the pile for the best coca leaves to make into k’intus, which are made up of three leaves. Once you find three good leaves, you put them together from smallest to largest, hold them with both hands, blow on them as an offering to the earth, and then with both hands, offer them to someone else in the group. When you receive a k’intu from someone, assuming they are a Quechua speaker, you say “Urpillay sonqoy,” which means roughly, “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.” Then you chew the coca leaves and eat them. On this trip I ate the most coca leaves I have ever eaten. They don’t make you high, but if you chew a lot of them they make your mouth feel kind of tingly and numb, and they also decrease hunger and help with altitude sickness.
After lunch Nicolas announced that we would be walking the rest of the way to the community of Haku. He said it would take two hours of we walked fast, three if we were slow. Factoring in that most of us were not used to the altitude and a couple of us, including me, were having some problems with it, and that the Peruvian sense of time is just not as exact as ours, the walk ended up taking over six hours, and we arrived in Haku just as the sun was setting. That having been said, it was probably the most beautiful hike I have ever been on in my life. When we arrived we were greeted with flute music by the members of the community, and of course, offered a bowl of boiled potatoes.
The next morning Jenny and I discovered that we would actually not be going straight from the community to Qoyllur Rit’i, but rather backtracking the entire way we had walked and part of the way we had come on the truck. Nicolas announced that since I was having trouble with the altitude and slowing us down, I would, along with a couple other people, be riding a horse. Or rather, sitting on top of a horse while its owner pulled it along by a rope. I wasn’t complaining about that. The journey back took about half the time it had taken us to get there, and the entire time the men in the community led the group with flute music. Every once in awhile we would stop to rest, the women sitting in one circle and the men in the other, and share potatoes, coca leaves, and whatever anyone else had to offer. When we got there, Jenny and I and a couple Quechua woman hitchhiked to where we needed to go in a passing van. The rest of our group staid to wait for a truck.
When we arrived at the town in which the road to Qoyllur Rit’i begins, to our surprise our fellow travelers led us not up the mountain but to a field with a circular rock wall (probably a corral for animals), which we were to use as a campsite for the night. This was a problem for Jenny and I because Jenny and I had been planning on returning from Qoyllur Rit’i the next day so that she could catch a flight to Lima. We came to the decision that we would have to go up to Qoyllur Rit’i that night or we would never get there. However, it was difficult to communicate this with our group members, considering that the majority of them were Quechua-speaking women who were busy preparing potatoes for dinner, and the only man who had come with us in the van had temporarily disappeared. We waited about two hours for Nicolas and the rest of our friends to arrive, but they were busy doing God knows what in the town. When Jenny and I awkwardly tried to explain to one of the semi-Spanish-speaking men that we were going to go to Qoyllur Rit’i that night, by ourselves, he didn’t quite understand and insisted that we rest for “a moment.” We waited ten more minutes and then told the men that we were going to the town to find Nicolas. It was already dark, and of course, the insisted on leading us there, which made an already awkward situation even more awkward. On the way we saw Nicolas and explained to him and a few other people why we were abandoning the group. They kind of looked at us like we were crazy but let us go. Realizing we didn’t actually know where exactly the beginning of the road to Qoyllur Rit’i was, we wandered around the market area for awhile looking for someone that looked friendly enough to ask. At one point we were laughed at by a group of pointing young boys, and I can’t deny that we must have looked ridiculous: two gringas in identical big poofy alpaca hats that all the tourists buy, each carrying a giant backpack, nibbling on a piece of bread, and looking lost. Aware of how idiotic we looked, we asked a woman vendor where the road to Qoyllur Rit’i began, and she pointed us in the right direction. By the time we began, it was already after 7, which was actually fine because at this time of year there are constantly people going up and down. On top of that, the road is wide and well-kept, and once the moon came out, it was bright enough to read a book by. The whole walk uphill took two and a half hours, which was shorter than we had expected.
Now comes the hard part: attempting to describe the spectacle that is the festival of Qoyllur Rit’i. It’s kind of like the Peruvian equivalent of Woodstock, except much colder and minus the drugs. The actual shrine of Qoyllur Rit’i is just a big cross that people light candles underneath, but the most important part of the festival is the dancing. Each community that comes has its own dance group, and there are several areas in which there is constantly some group dancing all day and all night, for the entire duration of the festival, which is over a week. The dancers start in one place and then move to the next, and the next, and so on. The whole thing is a raucous of music and explosions (not fireworks, but something else that just makes a really loud noise and a bunch of smoke). Then there are hundreds of tents set up which people generally avoid sleeping in because it’s much easier to keep warm by moving around. The backdrop of the whole thing is the snow-covered mountain peaks of Ausengate.
Jenny and I arrived there at around 10:00, by which time it was already freezing. We hadn’t had room to bring a tent so instead we just had sleeping pads, mats, and a couple of tarps to put over us and protect us from the frost. It probably got down to somewhere in the teens or 20’s at the coldest point of the night. We stayed awake and moving around as long as possible, watching the different dances and drinking sweet, hot “ponche” made from a powder of dried “haba” beans. When we finally went back “home” to sleep under our tarp, we kept being woken up by the explosions and dance groups that marched right by us with their bands and sometimes also horses. At around 4 am, we had an interesting encounter with a Quechua woman who was trying to tell us something that I couldn’t quite make out, except for the words, “Where did they come from?” It seemed as if we had taken her spot on the frozen ground. I couldn’t figure out how that could have happened seeing as none of the campsites were marked. Every so often the woman would pause in her Quechua tirade and try to connect with us by saying “Hi” in a very heavy accent. In any case, I was resolved not to move, seeing as I was not only exhausted but bundled up in my sleeping bag and freezing. Eventually the woman left us alone, and somehow Jenny and I made it through the night. We watched impatiently, shivering, as the sun came up over the mountains. After walking around a bit to see some more dances, which had not even let up for a second throughout the night, we started back down toward the town.
Of course, our bus ride back to Cuzco was not without incident. About ten minutes into the drip, the bus driver hit another car. There was only some minor damage to the back bumper of the car, so everyone in the bus waited for about twenty minutes while the bus driver negotiated with the other driver and eventually gave him 50 soles to repair the damage. After that, I’m not really sure what happened, but we kept stopping for 15 or 20 minutes in different places, and it seemed the two drivers wanted to fight. Then the whole bus went into mutiny and got off the vehicle, and finally a police car arrived and resolved everything. Add that drama to a really really hot bus (we couldn’t open the windows or the dust from the road would come in), street vendors periodically hassling us and selling boiled potatoes to people through the windows, and a bunch of rowdy passengers yelling at the driver to change the music, and you’ve got a real Peruvian experience.
But in order to really understand the music issue, I’ll conclude this entry by describing the horribly formulaic music I’ve been subject to in pretty much every public vehicle all these months. Most of Peruvian radio plays a random mix of songs from the 70’s and 80’s along with some hits from a few years ago, but the stations that cater to people from the “campo” (rural areas) is, as Jenny aptly observed, the Peruvian equivalent of popular country music. The genre (I believe it’s called “chicha”, but I could be confusing it with something else) has its roots in traditional Quechua songs called huaynos, but all the lyrics are in Spanish, and the arrangement is usually limited to a very high-pitched kind of harp, Andean flutes, electronic drumbeats, and a handful of strange synthesized noises. “Chichas” are always sung by women and the lyrics always have something to do with gender relations. They are usually along the lines of “Stop cheating on me, it hurts”, but they can also be cheesy love songs, such as “Remember my cell phone number, so that you can call me whenever you need to cry.” Every song starts with some electronic drum beats the singer singing some of these incredibly trite, usually unrhymed lyrics in a tone of voice that is best described as energetically desperate. As far as I can tell, there is only one melody for the verse portion of every single chicha song. Every verse is followed by a short chorus and every chorus is followed by the same 5 synthesized notes (again, the same ones for virtually every song) and a very odd noise that I can only guess must have been stolen from the noise of the twisty thing on the “Bop It” game (for those fortunate enough to have had a “Bop It” during their childhood). After two or three choruses and verses, the music continues and a man’s voice comes in, shouting things in roughly the same tone of voice is used in radio car commercials in the United States. Somestimes the man’s voice just repeats the main points of the woman’s song, emphasizing its triteness, or sometimes he enters into a very, very short argument with the woman, which consists of he contradicting her and she restating the message of her song, which automatically proves her to be in the right. Every so often the man will follow that up by yelling out instructions to the audience, such as “Men, raise your hands! Women, turn around, smooth now!” Just for good measure the chorus is repeated a few times. Then another song comes on that is barely distinguishable from the last. And that’s when you start adding to the song by banging your head against the wall.
Program aftermath 5/26/07
Hello all,
A lot has happened in the last week. It’s a strange feeling to be in a foreign country pretty much on my own, with hardly any set-in-stone plans and virtually no responsibilities other than to look out for myself. Every day since the end of my program, I’ve started the day having one or two small tasks in mind and ended up being busy all day with things that just come up spontaneously.
Saturday, for example, was a typical day for me in Cuzco. In the morning, the family I am living with taught me to hand-wash my clothes. Then I went to the city center to buy a plane ticket to go to Buenos Aires. After I bought my ticket I decided to sit in the Plaza de Armas for a few minutes because it was sunny. I sat down on a bench at the same time as Yacin, a hippie guy from Paris who is on the last stretch of a year-long trip traveling around the world. We talked for about an hour and then went to a restaurant to eat lunch with Jenny, Jenny’s entire family who was here visiting, and Braddy, our Cuzqueñan artist/writer friend. After lunch Yacin by chance ran into a Norwegian guy he’d met in Bolivia, and I went back to the travel agency to change the flight I’d just bought a day later so I wouldn’t have to miss Corpus Christi, which is a big festival in Cuzco. Then later, I went to visit Braddy in his art workshop, where there was some kind of special event going on, and I drank some chicha and saw a puppet show put on by a few other artsy friends of his. I went back to the house of my new family to eat dinner, and my host mom, Flora (who is an amazing cook) fed me enough food for two people, as generally happens 3 times a day. Then we had a visit from Flora’s brother, Cristostomo, who lives in Huilloq (the rural town where I was staying) but had just come back from working in tourism in the jungle. Yes, that was a typical day in Cuzco.
Another little perk of being in the city right now is that it’s pretty much a nonstop party. Well, everyone has told me that the month of June is all one big festival, but if that’s true, I’m assuming May must be the pre-game. The sound of fireworks, marching bands, and parades of people carrying saints through the street have become everyday occurrences for me, which I have even had to learn to ignore most of the time in order to actually live a normal life. Most of the time, even the people in Cuzco don’t know what the hell is being celebrated right outside their door, and are usually just annoyed by the noise and rowdiness. On top of that, every Sunday throughout the year, there is a parade in the main plaza, always involving the military and school/university students, but also any other group of people who feels like coming out. Last week I saw one of these parades for the first time. It was astonishing. First, because there were so many people there watching, the majority of whom were Peruvians. “Why are there so many people here, if this happens every Sunday?” I asked Rosita, who was with me. “Oh, I don’t know, there are always a ton of people watching,” she said. But the even more astonishing thing was how long the parade lasted and how many people were involved in it. I now understand why everything is always closed on Sundays; it’s because every sector of Peruvian society comes to march in the street. It began with the military, followed by professors, doctors, students from toddlers to university age, museum workers, the tae kwan do society, traditional dance groups, the women who sell potatoes in the market—I swear, everyone. The parade lasted at least 3 or 4 hours. From this I have concluded: there is nothing that Cuzqueñans love more than coming out and showing that they are proud to be Cuzqueñans.
I am now living with a new host family, at the opposite end of the city as I lived before. Just to put things in perspective, I’d say my new host family is about the same social class as the maid in the house of my old host family. My host mom, Flora, is from Huilloq, and my host dad, Mario, was born in Cuzco. They have two kids, Maria (12) and Brandon (8), and their nephew, Tonio (11) also lives with the family. It’s a whole different living experience. To get to my room, you have to walk through a little general store that the family owns, then go out into an unenclosed area of the house where they hang laundry, and then up a few stairs into my room. There is no phone, no washing machine, and no hot water. I have to admit, the one thing I think I’ll never get used to used to is freezing cold showers. After the first one I decided it just wasn’t going to work out. So since then I’ve been either taking showers in other people’s houses or avoiding them altogether. Other than that though, I have nothing to complain about—the family is wonderful.
I have managed to create some semblance of plans, at least for the coming month. On Thursdays, I’ll be teaching English to kids in an elementary school in Pisac (about an hour from Cuzco by bus), where Jenny was working during her independent project. It’s a private, alternative bilingual school (Spanish and Quechua) that was started by Kike Pinto, this hippie musician from Lima, because he and his wife didn’t like the public school system. On Thursday nights I’ll be staying in a house with a bunch of hippies from Lima who Jenny also stayed with when she was in Pisac. On Fridays I’ll be helping out with art, drama and music at the school, because Fridays are art days. My first day at the school was quite an experience. I was nervous about teaching English, before I realized that if I managed to teach the kids a few new words before they completely stopped paying attention, the class would be a success. I taught two different classes, and only stayed in each classroom for about 15 minutes before I took them outside to play games like Simon Says and Duck Duck Goose, which eventually degenerated into a giant game of tag. But the teachers didn’t really seem to mind. After recess, a band from Argentina came to play for the kids (and this wasn’t even art day!), and then Kike, the school director, took out his drum and a bunch of Andean flutes, and all the kids circled up either to dance of play an instrument. As far as I can tell this was pretty much a spontaneous activity. As you might guess, the school has a completely different philosophy than most of the schools in rural areas, who encourage conformity, sometimes punish children for speaking Quechua, and often hit them or pull their ears if they do something wrong.
As for other plans, this coming Friday I will be going to Qoyllur Rit’i, a shrine high up on a mountain that people make pilgrimages to every year. From what people have told me, it’s basically a ton of people dancing, singing and generally making a lot of noise all day and all night. People start making pilgrimages in late May and continue through June 6th. Everyone has told me that it’s freezing there; some people bring tents, but most just put their sleeping bags on the snow. Or of course, don’t sleep at all. Well, it’s going to be an experience to write home about, that’s for sure.
A lot has happened in the last week. It’s a strange feeling to be in a foreign country pretty much on my own, with hardly any set-in-stone plans and virtually no responsibilities other than to look out for myself. Every day since the end of my program, I’ve started the day having one or two small tasks in mind and ended up being busy all day with things that just come up spontaneously.
Saturday, for example, was a typical day for me in Cuzco. In the morning, the family I am living with taught me to hand-wash my clothes. Then I went to the city center to buy a plane ticket to go to Buenos Aires. After I bought my ticket I decided to sit in the Plaza de Armas for a few minutes because it was sunny. I sat down on a bench at the same time as Yacin, a hippie guy from Paris who is on the last stretch of a year-long trip traveling around the world. We talked for about an hour and then went to a restaurant to eat lunch with Jenny, Jenny’s entire family who was here visiting, and Braddy, our Cuzqueñan artist/writer friend. After lunch Yacin by chance ran into a Norwegian guy he’d met in Bolivia, and I went back to the travel agency to change the flight I’d just bought a day later so I wouldn’t have to miss Corpus Christi, which is a big festival in Cuzco. Then later, I went to visit Braddy in his art workshop, where there was some kind of special event going on, and I drank some chicha and saw a puppet show put on by a few other artsy friends of his. I went back to the house of my new family to eat dinner, and my host mom, Flora (who is an amazing cook) fed me enough food for two people, as generally happens 3 times a day. Then we had a visit from Flora’s brother, Cristostomo, who lives in Huilloq (the rural town where I was staying) but had just come back from working in tourism in the jungle. Yes, that was a typical day in Cuzco.
Another little perk of being in the city right now is that it’s pretty much a nonstop party. Well, everyone has told me that the month of June is all one big festival, but if that’s true, I’m assuming May must be the pre-game. The sound of fireworks, marching bands, and parades of people carrying saints through the street have become everyday occurrences for me, which I have even had to learn to ignore most of the time in order to actually live a normal life. Most of the time, even the people in Cuzco don’t know what the hell is being celebrated right outside their door, and are usually just annoyed by the noise and rowdiness. On top of that, every Sunday throughout the year, there is a parade in the main plaza, always involving the military and school/university students, but also any other group of people who feels like coming out. Last week I saw one of these parades for the first time. It was astonishing. First, because there were so many people there watching, the majority of whom were Peruvians. “Why are there so many people here, if this happens every Sunday?” I asked Rosita, who was with me. “Oh, I don’t know, there are always a ton of people watching,” she said. But the even more astonishing thing was how long the parade lasted and how many people were involved in it. I now understand why everything is always closed on Sundays; it’s because every sector of Peruvian society comes to march in the street. It began with the military, followed by professors, doctors, students from toddlers to university age, museum workers, the tae kwan do society, traditional dance groups, the women who sell potatoes in the market—I swear, everyone. The parade lasted at least 3 or 4 hours. From this I have concluded: there is nothing that Cuzqueñans love more than coming out and showing that they are proud to be Cuzqueñans.
I am now living with a new host family, at the opposite end of the city as I lived before. Just to put things in perspective, I’d say my new host family is about the same social class as the maid in the house of my old host family. My host mom, Flora, is from Huilloq, and my host dad, Mario, was born in Cuzco. They have two kids, Maria (12) and Brandon (8), and their nephew, Tonio (11) also lives with the family. It’s a whole different living experience. To get to my room, you have to walk through a little general store that the family owns, then go out into an unenclosed area of the house where they hang laundry, and then up a few stairs into my room. There is no phone, no washing machine, and no hot water. I have to admit, the one thing I think I’ll never get used to used to is freezing cold showers. After the first one I decided it just wasn’t going to work out. So since then I’ve been either taking showers in other people’s houses or avoiding them altogether. Other than that though, I have nothing to complain about—the family is wonderful.
I have managed to create some semblance of plans, at least for the coming month. On Thursdays, I’ll be teaching English to kids in an elementary school in Pisac (about an hour from Cuzco by bus), where Jenny was working during her independent project. It’s a private, alternative bilingual school (Spanish and Quechua) that was started by Kike Pinto, this hippie musician from Lima, because he and his wife didn’t like the public school system. On Thursday nights I’ll be staying in a house with a bunch of hippies from Lima who Jenny also stayed with when she was in Pisac. On Fridays I’ll be helping out with art, drama and music at the school, because Fridays are art days. My first day at the school was quite an experience. I was nervous about teaching English, before I realized that if I managed to teach the kids a few new words before they completely stopped paying attention, the class would be a success. I taught two different classes, and only stayed in each classroom for about 15 minutes before I took them outside to play games like Simon Says and Duck Duck Goose, which eventually degenerated into a giant game of tag. But the teachers didn’t really seem to mind. After recess, a band from Argentina came to play for the kids (and this wasn’t even art day!), and then Kike, the school director, took out his drum and a bunch of Andean flutes, and all the kids circled up either to dance of play an instrument. As far as I can tell this was pretty much a spontaneous activity. As you might guess, the school has a completely different philosophy than most of the schools in rural areas, who encourage conformity, sometimes punish children for speaking Quechua, and often hit them or pull their ears if they do something wrong.
As for other plans, this coming Friday I will be going to Qoyllur Rit’i, a shrine high up on a mountain that people make pilgrimages to every year. From what people have told me, it’s basically a ton of people dancing, singing and generally making a lot of noise all day and all night. People start making pilgrimages in late May and continue through June 6th. Everyone has told me that it’s freezing there; some people bring tents, but most just put their sleeping bags on the snow. Or of course, don’t sleep at all. Well, it’s going to be an experience to write home about, that’s for sure.
ya pues... 5/16/07
Dear friends and family,
There´s no Quechua lesson today, but the subject of this email is something I hear Peruvians say every five minutes, and which can mean anything from 'oh well' to 'come on!' In this case it means something like, 'Well, that's it for the study abroad program, what is Naomi going to do in Peru now?'
I realize I’ve been avoiding sitting down to write another mass email because I have no idea how to express just how insane and amazing this last month has been. I want to tell everyone about my time in Huilloq, just how poetic and unique it was, and yet when I think back on it I realize that I really didn’t do much there. Instead of anecdotes I have a series of impressions.
One major thing I realized about life in Huilloq is how much my moods were affected by the weather. Like the rest of Peru, the houses in Huilloq obviously have no heat or air conditioning, but unlike urban Peru, people spend almost all of their time outside. When it’s light out, people work, and when it’s dark, they eat and sleep—simple as that. And that’s how all that stuff I’ve always been told about native people being connected with nature suddenly became real to me. There’s no getting around it: when the sun is out in Huilloq, it’s absolutely the most beautiful place in the world. In these moments it seems like blasphemy to do anything other than work the land, or just sit and think. Even reading a book is out of the question; it just would seem out of place and unnecessary. When the sun disappears for a few minutes behind the clouds, it’s freezing, miserable, and lonely—these were the first moments since I’ve been in Peru that I felt genuinely homesick. And I’m not even sure if it was homesick for the United States or just for Cuzco.
The first week I spent in Huilloq was probably the slowest week of my life, but the second week was one of the fastest. I started getting used to the rhythm of life there. I gave up on trying to read while I was there and just spent as much time as I could harvesting potatoes, going out with the kids to graze their animals, and exploring. The last few days I was there I stayed with families who live higher up in the mountains (a 45 minute to hour-long walk all steep uphill) and just spent all day there without coming back down to the road. I made some new friends; among them a 17-year-old girl who spoke Spanish because she’d spent a couple years working as a domestic servant in Lima, and the former president of the community, who is just about the nicest guy you could ever meet. I asked if I could stay with him in his house for one night, because I wanted to get to know his family. Of course, he wasn’t going to say he didn’t have room. I ended up sleeping on a bed made of wooden planks, in the kitchen, with the guinea pigs. It actually wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought.
Most of my best friends in Huilloq were 9- or 10-year-old boys. Mostly because they’re old enough to speak good Spanish but young enough not to have many responsibilities of have left the community. I was reunited with my old friend Rosalío, who I gave a little magnetic checkers game. I taught him how to play and he beat me on about the 4th game. Another family I stayed with higher up had a TV and DVD player, so with a 10-year-old boy named José I got a chance to watch such classics as “The Life of Jesus” in Quechua, and a show called “Los cholitos,” which I have no idea how to translate, but was basically a comedy show in Spanish involving two guys dressed in traditional clothing, one of which was a midget, performing slapstick humor and generally making good-natured fun of indigenous culture.
The last few days I was there I ate the most boiled potatoes I have ever eaten in my life. Either the entire meal would consist of a bowl of boiled potatoes, or I would be served a bowl of boiled potatoes as an appetizer before being served a huge bowl of potato soup or french fries with white rice. I learned an important life lesson: the point of not being able to eat any more potatoes comes well before the point of not being able to eat anymore. One of the most exciting moments during my entire stay in Huilloq was when someone brought out a bottle of ketchup, which happened only once.
I was surprised at how much I actually learned relating to my independent study topic in the short time I was there, even after spending the majority of the time harvesting potatoes. I don’t even want to begin talking about it because I won’t know where to stop, but if you’re interested you can request a copy of my 30-page paper. :-P
I’m now back in Ollantaytambo, where this journey began, where the last week of the program, evaluation week, is being held. After that I’m going back to Cuzco to figure out exactly what I’m going to be doing for the rest of the time I’m here (right now, my flight back is scheduled for the end of July). It will probably be some combination of traveling and volunteer work. I’ll be living most of the time with the sister of my friend the former president of Huilloq, who has a little store near the center of Cuzco and a little room for me behind the store. It sounds like a good compromise between living with a family and living on my own, and should be a lot of fun.
There´s no Quechua lesson today, but the subject of this email is something I hear Peruvians say every five minutes, and which can mean anything from 'oh well' to 'come on!' In this case it means something like, 'Well, that's it for the study abroad program, what is Naomi going to do in Peru now?'
I realize I’ve been avoiding sitting down to write another mass email because I have no idea how to express just how insane and amazing this last month has been. I want to tell everyone about my time in Huilloq, just how poetic and unique it was, and yet when I think back on it I realize that I really didn’t do much there. Instead of anecdotes I have a series of impressions.
One major thing I realized about life in Huilloq is how much my moods were affected by the weather. Like the rest of Peru, the houses in Huilloq obviously have no heat or air conditioning, but unlike urban Peru, people spend almost all of their time outside. When it’s light out, people work, and when it’s dark, they eat and sleep—simple as that. And that’s how all that stuff I’ve always been told about native people being connected with nature suddenly became real to me. There’s no getting around it: when the sun is out in Huilloq, it’s absolutely the most beautiful place in the world. In these moments it seems like blasphemy to do anything other than work the land, or just sit and think. Even reading a book is out of the question; it just would seem out of place and unnecessary. When the sun disappears for a few minutes behind the clouds, it’s freezing, miserable, and lonely—these were the first moments since I’ve been in Peru that I felt genuinely homesick. And I’m not even sure if it was homesick for the United States or just for Cuzco.
The first week I spent in Huilloq was probably the slowest week of my life, but the second week was one of the fastest. I started getting used to the rhythm of life there. I gave up on trying to read while I was there and just spent as much time as I could harvesting potatoes, going out with the kids to graze their animals, and exploring. The last few days I was there I stayed with families who live higher up in the mountains (a 45 minute to hour-long walk all steep uphill) and just spent all day there without coming back down to the road. I made some new friends; among them a 17-year-old girl who spoke Spanish because she’d spent a couple years working as a domestic servant in Lima, and the former president of the community, who is just about the nicest guy you could ever meet. I asked if I could stay with him in his house for one night, because I wanted to get to know his family. Of course, he wasn’t going to say he didn’t have room. I ended up sleeping on a bed made of wooden planks, in the kitchen, with the guinea pigs. It actually wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought.
Most of my best friends in Huilloq were 9- or 10-year-old boys. Mostly because they’re old enough to speak good Spanish but young enough not to have many responsibilities of have left the community. I was reunited with my old friend Rosalío, who I gave a little magnetic checkers game. I taught him how to play and he beat me on about the 4th game. Another family I stayed with higher up had a TV and DVD player, so with a 10-year-old boy named José I got a chance to watch such classics as “The Life of Jesus” in Quechua, and a show called “Los cholitos,” which I have no idea how to translate, but was basically a comedy show in Spanish involving two guys dressed in traditional clothing, one of which was a midget, performing slapstick humor and generally making good-natured fun of indigenous culture.
The last few days I was there I ate the most boiled potatoes I have ever eaten in my life. Either the entire meal would consist of a bowl of boiled potatoes, or I would be served a bowl of boiled potatoes as an appetizer before being served a huge bowl of potato soup or french fries with white rice. I learned an important life lesson: the point of not being able to eat any more potatoes comes well before the point of not being able to eat anymore. One of the most exciting moments during my entire stay in Huilloq was when someone brought out a bottle of ketchup, which happened only once.
I was surprised at how much I actually learned relating to my independent study topic in the short time I was there, even after spending the majority of the time harvesting potatoes. I don’t even want to begin talking about it because I won’t know where to stop, but if you’re interested you can request a copy of my 30-page paper. :-P
I’m now back in Ollantaytambo, where this journey began, where the last week of the program, evaluation week, is being held. After that I’m going back to Cuzco to figure out exactly what I’m going to be doing for the rest of the time I’m here (right now, my flight back is scheduled for the end of July). It will probably be some combination of traveling and volunteer work. I’ll be living most of the time with the sister of my friend the former president of Huilloq, who has a little store near the center of Cuzco and a little room for me behind the store. It sounds like a good compromise between living with a family and living on my own, and should be a lot of fun.
ISP 4/26/07
Hello all,
Well, I have survived the first half (almost) of the independent study period, and what an adventure it´s been. The first few days I was in Cuzco, supposedly researching for my paper but actually spending more time not finding any of the books I was looking for and dealing with library bureacracy (you can´t take books out of the library at all, and just to look at a book you need a library card or a passport). Then once I got to Huilloq I ended up kind of changing my topic again. But I won´t get into that yet.
The first few days I spent in Huilloq were definitely a learning experience. The main thing I learned was that spending a couple nights in a rural community with a group of English-speaking friends is one thing; staying a few nights alone there, with the one community phone broken, cold nights, fleas in your bed, and in a place where half the people don´t even speak your second language let alone your first, is quite another. OK, so it wasn´t as bad as I´m making it sound, but for the first few days there I was in a semi-panic the majority of the time. Then after three nights I took a ride down to Ollantaytambo (civilization!) in a van packed full of weavers who were headed to an artesanal festival, and immediately checked into a hostel upon arrival. I called Irma, the academic director, complaining about the fleas and the broken phone, and she found me a family to stay with in Ollantaytambo so that I could go up to Huilloq during the day.
But after a night with the family (who are really nice) I got my courage back up, and headed back to Huilloq armed with a bottle of highly toxic flea-killing spray (I´ve been told what they have in the beds is probably not bedbugs but fleas--which makes sense considering that in my new Huilloq family´s house, my room is seperated from the guinea pigs´room only by a tarp, which does virtually nothing to stop the little rodents from coming and going as they please). To get there, I had to go to the plaza in Ollantaytambo at 7:00 in the morning to catch a van full of schoolteachers. It was PACKED. And by packed I mean that I was somehow sitting on my backpack in a six-inch isle, and some people were sitting on the roof, for the entire half-hour duration of the ride. I recommend this experience to anyone.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I decided to change my project topic to something having to do with the cooperative of artesans (meaning weavers) in Huilloq and how the women participate in it. I´ve run into a few complications in terms of interviewing people. First, there´s the fact that hardly any of the women speak Spanish, and I´ve learned the hard way that it´s better to find an interpreter in advance than to just count on one showing up. The second complication is that it´s harvesting season. That means that for the past few days everyone in the village (men, women, children, everyone) has been out in the fields digging up potatoes all day. They go out at 8:00 in the morning, dig up potatoes, take a break to drink some chicha and chew some coca leaves, dig up some more potatoes, boil some potatoes over a fire in the field for lunch, and dig up some more potatoes.Then they put the potatoes in huge sacks and tie them to donkeys to take them back down to their houses.
I´ve made some progress on my project, but I´ve mostly just spent the past few days digging up potatoes. Which is actually an amazing experience. The work itself isn´t actually that hard (other than the strain on your back from being bent over most of the time) and there´s something incredibly satisfying about digging in the ground and finding enough food to last your family for months (eating potatoes for every meal isn´t really as bad as it sounds, but it turns out if I had arrived a couple weeks later I would be eating ´chuño´ for every meal instead--dehydrated potatoes). When they say they´re digging up potatoes they use the word ´excavate´, so I kind of feel like an archaeologist searching for some lost city. For my English major friends, it´s exactly like the Seamus Heaney poem 'Digging', except without the Irish accent. I´ve also been honored to participate in an age-old game called ´papa o piedra?´ ('potato or rock?') and another one called 'tira la papa a la lliqlla' ('throw the potato on the carrying blanket'), which is a little like basketball with a few minor differences.
I've been staying with a different family that I stayed with before, one that is slightly more equipped to host tourists (meaning that I have my own room) but since I really miss my old family and they keep asking me to stay with them, I'm going to stay with them for a couple nights and see how it goes. My host brothers from that family are highly amused by my tape recorder, and I've gotten some great recordings of them singing songs in Quechua. Unfortunately my favorite brother, Rosalio, goes to school in Urabamba during the week, but he should be back for the weekend.
This morning after breakfast I walked from Huilloq back down to Ollantaytambo, which took 2 and a half hours but was absolutely gorgeous. I'll be taking care of some business here during the day and then heading back to Huilloq tomorrow morning with the teachers.
Well, I have survived the first half (almost) of the independent study period, and what an adventure it´s been. The first few days I was in Cuzco, supposedly researching for my paper but actually spending more time not finding any of the books I was looking for and dealing with library bureacracy (you can´t take books out of the library at all, and just to look at a book you need a library card or a passport). Then once I got to Huilloq I ended up kind of changing my topic again. But I won´t get into that yet.
The first few days I spent in Huilloq were definitely a learning experience. The main thing I learned was that spending a couple nights in a rural community with a group of English-speaking friends is one thing; staying a few nights alone there, with the one community phone broken, cold nights, fleas in your bed, and in a place where half the people don´t even speak your second language let alone your first, is quite another. OK, so it wasn´t as bad as I´m making it sound, but for the first few days there I was in a semi-panic the majority of the time. Then after three nights I took a ride down to Ollantaytambo (civilization!) in a van packed full of weavers who were headed to an artesanal festival, and immediately checked into a hostel upon arrival. I called Irma, the academic director, complaining about the fleas and the broken phone, and she found me a family to stay with in Ollantaytambo so that I could go up to Huilloq during the day.
But after a night with the family (who are really nice) I got my courage back up, and headed back to Huilloq armed with a bottle of highly toxic flea-killing spray (I´ve been told what they have in the beds is probably not bedbugs but fleas--which makes sense considering that in my new Huilloq family´s house, my room is seperated from the guinea pigs´room only by a tarp, which does virtually nothing to stop the little rodents from coming and going as they please). To get there, I had to go to the plaza in Ollantaytambo at 7:00 in the morning to catch a van full of schoolteachers. It was PACKED. And by packed I mean that I was somehow sitting on my backpack in a six-inch isle, and some people were sitting on the roof, for the entire half-hour duration of the ride. I recommend this experience to anyone.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I decided to change my project topic to something having to do with the cooperative of artesans (meaning weavers) in Huilloq and how the women participate in it. I´ve run into a few complications in terms of interviewing people. First, there´s the fact that hardly any of the women speak Spanish, and I´ve learned the hard way that it´s better to find an interpreter in advance than to just count on one showing up. The second complication is that it´s harvesting season. That means that for the past few days everyone in the village (men, women, children, everyone) has been out in the fields digging up potatoes all day. They go out at 8:00 in the morning, dig up potatoes, take a break to drink some chicha and chew some coca leaves, dig up some more potatoes, boil some potatoes over a fire in the field for lunch, and dig up some more potatoes.Then they put the potatoes in huge sacks and tie them to donkeys to take them back down to their houses.
I´ve made some progress on my project, but I´ve mostly just spent the past few days digging up potatoes. Which is actually an amazing experience. The work itself isn´t actually that hard (other than the strain on your back from being bent over most of the time) and there´s something incredibly satisfying about digging in the ground and finding enough food to last your family for months (eating potatoes for every meal isn´t really as bad as it sounds, but it turns out if I had arrived a couple weeks later I would be eating ´chuño´ for every meal instead--dehydrated potatoes). When they say they´re digging up potatoes they use the word ´excavate´, so I kind of feel like an archaeologist searching for some lost city. For my English major friends, it´s exactly like the Seamus Heaney poem 'Digging', except without the Irish accent. I´ve also been honored to participate in an age-old game called ´papa o piedra?´ ('potato or rock?') and another one called 'tira la papa a la lliqlla' ('throw the potato on the carrying blanket'), which is a little like basketball with a few minor differences.
I've been staying with a different family that I stayed with before, one that is slightly more equipped to host tourists (meaning that I have my own room) but since I really miss my old family and they keep asking me to stay with them, I'm going to stay with them for a couple nights and see how it goes. My host brothers from that family are highly amused by my tape recorder, and I've gotten some great recordings of them singing songs in Quechua. Unfortunately my favorite brother, Rosalio, goes to school in Urabamba during the week, but he should be back for the weekend.
This morning after breakfast I walked from Huilloq back down to Ollantaytambo, which took 2 and a half hours but was absolutely gorgeous. I'll be taking care of some business here during the day and then heading back to Huilloq tomorrow morning with the teachers.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Sibayo, Colca Canyon, 4/3-4/8
From Arequipa we took a bus to Colca Canyon, which is the second deepest canyon in the world (the biggest is the one right next to the Colca Canyon). Our group was split up into four villages, two agricultural communities and two communities that specialize in alpaca farming. I was one of the lucky ones that got to stay in the alpaca zone. The town I stayed in, called Sibayo, has a population of only a few hundred people, and is basically one dirt road lined with houses, a plaza with a huge stone church and a llama sculpture in the center, and some Incan ruins, surrounded by mountains which are used for growing a variety of crops as well as grazing animals, and a beautiful view of the Colca River. There was a cell phone tower being built in the town just as we were arriving, but the one place in the town with internet access was closed all week for Eater celebrations, which was probably better for me anyway.
Again, the family I staid with was wonderful. My host mom, Marleni, was 29, and has two adorable little kids, Gonzalo (4) and Anghi (a girl, 3). They are both quite rambunctious little kids, especially Gonzalo, and Marleni constantly sighs to herself, “Estes chiquitos”, whenever the kids do they do things like play-fight, spill their food, or cry for apparently no reason. Marleni used to be a teacher, but since she had kids she’s just concentrated on spinning yarn from alpaca wool and knitting hats to sell in Chivay, a tourist town a couple hours drive down the mountain. My host dad, Abel, is an elementary school teacher in Chivay, so I didn’t meet him until a couple days into the visit. Abel’s parents also live in the house, but I didn’t see much of them because they were usually out tending to the family’s donkeys, which are kept on the mountains. Marleni consistently referred to her father-in-law as “el caballero,” which I never ceased to find funny.
It was interesting to compare my family in Huilloq to this family, which seemed to be one rung up on the social ladder. The first couple days before Abel came home Marleni cooked over a fire (maybe just to entertain me), but the family also has a small gas stove, which Marleni said they only use when they’re in a hurry. From what I observed though, they actually use it the majority of the time. Their house was small but really nice—the center part is open air, where they have a sink with running water, an outhouse, a small garden, and some open space where Abel and I played soccer one day. Then there are closed off rooms surrounding the open space—two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a dining room. It’s as much space as 6 people really need, and I can’t really think of any good reason why houses in the US aren’t designed like that—who wants to sit inside all day anyway? There is also electric lighting in the closed off rooms and a small TV in one of the bedrooms. Like any good Peruvians, the family especially enjoys watching soccer games and the beloved soap opera “Pasiones prohibidas” (although Abel insisted that he really doesn’t like that show all that much).
Marleni and Abel both speak Quechua, but hardly ever to each other, although they do speak it with Abel’s parents. As for the kids, I can pretty confidently say that I speak more Quechua than they do, which is pretty strange considering that Abel’s mom hardly speaks any Spanish. It’s a little sad to think that the kids can’t even communicate with their grandmother, but that’s just one of the things that comes with modernization, I guess. During the week Marleni drops the kids off at a daycare center called the “wawawasi,” which is a wonderful word meaning “house of children” in Quechua.
My family doesn’t actually own any llamas or alpacas (only donkeys) and the only time we ate alpaca meat was in its dried form, called “charqui” (it’s where the English word “jerky” comes from). Marleni explained to me that they don’t eat llama meat very much because for some reason when you buy llama meat you have to buy the whole llama, and it’s really expensive. In fact, we didn’t eat very much meat at all. One day we had trout, which Marleni told me is the only kind of fish that lives in the river ever since the species was introduced from the North America and ate all the smaller fish. On top of that, because of overfishing, now you can only get really small trout. The only other meat we ate was a little bit of chicken in one of the soups, which Marleni told me had come from Lima. Marleni’s cooking, I have to admit, was nothing to brag about, and usually her soups just consisted of some potatoes, shredded carrots, and fava beans thrown in a pot of water, sometimes along with some overcooked noodles, and a little salt for flavoring. She always filled my bowl up so much that I could hardly eat out of it without spilling it all over the place first, and every time I turned down seconds she’d say, “You guys don’t eat a lot, do you?” (“you guys” referring to me and the other SIT students she’s hosted in the past), despite the fact that she never ate as much food as I did.
My 6 days in Sibayo were incredibly quiet and relaxing. Every day I went to bed between 7:30 and 8:00 and woke up around 4, which is actually my preferred sleeping schedule, and probably the routine I would stick by at home if I could get away with it. Days were filled with cooking, walking to the “charkas” (fields) to pick potatoes and haba beans, long afternoon naps, playing with the kids, and having interesting conversations with Abel, who liked to ask me things like, “Why do you think September 11th happened?”, “What do you think about the president?”, “How much does it cost to get to the United States—legally?”, and “What happens if you get married in Peru?” These questions and others never failed to lead to interesting conversations. Luckily, Abel has a very good sense of humor. Like the kids in Huilloq, he was fascinated by my contact lenses. One day we were digging up potatoes and I spotted one that he hadn’t seen. “I need to go put in my contact lenses,” he quipped.
Other highlights of the trip included going to two different “estancias” (I don’t know what the English translation is, but it’s where they keep the llamas and alpacas). The first one we had to walk to, so we left at 5:30 in the morning and walked an hour and a half straight up a mountain (an exertion which, combined with the altitude, tired me out so much that I didn’t feel like doing anything else for the rest of the day). We were lucky (or unlucky) enough to witness the killing of a llama for meat: first they caught it with a lasso, then tied its feet together and slit its throat (it was hard to watch, but I’m sure it was nothing compared to Jenny’s experience in her family when she was asked to help with the killing of 20 sheep). Another day we took a bus to a different estancia, where we got to help with the sheering of an alpaca. There is also a natural hot springs about a 20-minute walk from Sibayo, where we went to take showers every so often, and about an hour walk in the other direction there are a few mummies scattered around from old Incan burials. There is even a guy whose job it is to guard the mummies and keep the path clear from Mondays to Fridays. When Abby and I and our host moms arrived at the site of the mummies, our host moms had a special surprise for us: they had brought along traditional clothes to dress us up in and take pictures. We walked back to the town in our new outfits, and so for one day we looked like bona fide Quechua people—or more likely, really lame tourists.
We were lucky enough to be in Colca Canyon for the “Semana Santa”, the holy week leading up to Easter, in which they honor the birth, passion, and resurrection of Christ, all in one week. My family doesn’t participate in all the same celebrations that the majority of the town does, because they recently converted from Catholicism to Evangelical Protestantism. When I asked Marleni why she and her husband had converted, she said that her husband’s parents were evangelicals, and she and her husband had been sympathizers for awhile, but they both decided to get baptized when her husband developed a bad drinking problem. Since he was baptized last year, she says he hasn’t had a drop of alcohol, and has treated her a lot better.
There was nothing really going on until Viernes Santa (Holy Friday), the morning of which I had an interesting conversation about religion with Abel. When people ask me what religion I am here I usually just say Jewish and leave it at that, because it seems like the closest I can come to something that people might not consider devil-worshipping. First Abel asked me to explain my religion, which was a little difficult since I really don’t know very much about Judaism and on top of that I couldn’t remember how to say “messiah” in Spanish (on a side note, it was also fun trying to explain to my family what we do in the United States to celebrate Easter: “Pues…hay un conejo muy grande que esconde huevos colorados, y a veces hay dulces adentro de los huevos…”). Then he asked me the ultimate question: “Do you believe in God?” I lied and said “yes, of course,” thinking that a much easier answer than trying to explain agnosticism. To my relief, Abel appeared to have overlooked the fact that my people killed Christ (which is probably the only thing he would know about Jews, now that I think about it) and was satisfied that I believed in God, saying that all the religions are different paths leading to the same God. After breakfast the family went to watch TV—all day there were movies on about the passion of the Christ, which everyone claimed to enjoy immensely. The traditional meal for Viernes Santa is called “los 12 platos” (the 12 dishes), but Marleni told me we were just going to have 6 or 7 plates because 12 is way too much to eat. When I told that to Abby’s family, they laughed, saying that we had to eat 12 dishes, it was ridiculous to have 7. However, it turned out that both of our families only ate 5 plates, which was fine with my stomach. Later in the day a couple of Jehovah’s witnesses stopped by, and since I was the closest to the door at the time, I had the good fortune of talking to the guy myself. First he asked me if I already had a religion. “Yes?” I responded, hoping that that was the correct answer. “Oh good,” he said, with a big smile on his face, “But here’s a question for you: If there’s only one Bible, why are there so many different religions?” That was too stupid of a question to merit a response, so I just took his propaganda and thanked him.
At 7:00 was the Catholic mass, which I went to with Abby’s family because my family had their own mass at the Evangelical church. The mass was pretty fascinating. It began with a woman leading the group in at least 100 Hail Marys (or at least I think they wwere Hail Marys, but I could be wrong since I know nothing about Catholocism), over a loudspeaker with a horrible crackling sound system. Then sheets were handed out with religious songs in a mixture of Quechua and Spanish. Some of the titles of the songs were pretty humorous, notably one song that was called “Apu Jesusllay.” “Apu” is a general term in Quechua for a divinity—they often call the mountains “apus.” So “Apu Jesusllay” roughly translates to “My Little Jesus God.” After singing a few songs in a mixture of Spanish and Quechua, a couple of little girls got up and read aloud a long biblical passage about the passion of the Christ. The priest, who was white and had a bit of a French accent, read all of Jesus’s lines. Again I felt a little awkward about the whole Jews killing Jesus thing. Later in the service they lit 14 candles in a triangle shape, and the priest went over the “7 words of Jesus” (which I had never heard of before). Every time he finished explaining one of the 7 words, two of the candles were put out. Once that was over, a bunch of guys dressed in white suits with white scarves around their heads and black glasses came and took a figure of Jesus down from the cross in the front of the church. They put Jesus in a carrying thing (man, my vocabulary to describe this is really lacking) made of flowers, and a handful of men carried him and the Virgin Mary on a procession around the town plaza. Abby’s host mom told us that later in the night there would be whippings (to purge the men of their sins) but that they had to wait until all the kids went home to do it because it’s too “horrible” for them to watch. Abby and I agreed that it would be a little awkward to wait around to see people being whipped, so instead we went home and went to bed.
On Domingo Santo (Holy Sunday) I went to masses in both the Catholic and Evangelical churches. For some reason, everyone in the town calls Catholic mass “misa”, but the Evangelical mass is called “culto,” which literally translated to “cult.” At first I thought the Catholics were just calling it that to be mean, but Marleni confirmed that it was the correct term. It was really interesting to see the difference between the two churches. The Evangelical church is much smaller and was founded only 35 years or so ago. Unlike the Catholic church, there were no fancy images or adornments inside, only one biblical passage painted on the back wall: “Venid a mi todos los que estais trabajados y cargados, y yo os haré descansar.” –San Mateo 11.28. (“Come to me all that are overworked and burdened, and I will give you rest.”) The Evangelical church also had a much more communal atmosphere. The pastor was from the town, and switched freely back and forth between Spanish and Quechua during his sermon. Everyone had their own marked up copy of the bible, so everyone was able to follow along when passages were read. Abel’s father, since he is one of the oldest living members of the church, led a few prayers in Quechua, and at one point even started crying. Behind the pastor there was actually a little band made up of Abel (on guitar) and a few other church members, which provided the music for the praise songs that were sung in Spanish but in a rhythm and style of singing that made them sound almost like traditional huaynos. Other songs were also sung in Quechua.
After the service I met the pastor, who was very excited to have me there and also very enthusiastic about telling me about how the Catholics worship idols and that really there is only one spirit, and that everyone has to connect with the spirit through their own personal revelation. That’s why evangelicals aren’t baptized as babies, like Catholics. I also had the opportunity to see a baptism of a married couple. The congregation went down to the river and first read from the Bible, then sang a few songs in Quechua. Then the couple was dunked into the river while the women in the congregation sang traditional-sounding songs in Quechua. Afterwards, everyone went back up to the church to share a meal that the women had all helped to prepare. We all sat outside to eat—it was a delicious soup followed by rice pudding. Although I find it a little sad that evangelicals aren’t allowed to participate in traditional dances (or drink alcohol), I have to admit the Evangelical church seemed a lot more friendly and communal than the huge, dark Catholic church that made me think of the Spanish conquest.
It was hard leaving my family after living with them for six days—“Whenever the students leave, we’re very sad, and there’s silence in the house” Marleni told me. But I joked that I would come back some day on my honeymoon after marrying a Peruvian man. I hope I do get a chance to go back there sometime.
Again, the family I staid with was wonderful. My host mom, Marleni, was 29, and has two adorable little kids, Gonzalo (4) and Anghi (a girl, 3). They are both quite rambunctious little kids, especially Gonzalo, and Marleni constantly sighs to herself, “Estes chiquitos”, whenever the kids do they do things like play-fight, spill their food, or cry for apparently no reason. Marleni used to be a teacher, but since she had kids she’s just concentrated on spinning yarn from alpaca wool and knitting hats to sell in Chivay, a tourist town a couple hours drive down the mountain. My host dad, Abel, is an elementary school teacher in Chivay, so I didn’t meet him until a couple days into the visit. Abel’s parents also live in the house, but I didn’t see much of them because they were usually out tending to the family’s donkeys, which are kept on the mountains. Marleni consistently referred to her father-in-law as “el caballero,” which I never ceased to find funny.
It was interesting to compare my family in Huilloq to this family, which seemed to be one rung up on the social ladder. The first couple days before Abel came home Marleni cooked over a fire (maybe just to entertain me), but the family also has a small gas stove, which Marleni said they only use when they’re in a hurry. From what I observed though, they actually use it the majority of the time. Their house was small but really nice—the center part is open air, where they have a sink with running water, an outhouse, a small garden, and some open space where Abel and I played soccer one day. Then there are closed off rooms surrounding the open space—two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a dining room. It’s as much space as 6 people really need, and I can’t really think of any good reason why houses in the US aren’t designed like that—who wants to sit inside all day anyway? There is also electric lighting in the closed off rooms and a small TV in one of the bedrooms. Like any good Peruvians, the family especially enjoys watching soccer games and the beloved soap opera “Pasiones prohibidas” (although Abel insisted that he really doesn’t like that show all that much).
Marleni and Abel both speak Quechua, but hardly ever to each other, although they do speak it with Abel’s parents. As for the kids, I can pretty confidently say that I speak more Quechua than they do, which is pretty strange considering that Abel’s mom hardly speaks any Spanish. It’s a little sad to think that the kids can’t even communicate with their grandmother, but that’s just one of the things that comes with modernization, I guess. During the week Marleni drops the kids off at a daycare center called the “wawawasi,” which is a wonderful word meaning “house of children” in Quechua.
My family doesn’t actually own any llamas or alpacas (only donkeys) and the only time we ate alpaca meat was in its dried form, called “charqui” (it’s where the English word “jerky” comes from). Marleni explained to me that they don’t eat llama meat very much because for some reason when you buy llama meat you have to buy the whole llama, and it’s really expensive. In fact, we didn’t eat very much meat at all. One day we had trout, which Marleni told me is the only kind of fish that lives in the river ever since the species was introduced from the North America and ate all the smaller fish. On top of that, because of overfishing, now you can only get really small trout. The only other meat we ate was a little bit of chicken in one of the soups, which Marleni told me had come from Lima. Marleni’s cooking, I have to admit, was nothing to brag about, and usually her soups just consisted of some potatoes, shredded carrots, and fava beans thrown in a pot of water, sometimes along with some overcooked noodles, and a little salt for flavoring. She always filled my bowl up so much that I could hardly eat out of it without spilling it all over the place first, and every time I turned down seconds she’d say, “You guys don’t eat a lot, do you?” (“you guys” referring to me and the other SIT students she’s hosted in the past), despite the fact that she never ate as much food as I did.
My 6 days in Sibayo were incredibly quiet and relaxing. Every day I went to bed between 7:30 and 8:00 and woke up around 4, which is actually my preferred sleeping schedule, and probably the routine I would stick by at home if I could get away with it. Days were filled with cooking, walking to the “charkas” (fields) to pick potatoes and haba beans, long afternoon naps, playing with the kids, and having interesting conversations with Abel, who liked to ask me things like, “Why do you think September 11th happened?”, “What do you think about the president?”, “How much does it cost to get to the United States—legally?”, and “What happens if you get married in Peru?” These questions and others never failed to lead to interesting conversations. Luckily, Abel has a very good sense of humor. Like the kids in Huilloq, he was fascinated by my contact lenses. One day we were digging up potatoes and I spotted one that he hadn’t seen. “I need to go put in my contact lenses,” he quipped.
Other highlights of the trip included going to two different “estancias” (I don’t know what the English translation is, but it’s where they keep the llamas and alpacas). The first one we had to walk to, so we left at 5:30 in the morning and walked an hour and a half straight up a mountain (an exertion which, combined with the altitude, tired me out so much that I didn’t feel like doing anything else for the rest of the day). We were lucky (or unlucky) enough to witness the killing of a llama for meat: first they caught it with a lasso, then tied its feet together and slit its throat (it was hard to watch, but I’m sure it was nothing compared to Jenny’s experience in her family when she was asked to help with the killing of 20 sheep). Another day we took a bus to a different estancia, where we got to help with the sheering of an alpaca. There is also a natural hot springs about a 20-minute walk from Sibayo, where we went to take showers every so often, and about an hour walk in the other direction there are a few mummies scattered around from old Incan burials. There is even a guy whose job it is to guard the mummies and keep the path clear from Mondays to Fridays. When Abby and I and our host moms arrived at the site of the mummies, our host moms had a special surprise for us: they had brought along traditional clothes to dress us up in and take pictures. We walked back to the town in our new outfits, and so for one day we looked like bona fide Quechua people—or more likely, really lame tourists.
We were lucky enough to be in Colca Canyon for the “Semana Santa”, the holy week leading up to Easter, in which they honor the birth, passion, and resurrection of Christ, all in one week. My family doesn’t participate in all the same celebrations that the majority of the town does, because they recently converted from Catholicism to Evangelical Protestantism. When I asked Marleni why she and her husband had converted, she said that her husband’s parents were evangelicals, and she and her husband had been sympathizers for awhile, but they both decided to get baptized when her husband developed a bad drinking problem. Since he was baptized last year, she says he hasn’t had a drop of alcohol, and has treated her a lot better.
There was nothing really going on until Viernes Santa (Holy Friday), the morning of which I had an interesting conversation about religion with Abel. When people ask me what religion I am here I usually just say Jewish and leave it at that, because it seems like the closest I can come to something that people might not consider devil-worshipping. First Abel asked me to explain my religion, which was a little difficult since I really don’t know very much about Judaism and on top of that I couldn’t remember how to say “messiah” in Spanish (on a side note, it was also fun trying to explain to my family what we do in the United States to celebrate Easter: “Pues…hay un conejo muy grande que esconde huevos colorados, y a veces hay dulces adentro de los huevos…”). Then he asked me the ultimate question: “Do you believe in God?” I lied and said “yes, of course,” thinking that a much easier answer than trying to explain agnosticism. To my relief, Abel appeared to have overlooked the fact that my people killed Christ (which is probably the only thing he would know about Jews, now that I think about it) and was satisfied that I believed in God, saying that all the religions are different paths leading to the same God. After breakfast the family went to watch TV—all day there were movies on about the passion of the Christ, which everyone claimed to enjoy immensely. The traditional meal for Viernes Santa is called “los 12 platos” (the 12 dishes), but Marleni told me we were just going to have 6 or 7 plates because 12 is way too much to eat. When I told that to Abby’s family, they laughed, saying that we had to eat 12 dishes, it was ridiculous to have 7. However, it turned out that both of our families only ate 5 plates, which was fine with my stomach. Later in the day a couple of Jehovah’s witnesses stopped by, and since I was the closest to the door at the time, I had the good fortune of talking to the guy myself. First he asked me if I already had a religion. “Yes?” I responded, hoping that that was the correct answer. “Oh good,” he said, with a big smile on his face, “But here’s a question for you: If there’s only one Bible, why are there so many different religions?” That was too stupid of a question to merit a response, so I just took his propaganda and thanked him.
At 7:00 was the Catholic mass, which I went to with Abby’s family because my family had their own mass at the Evangelical church. The mass was pretty fascinating. It began with a woman leading the group in at least 100 Hail Marys (or at least I think they wwere Hail Marys, but I could be wrong since I know nothing about Catholocism), over a loudspeaker with a horrible crackling sound system. Then sheets were handed out with religious songs in a mixture of Quechua and Spanish. Some of the titles of the songs were pretty humorous, notably one song that was called “Apu Jesusllay.” “Apu” is a general term in Quechua for a divinity—they often call the mountains “apus.” So “Apu Jesusllay” roughly translates to “My Little Jesus God.” After singing a few songs in a mixture of Spanish and Quechua, a couple of little girls got up and read aloud a long biblical passage about the passion of the Christ. The priest, who was white and had a bit of a French accent, read all of Jesus’s lines. Again I felt a little awkward about the whole Jews killing Jesus thing. Later in the service they lit 14 candles in a triangle shape, and the priest went over the “7 words of Jesus” (which I had never heard of before). Every time he finished explaining one of the 7 words, two of the candles were put out. Once that was over, a bunch of guys dressed in white suits with white scarves around their heads and black glasses came and took a figure of Jesus down from the cross in the front of the church. They put Jesus in a carrying thing (man, my vocabulary to describe this is really lacking) made of flowers, and a handful of men carried him and the Virgin Mary on a procession around the town plaza. Abby’s host mom told us that later in the night there would be whippings (to purge the men of their sins) but that they had to wait until all the kids went home to do it because it’s too “horrible” for them to watch. Abby and I agreed that it would be a little awkward to wait around to see people being whipped, so instead we went home and went to bed.
On Domingo Santo (Holy Sunday) I went to masses in both the Catholic and Evangelical churches. For some reason, everyone in the town calls Catholic mass “misa”, but the Evangelical mass is called “culto,” which literally translated to “cult.” At first I thought the Catholics were just calling it that to be mean, but Marleni confirmed that it was the correct term. It was really interesting to see the difference between the two churches. The Evangelical church is much smaller and was founded only 35 years or so ago. Unlike the Catholic church, there were no fancy images or adornments inside, only one biblical passage painted on the back wall: “Venid a mi todos los que estais trabajados y cargados, y yo os haré descansar.” –San Mateo 11.28. (“Come to me all that are overworked and burdened, and I will give you rest.”) The Evangelical church also had a much more communal atmosphere. The pastor was from the town, and switched freely back and forth between Spanish and Quechua during his sermon. Everyone had their own marked up copy of the bible, so everyone was able to follow along when passages were read. Abel’s father, since he is one of the oldest living members of the church, led a few prayers in Quechua, and at one point even started crying. Behind the pastor there was actually a little band made up of Abel (on guitar) and a few other church members, which provided the music for the praise songs that were sung in Spanish but in a rhythm and style of singing that made them sound almost like traditional huaynos. Other songs were also sung in Quechua.
After the service I met the pastor, who was very excited to have me there and also very enthusiastic about telling me about how the Catholics worship idols and that really there is only one spirit, and that everyone has to connect with the spirit through their own personal revelation. That’s why evangelicals aren’t baptized as babies, like Catholics. I also had the opportunity to see a baptism of a married couple. The congregation went down to the river and first read from the Bible, then sang a few songs in Quechua. Then the couple was dunked into the river while the women in the congregation sang traditional-sounding songs in Quechua. Afterwards, everyone went back up to the church to share a meal that the women had all helped to prepare. We all sat outside to eat—it was a delicious soup followed by rice pudding. Although I find it a little sad that evangelicals aren’t allowed to participate in traditional dances (or drink alcohol), I have to admit the Evangelical church seemed a lot more friendly and communal than the huge, dark Catholic church that made me think of the Spanish conquest.
It was hard leaving my family after living with them for six days—“Whenever the students leave, we’re very sad, and there’s silence in the house” Marleni told me. But I joked that I would come back some day on my honeymoon after marrying a Peruvian man. I hope I do get a chance to go back there sometime.
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