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.