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.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
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.
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