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.