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.