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?
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Qoyllur Rit'i 6/1/07-6/4/07
My trip to Qoyllur Rit’i was quite an adventure—getting there as much as Qoyllur Rit’i itself. On Friday afternoon Jenny and I met up in Cuzco with Nicolas, a professor from the school I taught English, and 3 hippies that we hadn’t met before: Violeta, a Chilean woman, who was dating an indigenous man from Apurimac named Basilio, and Violeta’s friend Ariel, also from Chile. Nicolas was kind of the leader of the journey and both Jenny and I had only a vague idea of what the plan was before we left. From Cuzco we all took a 5-hour bus ride to Ocongate, which is the name of a region in Peru and also a small community in which we stayed with a relative of Nicolas the first night. Immediately Jenny and I could see that we were with an interesting group of people. After eating a scrumptious dinner of boiled potatoes with the family we were staying with, there was kind of a spontaneous group bonding hour/ceremony which involved a lot of coca chewing, incense, tobacco smoking, Argentinian mate, a very strange twangy European instrument that Violeta played with her mouth, and everyone except Jenny and me saying a personal thanks to the Pachamama (mother earth).
We finally got to bed and woke up bright and early the next morning to begin the next segment of our journey. The plan was to travel to another remote community called Haku, stay there the night, and then travel with them to Qoyllur Rit’i the next day. The first stretch of the journey was three hours on a truck, which also was carrying, among other things, a bag full of (live) chickens and some sacks of potatoes. The ride was incredible; it would be futile to try to describe the natural beauty of the mountains, yet again, but I’ll just say that even for a relatively non-spiritual person such as me, it’s hard not to think that the mountains in Peru are gods. The landscape changes every moment, from jutting, rocky, snow-capped peaks to smoother, colorful mountains, dusty places that look like desert to places filled with fog that apparently comes from the jungle. And embellishing the landscape is a smattering of tiny sparkling freshwater lakes. Riding on the back of a truck with a bunch of indigenous people and hippies added to the surreal quality of the trip.
When we arrived at our destination (nothing more than a bend in the road) we all sat down on the grass to share a meal. Jenny and I had brought our own food, mostly essentials like cliff bars, peanut butter and cheese, but one thing we had to get used to during the trip was that everyone’s food was communal food. It’s a beautiful tradition in collectivistic societies and something that it’s really hard for Americans to get used to even if you tell yourself to be generous. So, we ended up giving away most of our food (except for the peanut butter, we just could not part with it) and eating mostly potatoes and coca leaves for the majority of the trip. There is also a specific way of offering and chewing coca leaves. Everyone sits in a circle and the leaves are usually set in a pile on a blanket in the center. Then everyone starts searching in the pile for the best coca leaves to make into k’intus, which are made up of three leaves. Once you find three good leaves, you put them together from smallest to largest, hold them with both hands, blow on them as an offering to the earth, and then with both hands, offer them to someone else in the group. When you receive a k’intu from someone, assuming they are a Quechua speaker, you say “Urpillay sonqoy,” which means roughly, “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.” Then you chew the coca leaves and eat them. On this trip I ate the most coca leaves I have ever eaten. They don’t make you high, but if you chew a lot of them they make your mouth feel kind of tingly and numb, and they also decrease hunger and help with altitude sickness.
After lunch Nicolas announced that we would be walking the rest of the way to the community of Haku. He said it would take two hours of we walked fast, three if we were slow. Factoring in that most of us were not used to the altitude and a couple of us, including me, were having some problems with it, and that the Peruvian sense of time is just not as exact as ours, the walk ended up taking over six hours, and we arrived in Haku just as the sun was setting. That having been said, it was probably the most beautiful hike I have ever been on in my life. When we arrived we were greeted with flute music by the members of the community, and of course, offered a bowl of boiled potatoes.
The next morning Jenny and I discovered that we would actually not be going straight from the community to Qoyllur Rit’i, but rather backtracking the entire way we had walked and part of the way we had come on the truck. Nicolas announced that since I was having trouble with the altitude and slowing us down, I would, along with a couple other people, be riding a horse. Or rather, sitting on top of a horse while its owner pulled it along by a rope. I wasn’t complaining about that. The journey back took about half the time it had taken us to get there, and the entire time the men in the community led the group with flute music. Every once in awhile we would stop to rest, the women sitting in one circle and the men in the other, and share potatoes, coca leaves, and whatever anyone else had to offer. When we got there, Jenny and I and a couple Quechua woman hitchhiked to where we needed to go in a passing van. The rest of our group staid to wait for a truck.
When we arrived at the town in which the road to Qoyllur Rit’i begins, to our surprise our fellow travelers led us not up the mountain but to a field with a circular rock wall (probably a corral for animals), which we were to use as a campsite for the night. This was a problem for Jenny and I because Jenny and I had been planning on returning from Qoyllur Rit’i the next day so that she could catch a flight to Lima. We came to the decision that we would have to go up to Qoyllur Rit’i that night or we would never get there. However, it was difficult to communicate this with our group members, considering that the majority of them were Quechua-speaking women who were busy preparing potatoes for dinner, and the only man who had come with us in the van had temporarily disappeared. We waited about two hours for Nicolas and the rest of our friends to arrive, but they were busy doing God knows what in the town. When Jenny and I awkwardly tried to explain to one of the semi-Spanish-speaking men that we were going to go to Qoyllur Rit’i that night, by ourselves, he didn’t quite understand and insisted that we rest for “a moment.” We waited ten more minutes and then told the men that we were going to the town to find Nicolas. It was already dark, and of course, the insisted on leading us there, which made an already awkward situation even more awkward. On the way we saw Nicolas and explained to him and a few other people why we were abandoning the group. They kind of looked at us like we were crazy but let us go. Realizing we didn’t actually know where exactly the beginning of the road to Qoyllur Rit’i was, we wandered around the market area for awhile looking for someone that looked friendly enough to ask. At one point we were laughed at by a group of pointing young boys, and I can’t deny that we must have looked ridiculous: two gringas in identical big poofy alpaca hats that all the tourists buy, each carrying a giant backpack, nibbling on a piece of bread, and looking lost. Aware of how idiotic we looked, we asked a woman vendor where the road to Qoyllur Rit’i began, and she pointed us in the right direction. By the time we began, it was already after 7, which was actually fine because at this time of year there are constantly people going up and down. On top of that, the road is wide and well-kept, and once the moon came out, it was bright enough to read a book by. The whole walk uphill took two and a half hours, which was shorter than we had expected.
Now comes the hard part: attempting to describe the spectacle that is the festival of Qoyllur Rit’i. It’s kind of like the Peruvian equivalent of Woodstock, except much colder and minus the drugs. The actual shrine of Qoyllur Rit’i is just a big cross that people light candles underneath, but the most important part of the festival is the dancing. Each community that comes has its own dance group, and there are several areas in which there is constantly some group dancing all day and all night, for the entire duration of the festival, which is over a week. The dancers start in one place and then move to the next, and the next, and so on. The whole thing is a raucous of music and explosions (not fireworks, but something else that just makes a really loud noise and a bunch of smoke). Then there are hundreds of tents set up which people generally avoid sleeping in because it’s much easier to keep warm by moving around. The backdrop of the whole thing is the snow-covered mountain peaks of Ausengate.
Jenny and I arrived there at around 10:00, by which time it was already freezing. We hadn’t had room to bring a tent so instead we just had sleeping pads, mats, and a couple of tarps to put over us and protect us from the frost. It probably got down to somewhere in the teens or 20’s at the coldest point of the night. We stayed awake and moving around as long as possible, watching the different dances and drinking sweet, hot “ponche” made from a powder of dried “haba” beans. When we finally went back “home” to sleep under our tarp, we kept being woken up by the explosions and dance groups that marched right by us with their bands and sometimes also horses. At around 4 am, we had an interesting encounter with a Quechua woman who was trying to tell us something that I couldn’t quite make out, except for the words, “Where did they come from?” It seemed as if we had taken her spot on the frozen ground. I couldn’t figure out how that could have happened seeing as none of the campsites were marked. Every so often the woman would pause in her Quechua tirade and try to connect with us by saying “Hi” in a very heavy accent. In any case, I was resolved not to move, seeing as I was not only exhausted but bundled up in my sleeping bag and freezing. Eventually the woman left us alone, and somehow Jenny and I made it through the night. We watched impatiently, shivering, as the sun came up over the mountains. After walking around a bit to see some more dances, which had not even let up for a second throughout the night, we started back down toward the town.
Of course, our bus ride back to Cuzco was not without incident. About ten minutes into the drip, the bus driver hit another car. There was only some minor damage to the back bumper of the car, so everyone in the bus waited for about twenty minutes while the bus driver negotiated with the other driver and eventually gave him 50 soles to repair the damage. After that, I’m not really sure what happened, but we kept stopping for 15 or 20 minutes in different places, and it seemed the two drivers wanted to fight. Then the whole bus went into mutiny and got off the vehicle, and finally a police car arrived and resolved everything. Add that drama to a really really hot bus (we couldn’t open the windows or the dust from the road would come in), street vendors periodically hassling us and selling boiled potatoes to people through the windows, and a bunch of rowdy passengers yelling at the driver to change the music, and you’ve got a real Peruvian experience.
But in order to really understand the music issue, I’ll conclude this entry by describing the horribly formulaic music I’ve been subject to in pretty much every public vehicle all these months. Most of Peruvian radio plays a random mix of songs from the 70’s and 80’s along with some hits from a few years ago, but the stations that cater to people from the “campo” (rural areas) is, as Jenny aptly observed, the Peruvian equivalent of popular country music. The genre (I believe it’s called “chicha”, but I could be confusing it with something else) has its roots in traditional Quechua songs called huaynos, but all the lyrics are in Spanish, and the arrangement is usually limited to a very high-pitched kind of harp, Andean flutes, electronic drumbeats, and a handful of strange synthesized noises. “Chichas” are always sung by women and the lyrics always have something to do with gender relations. They are usually along the lines of “Stop cheating on me, it hurts”, but they can also be cheesy love songs, such as “Remember my cell phone number, so that you can call me whenever you need to cry.” Every song starts with some electronic drum beats the singer singing some of these incredibly trite, usually unrhymed lyrics in a tone of voice that is best described as energetically desperate. As far as I can tell, there is only one melody for the verse portion of every single chicha song. Every verse is followed by a short chorus and every chorus is followed by the same 5 synthesized notes (again, the same ones for virtually every song) and a very odd noise that I can only guess must have been stolen from the noise of the twisty thing on the “Bop It” game (for those fortunate enough to have had a “Bop It” during their childhood). After two or three choruses and verses, the music continues and a man’s voice comes in, shouting things in roughly the same tone of voice is used in radio car commercials in the United States. Somestimes the man’s voice just repeats the main points of the woman’s song, emphasizing its triteness, or sometimes he enters into a very, very short argument with the woman, which consists of he contradicting her and she restating the message of her song, which automatically proves her to be in the right. Every so often the man will follow that up by yelling out instructions to the audience, such as “Men, raise your hands! Women, turn around, smooth now!” Just for good measure the chorus is repeated a few times. Then another song comes on that is barely distinguishable from the last. And that’s when you start adding to the song by banging your head against the wall.
We finally got to bed and woke up bright and early the next morning to begin the next segment of our journey. The plan was to travel to another remote community called Haku, stay there the night, and then travel with them to Qoyllur Rit’i the next day. The first stretch of the journey was three hours on a truck, which also was carrying, among other things, a bag full of (live) chickens and some sacks of potatoes. The ride was incredible; it would be futile to try to describe the natural beauty of the mountains, yet again, but I’ll just say that even for a relatively non-spiritual person such as me, it’s hard not to think that the mountains in Peru are gods. The landscape changes every moment, from jutting, rocky, snow-capped peaks to smoother, colorful mountains, dusty places that look like desert to places filled with fog that apparently comes from the jungle. And embellishing the landscape is a smattering of tiny sparkling freshwater lakes. Riding on the back of a truck with a bunch of indigenous people and hippies added to the surreal quality of the trip.
When we arrived at our destination (nothing more than a bend in the road) we all sat down on the grass to share a meal. Jenny and I had brought our own food, mostly essentials like cliff bars, peanut butter and cheese, but one thing we had to get used to during the trip was that everyone’s food was communal food. It’s a beautiful tradition in collectivistic societies and something that it’s really hard for Americans to get used to even if you tell yourself to be generous. So, we ended up giving away most of our food (except for the peanut butter, we just could not part with it) and eating mostly potatoes and coca leaves for the majority of the trip. There is also a specific way of offering and chewing coca leaves. Everyone sits in a circle and the leaves are usually set in a pile on a blanket in the center. Then everyone starts searching in the pile for the best coca leaves to make into k’intus, which are made up of three leaves. Once you find three good leaves, you put them together from smallest to largest, hold them with both hands, blow on them as an offering to the earth, and then with both hands, offer them to someone else in the group. When you receive a k’intu from someone, assuming they are a Quechua speaker, you say “Urpillay sonqoy,” which means roughly, “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.” Then you chew the coca leaves and eat them. On this trip I ate the most coca leaves I have ever eaten. They don’t make you high, but if you chew a lot of them they make your mouth feel kind of tingly and numb, and they also decrease hunger and help with altitude sickness.
After lunch Nicolas announced that we would be walking the rest of the way to the community of Haku. He said it would take two hours of we walked fast, three if we were slow. Factoring in that most of us were not used to the altitude and a couple of us, including me, were having some problems with it, and that the Peruvian sense of time is just not as exact as ours, the walk ended up taking over six hours, and we arrived in Haku just as the sun was setting. That having been said, it was probably the most beautiful hike I have ever been on in my life. When we arrived we were greeted with flute music by the members of the community, and of course, offered a bowl of boiled potatoes.
The next morning Jenny and I discovered that we would actually not be going straight from the community to Qoyllur Rit’i, but rather backtracking the entire way we had walked and part of the way we had come on the truck. Nicolas announced that since I was having trouble with the altitude and slowing us down, I would, along with a couple other people, be riding a horse. Or rather, sitting on top of a horse while its owner pulled it along by a rope. I wasn’t complaining about that. The journey back took about half the time it had taken us to get there, and the entire time the men in the community led the group with flute music. Every once in awhile we would stop to rest, the women sitting in one circle and the men in the other, and share potatoes, coca leaves, and whatever anyone else had to offer. When we got there, Jenny and I and a couple Quechua woman hitchhiked to where we needed to go in a passing van. The rest of our group staid to wait for a truck.
When we arrived at the town in which the road to Qoyllur Rit’i begins, to our surprise our fellow travelers led us not up the mountain but to a field with a circular rock wall (probably a corral for animals), which we were to use as a campsite for the night. This was a problem for Jenny and I because Jenny and I had been planning on returning from Qoyllur Rit’i the next day so that she could catch a flight to Lima. We came to the decision that we would have to go up to Qoyllur Rit’i that night or we would never get there. However, it was difficult to communicate this with our group members, considering that the majority of them were Quechua-speaking women who were busy preparing potatoes for dinner, and the only man who had come with us in the van had temporarily disappeared. We waited about two hours for Nicolas and the rest of our friends to arrive, but they were busy doing God knows what in the town. When Jenny and I awkwardly tried to explain to one of the semi-Spanish-speaking men that we were going to go to Qoyllur Rit’i that night, by ourselves, he didn’t quite understand and insisted that we rest for “a moment.” We waited ten more minutes and then told the men that we were going to the town to find Nicolas. It was already dark, and of course, the insisted on leading us there, which made an already awkward situation even more awkward. On the way we saw Nicolas and explained to him and a few other people why we were abandoning the group. They kind of looked at us like we were crazy but let us go. Realizing we didn’t actually know where exactly the beginning of the road to Qoyllur Rit’i was, we wandered around the market area for awhile looking for someone that looked friendly enough to ask. At one point we were laughed at by a group of pointing young boys, and I can’t deny that we must have looked ridiculous: two gringas in identical big poofy alpaca hats that all the tourists buy, each carrying a giant backpack, nibbling on a piece of bread, and looking lost. Aware of how idiotic we looked, we asked a woman vendor where the road to Qoyllur Rit’i began, and she pointed us in the right direction. By the time we began, it was already after 7, which was actually fine because at this time of year there are constantly people going up and down. On top of that, the road is wide and well-kept, and once the moon came out, it was bright enough to read a book by. The whole walk uphill took two and a half hours, which was shorter than we had expected.
Now comes the hard part: attempting to describe the spectacle that is the festival of Qoyllur Rit’i. It’s kind of like the Peruvian equivalent of Woodstock, except much colder and minus the drugs. The actual shrine of Qoyllur Rit’i is just a big cross that people light candles underneath, but the most important part of the festival is the dancing. Each community that comes has its own dance group, and there are several areas in which there is constantly some group dancing all day and all night, for the entire duration of the festival, which is over a week. The dancers start in one place and then move to the next, and the next, and so on. The whole thing is a raucous of music and explosions (not fireworks, but something else that just makes a really loud noise and a bunch of smoke). Then there are hundreds of tents set up which people generally avoid sleeping in because it’s much easier to keep warm by moving around. The backdrop of the whole thing is the snow-covered mountain peaks of Ausengate.
Jenny and I arrived there at around 10:00, by which time it was already freezing. We hadn’t had room to bring a tent so instead we just had sleeping pads, mats, and a couple of tarps to put over us and protect us from the frost. It probably got down to somewhere in the teens or 20’s at the coldest point of the night. We stayed awake and moving around as long as possible, watching the different dances and drinking sweet, hot “ponche” made from a powder of dried “haba” beans. When we finally went back “home” to sleep under our tarp, we kept being woken up by the explosions and dance groups that marched right by us with their bands and sometimes also horses. At around 4 am, we had an interesting encounter with a Quechua woman who was trying to tell us something that I couldn’t quite make out, except for the words, “Where did they come from?” It seemed as if we had taken her spot on the frozen ground. I couldn’t figure out how that could have happened seeing as none of the campsites were marked. Every so often the woman would pause in her Quechua tirade and try to connect with us by saying “Hi” in a very heavy accent. In any case, I was resolved not to move, seeing as I was not only exhausted but bundled up in my sleeping bag and freezing. Eventually the woman left us alone, and somehow Jenny and I made it through the night. We watched impatiently, shivering, as the sun came up over the mountains. After walking around a bit to see some more dances, which had not even let up for a second throughout the night, we started back down toward the town.
Of course, our bus ride back to Cuzco was not without incident. About ten minutes into the drip, the bus driver hit another car. There was only some minor damage to the back bumper of the car, so everyone in the bus waited for about twenty minutes while the bus driver negotiated with the other driver and eventually gave him 50 soles to repair the damage. After that, I’m not really sure what happened, but we kept stopping for 15 or 20 minutes in different places, and it seemed the two drivers wanted to fight. Then the whole bus went into mutiny and got off the vehicle, and finally a police car arrived and resolved everything. Add that drama to a really really hot bus (we couldn’t open the windows or the dust from the road would come in), street vendors periodically hassling us and selling boiled potatoes to people through the windows, and a bunch of rowdy passengers yelling at the driver to change the music, and you’ve got a real Peruvian experience.
But in order to really understand the music issue, I’ll conclude this entry by describing the horribly formulaic music I’ve been subject to in pretty much every public vehicle all these months. Most of Peruvian radio plays a random mix of songs from the 70’s and 80’s along with some hits from a few years ago, but the stations that cater to people from the “campo” (rural areas) is, as Jenny aptly observed, the Peruvian equivalent of popular country music. The genre (I believe it’s called “chicha”, but I could be confusing it with something else) has its roots in traditional Quechua songs called huaynos, but all the lyrics are in Spanish, and the arrangement is usually limited to a very high-pitched kind of harp, Andean flutes, electronic drumbeats, and a handful of strange synthesized noises. “Chichas” are always sung by women and the lyrics always have something to do with gender relations. They are usually along the lines of “Stop cheating on me, it hurts”, but they can also be cheesy love songs, such as “Remember my cell phone number, so that you can call me whenever you need to cry.” Every song starts with some electronic drum beats the singer singing some of these incredibly trite, usually unrhymed lyrics in a tone of voice that is best described as energetically desperate. As far as I can tell, there is only one melody for the verse portion of every single chicha song. Every verse is followed by a short chorus and every chorus is followed by the same 5 synthesized notes (again, the same ones for virtually every song) and a very odd noise that I can only guess must have been stolen from the noise of the twisty thing on the “Bop It” game (for those fortunate enough to have had a “Bop It” during their childhood). After two or three choruses and verses, the music continues and a man’s voice comes in, shouting things in roughly the same tone of voice is used in radio car commercials in the United States. Somestimes the man’s voice just repeats the main points of the woman’s song, emphasizing its triteness, or sometimes he enters into a very, very short argument with the woman, which consists of he contradicting her and she restating the message of her song, which automatically proves her to be in the right. Every so often the man will follow that up by yelling out instructions to the audience, such as “Men, raise your hands! Women, turn around, smooth now!” Just for good measure the chorus is repeated a few times. Then another song comes on that is barely distinguishable from the last. And that’s when you start adding to the song by banging your head against the wall.
Program aftermath 5/26/07
Hello all,
A lot has happened in the last week. It’s a strange feeling to be in a foreign country pretty much on my own, with hardly any set-in-stone plans and virtually no responsibilities other than to look out for myself. Every day since the end of my program, I’ve started the day having one or two small tasks in mind and ended up being busy all day with things that just come up spontaneously.
Saturday, for example, was a typical day for me in Cuzco. In the morning, the family I am living with taught me to hand-wash my clothes. Then I went to the city center to buy a plane ticket to go to Buenos Aires. After I bought my ticket I decided to sit in the Plaza de Armas for a few minutes because it was sunny. I sat down on a bench at the same time as Yacin, a hippie guy from Paris who is on the last stretch of a year-long trip traveling around the world. We talked for about an hour and then went to a restaurant to eat lunch with Jenny, Jenny’s entire family who was here visiting, and Braddy, our Cuzqueñan artist/writer friend. After lunch Yacin by chance ran into a Norwegian guy he’d met in Bolivia, and I went back to the travel agency to change the flight I’d just bought a day later so I wouldn’t have to miss Corpus Christi, which is a big festival in Cuzco. Then later, I went to visit Braddy in his art workshop, where there was some kind of special event going on, and I drank some chicha and saw a puppet show put on by a few other artsy friends of his. I went back to the house of my new family to eat dinner, and my host mom, Flora (who is an amazing cook) fed me enough food for two people, as generally happens 3 times a day. Then we had a visit from Flora’s brother, Cristostomo, who lives in Huilloq (the rural town where I was staying) but had just come back from working in tourism in the jungle. Yes, that was a typical day in Cuzco.
Another little perk of being in the city right now is that it’s pretty much a nonstop party. Well, everyone has told me that the month of June is all one big festival, but if that’s true, I’m assuming May must be the pre-game. The sound of fireworks, marching bands, and parades of people carrying saints through the street have become everyday occurrences for me, which I have even had to learn to ignore most of the time in order to actually live a normal life. Most of the time, even the people in Cuzco don’t know what the hell is being celebrated right outside their door, and are usually just annoyed by the noise and rowdiness. On top of that, every Sunday throughout the year, there is a parade in the main plaza, always involving the military and school/university students, but also any other group of people who feels like coming out. Last week I saw one of these parades for the first time. It was astonishing. First, because there were so many people there watching, the majority of whom were Peruvians. “Why are there so many people here, if this happens every Sunday?” I asked Rosita, who was with me. “Oh, I don’t know, there are always a ton of people watching,” she said. But the even more astonishing thing was how long the parade lasted and how many people were involved in it. I now understand why everything is always closed on Sundays; it’s because every sector of Peruvian society comes to march in the street. It began with the military, followed by professors, doctors, students from toddlers to university age, museum workers, the tae kwan do society, traditional dance groups, the women who sell potatoes in the market—I swear, everyone. The parade lasted at least 3 or 4 hours. From this I have concluded: there is nothing that Cuzqueñans love more than coming out and showing that they are proud to be Cuzqueñans.
I am now living with a new host family, at the opposite end of the city as I lived before. Just to put things in perspective, I’d say my new host family is about the same social class as the maid in the house of my old host family. My host mom, Flora, is from Huilloq, and my host dad, Mario, was born in Cuzco. They have two kids, Maria (12) and Brandon (8), and their nephew, Tonio (11) also lives with the family. It’s a whole different living experience. To get to my room, you have to walk through a little general store that the family owns, then go out into an unenclosed area of the house where they hang laundry, and then up a few stairs into my room. There is no phone, no washing machine, and no hot water. I have to admit, the one thing I think I’ll never get used to used to is freezing cold showers. After the first one I decided it just wasn’t going to work out. So since then I’ve been either taking showers in other people’s houses or avoiding them altogether. Other than that though, I have nothing to complain about—the family is wonderful.
I have managed to create some semblance of plans, at least for the coming month. On Thursdays, I’ll be teaching English to kids in an elementary school in Pisac (about an hour from Cuzco by bus), where Jenny was working during her independent project. It’s a private, alternative bilingual school (Spanish and Quechua) that was started by Kike Pinto, this hippie musician from Lima, because he and his wife didn’t like the public school system. On Thursday nights I’ll be staying in a house with a bunch of hippies from Lima who Jenny also stayed with when she was in Pisac. On Fridays I’ll be helping out with art, drama and music at the school, because Fridays are art days. My first day at the school was quite an experience. I was nervous about teaching English, before I realized that if I managed to teach the kids a few new words before they completely stopped paying attention, the class would be a success. I taught two different classes, and only stayed in each classroom for about 15 minutes before I took them outside to play games like Simon Says and Duck Duck Goose, which eventually degenerated into a giant game of tag. But the teachers didn’t really seem to mind. After recess, a band from Argentina came to play for the kids (and this wasn’t even art day!), and then Kike, the school director, took out his drum and a bunch of Andean flutes, and all the kids circled up either to dance of play an instrument. As far as I can tell this was pretty much a spontaneous activity. As you might guess, the school has a completely different philosophy than most of the schools in rural areas, who encourage conformity, sometimes punish children for speaking Quechua, and often hit them or pull their ears if they do something wrong.
As for other plans, this coming Friday I will be going to Qoyllur Rit’i, a shrine high up on a mountain that people make pilgrimages to every year. From what people have told me, it’s basically a ton of people dancing, singing and generally making a lot of noise all day and all night. People start making pilgrimages in late May and continue through June 6th. Everyone has told me that it’s freezing there; some people bring tents, but most just put their sleeping bags on the snow. Or of course, don’t sleep at all. Well, it’s going to be an experience to write home about, that’s for sure.
A lot has happened in the last week. It’s a strange feeling to be in a foreign country pretty much on my own, with hardly any set-in-stone plans and virtually no responsibilities other than to look out for myself. Every day since the end of my program, I’ve started the day having one or two small tasks in mind and ended up being busy all day with things that just come up spontaneously.
Saturday, for example, was a typical day for me in Cuzco. In the morning, the family I am living with taught me to hand-wash my clothes. Then I went to the city center to buy a plane ticket to go to Buenos Aires. After I bought my ticket I decided to sit in the Plaza de Armas for a few minutes because it was sunny. I sat down on a bench at the same time as Yacin, a hippie guy from Paris who is on the last stretch of a year-long trip traveling around the world. We talked for about an hour and then went to a restaurant to eat lunch with Jenny, Jenny’s entire family who was here visiting, and Braddy, our Cuzqueñan artist/writer friend. After lunch Yacin by chance ran into a Norwegian guy he’d met in Bolivia, and I went back to the travel agency to change the flight I’d just bought a day later so I wouldn’t have to miss Corpus Christi, which is a big festival in Cuzco. Then later, I went to visit Braddy in his art workshop, where there was some kind of special event going on, and I drank some chicha and saw a puppet show put on by a few other artsy friends of his. I went back to the house of my new family to eat dinner, and my host mom, Flora (who is an amazing cook) fed me enough food for two people, as generally happens 3 times a day. Then we had a visit from Flora’s brother, Cristostomo, who lives in Huilloq (the rural town where I was staying) but had just come back from working in tourism in the jungle. Yes, that was a typical day in Cuzco.
Another little perk of being in the city right now is that it’s pretty much a nonstop party. Well, everyone has told me that the month of June is all one big festival, but if that’s true, I’m assuming May must be the pre-game. The sound of fireworks, marching bands, and parades of people carrying saints through the street have become everyday occurrences for me, which I have even had to learn to ignore most of the time in order to actually live a normal life. Most of the time, even the people in Cuzco don’t know what the hell is being celebrated right outside their door, and are usually just annoyed by the noise and rowdiness. On top of that, every Sunday throughout the year, there is a parade in the main plaza, always involving the military and school/university students, but also any other group of people who feels like coming out. Last week I saw one of these parades for the first time. It was astonishing. First, because there were so many people there watching, the majority of whom were Peruvians. “Why are there so many people here, if this happens every Sunday?” I asked Rosita, who was with me. “Oh, I don’t know, there are always a ton of people watching,” she said. But the even more astonishing thing was how long the parade lasted and how many people were involved in it. I now understand why everything is always closed on Sundays; it’s because every sector of Peruvian society comes to march in the street. It began with the military, followed by professors, doctors, students from toddlers to university age, museum workers, the tae kwan do society, traditional dance groups, the women who sell potatoes in the market—I swear, everyone. The parade lasted at least 3 or 4 hours. From this I have concluded: there is nothing that Cuzqueñans love more than coming out and showing that they are proud to be Cuzqueñans.
I am now living with a new host family, at the opposite end of the city as I lived before. Just to put things in perspective, I’d say my new host family is about the same social class as the maid in the house of my old host family. My host mom, Flora, is from Huilloq, and my host dad, Mario, was born in Cuzco. They have two kids, Maria (12) and Brandon (8), and their nephew, Tonio (11) also lives with the family. It’s a whole different living experience. To get to my room, you have to walk through a little general store that the family owns, then go out into an unenclosed area of the house where they hang laundry, and then up a few stairs into my room. There is no phone, no washing machine, and no hot water. I have to admit, the one thing I think I’ll never get used to used to is freezing cold showers. After the first one I decided it just wasn’t going to work out. So since then I’ve been either taking showers in other people’s houses or avoiding them altogether. Other than that though, I have nothing to complain about—the family is wonderful.
I have managed to create some semblance of plans, at least for the coming month. On Thursdays, I’ll be teaching English to kids in an elementary school in Pisac (about an hour from Cuzco by bus), where Jenny was working during her independent project. It’s a private, alternative bilingual school (Spanish and Quechua) that was started by Kike Pinto, this hippie musician from Lima, because he and his wife didn’t like the public school system. On Thursday nights I’ll be staying in a house with a bunch of hippies from Lima who Jenny also stayed with when she was in Pisac. On Fridays I’ll be helping out with art, drama and music at the school, because Fridays are art days. My first day at the school was quite an experience. I was nervous about teaching English, before I realized that if I managed to teach the kids a few new words before they completely stopped paying attention, the class would be a success. I taught two different classes, and only stayed in each classroom for about 15 minutes before I took them outside to play games like Simon Says and Duck Duck Goose, which eventually degenerated into a giant game of tag. But the teachers didn’t really seem to mind. After recess, a band from Argentina came to play for the kids (and this wasn’t even art day!), and then Kike, the school director, took out his drum and a bunch of Andean flutes, and all the kids circled up either to dance of play an instrument. As far as I can tell this was pretty much a spontaneous activity. As you might guess, the school has a completely different philosophy than most of the schools in rural areas, who encourage conformity, sometimes punish children for speaking Quechua, and often hit them or pull their ears if they do something wrong.
As for other plans, this coming Friday I will be going to Qoyllur Rit’i, a shrine high up on a mountain that people make pilgrimages to every year. From what people have told me, it’s basically a ton of people dancing, singing and generally making a lot of noise all day and all night. People start making pilgrimages in late May and continue through June 6th. Everyone has told me that it’s freezing there; some people bring tents, but most just put their sleeping bags on the snow. Or of course, don’t sleep at all. Well, it’s going to be an experience to write home about, that’s for sure.
ya pues... 5/16/07
Dear friends and family,
There´s no Quechua lesson today, but the subject of this email is something I hear Peruvians say every five minutes, and which can mean anything from 'oh well' to 'come on!' In this case it means something like, 'Well, that's it for the study abroad program, what is Naomi going to do in Peru now?'
I realize I’ve been avoiding sitting down to write another mass email because I have no idea how to express just how insane and amazing this last month has been. I want to tell everyone about my time in Huilloq, just how poetic and unique it was, and yet when I think back on it I realize that I really didn’t do much there. Instead of anecdotes I have a series of impressions.
One major thing I realized about life in Huilloq is how much my moods were affected by the weather. Like the rest of Peru, the houses in Huilloq obviously have no heat or air conditioning, but unlike urban Peru, people spend almost all of their time outside. When it’s light out, people work, and when it’s dark, they eat and sleep—simple as that. And that’s how all that stuff I’ve always been told about native people being connected with nature suddenly became real to me. There’s no getting around it: when the sun is out in Huilloq, it’s absolutely the most beautiful place in the world. In these moments it seems like blasphemy to do anything other than work the land, or just sit and think. Even reading a book is out of the question; it just would seem out of place and unnecessary. When the sun disappears for a few minutes behind the clouds, it’s freezing, miserable, and lonely—these were the first moments since I’ve been in Peru that I felt genuinely homesick. And I’m not even sure if it was homesick for the United States or just for Cuzco.
The first week I spent in Huilloq was probably the slowest week of my life, but the second week was one of the fastest. I started getting used to the rhythm of life there. I gave up on trying to read while I was there and just spent as much time as I could harvesting potatoes, going out with the kids to graze their animals, and exploring. The last few days I was there I stayed with families who live higher up in the mountains (a 45 minute to hour-long walk all steep uphill) and just spent all day there without coming back down to the road. I made some new friends; among them a 17-year-old girl who spoke Spanish because she’d spent a couple years working as a domestic servant in Lima, and the former president of the community, who is just about the nicest guy you could ever meet. I asked if I could stay with him in his house for one night, because I wanted to get to know his family. Of course, he wasn’t going to say he didn’t have room. I ended up sleeping on a bed made of wooden planks, in the kitchen, with the guinea pigs. It actually wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought.
Most of my best friends in Huilloq were 9- or 10-year-old boys. Mostly because they’re old enough to speak good Spanish but young enough not to have many responsibilities of have left the community. I was reunited with my old friend Rosalío, who I gave a little magnetic checkers game. I taught him how to play and he beat me on about the 4th game. Another family I stayed with higher up had a TV and DVD player, so with a 10-year-old boy named José I got a chance to watch such classics as “The Life of Jesus” in Quechua, and a show called “Los cholitos,” which I have no idea how to translate, but was basically a comedy show in Spanish involving two guys dressed in traditional clothing, one of which was a midget, performing slapstick humor and generally making good-natured fun of indigenous culture.
The last few days I was there I ate the most boiled potatoes I have ever eaten in my life. Either the entire meal would consist of a bowl of boiled potatoes, or I would be served a bowl of boiled potatoes as an appetizer before being served a huge bowl of potato soup or french fries with white rice. I learned an important life lesson: the point of not being able to eat any more potatoes comes well before the point of not being able to eat anymore. One of the most exciting moments during my entire stay in Huilloq was when someone brought out a bottle of ketchup, which happened only once.
I was surprised at how much I actually learned relating to my independent study topic in the short time I was there, even after spending the majority of the time harvesting potatoes. I don’t even want to begin talking about it because I won’t know where to stop, but if you’re interested you can request a copy of my 30-page paper. :-P
I’m now back in Ollantaytambo, where this journey began, where the last week of the program, evaluation week, is being held. After that I’m going back to Cuzco to figure out exactly what I’m going to be doing for the rest of the time I’m here (right now, my flight back is scheduled for the end of July). It will probably be some combination of traveling and volunteer work. I’ll be living most of the time with the sister of my friend the former president of Huilloq, who has a little store near the center of Cuzco and a little room for me behind the store. It sounds like a good compromise between living with a family and living on my own, and should be a lot of fun.
There´s no Quechua lesson today, but the subject of this email is something I hear Peruvians say every five minutes, and which can mean anything from 'oh well' to 'come on!' In this case it means something like, 'Well, that's it for the study abroad program, what is Naomi going to do in Peru now?'
I realize I’ve been avoiding sitting down to write another mass email because I have no idea how to express just how insane and amazing this last month has been. I want to tell everyone about my time in Huilloq, just how poetic and unique it was, and yet when I think back on it I realize that I really didn’t do much there. Instead of anecdotes I have a series of impressions.
One major thing I realized about life in Huilloq is how much my moods were affected by the weather. Like the rest of Peru, the houses in Huilloq obviously have no heat or air conditioning, but unlike urban Peru, people spend almost all of their time outside. When it’s light out, people work, and when it’s dark, they eat and sleep—simple as that. And that’s how all that stuff I’ve always been told about native people being connected with nature suddenly became real to me. There’s no getting around it: when the sun is out in Huilloq, it’s absolutely the most beautiful place in the world. In these moments it seems like blasphemy to do anything other than work the land, or just sit and think. Even reading a book is out of the question; it just would seem out of place and unnecessary. When the sun disappears for a few minutes behind the clouds, it’s freezing, miserable, and lonely—these were the first moments since I’ve been in Peru that I felt genuinely homesick. And I’m not even sure if it was homesick for the United States or just for Cuzco.
The first week I spent in Huilloq was probably the slowest week of my life, but the second week was one of the fastest. I started getting used to the rhythm of life there. I gave up on trying to read while I was there and just spent as much time as I could harvesting potatoes, going out with the kids to graze their animals, and exploring. The last few days I was there I stayed with families who live higher up in the mountains (a 45 minute to hour-long walk all steep uphill) and just spent all day there without coming back down to the road. I made some new friends; among them a 17-year-old girl who spoke Spanish because she’d spent a couple years working as a domestic servant in Lima, and the former president of the community, who is just about the nicest guy you could ever meet. I asked if I could stay with him in his house for one night, because I wanted to get to know his family. Of course, he wasn’t going to say he didn’t have room. I ended up sleeping on a bed made of wooden planks, in the kitchen, with the guinea pigs. It actually wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought.
Most of my best friends in Huilloq were 9- or 10-year-old boys. Mostly because they’re old enough to speak good Spanish but young enough not to have many responsibilities of have left the community. I was reunited with my old friend Rosalío, who I gave a little magnetic checkers game. I taught him how to play and he beat me on about the 4th game. Another family I stayed with higher up had a TV and DVD player, so with a 10-year-old boy named José I got a chance to watch such classics as “The Life of Jesus” in Quechua, and a show called “Los cholitos,” which I have no idea how to translate, but was basically a comedy show in Spanish involving two guys dressed in traditional clothing, one of which was a midget, performing slapstick humor and generally making good-natured fun of indigenous culture.
The last few days I was there I ate the most boiled potatoes I have ever eaten in my life. Either the entire meal would consist of a bowl of boiled potatoes, or I would be served a bowl of boiled potatoes as an appetizer before being served a huge bowl of potato soup or french fries with white rice. I learned an important life lesson: the point of not being able to eat any more potatoes comes well before the point of not being able to eat anymore. One of the most exciting moments during my entire stay in Huilloq was when someone brought out a bottle of ketchup, which happened only once.
I was surprised at how much I actually learned relating to my independent study topic in the short time I was there, even after spending the majority of the time harvesting potatoes. I don’t even want to begin talking about it because I won’t know where to stop, but if you’re interested you can request a copy of my 30-page paper. :-P
I’m now back in Ollantaytambo, where this journey began, where the last week of the program, evaluation week, is being held. After that I’m going back to Cuzco to figure out exactly what I’m going to be doing for the rest of the time I’m here (right now, my flight back is scheduled for the end of July). It will probably be some combination of traveling and volunteer work. I’ll be living most of the time with the sister of my friend the former president of Huilloq, who has a little store near the center of Cuzco and a little room for me behind the store. It sounds like a good compromise between living with a family and living on my own, and should be a lot of fun.
ISP 4/26/07
Hello all,
Well, I have survived the first half (almost) of the independent study period, and what an adventure it´s been. The first few days I was in Cuzco, supposedly researching for my paper but actually spending more time not finding any of the books I was looking for and dealing with library bureacracy (you can´t take books out of the library at all, and just to look at a book you need a library card or a passport). Then once I got to Huilloq I ended up kind of changing my topic again. But I won´t get into that yet.
The first few days I spent in Huilloq were definitely a learning experience. The main thing I learned was that spending a couple nights in a rural community with a group of English-speaking friends is one thing; staying a few nights alone there, with the one community phone broken, cold nights, fleas in your bed, and in a place where half the people don´t even speak your second language let alone your first, is quite another. OK, so it wasn´t as bad as I´m making it sound, but for the first few days there I was in a semi-panic the majority of the time. Then after three nights I took a ride down to Ollantaytambo (civilization!) in a van packed full of weavers who were headed to an artesanal festival, and immediately checked into a hostel upon arrival. I called Irma, the academic director, complaining about the fleas and the broken phone, and she found me a family to stay with in Ollantaytambo so that I could go up to Huilloq during the day.
But after a night with the family (who are really nice) I got my courage back up, and headed back to Huilloq armed with a bottle of highly toxic flea-killing spray (I´ve been told what they have in the beds is probably not bedbugs but fleas--which makes sense considering that in my new Huilloq family´s house, my room is seperated from the guinea pigs´room only by a tarp, which does virtually nothing to stop the little rodents from coming and going as they please). To get there, I had to go to the plaza in Ollantaytambo at 7:00 in the morning to catch a van full of schoolteachers. It was PACKED. And by packed I mean that I was somehow sitting on my backpack in a six-inch isle, and some people were sitting on the roof, for the entire half-hour duration of the ride. I recommend this experience to anyone.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I decided to change my project topic to something having to do with the cooperative of artesans (meaning weavers) in Huilloq and how the women participate in it. I´ve run into a few complications in terms of interviewing people. First, there´s the fact that hardly any of the women speak Spanish, and I´ve learned the hard way that it´s better to find an interpreter in advance than to just count on one showing up. The second complication is that it´s harvesting season. That means that for the past few days everyone in the village (men, women, children, everyone) has been out in the fields digging up potatoes all day. They go out at 8:00 in the morning, dig up potatoes, take a break to drink some chicha and chew some coca leaves, dig up some more potatoes, boil some potatoes over a fire in the field for lunch, and dig up some more potatoes.Then they put the potatoes in huge sacks and tie them to donkeys to take them back down to their houses.
I´ve made some progress on my project, but I´ve mostly just spent the past few days digging up potatoes. Which is actually an amazing experience. The work itself isn´t actually that hard (other than the strain on your back from being bent over most of the time) and there´s something incredibly satisfying about digging in the ground and finding enough food to last your family for months (eating potatoes for every meal isn´t really as bad as it sounds, but it turns out if I had arrived a couple weeks later I would be eating ´chuño´ for every meal instead--dehydrated potatoes). When they say they´re digging up potatoes they use the word ´excavate´, so I kind of feel like an archaeologist searching for some lost city. For my English major friends, it´s exactly like the Seamus Heaney poem 'Digging', except without the Irish accent. I´ve also been honored to participate in an age-old game called ´papa o piedra?´ ('potato or rock?') and another one called 'tira la papa a la lliqlla' ('throw the potato on the carrying blanket'), which is a little like basketball with a few minor differences.
I've been staying with a different family that I stayed with before, one that is slightly more equipped to host tourists (meaning that I have my own room) but since I really miss my old family and they keep asking me to stay with them, I'm going to stay with them for a couple nights and see how it goes. My host brothers from that family are highly amused by my tape recorder, and I've gotten some great recordings of them singing songs in Quechua. Unfortunately my favorite brother, Rosalio, goes to school in Urabamba during the week, but he should be back for the weekend.
This morning after breakfast I walked from Huilloq back down to Ollantaytambo, which took 2 and a half hours but was absolutely gorgeous. I'll be taking care of some business here during the day and then heading back to Huilloq tomorrow morning with the teachers.
Well, I have survived the first half (almost) of the independent study period, and what an adventure it´s been. The first few days I was in Cuzco, supposedly researching for my paper but actually spending more time not finding any of the books I was looking for and dealing with library bureacracy (you can´t take books out of the library at all, and just to look at a book you need a library card or a passport). Then once I got to Huilloq I ended up kind of changing my topic again. But I won´t get into that yet.
The first few days I spent in Huilloq were definitely a learning experience. The main thing I learned was that spending a couple nights in a rural community with a group of English-speaking friends is one thing; staying a few nights alone there, with the one community phone broken, cold nights, fleas in your bed, and in a place where half the people don´t even speak your second language let alone your first, is quite another. OK, so it wasn´t as bad as I´m making it sound, but for the first few days there I was in a semi-panic the majority of the time. Then after three nights I took a ride down to Ollantaytambo (civilization!) in a van packed full of weavers who were headed to an artesanal festival, and immediately checked into a hostel upon arrival. I called Irma, the academic director, complaining about the fleas and the broken phone, and she found me a family to stay with in Ollantaytambo so that I could go up to Huilloq during the day.
But after a night with the family (who are really nice) I got my courage back up, and headed back to Huilloq armed with a bottle of highly toxic flea-killing spray (I´ve been told what they have in the beds is probably not bedbugs but fleas--which makes sense considering that in my new Huilloq family´s house, my room is seperated from the guinea pigs´room only by a tarp, which does virtually nothing to stop the little rodents from coming and going as they please). To get there, I had to go to the plaza in Ollantaytambo at 7:00 in the morning to catch a van full of schoolteachers. It was PACKED. And by packed I mean that I was somehow sitting on my backpack in a six-inch isle, and some people were sitting on the roof, for the entire half-hour duration of the ride. I recommend this experience to anyone.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I decided to change my project topic to something having to do with the cooperative of artesans (meaning weavers) in Huilloq and how the women participate in it. I´ve run into a few complications in terms of interviewing people. First, there´s the fact that hardly any of the women speak Spanish, and I´ve learned the hard way that it´s better to find an interpreter in advance than to just count on one showing up. The second complication is that it´s harvesting season. That means that for the past few days everyone in the village (men, women, children, everyone) has been out in the fields digging up potatoes all day. They go out at 8:00 in the morning, dig up potatoes, take a break to drink some chicha and chew some coca leaves, dig up some more potatoes, boil some potatoes over a fire in the field for lunch, and dig up some more potatoes.Then they put the potatoes in huge sacks and tie them to donkeys to take them back down to their houses.
I´ve made some progress on my project, but I´ve mostly just spent the past few days digging up potatoes. Which is actually an amazing experience. The work itself isn´t actually that hard (other than the strain on your back from being bent over most of the time) and there´s something incredibly satisfying about digging in the ground and finding enough food to last your family for months (eating potatoes for every meal isn´t really as bad as it sounds, but it turns out if I had arrived a couple weeks later I would be eating ´chuño´ for every meal instead--dehydrated potatoes). When they say they´re digging up potatoes they use the word ´excavate´, so I kind of feel like an archaeologist searching for some lost city. For my English major friends, it´s exactly like the Seamus Heaney poem 'Digging', except without the Irish accent. I´ve also been honored to participate in an age-old game called ´papa o piedra?´ ('potato or rock?') and another one called 'tira la papa a la lliqlla' ('throw the potato on the carrying blanket'), which is a little like basketball with a few minor differences.
I've been staying with a different family that I stayed with before, one that is slightly more equipped to host tourists (meaning that I have my own room) but since I really miss my old family and they keep asking me to stay with them, I'm going to stay with them for a couple nights and see how it goes. My host brothers from that family are highly amused by my tape recorder, and I've gotten some great recordings of them singing songs in Quechua. Unfortunately my favorite brother, Rosalio, goes to school in Urabamba during the week, but he should be back for the weekend.
This morning after breakfast I walked from Huilloq back down to Ollantaytambo, which took 2 and a half hours but was absolutely gorgeous. I'll be taking care of some business here during the day and then heading back to Huilloq tomorrow morning with the teachers.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Sibayo, Colca Canyon, 4/3-4/8
From Arequipa we took a bus to Colca Canyon, which is the second deepest canyon in the world (the biggest is the one right next to the Colca Canyon). Our group was split up into four villages, two agricultural communities and two communities that specialize in alpaca farming. I was one of the lucky ones that got to stay in the alpaca zone. The town I stayed in, called Sibayo, has a population of only a few hundred people, and is basically one dirt road lined with houses, a plaza with a huge stone church and a llama sculpture in the center, and some Incan ruins, surrounded by mountains which are used for growing a variety of crops as well as grazing animals, and a beautiful view of the Colca River. There was a cell phone tower being built in the town just as we were arriving, but the one place in the town with internet access was closed all week for Eater celebrations, which was probably better for me anyway.
Again, the family I staid with was wonderful. My host mom, Marleni, was 29, and has two adorable little kids, Gonzalo (4) and Anghi (a girl, 3). They are both quite rambunctious little kids, especially Gonzalo, and Marleni constantly sighs to herself, “Estes chiquitos”, whenever the kids do they do things like play-fight, spill their food, or cry for apparently no reason. Marleni used to be a teacher, but since she had kids she’s just concentrated on spinning yarn from alpaca wool and knitting hats to sell in Chivay, a tourist town a couple hours drive down the mountain. My host dad, Abel, is an elementary school teacher in Chivay, so I didn’t meet him until a couple days into the visit. Abel’s parents also live in the house, but I didn’t see much of them because they were usually out tending to the family’s donkeys, which are kept on the mountains. Marleni consistently referred to her father-in-law as “el caballero,” which I never ceased to find funny.
It was interesting to compare my family in Huilloq to this family, which seemed to be one rung up on the social ladder. The first couple days before Abel came home Marleni cooked over a fire (maybe just to entertain me), but the family also has a small gas stove, which Marleni said they only use when they’re in a hurry. From what I observed though, they actually use it the majority of the time. Their house was small but really nice—the center part is open air, where they have a sink with running water, an outhouse, a small garden, and some open space where Abel and I played soccer one day. Then there are closed off rooms surrounding the open space—two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a dining room. It’s as much space as 6 people really need, and I can’t really think of any good reason why houses in the US aren’t designed like that—who wants to sit inside all day anyway? There is also electric lighting in the closed off rooms and a small TV in one of the bedrooms. Like any good Peruvians, the family especially enjoys watching soccer games and the beloved soap opera “Pasiones prohibidas” (although Abel insisted that he really doesn’t like that show all that much).
Marleni and Abel both speak Quechua, but hardly ever to each other, although they do speak it with Abel’s parents. As for the kids, I can pretty confidently say that I speak more Quechua than they do, which is pretty strange considering that Abel’s mom hardly speaks any Spanish. It’s a little sad to think that the kids can’t even communicate with their grandmother, but that’s just one of the things that comes with modernization, I guess. During the week Marleni drops the kids off at a daycare center called the “wawawasi,” which is a wonderful word meaning “house of children” in Quechua.
My family doesn’t actually own any llamas or alpacas (only donkeys) and the only time we ate alpaca meat was in its dried form, called “charqui” (it’s where the English word “jerky” comes from). Marleni explained to me that they don’t eat llama meat very much because for some reason when you buy llama meat you have to buy the whole llama, and it’s really expensive. In fact, we didn’t eat very much meat at all. One day we had trout, which Marleni told me is the only kind of fish that lives in the river ever since the species was introduced from the North America and ate all the smaller fish. On top of that, because of overfishing, now you can only get really small trout. The only other meat we ate was a little bit of chicken in one of the soups, which Marleni told me had come from Lima. Marleni’s cooking, I have to admit, was nothing to brag about, and usually her soups just consisted of some potatoes, shredded carrots, and fava beans thrown in a pot of water, sometimes along with some overcooked noodles, and a little salt for flavoring. She always filled my bowl up so much that I could hardly eat out of it without spilling it all over the place first, and every time I turned down seconds she’d say, “You guys don’t eat a lot, do you?” (“you guys” referring to me and the other SIT students she’s hosted in the past), despite the fact that she never ate as much food as I did.
My 6 days in Sibayo were incredibly quiet and relaxing. Every day I went to bed between 7:30 and 8:00 and woke up around 4, which is actually my preferred sleeping schedule, and probably the routine I would stick by at home if I could get away with it. Days were filled with cooking, walking to the “charkas” (fields) to pick potatoes and haba beans, long afternoon naps, playing with the kids, and having interesting conversations with Abel, who liked to ask me things like, “Why do you think September 11th happened?”, “What do you think about the president?”, “How much does it cost to get to the United States—legally?”, and “What happens if you get married in Peru?” These questions and others never failed to lead to interesting conversations. Luckily, Abel has a very good sense of humor. Like the kids in Huilloq, he was fascinated by my contact lenses. One day we were digging up potatoes and I spotted one that he hadn’t seen. “I need to go put in my contact lenses,” he quipped.
Other highlights of the trip included going to two different “estancias” (I don’t know what the English translation is, but it’s where they keep the llamas and alpacas). The first one we had to walk to, so we left at 5:30 in the morning and walked an hour and a half straight up a mountain (an exertion which, combined with the altitude, tired me out so much that I didn’t feel like doing anything else for the rest of the day). We were lucky (or unlucky) enough to witness the killing of a llama for meat: first they caught it with a lasso, then tied its feet together and slit its throat (it was hard to watch, but I’m sure it was nothing compared to Jenny’s experience in her family when she was asked to help with the killing of 20 sheep). Another day we took a bus to a different estancia, where we got to help with the sheering of an alpaca. There is also a natural hot springs about a 20-minute walk from Sibayo, where we went to take showers every so often, and about an hour walk in the other direction there are a few mummies scattered around from old Incan burials. There is even a guy whose job it is to guard the mummies and keep the path clear from Mondays to Fridays. When Abby and I and our host moms arrived at the site of the mummies, our host moms had a special surprise for us: they had brought along traditional clothes to dress us up in and take pictures. We walked back to the town in our new outfits, and so for one day we looked like bona fide Quechua people—or more likely, really lame tourists.
We were lucky enough to be in Colca Canyon for the “Semana Santa”, the holy week leading up to Easter, in which they honor the birth, passion, and resurrection of Christ, all in one week. My family doesn’t participate in all the same celebrations that the majority of the town does, because they recently converted from Catholicism to Evangelical Protestantism. When I asked Marleni why she and her husband had converted, she said that her husband’s parents were evangelicals, and she and her husband had been sympathizers for awhile, but they both decided to get baptized when her husband developed a bad drinking problem. Since he was baptized last year, she says he hasn’t had a drop of alcohol, and has treated her a lot better.
There was nothing really going on until Viernes Santa (Holy Friday), the morning of which I had an interesting conversation about religion with Abel. When people ask me what religion I am here I usually just say Jewish and leave it at that, because it seems like the closest I can come to something that people might not consider devil-worshipping. First Abel asked me to explain my religion, which was a little difficult since I really don’t know very much about Judaism and on top of that I couldn’t remember how to say “messiah” in Spanish (on a side note, it was also fun trying to explain to my family what we do in the United States to celebrate Easter: “Pues…hay un conejo muy grande que esconde huevos colorados, y a veces hay dulces adentro de los huevos…”). Then he asked me the ultimate question: “Do you believe in God?” I lied and said “yes, of course,” thinking that a much easier answer than trying to explain agnosticism. To my relief, Abel appeared to have overlooked the fact that my people killed Christ (which is probably the only thing he would know about Jews, now that I think about it) and was satisfied that I believed in God, saying that all the religions are different paths leading to the same God. After breakfast the family went to watch TV—all day there were movies on about the passion of the Christ, which everyone claimed to enjoy immensely. The traditional meal for Viernes Santa is called “los 12 platos” (the 12 dishes), but Marleni told me we were just going to have 6 or 7 plates because 12 is way too much to eat. When I told that to Abby’s family, they laughed, saying that we had to eat 12 dishes, it was ridiculous to have 7. However, it turned out that both of our families only ate 5 plates, which was fine with my stomach. Later in the day a couple of Jehovah’s witnesses stopped by, and since I was the closest to the door at the time, I had the good fortune of talking to the guy myself. First he asked me if I already had a religion. “Yes?” I responded, hoping that that was the correct answer. “Oh good,” he said, with a big smile on his face, “But here’s a question for you: If there’s only one Bible, why are there so many different religions?” That was too stupid of a question to merit a response, so I just took his propaganda and thanked him.
At 7:00 was the Catholic mass, which I went to with Abby’s family because my family had their own mass at the Evangelical church. The mass was pretty fascinating. It began with a woman leading the group in at least 100 Hail Marys (or at least I think they wwere Hail Marys, but I could be wrong since I know nothing about Catholocism), over a loudspeaker with a horrible crackling sound system. Then sheets were handed out with religious songs in a mixture of Quechua and Spanish. Some of the titles of the songs were pretty humorous, notably one song that was called “Apu Jesusllay.” “Apu” is a general term in Quechua for a divinity—they often call the mountains “apus.” So “Apu Jesusllay” roughly translates to “My Little Jesus God.” After singing a few songs in a mixture of Spanish and Quechua, a couple of little girls got up and read aloud a long biblical passage about the passion of the Christ. The priest, who was white and had a bit of a French accent, read all of Jesus’s lines. Again I felt a little awkward about the whole Jews killing Jesus thing. Later in the service they lit 14 candles in a triangle shape, and the priest went over the “7 words of Jesus” (which I had never heard of before). Every time he finished explaining one of the 7 words, two of the candles were put out. Once that was over, a bunch of guys dressed in white suits with white scarves around their heads and black glasses came and took a figure of Jesus down from the cross in the front of the church. They put Jesus in a carrying thing (man, my vocabulary to describe this is really lacking) made of flowers, and a handful of men carried him and the Virgin Mary on a procession around the town plaza. Abby’s host mom told us that later in the night there would be whippings (to purge the men of their sins) but that they had to wait until all the kids went home to do it because it’s too “horrible” for them to watch. Abby and I agreed that it would be a little awkward to wait around to see people being whipped, so instead we went home and went to bed.
On Domingo Santo (Holy Sunday) I went to masses in both the Catholic and Evangelical churches. For some reason, everyone in the town calls Catholic mass “misa”, but the Evangelical mass is called “culto,” which literally translated to “cult.” At first I thought the Catholics were just calling it that to be mean, but Marleni confirmed that it was the correct term. It was really interesting to see the difference between the two churches. The Evangelical church is much smaller and was founded only 35 years or so ago. Unlike the Catholic church, there were no fancy images or adornments inside, only one biblical passage painted on the back wall: “Venid a mi todos los que estais trabajados y cargados, y yo os haré descansar.” –San Mateo 11.28. (“Come to me all that are overworked and burdened, and I will give you rest.”) The Evangelical church also had a much more communal atmosphere. The pastor was from the town, and switched freely back and forth between Spanish and Quechua during his sermon. Everyone had their own marked up copy of the bible, so everyone was able to follow along when passages were read. Abel’s father, since he is one of the oldest living members of the church, led a few prayers in Quechua, and at one point even started crying. Behind the pastor there was actually a little band made up of Abel (on guitar) and a few other church members, which provided the music for the praise songs that were sung in Spanish but in a rhythm and style of singing that made them sound almost like traditional huaynos. Other songs were also sung in Quechua.
After the service I met the pastor, who was very excited to have me there and also very enthusiastic about telling me about how the Catholics worship idols and that really there is only one spirit, and that everyone has to connect with the spirit through their own personal revelation. That’s why evangelicals aren’t baptized as babies, like Catholics. I also had the opportunity to see a baptism of a married couple. The congregation went down to the river and first read from the Bible, then sang a few songs in Quechua. Then the couple was dunked into the river while the women in the congregation sang traditional-sounding songs in Quechua. Afterwards, everyone went back up to the church to share a meal that the women had all helped to prepare. We all sat outside to eat—it was a delicious soup followed by rice pudding. Although I find it a little sad that evangelicals aren’t allowed to participate in traditional dances (or drink alcohol), I have to admit the Evangelical church seemed a lot more friendly and communal than the huge, dark Catholic church that made me think of the Spanish conquest.
It was hard leaving my family after living with them for six days—“Whenever the students leave, we’re very sad, and there’s silence in the house” Marleni told me. But I joked that I would come back some day on my honeymoon after marrying a Peruvian man. I hope I do get a chance to go back there sometime.
Again, the family I staid with was wonderful. My host mom, Marleni, was 29, and has two adorable little kids, Gonzalo (4) and Anghi (a girl, 3). They are both quite rambunctious little kids, especially Gonzalo, and Marleni constantly sighs to herself, “Estes chiquitos”, whenever the kids do they do things like play-fight, spill their food, or cry for apparently no reason. Marleni used to be a teacher, but since she had kids she’s just concentrated on spinning yarn from alpaca wool and knitting hats to sell in Chivay, a tourist town a couple hours drive down the mountain. My host dad, Abel, is an elementary school teacher in Chivay, so I didn’t meet him until a couple days into the visit. Abel’s parents also live in the house, but I didn’t see much of them because they were usually out tending to the family’s donkeys, which are kept on the mountains. Marleni consistently referred to her father-in-law as “el caballero,” which I never ceased to find funny.
It was interesting to compare my family in Huilloq to this family, which seemed to be one rung up on the social ladder. The first couple days before Abel came home Marleni cooked over a fire (maybe just to entertain me), but the family also has a small gas stove, which Marleni said they only use when they’re in a hurry. From what I observed though, they actually use it the majority of the time. Their house was small but really nice—the center part is open air, where they have a sink with running water, an outhouse, a small garden, and some open space where Abel and I played soccer one day. Then there are closed off rooms surrounding the open space—two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a dining room. It’s as much space as 6 people really need, and I can’t really think of any good reason why houses in the US aren’t designed like that—who wants to sit inside all day anyway? There is also electric lighting in the closed off rooms and a small TV in one of the bedrooms. Like any good Peruvians, the family especially enjoys watching soccer games and the beloved soap opera “Pasiones prohibidas” (although Abel insisted that he really doesn’t like that show all that much).
Marleni and Abel both speak Quechua, but hardly ever to each other, although they do speak it with Abel’s parents. As for the kids, I can pretty confidently say that I speak more Quechua than they do, which is pretty strange considering that Abel’s mom hardly speaks any Spanish. It’s a little sad to think that the kids can’t even communicate with their grandmother, but that’s just one of the things that comes with modernization, I guess. During the week Marleni drops the kids off at a daycare center called the “wawawasi,” which is a wonderful word meaning “house of children” in Quechua.
My family doesn’t actually own any llamas or alpacas (only donkeys) and the only time we ate alpaca meat was in its dried form, called “charqui” (it’s where the English word “jerky” comes from). Marleni explained to me that they don’t eat llama meat very much because for some reason when you buy llama meat you have to buy the whole llama, and it’s really expensive. In fact, we didn’t eat very much meat at all. One day we had trout, which Marleni told me is the only kind of fish that lives in the river ever since the species was introduced from the North America and ate all the smaller fish. On top of that, because of overfishing, now you can only get really small trout. The only other meat we ate was a little bit of chicken in one of the soups, which Marleni told me had come from Lima. Marleni’s cooking, I have to admit, was nothing to brag about, and usually her soups just consisted of some potatoes, shredded carrots, and fava beans thrown in a pot of water, sometimes along with some overcooked noodles, and a little salt for flavoring. She always filled my bowl up so much that I could hardly eat out of it without spilling it all over the place first, and every time I turned down seconds she’d say, “You guys don’t eat a lot, do you?” (“you guys” referring to me and the other SIT students she’s hosted in the past), despite the fact that she never ate as much food as I did.
My 6 days in Sibayo were incredibly quiet and relaxing. Every day I went to bed between 7:30 and 8:00 and woke up around 4, which is actually my preferred sleeping schedule, and probably the routine I would stick by at home if I could get away with it. Days were filled with cooking, walking to the “charkas” (fields) to pick potatoes and haba beans, long afternoon naps, playing with the kids, and having interesting conversations with Abel, who liked to ask me things like, “Why do you think September 11th happened?”, “What do you think about the president?”, “How much does it cost to get to the United States—legally?”, and “What happens if you get married in Peru?” These questions and others never failed to lead to interesting conversations. Luckily, Abel has a very good sense of humor. Like the kids in Huilloq, he was fascinated by my contact lenses. One day we were digging up potatoes and I spotted one that he hadn’t seen. “I need to go put in my contact lenses,” he quipped.
Other highlights of the trip included going to two different “estancias” (I don’t know what the English translation is, but it’s where they keep the llamas and alpacas). The first one we had to walk to, so we left at 5:30 in the morning and walked an hour and a half straight up a mountain (an exertion which, combined with the altitude, tired me out so much that I didn’t feel like doing anything else for the rest of the day). We were lucky (or unlucky) enough to witness the killing of a llama for meat: first they caught it with a lasso, then tied its feet together and slit its throat (it was hard to watch, but I’m sure it was nothing compared to Jenny’s experience in her family when she was asked to help with the killing of 20 sheep). Another day we took a bus to a different estancia, where we got to help with the sheering of an alpaca. There is also a natural hot springs about a 20-minute walk from Sibayo, where we went to take showers every so often, and about an hour walk in the other direction there are a few mummies scattered around from old Incan burials. There is even a guy whose job it is to guard the mummies and keep the path clear from Mondays to Fridays. When Abby and I and our host moms arrived at the site of the mummies, our host moms had a special surprise for us: they had brought along traditional clothes to dress us up in and take pictures. We walked back to the town in our new outfits, and so for one day we looked like bona fide Quechua people—or more likely, really lame tourists.
We were lucky enough to be in Colca Canyon for the “Semana Santa”, the holy week leading up to Easter, in which they honor the birth, passion, and resurrection of Christ, all in one week. My family doesn’t participate in all the same celebrations that the majority of the town does, because they recently converted from Catholicism to Evangelical Protestantism. When I asked Marleni why she and her husband had converted, she said that her husband’s parents were evangelicals, and she and her husband had been sympathizers for awhile, but they both decided to get baptized when her husband developed a bad drinking problem. Since he was baptized last year, she says he hasn’t had a drop of alcohol, and has treated her a lot better.
There was nothing really going on until Viernes Santa (Holy Friday), the morning of which I had an interesting conversation about religion with Abel. When people ask me what religion I am here I usually just say Jewish and leave it at that, because it seems like the closest I can come to something that people might not consider devil-worshipping. First Abel asked me to explain my religion, which was a little difficult since I really don’t know very much about Judaism and on top of that I couldn’t remember how to say “messiah” in Spanish (on a side note, it was also fun trying to explain to my family what we do in the United States to celebrate Easter: “Pues…hay un conejo muy grande que esconde huevos colorados, y a veces hay dulces adentro de los huevos…”). Then he asked me the ultimate question: “Do you believe in God?” I lied and said “yes, of course,” thinking that a much easier answer than trying to explain agnosticism. To my relief, Abel appeared to have overlooked the fact that my people killed Christ (which is probably the only thing he would know about Jews, now that I think about it) and was satisfied that I believed in God, saying that all the religions are different paths leading to the same God. After breakfast the family went to watch TV—all day there were movies on about the passion of the Christ, which everyone claimed to enjoy immensely. The traditional meal for Viernes Santa is called “los 12 platos” (the 12 dishes), but Marleni told me we were just going to have 6 or 7 plates because 12 is way too much to eat. When I told that to Abby’s family, they laughed, saying that we had to eat 12 dishes, it was ridiculous to have 7. However, it turned out that both of our families only ate 5 plates, which was fine with my stomach. Later in the day a couple of Jehovah’s witnesses stopped by, and since I was the closest to the door at the time, I had the good fortune of talking to the guy myself. First he asked me if I already had a religion. “Yes?” I responded, hoping that that was the correct answer. “Oh good,” he said, with a big smile on his face, “But here’s a question for you: If there’s only one Bible, why are there so many different religions?” That was too stupid of a question to merit a response, so I just took his propaganda and thanked him.
At 7:00 was the Catholic mass, which I went to with Abby’s family because my family had their own mass at the Evangelical church. The mass was pretty fascinating. It began with a woman leading the group in at least 100 Hail Marys (or at least I think they wwere Hail Marys, but I could be wrong since I know nothing about Catholocism), over a loudspeaker with a horrible crackling sound system. Then sheets were handed out with religious songs in a mixture of Quechua and Spanish. Some of the titles of the songs were pretty humorous, notably one song that was called “Apu Jesusllay.” “Apu” is a general term in Quechua for a divinity—they often call the mountains “apus.” So “Apu Jesusllay” roughly translates to “My Little Jesus God.” After singing a few songs in a mixture of Spanish and Quechua, a couple of little girls got up and read aloud a long biblical passage about the passion of the Christ. The priest, who was white and had a bit of a French accent, read all of Jesus’s lines. Again I felt a little awkward about the whole Jews killing Jesus thing. Later in the service they lit 14 candles in a triangle shape, and the priest went over the “7 words of Jesus” (which I had never heard of before). Every time he finished explaining one of the 7 words, two of the candles were put out. Once that was over, a bunch of guys dressed in white suits with white scarves around their heads and black glasses came and took a figure of Jesus down from the cross in the front of the church. They put Jesus in a carrying thing (man, my vocabulary to describe this is really lacking) made of flowers, and a handful of men carried him and the Virgin Mary on a procession around the town plaza. Abby’s host mom told us that later in the night there would be whippings (to purge the men of their sins) but that they had to wait until all the kids went home to do it because it’s too “horrible” for them to watch. Abby and I agreed that it would be a little awkward to wait around to see people being whipped, so instead we went home and went to bed.
On Domingo Santo (Holy Sunday) I went to masses in both the Catholic and Evangelical churches. For some reason, everyone in the town calls Catholic mass “misa”, but the Evangelical mass is called “culto,” which literally translated to “cult.” At first I thought the Catholics were just calling it that to be mean, but Marleni confirmed that it was the correct term. It was really interesting to see the difference between the two churches. The Evangelical church is much smaller and was founded only 35 years or so ago. Unlike the Catholic church, there were no fancy images or adornments inside, only one biblical passage painted on the back wall: “Venid a mi todos los que estais trabajados y cargados, y yo os haré descansar.” –San Mateo 11.28. (“Come to me all that are overworked and burdened, and I will give you rest.”) The Evangelical church also had a much more communal atmosphere. The pastor was from the town, and switched freely back and forth between Spanish and Quechua during his sermon. Everyone had their own marked up copy of the bible, so everyone was able to follow along when passages were read. Abel’s father, since he is one of the oldest living members of the church, led a few prayers in Quechua, and at one point even started crying. Behind the pastor there was actually a little band made up of Abel (on guitar) and a few other church members, which provided the music for the praise songs that were sung in Spanish but in a rhythm and style of singing that made them sound almost like traditional huaynos. Other songs were also sung in Quechua.
After the service I met the pastor, who was very excited to have me there and also very enthusiastic about telling me about how the Catholics worship idols and that really there is only one spirit, and that everyone has to connect with the spirit through their own personal revelation. That’s why evangelicals aren’t baptized as babies, like Catholics. I also had the opportunity to see a baptism of a married couple. The congregation went down to the river and first read from the Bible, then sang a few songs in Quechua. Then the couple was dunked into the river while the women in the congregation sang traditional-sounding songs in Quechua. Afterwards, everyone went back up to the church to share a meal that the women had all helped to prepare. We all sat outside to eat—it was a delicious soup followed by rice pudding. Although I find it a little sad that evangelicals aren’t allowed to participate in traditional dances (or drink alcohol), I have to admit the Evangelical church seemed a lot more friendly and communal than the huge, dark Catholic church that made me think of the Spanish conquest.
It was hard leaving my family after living with them for six days—“Whenever the students leave, we’re very sad, and there’s silence in the house” Marleni told me. But I joked that I would come back some day on my honeymoon after marrying a Peruvian man. I hope I do get a chance to go back there sometime.
Lima, 3/23-3/30
As I wrote that title something popped into my head from Cuzco life, something so run-of-the-mill in that city that it never even occurred to me to write about it. In fact, you could say it is the soundtrack of my life and of everyone who lives in Cuzco, and what it is is a guy with a loudspeaker selling fruit door-to-door. Well, I suppose it's not just one guy, but since I've never actually seen one of these fruit sellers and have only heard the loudspeaker monotone that carries for blocks, I imagine it as some larger-than-life omnipresent being, who sits in his perch in the sky saying "plátano plátano, manzana naranja papaya plátano, lima lima naranja lima dulce, mango papaya naranja plátano..."
Lima actually seems like a pretty nice city. It's a pleasant surprise after continuously being told by Cuzqueñans about how much of a shithole it is, but I might be getting that impression only because our group is staying in a hostel in Miraflores, which is the richest, most touristy part of the city. What strikes me most about Lima is its faded quality. By this I mean that, although many of the buildings are painted bright colors, there always seems to be a light mist covering the whole city that is barely noticeable but just gives you the slight impression of being in a cloud. The outskirts of Lima start to feel very desert-like because of the color of the sand, but on the coast there are some beautiful beaches. It's always around 70 degrees and humid, and it never ever rains, even though it looks like it's going to about 50% of the time.
There's definitely a lot to do--Cuzco is tiny in comparison with Lima, which is home to 8 million people, a full third of the population of Peru. One thing that they don't have in Cuzco is good movie theaters, so yesterday Raquel and I decided to take advantage of our week here to go to the movies. We both wanted to see something in Spanish, and naively supposed that anything with a title in Spanish would probably be dubbed into Spanish. So we chose one called "La Película Época Loca" ("The Crazy Epic Movie"?) which neither of us had heard of. For those of you fortunate enough not to have heard of it either, it is basically a spoof of various blockbuster movies and MTV shows, all thrown together in one movie. Needless to say it was totally ridiculous, but the best irony of the whole situation was that we couldn't have picked a movie more chock-full of American culture to see in Peru. Among the more uncomfortable moments were when one of the characters made a comment about how the White Bitch (a play off the "White Witch" from Narnia) doesn't let gay people get married--the audience let out kind of a collective befuddled groan. Then there were a handful of seemingly non-sequiter lines like "I just saved a lot of money on my car insurance" that had to have been lost on the Peruvian audience. The fact that this movie is even shown in Peru tells you how much of our culture is exported. Oh well--I for one laughed so hard in one part that I almost died from choking on soda.
One cool thing about Lima is the Afroperuvian culture--in the era when Peru had African slaves, they were mostly concentrated here on the coast, while people in rural areas used indigenous people to do their work. There is nothing more fun to watch than Afroperuvian music and dance, and the first night we were in Lima we got to see an amazing Afroperuvian band. Then there’s “chicha” and “technohuayno” music, developed by migrants to Lima from rural areas, which is like an electric version of traditional Quechua music, performed in neon-lighted pubs by night and circulated primarily through pirating (unfortunately I didn’t get to see any live music of this kind, but it was interesting enough to put it in here). Another fun fact: the inhabitants of shantytowns surrounding the central part of Lima make up 80% of the city’s overall population—mostly immigrants from the poor rural areas of Peru.
On the second day in Lima, we visited a theater group called Yuyachkani ("I remember" in Quechua), which is also a social activist group that uses theater as a mode of protest. We saw two plays by them, both related to the dark era in Peru's recent history when the country was torn by violence between Sendero Luminoso (a Maoist guerrilla group that claimed to represent indigenous rights but killed mostly indigenous people) and then the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori in the 90's. They were both really good (the theater productions, not the violence). Then we had a mask-acting workshop at the same place in which we were taught how to develop a character working from a mask, and also the movements to act out that character. It was really, really fun.
Another day we visited Chinatown in Lima. The Chinese have brought many things to Peru, the most important of which, obviously, is food—all over Lima you will see restaurants that specialize in “chifa,” which is the Peruvian version of Chinese food. It’s quite delicious, and actually about as similar to actual Chinese food as any “Chinese” food you will get in the states, but the difference is that we have the nerve to call ours Chinese food whereas Peruvians are smart enough to give it a different name. The Chinese migrant population is an interesting topic of conversation considering that in Peru (and in most other countries in Latin America, I’ve heard) anyone who has eyes that are even a little slanted or narrow automatically gains the nickname “Chino.” As a result of this, I estimate that at least ¼ of the Peruvian population is named “Chino,” considering that 10% of the population is actually made up of Chinese descendents, and more on top of that come from other Asian countries like Japan and Korea. However, the word “chino” is never actually derogatory, to the extent that even non-chinese Asian immigrants even refer to themselves in some contexts as “chino.” For example, the former president/dictator Alberto Fujimori, who was of Japanese descent, had a campaign chant composed of the words “Chino, Chino, Chino Chino Chino” and accompanied by a techno-huayno beat. There’s an interesting comment on multi-culturalism for you.
And now for an amusing night-life anecdote: one night Raquel and I went exploring around the beach (which is only a few blocks from our hostel in Miraflores—yes, we spent a fair amount of time after classes on the beach, haha) and when we got hungry, we visited a street that we call “Pizza Street”, because it is chock full of cheap pizza restaurants (the pizza in Peru is decent, but not “the best in the world”, as I’ve heard Cuzqueñans claim). We chose a little joint with outdoor tables and a live band playing some kind of fusion of Afro-Peruvian and traditional Peruvian music. Most of the guys in the band looked Peruvian, but there was one white guy who turned out to be from New York, and another guy whose parents were Guatemalan but had grown up in Europe. They were both incredibly drunk off Pisco sour and got really excited when Raquel told them she was from the Bronx. The guy from New York bought Raquel and I both roses from a vendor, then said he wanted to make a toast to “a world without borders.” Then a few minutes later he laughed and said, “Actually, that’s a lie, I’m a capitalist pig, I like borders.” It turns out he wasn’t lying; both he and the Guatemalan guy were CEOs of some corporate communications corporation, and just play in the band in their spare time. Anyway, within an hour Raquel was being hit on by both of the CEOs, our waiter, and a 70-year-old man who was sitting at the table next to us—at which point I began hinting that maybe we should go.
One last note especially for my Jersey friends: I went to Atlantic City in Peru. No joke, there is a casino in Lima called Atlantic City, right near our hotel in Miraflores. I have to say it didn’t come anywhere close to matching the charmingly offensive tackiness of the real Atlantic City. On second thought though, I don’t miss Atlantic City very much. :)
Lima actually seems like a pretty nice city. It's a pleasant surprise after continuously being told by Cuzqueñans about how much of a shithole it is, but I might be getting that impression only because our group is staying in a hostel in Miraflores, which is the richest, most touristy part of the city. What strikes me most about Lima is its faded quality. By this I mean that, although many of the buildings are painted bright colors, there always seems to be a light mist covering the whole city that is barely noticeable but just gives you the slight impression of being in a cloud. The outskirts of Lima start to feel very desert-like because of the color of the sand, but on the coast there are some beautiful beaches. It's always around 70 degrees and humid, and it never ever rains, even though it looks like it's going to about 50% of the time.
There's definitely a lot to do--Cuzco is tiny in comparison with Lima, which is home to 8 million people, a full third of the population of Peru. One thing that they don't have in Cuzco is good movie theaters, so yesterday Raquel and I decided to take advantage of our week here to go to the movies. We both wanted to see something in Spanish, and naively supposed that anything with a title in Spanish would probably be dubbed into Spanish. So we chose one called "La Película Época Loca" ("The Crazy Epic Movie"?) which neither of us had heard of. For those of you fortunate enough not to have heard of it either, it is basically a spoof of various blockbuster movies and MTV shows, all thrown together in one movie. Needless to say it was totally ridiculous, but the best irony of the whole situation was that we couldn't have picked a movie more chock-full of American culture to see in Peru. Among the more uncomfortable moments were when one of the characters made a comment about how the White Bitch (a play off the "White Witch" from Narnia) doesn't let gay people get married--the audience let out kind of a collective befuddled groan. Then there were a handful of seemingly non-sequiter lines like "I just saved a lot of money on my car insurance" that had to have been lost on the Peruvian audience. The fact that this movie is even shown in Peru tells you how much of our culture is exported. Oh well--I for one laughed so hard in one part that I almost died from choking on soda.
One cool thing about Lima is the Afroperuvian culture--in the era when Peru had African slaves, they were mostly concentrated here on the coast, while people in rural areas used indigenous people to do their work. There is nothing more fun to watch than Afroperuvian music and dance, and the first night we were in Lima we got to see an amazing Afroperuvian band. Then there’s “chicha” and “technohuayno” music, developed by migrants to Lima from rural areas, which is like an electric version of traditional Quechua music, performed in neon-lighted pubs by night and circulated primarily through pirating (unfortunately I didn’t get to see any live music of this kind, but it was interesting enough to put it in here). Another fun fact: the inhabitants of shantytowns surrounding the central part of Lima make up 80% of the city’s overall population—mostly immigrants from the poor rural areas of Peru.
On the second day in Lima, we visited a theater group called Yuyachkani ("I remember" in Quechua), which is also a social activist group that uses theater as a mode of protest. We saw two plays by them, both related to the dark era in Peru's recent history when the country was torn by violence between Sendero Luminoso (a Maoist guerrilla group that claimed to represent indigenous rights but killed mostly indigenous people) and then the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori in the 90's. They were both really good (the theater productions, not the violence). Then we had a mask-acting workshop at the same place in which we were taught how to develop a character working from a mask, and also the movements to act out that character. It was really, really fun.
Another day we visited Chinatown in Lima. The Chinese have brought many things to Peru, the most important of which, obviously, is food—all over Lima you will see restaurants that specialize in “chifa,” which is the Peruvian version of Chinese food. It’s quite delicious, and actually about as similar to actual Chinese food as any “Chinese” food you will get in the states, but the difference is that we have the nerve to call ours Chinese food whereas Peruvians are smart enough to give it a different name. The Chinese migrant population is an interesting topic of conversation considering that in Peru (and in most other countries in Latin America, I’ve heard) anyone who has eyes that are even a little slanted or narrow automatically gains the nickname “Chino.” As a result of this, I estimate that at least ¼ of the Peruvian population is named “Chino,” considering that 10% of the population is actually made up of Chinese descendents, and more on top of that come from other Asian countries like Japan and Korea. However, the word “chino” is never actually derogatory, to the extent that even non-chinese Asian immigrants even refer to themselves in some contexts as “chino.” For example, the former president/dictator Alberto Fujimori, who was of Japanese descent, had a campaign chant composed of the words “Chino, Chino, Chino Chino Chino” and accompanied by a techno-huayno beat. There’s an interesting comment on multi-culturalism for you.
And now for an amusing night-life anecdote: one night Raquel and I went exploring around the beach (which is only a few blocks from our hostel in Miraflores—yes, we spent a fair amount of time after classes on the beach, haha) and when we got hungry, we visited a street that we call “Pizza Street”, because it is chock full of cheap pizza restaurants (the pizza in Peru is decent, but not “the best in the world”, as I’ve heard Cuzqueñans claim). We chose a little joint with outdoor tables and a live band playing some kind of fusion of Afro-Peruvian and traditional Peruvian music. Most of the guys in the band looked Peruvian, but there was one white guy who turned out to be from New York, and another guy whose parents were Guatemalan but had grown up in Europe. They were both incredibly drunk off Pisco sour and got really excited when Raquel told them she was from the Bronx. The guy from New York bought Raquel and I both roses from a vendor, then said he wanted to make a toast to “a world without borders.” Then a few minutes later he laughed and said, “Actually, that’s a lie, I’m a capitalist pig, I like borders.” It turns out he wasn’t lying; both he and the Guatemalan guy were CEOs of some corporate communications corporation, and just play in the band in their spare time. Anyway, within an hour Raquel was being hit on by both of the CEOs, our waiter, and a 70-year-old man who was sitting at the table next to us—at which point I began hinting that maybe we should go.
One last note especially for my Jersey friends: I went to Atlantic City in Peru. No joke, there is a casino in Lima called Atlantic City, right near our hotel in Miraflores. I have to say it didn’t come anywhere close to matching the charmingly offensive tackiness of the real Atlantic City. On second thought though, I don’t miss Atlantic City very much. :)
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