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.

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. :)

Birthday celebrations

Conveniently, my birthday happened to fall on the last day our group was going to be in Cuzco before leaving for excursions to Lima and Arequipa for two weeks (March 22). It was also, sadly, the day of our last Quechua class. In the class, our whole group performed a short play we had written in Quechua called "The Guinea Pig Suicide Cult" (typical of my group to come up with something like that) in which we all played guinea pigs who were suffering from a food shortage and had to resort to eating their children. After one guinea pig got eaten by a human, all the other guinea pigs decided to commit suicide. This tragedy was accompanied by live quena (Peruvian flute) music provided by Jenny.

My host mom also organized a special lunch for my birthday at the house. Miraculously, Rosita has actually been sitting at the table with the family ever since Ursula was here. When she tries to sit somewhere else, my host mom insists that she sit at the table. It's unbelievable to me that I could have witnessed such a radical change in just a few short weeks of living with a family. I also invited Mijael to eat with us, and so for the first time me, Rosita, Socorro, and Mijael all ate at the same table (along with Raquel, who had also come to join us). Admittedly the conversation was slightly awkward, but I was overjoyed that the scenario could even exist at all. Rosita made a dish called "aji de gallina," which is a typical Peruvian dish of chicken shreds covered in a yellow sauce made from peppers and cheese. It was delicious. My host mom also liberally served us all special flavored liquors, and scolded Rosita when she didn't finish hers. We were enjoying ourselves to such an extent that by the time Raquel and I actually got around to looking at the clock it was past the time our afternoon class was supposed to start, and we were both a little buzzed. My host mom said, in complete seriousness, "Oh, you're not going to go to class, are you?" She cracks me up. At times she's completely neurotic and at other times totally chill.

So Raquel and I showed up to class late and slightly under the influence. To our surprise, at the end of class Irma, our academic director, pulled out a couple of bottles of pisco (the Peruvian liquor) and proceeded to give us a short lesson about the difference between aromatic and non-aromatic pisco. (The funny thing about Irma is that she has a knack for turning everything into an academic experience.) Then she handed out shot glasses and poured us each two shots so that we could see the difference between the two types of pisco. It was a cultural experience, alright.

At night I met up with pretty much all of the friends I have made in Peru thus far (which turned out to be a very eclectic but fun group) and we all went dancing in Las Vegas, a discoteca where my host mom has forbidden me to go because she says there are lots of robbers, but which I love because almost no tourists go there. Since I knew I would have to meet the group the next morning at 6:00 am to take a bus to the airport to fly to Lima, I decided to skip out on sleep. Alas, I am pretty exhausted today, but totally content.

Hell has frozen over

Something absolutely incredibly happened in my house at lunch yesterday. For the last few days another of my host mom's daughters, Ursula, has been visiting from the United States. She lives in Seattle, in a vegetarian, and dresses just a little bit hippie. As we were sitting down to lunch yesterday, Ursula said to Rosita, "Rosita, why are you sitting over there? Come sit with us at the table." I expected Rosita to politely turn her down, but instead, she just thanked her and came to sit at the table with the whole family. If I hadn't been busy eating choqllo, I think my jaw would have dropped in that moment.

Later in the day I went with Ursula and my host parents to Gabi's house for dinner, and was fortunate enough to witness a debate about global warming and environmental issues, mostly between Ursula and Gabi's husband Pepe, who as you might assume from his name, is pretty much an airhead. If he wasn't Peruvian I would say he's your typical Bush-loving macho American. Worth mentioning is one very memorable interjection from my host mom: in response to Ursula's fear that the world's water supply is diminishing, Socorro scoffed and said, "I still have plenty of water in my house."

I'm starting to feel as if Rosita and Mijael are fighting over me. The last bit of drama to arise began with a piece of gossip Rosita told me yesterday: Socorro had told Rosita that someone had told her that Mijael had told that someone that I was in love with him (Mijael). I asked Mijael if it was true that he had told someone I was in love with him. He said he didn't know how Rosita had come up with that (I'm sure my host mom made it up). Then, to get back at Rosita for spreading rumors of that kind, Mijael accused her of sending him an insulting text message from my cell phone (which is a strange accusation, considering I never sent him any insulting text messages and I'm pretty certain Rosita has never touched my phone). Ayayay.

Weekend of nonstop cultural experience 3/17-3/18

Like I’ve said before about Peru, every day here is an adventure, but there are certain days that just feel like one giant cultural experience; days that make you think that maybe someone in the Middlebury study abroad office, or Jean-Jacques (a silly French man who is the director of this entire SIT Peru program) is actually a puppet-master pulling some stings behind the scenes just to make your experience extra-cultural. This weekend consisted of two of those days. From about noon to 2 pm on Saturday, I sat at the kitchen table with my family, innocently studying a poem I have to memorize in Quechua, and simultaneously witnessing machismo in action. My host parents had meant to leave for their weekend house in the campo at noon, so they were running late. My host mom (Socorro) was busily preparing food to take to the campo so they could eat lunch as soon as they arrived, and my host dad (Ramiro) was sitting at the kitchen table watching her. And complaining the whole time because they were running late, and it was all Socorro’s fault because she had woken up too late, and now they weren’t even going to be able to eat lunch until around 3. And it would not be an exaggeration or use of an unnecessary profanity were I to say that Ramiro does not do shit in the house. Ever. He comes back from his work in his development program in the mines about once a week or so, and then sits there are gets served on. At the same time that Ramiro was exercising his machismo, Socorro was freaking out because she didn’t know where Rosita had gone and when she was going to get back. She was worried that she wouldn’t get back before they left, and so I might have no one to put my already-prepared lunch in the microwave for me, and God knows, I might starve.

Finally at around 2:00 they left, and about 10 minutes later Rosita showed up. I told her what had happened, and she said she had gone to visit her cousin in the hospital, who got into a horrible bus accident about a week ago. According to her she had told Socorro exactly where she was going. We started getting into a conversation about how ridiculous and crazy Socorro is, and I mentioned the four heavy duty locks on the door and said I couldn’t understand why she’s so paranoid about getting robbed all the time. Rosita explained that a few years ago, the family was robbed while everyone in the house was asleep. The robbers came in through a tiny downstairs bathroom window and took the computer, some family jewelry, and a few other things. Rosita thinks it was a political crime, because at the time Ramiro was running for mayor of Cuzco, for a progressive political party called Popular Action or something like that. I couldn’t understand why that would make the robbers want to punish him; maybe they just don’t like politicians in general. Then we kept talking about how crazy Socorro is, and I said that she thinks that I can’t do anything by myself. Rosita told me that’s probably because there are a lot of things around the house that she herself can’t do, and that she frequently calls Rosita to ask her things like how to turn on the stove and the oven.

After lunch Rosita and I went to Gabi’s (Socorro’s daughter’s) house so Rosita could help her cook, since tomorrow is her birthday and she was preparing for a big party at night. I figured out that Mijael’s sister, Erika, is the maid at Gabi’s house. Well, one of his sisters, that is; he has five of them. And three brothers on top of that. Mijael is the youngest of the whole bunch. So back to Gabi’s kitchen—I spent about an hour helping Erika put together about a hundred little cheese pastries, while Rosita cleaned the patio. When we got back Rosita went to use an internet café for a little bit, and I went down to the fish store to say hello to Mijael and show him some pictures I had taken in Manu. Sometime in the half hour I was in the store, Socorro called the house wanting to talk to me for some reason (this wasn’t even the first time she’d called to talk to me since she’d left for the campo) and Rosita said I wasn’t in the house and she didn’t know where I was. Apparently Socorro started freaking out. “How is she not in the house?!!” “I don’t know, maybe she went for a walk or something,” Rosita told her. “Or maybe she’s down in the store.” (By the way, about a week ago I was instructed by Socorro not to go down to the store too much, “because it seems like Mijael isn’t doing his work.” Bullshit.) So when I came back up to the house after about a half hour, Rosita told me what had happened and said that Socorro was going to call again soon to make sure I was in the house. She never called, but that might have been because I spent so much time using the phone to rant to friends about how nuts she is.

After that I briefly met Rosita’s friend who she is writing her thesis with—she and Rosita came back to the house with some fried chicken and French fries and we made some good conversation for about an hour. I really really like her friend, whose name is Vanesa. Among other things Vanesa asked me what I think the difference is between American and Peruvian guys, and I told her that I think Peruvians are much friendlier and easier to talk to in general, but that there is definitely a lot more machismo here. She said that she thinks Peruvian guys also lie more than American guys, which I hesitated to believe, but when she gave an example I understood: Whenever a guy tells you he doesn’t have a girlfriend, he probably does. It’s an extension of machismo. Here’s an example from my own experience: I won’t get into great detail with this anecdote, but suffice it to say that after being blatantly hit on by my 30-year-old-ish guitar teacher in most of my lessons, I called his house today to talk about lessons I had missed, and guess who answered the phone! His wife! Huh, the guy who told me he wants to go dancing on the weekends but doesn’t know who to go with has a wife. The moral of the story is that you’ve got to be careful with Peruvian guys. They talk suave but they’re usually not that innocent. Ha. Also, Rosita is completely convinced that Mijael has a secret girlfriend, a suspicion that I'm not sure whether to take seriously.

The party at Gabi’s was another cultural experience, even thought I didn’t stay very long because I was exhausted. Gabi kept insisting that I drink Pisco sour, which is the typical Peruvian alcoholic beverage, consisting of a liquor called Pisco, sprite, and lime. I kept having to explain to her that the doctor had explicitly forbidden me to drink alcohol while I am on antibiotics. Gabi was all dressed up and perfumed; she’s definitely the type who you can tell loves nothing more than throwing parties for herself. She’s a sweet person, but so upper class it makes you want to vomit. When I told her beforehand about our group’s excursion to Huilloq, for instance, she said, “You’re spending two nights there? No, Noe, it would be better if you spent the night here. It’s very dirty there.” I politely laughed it off. I’ve gotten in the habit of referring to her as “La Señora Gabi” (“Miss Gabi”) because that’s how Rosita and Mijael both refer to her. All the guests at her party sat down in the living room and were offered Pisco sours, while Rosita, Erika, and Marleni (another random sister of Mijael’s) sat in the kitchen helping out with food or went upstairs to look after the children while their parents became intoxicated. I should clarify that they, too, were offered Pisco sours, but not to drink with the rest of the guests.

At the party, Erika (Mijael’s sister, the maid) invited me to come to her sister’s house the next day (the sister who owns the fish store) because it was going to be her neice’s 4th birthday. Mijael didn't show up, evidently because of some miscommunication, although at the time I was suspicious that he had gone to visit his supposed secret girlfriend. But in any case, I had a really good time meeting the rest of Mijael’s family: four of his sisters (Erika, Marle, Elisabeth, and one other whose name I can’t remember), one husband, and several of his nieces and nephews, including the little girl who was turning four, and a month-old baby. They seem like a really nice, down to earth family—probably what you could call the Peruvian middle class if there is one. We sat down to a meal that consisted of really watery flan, chocolate pudding, hot chocolate, chocolate cake, cookies, and marshmallows. Basically it was a shitload of sugar. The whole family kept trying to ask me questions in Quechua (they all speak Spanish as a first language, but their parents spoke Quechua), and usually I would give them a blank stare for a few seconds before understanding at least a couple words of what they had said, well enough to answer the question. The good thing is that whenever I say anything correctly, they tell me I speak really well because they’re impressed I can even speak it at all. Before leaving the party I took lots of pictures of the family, and, like in Huilloq, it was a big event for them for someone to have a digital camera. Except in this case I will be able to make them a CD of the photos rather than sending it by snail mail.

Manu (Amazon Jungle highlands) excursion 3/12-3/16

On Monday we left from Cuzco at 6 am to embark on a 12-hour bumpy bus ride, which ended up taking 14 hours because on the way there we were delayed by a landslide which had caused a huge pile of mud to be blocking the road. We were stuck for two hours while at first a bunch of guys tried to dig it out, and when that didn´t work, cut down a bunch of small tree trunks to cover the mud. Our bus made it over fine, but the big truck that went after us didn´t have so much luck, and got stuck in the mud. We didn´t stick around to see its fate. The ride was long and bumpy, but beautiful; as we descended from Cuzco we watched the landscape change from mountains to the “clouded forest” to the jungle highlands, which includes Manu. At around 8:00 at night we finally arrived in a very strange little town that hardly even look like a town; more like a really wide stretch of dirt with some buildings and a market sprinkled around haphazardly. From there we loaded all our stuff on a small boat and crossed the Amazon River to our campsite.

The next morning we woke up bright and early to go trekking through the jungle with rubber boots that they lent us, which were a really good idea. We walked right through a river and also through something that I would call quicksand if I hadn´t made it out alive (that doesn´t make much sense, does it). The best way to describe this place is that it is very green, very wet, and very big, and all of the creatures that live here are also very big. Here is a brief description of some of the more interesting plant life our guide told us about: a vine that grows along the ground like a snake, and is the same color as a certain venomous snake, but also coincidentally is used as an antidote when someone gets bitten by that same snake. A plant that recoils instantly when you touch it. A certain type of caterpillar that is incredibly poisonous, and which were completely covering the trunk of a tree, camoflauged to look like the tree. And a tree whose trunk was at least 10 or 15 feet in diameter, and apparently was a small example of this species. I’ve decided I´m more of a mountain person than a jungle person (I don´t like the humidity and am not crazy about the bugs) but I’m sure if I actually knew more about all the creatures that live here (the great majority of which have not yet been studied), I would be in heaven.

Wednesday was the day when all hell broke loose. I woke up feeling really nauseous and having bad stomach cramps, and could tell it was something sinister. Luckily, the bus ride to the next town with a health center was only a half hour, and I made it almost all the way there before getting out and puking all over the place. The doctor told me I had some kind of bacteria, and they took some blood to do a study to see what type it was. My academic director checked me into a hostel so I could lie down, and she waited to get the results from the doctor while the rest of my group continued on toward the next campsite. It turned out I had salmonelitis, which is something very similar to salmonella. The doctor said it was probably in incubation 7 days, which means I got it in Cuzco, and the only thing I can think of that I could have eaten in Cuzco is maybe a fried egg that wasn’t cooked enough (man, couldn’t that happen in the United States just as easily as the middle of the Amazon jungle?). So I took some Cipro, which is a really strong, magical anti-biotic, ate a little bit of bread, felt a little better, and decided to try to come along with Irma (the academic director) to the next town where the rest of my group already was. But as soon as I breathed in the hot, humid air and started getting bumped around in this truck that was from sometime in the 17th century, I started feeling sick again, and vomited twice within the first 10 minutes. So we went with plan B, which was that Irma would leave me in the hotel with a bathroom and lots of water, continue on to Huacaria (the campsite) because the 17th-century truck was also carrying all the food for lunch for the rest of our group, and send another group leader back to spend the night with me. I was pretty much fine just lying there for the rest of the afternoon, and found that as long as I didn’t move from my bed I wouldn’t have to vomit. By 5:00 the Cipro had started working wonders and I felt almost perfectly normal; I got up and spent two hours in the internet café in the hostel. My other group leader, Christina, finally showed up at 7:00, and told me that the reason she was so late was because the truck that Irma had been traveling had gotten stuck in a ditch on the way to Huacaria, and they had had to walk the rest of the way to the town to get help, so they didn’t actually arrive there until 5:00 and no one in my group had any food for lunch until then. She also told me that Irma hadn’t been able to talk to the doctor that much about my own illness because the same day, someone had gotten bitten by a very poisonous snake and the doctor had had to attend to him urgently. What a day.

The next day, Chris and I caught a ride to Huacaria in a truck that was slightly more recent (maybe 18th century). By this time I was feeling totally fine. Huacaria is a small, remote town with a group of indigenous people called Huacari that speak their own indigenous language in addition to Quechua and a little bit of Spanish. Unlike some other indigenous groups in the jungle, the Huacari people have chosen not to completely isolate themselves from the outside world. When we arrived at the campsite I was greeted by friends shouting, “You’re alive!” It was a warm welcome. That morning we had a little tour around in the jungle with a curandero (medicine man), who showed us various medicinal plants including Ayahuasca, which is kind of considered a spiritual cure-all. Before lunch we went swimming in a beautiful river right by the campsite, and the water was a perfect, refreshing temperature. After lunch we walked up to the village (about 5 minutes from our campsite) and played soccer with some of the men and one woman in the village. The woman was surprisingly good; as in Huilloq, they have actually organized a women’s soccer team there. After the game, we went into the school in the village (school for the kids hasn’t started yet, even though it was supposed to start at the beginning of March) and one of the elders in the village came to tell us a Huacari myth, which the curandero recorded and then translated for us into Spanish. Even though I understood most of the words he was saying in Spanish, the myth was so long and complex and so completely removed from anything resembling western culture that I was pretty much lost the entire time. My favorite part that I did understand, however, was that the tree of life grew out of a woman's vagina, and all of the animals in the world grew from that tree. How cool is that?

The last day, we walked about two and a half hours through the jungle back to the town where I had been staying while I was sick--a beautiful walk in which I gave up trying not to get my socks wet, and was absolutely exhausted by the end. I had a little bit or a scare when I saw a yellow and black snake in the middle of the road--and after staring at it for awhile in terror, then creeping towards it slowly, I realized that it had been run over by a car and was good and dead. The rest of the day was relatively uneventful with our 12-hour bus ride back to Cuzco, where we finally arrived at 10:00 at night--and then, of course, I went out dancing. :)

Drama drama drama

I decided I should elaborate on this family drama more, since some people seem curious and it’s really pretty entertaining. Sometimes I feel like my mere presence here has thrown off the precarious balance of relationships between my family members; on the other hand, these are all really complex class and gender issues that go way back. Anyway, it all started last week when I started hanging out a lot during the day in the pet store under our house with Mijael. Usually he helps me with Quechua and I teach him some phrases in English, and then while he’s attending to customers I do my reading for class the next day. Admittedly this is not always the most efficient way of getting my work done, but it’s more fun than just doing it holed up in my room. Sometimes I bring my guitar down there to practice, and he also plays a little (he said he played pretty well, until one day when he left his guitar in a taxi and never got a new one). And then there was one day when I showed him ALL the pictures I have on my laptop (over 1000) because, well, he wanted to see them all.

Anyway, from the beginning I was a little nervous about how my host mom was going to react to this new habit of mine (of hanging out in the pet store), and I sensed that she would rather I spend more time in the house, but all she said was to let her know when I was going down there so she would know where I was. Then one day last week when I was down there, my friends Jenny and Raquel wandered in, and we were all taking turns with the guitar, talking, and having a good time. Then Mijael’s friend Carlos wandered in. Carlos is a Cuzqueñan who was just recently married to a gringa from Maine, but to make a long sad story short, she dumped him for some other guy literally a week after he had finally gotten his visa and moved in with her in Maine. The day we met him was his first day back in Peru, and unfortunately he has to go back to the US really soon to resolve some legal issues surrounding his green card. He’s a really funny guy though, pretty much always in good spirits. Anyway. The next day my host mom explained to me that it’s fine for me to hang out in the store with Mijael, but my friends aren’t allowed to be there because supposedly they are too much of a distraction. She made it sound like this was a mandate coming from his sister, who owns the store, but I think she was making that up because his sister is too nice to have ratted on Mijael and besides, she was never there at the same time as my friends were there.

So. Then there’s this other thing my host mom has doing lately that’s been bothering me, which is asking me to stay in the house for certain periods of time so that Rosita can go out. She’s afraid she might be robbed if the house is ever left alone, which is completely ridiculous, a) because we have at least 4 locks on the doors, b) Santa Monica is a very safe neighborhood, and c) Mijael is always in the store during the day (according to her, you can’t see from the store anything thats going on outside the store, which is also untrue). But I can’t say no to her when she asks me to stay in the house, because otherwise she won’t let Rosita leave. Well, one day when I was in the store my host mom came down there to ask me to go up to the house in a few minutes because she was leaving. I staid down there for another hour or so, in which time Raquel wandered in, and I told her she could stay for a few minutes because Socorro wasn’t around. Eventually I went into the house so that Socorro wouldn’t find me in the store when she got back. I told Raquel that she could stay at her own risk, but that if my host mom got back her best option was to hide, then run away. Well, sure enough, Socorro came back and found her there, along with Carlos and a couple of Mijael’s other friends. She got really mad at Raquel and gave her a tirade about how the store is not a public socializing space. Ironically though, when she walked in Mijael was attending to a customer (obviously not distracted), and she didn’t say a word to Carlos or any of the other guys who were hanging out there (I think because they were also friends of my host mom’s son, Javier). Instead she waited until Carlos and the other guys had left, then scolded Mijael about them having been there.

Then the next week my friends and I were planning on going out dancing with Carlos, and I invited Mijael to come along—he has nights free now because he quit his job at the hotel. He said he would come, but not to tell Socorro that I was going out with him (I also was instructued by Carlos not to tell her I was going out with him). We went dancing at some place where Jenny and I were pretty much the only two gringas in the whole place, and had a lot of fun (attempting) dancing to latin music with the guys, who of course all know how to dance. When we arrived back in front of my house in Santa Monica, it was around 1:30 and Socorro was most definitely asleep, but Mijael was scared shitless that she would see him with us if he got out of the taxi. “She’s watching! She’s watching!” he kept saying. He was so terrified that he even called Carlos right after he left in the taxi just to make sure that none of us would even do so much as mention his name anywhere in the vicinity of the house. The next morning I told Rosita that we had been out with Mijael, and then she spent the whole breakfast telling me about how Mijael lies all the time and you can’t trust him with anything. Even though he and Rosita are friends to some extent, both she and my host mom are constantly giving him shit and I’m not sure how much of it to take at face value. It makes a lot of sense to me that Mijael may have developed a habit of lying as a defense mechanism, after years and years of my family treating him like a poor misguided little indigenous boy who needs to be disciplined. Well, apparently that day (the day after we had gone out at night) Mijael overslept and came to the store late. Rosita asked him if he had been out the night before, he said no, and she called him a liar. Mijael was a little upset with me because apparently I wasn’t supposed to have told Rosita either, even though I know she would never rat on me to my host mom. What Rosita did report to her was that Mijael had arrived late. So I got to witness my host mom asking Mijael why he had been late. Had he gone out the night before? Mijael made up some long-winded story that I couldn’t quite follow, and to that my host mom responded, “Look, his nose is already a foot long!” “No, it’s still here,” Mijael responded, jokingly patting his nose. Luckily the subject was dropped after that. Man, so much drama, so much drama. And I always seem to be right in the center of it.