Pictures!

Here is the link to more photos. 

Enjoy!

https://picasaweb.google.com/114379609394765551921/PromotoresChoquekillcaAndHealthCampaigns?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCNKM0_H6-5D1IQ&feat=directlink

Choquekillca

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May 20^th, 2013

Choquekillca.  It all started an impossible amount of years ago, in a mysterious place, with a man, his horse, a river, and some beers.  This myth is, of course, according to the nine-year old on the combi ride to the nearby town of Urubamba.  The man, well, the Senor, was drunk.  He was riding his horse around the Sacred Valley and came across a river that had a giant whirlpool whirling around it.  He drunkenly decided to cross the river, using only a few sticks he found to make a bridge.  About midway through the river, right above the whirlpool, the stick bridge broke, the man fell in, and miraculously a cross emerged.  Thus was born the festival of Choqeukillca.  For a more accurate description of the myth behind the 4 days of incessant and belligerent partying, you may want to consult the internet.  Basically, the bare bones of that story still are manifested in present day: beer.  For four days in Ollantaytambo, the town gets wasted.  Old Quechua speaking woman wearing their skirts and beautifully woven capes that carry babies chug beer, toddlers drink chicha (fermented corn beer), teenagers slug back pisco with no regret.  People begin drinking at 4am and don’t stop until 4 am.  The premise is to celebrate El Senor, who on all the t-shirts looks exactly like Jesus.  There are 17 dance troupes that are handpicked and involve about 20 dancers each in incredibly be-jeweled costumes, masks, and whips.  The dances represent everything from the Spanish invasion to the heritage of those living in the high altitude regions.  Each dance troupe has its own party, or cargo, around town.  The party hosts were carefully picked at last year’s celebration, and have spent months planning for a feast – they often hire bands from Cuzco and caterers for this event, and have to cook for hundreds of people, without rest, for four days.  To be invited to a cargo officially, the hosts go around with bread and beer about three months before to each invited family’s home.  The invited person then describes what they will bring as a gift for the host at the cargo.  Typically, the gifts are crates of beer.  My host family hosted a cargo for a dance troupe last year, and my host mom had to deliver gifts to each family that came last year that is now hosting their own cargo. 

Lastly, the most crazy part.  The replica of El Senor must be protected 24 hours a day by the dancers.  The replica is in the church in the plaza.  Each dance troupe, who has a specialized dance they perform, must protect the Senor for two hour shifts, bringing their cargo, or party, with them, including the crates of beer.  They dance in front of the church, with community members, or without them if no one is there.  A few tidbits to explain: to be a part of a dance troupe you must commit three years of dancing.  You also dance at other celebrations throughout the year.  You must stay in costume throughout Choquekillca, unless you are at home resting.  You must eat and drink whatever is put in front of you.  This part is ridiculous, and on one day, the day where all the dance troupes visit all the other troupe’s cargos, only the captains have to eat everything.  That means the captains have to eat about 16 full meals, including 16 huge beers, shots of Pisco, and some random brown “digestive” liquor that is often poured out of a big water bottle.  And glasses of chicha.  As a dancer, you must attend a certain amount of church ceremonies per year, or you will get whipped.  Which beings me to another interesting point.  If you are late for your dance, or are new to the troupe, or mess up the dance (even after drinking 16 huge beers), you will get whipped.  I witnessed this!  They take it very seriously.  They will whip you with huge whips either on the back (in certain dance troupes they tie people up), or on the ankles.  My host brother was in a dance where all they did was dance around on one foot until someone blew a whistle, then one person would whip another person.  There were children involved in this dance as well.  I saw his legs today, they looked broken from the bruising.  The men wear layers of socks, but the women just ear thin nylons under their dresses.  They even whip the women.  There is no tolerance for being late to dance practice.  This is a basic summary of Choquekillca.  By far, the most drinking I have ever seen in my entire life took place this last weekend.  If I went to a huge university, grabbed all of the fraternity brothers, dropped them in on this weekend, and told them to enjoy the fiestas, they wouldn’t make it past 2 days.   This was serious partying.

Pictures of my first week

Here is a link to pictures of my first week!  Enjoy.  This is way less convenient than Facebook, so thank you for your cooperation.

https://picasaweb.google.com/114379609394765551921/FirstWeekInPeru03?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCP-Y0dTKio3VAw&feat=directlink

A little romance

May 2, 2013

Today was my first day holding hands here and I felt pretty queasy about it.  Margarita was in the kitchen before dinner, preparing something with Aleja (an older woman who doesn’t live with us but who cooks, eats, and hangs out at the house all day), and I asked if I could help.  What are you making, I wondered aloud.  Feet soup, they responded.  It’s good for the stomach.  Ok, how can I help you?  I asked, intrepidly.  Margarita had the raw chicken foot in her hand and was scraping it.  Aleja was dicing vegetables.  I thought that’s what my job would be.  Margarita grabbed another knife and told me to take the yellow parts off the chicken foot with it.  What are the yellow parts?  I asked.  Skin, she replied.  Oh.  I skinned the chicken leg, mindful to dissociate as much as possible. I saw how Margarita was doing it, very aggressively, so I copied her.  The best way to assimilate into a host family, I think, is to copy what they do.  The chicken leg still had its nails. It felt like holding a miniature old persons’ hands with only three fingers and a thumb.  Or was it two fingers a thumb?  How good I am at dissociation!  I hold its hand and rip at the skin, peeling it off slowly, trying to make it more fun for myself by remembering that I love peeling off people’s sunburned skin only that doesn’t feel like I’m holding a severed 97 year old baby’s hand while I’m doing it.  I made conversation.  Is this the same chicken we had for lunch, I asked.  It sure is, says Margarita.  Aleja nods accordingly, dicing her G-rated vegetables.  Keeping her hands clean of all this.  What a delicious chicken that was!  I remarked.  They murmured in agreement.  I can’t wait to eat its feet.  I kept that one to myself.  We sat down for dinner - me, Mama Ana Maria (just home from backbreaking labor making stone streets in our neighborhood), Aleja, and Cesar, Ana Maria’s goddaughter’s older brother from a town a few hours’ walk up the hill.  I tried eating a foot.  Ana Maria was very nice about it.  I had to ask her to put one in my soup for me.  I tried it, and for the first time in my traveling years, I felt vomit immediately in my mouth. I put it aside and laughed.  I couldn’t help myself!  Ana Maria ate it for me – it’s nothing, she said, your stomach still has to get accustomed.   

Work is great too.  There is so much to learn, but I love all of it.  This organization has clearly made an impact in the community - everyone I speak with knows not only the name of the organization, but can name one or more people that work here (there’s only about 6 of us).  There isn’t a lot to say about work yet because I’m feeling very overwhelmed by it.   My host family, their lives, and the comfort I feel here are very reachable for me. 

My life has changed immensely in the past week and it is an incredible shift.

At last!

5/1/13

At last!  So many things have happened at last.  Inside the mountains I have found a certain peace, mouth agape, family smiling, joy abound.  I unpack my things in this new home, my temporary placement.  A guinea pig farm, for eating only!  A houseful of mostly women, only one man to speak of, a very timid and adorable man who is in love with his wife and child.  It is here at last!  A walk through dirt roads and cables lining the street, sisters Cati and Ana Margarita dutifully carrying my bags, I see ice-capped mountains in the distance. I have a comfort zone in this incredibly foreign place.  It has not enlightened, nor thrilled, nor exhausted me yet because I have been thrown in and because it is so different.  I just might feel comfortable here soon though, with bugs biting me, walking across a dirt path from my room, adjacent to the room shared by mom, dad, and baby, to get to the dimly lit kitchen where we chat and drink coca leaf tea.  Dogs bark and fight in the distance.  I warily turn lights on, expecting the scurry of creatures.  The kitchen is full of jars and jars of spices and dried leaves, the oven built into a wall, black with soot.  Grandmother Ana Maria tells me she likes to cook everything.  Based on the massive amount of guinea pigs (cuy) she has in the back (piles of them) I’m guessing that’s one of her favorite things to cook.

In the backyard, the cuy murmur in unison.  Under each piece of cardboard box in their pen is another lump of fur!  A “mother with her babies” she would say.  I laugh and laugh (quietly so as not to offend them).  She maybe has 100 of them. By tomorrow it might jump to 150.  I am not yet grossed out by it, but I might be because they are cute, and when Ana Margarita holds one up to me I can’t help but pet it.  Is that how you treat your food?  I don’t know yet.  It is pretty precious, and terrified. Apparently they taste delicious.  The other girls I have met so far tell me they only have it on rare occasion, and in Cuzco it costs about $25 a plate. But not at Ana Maria’s!  I tell them it is my birthday on Friday, and they say they will make something for me, hopefully with a side of cuy.

Musing!

4/15/13

This feels different to me than leaving for Asia.  Then, there was heartbreak, extreme emotions, heat, and a ripping apart of my life in Santa Barbara to create something entirely unique in a foreign place.  This feels complacent.  I am not forcing anything to a stop; things have eased themselves into a natural termination.  This is the beginning that I want, not one I need, or one that I have to construct out of a void.  There is nothing left for me to accomplish here in this moment, the light of this place is flickering to a close. 

My muse - my muse is trouble, she is delinquency and a torturous past, failed relationships and broken hearts and I get the sense that she is not able to fully function right now because I am doing pretty well.  Beauty used to be created for me out of a certain suffering and it will take me a while to re-assess that suffering, tap into it, and re-write it from this stance - to enter into a place in my life where I can engage a transformed muse and where beauty can emerge from a point of positivity and empowerment.  Not all the time though – she does come back uninvited and unexpected to scratch her long nails down the chalkboards of my inactivity.  But for now, her light and airy counterpart will have to find her way into my phonemes, spreading like inkblots and blurring and slurring the darkened syntax.  

Looking back (in preparation)

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August 4, 2005…(taken from one of my recently found journals)

I am overwhelmed by all I want to do, but I can’t stand still.  I need to do something out of the ordinary, need to take a risk, break away from this level of functionality and add a spark to it’s grayness.  Maybe I’m slowly getting ready.  

Presently….

It’s hard to believe – well it’s hard to believe a lot about that last statement, that I wrote it almost 8 years ago, that since then I have done some fairly out of the ordinary things, that I felt this way before leaving for college and that I still feel this way a little bit.  I love these pieces of me that I see over time, I love how they melt together and roughly form the portrait of who I am, and how that portrait will help build the one 8 years from now.  In looking back, there are times when I wish I could hold myself, tell myself that the storm will clear, tell myself to stay or go, tell myself that soon the pain will pass and the beauty will begin.  Tell myself to breathe, breathe through the hard times and gulp the air down when times are good.  I know I will want to tell myself these things as I look back on this phase of my life years from now, so I hope that through this retrospective looking glass I can invert the image and hold steady on me now, continue breathing through the hard times and the good, and love myself throughout this new adventure.

For those of you who are interested, here is a link to the organization I will be working for in Peru:

http://www.sacredvalleyhealth.org/about.html