Couldn´t upload this last night

Thanks to everyone who is responding to my blog and emailing me. I don´t have time to respond to everyone, so please understand. It´s great to hear from you all.

I´m in Puno at Lake Titicaca for a visit and hot showers. We´re spending our second night in a hotel tonight. We have hot showers, toilets, sinks, beds with real mattresses, TV, telephone, restaurants, etc. It´s like a little piece of heaven.

Last night was my first hot shower in two weeks. Generally I sponge bath with cold water or wipe down with baby wipes. I do wash my hair and face daily in a basin of cold or tepid water. If I think about it early enough, I put out my sun shower and heat up some water. It will get to about 106 degrees, which is nice.

Everything is going great here. The English classes are coming along, and they are learning. We´ve got lots of great ideas for tourism and improving the community. There are seven other volunteers here.

The remainder of this very long blog is some journaling I did during the week. I had some problems with the keyboard for the last 3 days, so I couldn´t write. I´ve written a lot, so get yourself a cup of coffee and settle in if you´re ready to read!

Sunday, June 11, 2006

As usual, I woke up this morning around 6 a.m. I think the reason is that this is when the family begins to wake up. There is a cold water spigot in the courtyard area of every home, and they begin filling plastic buckets with water for various uses. The sound of the water hitting the bucket is probably what wakes me up, because it’s not a noise you hear normally at night.

The water comes from a spring high up on a hill nearby and feeds down through pipes to each home. They’ve had the running water for about 4-5 years now. They can drink it, but we have to treat it first. Their livestock grazes on the hill, and the water almost definitely is contaminated in some way.

Before they got running water, they had a few wells that had hand pumps on them scattered around town. If you lived near one, you were lucky, but many people had to walk for all of their water, up to the distance of 2-3 blocks each way. You really take the hot and cold running water in your house for granted until you live in a place where you don’t have it.

Let me tell you a little bit about the household arrangement where I live. It’s a pretty common scenario, from what I can tell.

When the founding members came to Chijnaya, they built their homes along four long parallel roads in a plain surrounded by hills. The main roads are divided into blocks so that each block has approximately four family homes on it. Each family’s property is rectangular and stretches between the parallel main roads, so that the front of every house is on a main road and the rear of the property opens onto a main road.

This rectangle is roughly divided in half, with the front half being the living quarters and the back half the animal quarters. The homes are predominately made of adobe bricks. You can see examples in my photos. Don’t think of the smooth, white, modern adobe you see out West. This is brown mud (shoveled by hand) with straw mixed in (in a wheelbarrow) which is pressed by hand into a mold. The entire family works to make the bricks themselves whenever they need to build something new or rebuild something that’s disintegrating. They must make the bricks in the dry season (now) and let them dry in the sun for a month before they can be used to build. A brick is approximately 18”x12”x7”. The adobe on a house lasts for about 5-6 years, but the walls around the homes, which get much more direct rain in the rainy season, only last about three years before they begin crumbling.

The animal area and family area is generally divided by a three foot wall with the water spigot centrally located just on the human side. This area is a dirt-packed courtyard that has a big muddy spot in the middle. It’s muddy because the spigot is nearby, and because this is where they often discard water.

They wash their hair and faces daily using cold water in a bucket, at least during the winter months. They also sometimes wrap in a towel or put on shorts to wash off their bodies with cold water. They may also do some washing indoors, which I don’t see. Occasionally I’ve seen the girls wet down their hair before school instead of washing it on a cold day.

I’ve been washing my hair daily with shampoo, in water that is sometimes cold, sometimes tepid from sitting in a bucket in the sun, or sometimes even hot if I remember to put water in my Sun Shower bag and let it sit in the sun for a couple of hours. The routine is water in the basin to wet my hair, shampoo, rinse in the same basin, empty basin, refill with clean water, rinse again. I gave up on the traditional conditioning step because it takes another basin of water. I just put a little conditioner in my hair and leave it.

As for washing myself, I’ve taken a bucket of water in my room to basically sponge bathe. During the day my room is about 60-65 degrees, so it’s a little chilly to do, and you don’t really feel “clean” afterwards. Not like a hot shower. Washing my hair daily is very refreshing though. I’ve found that as a woman, baby wipes are also very refreshing. I brought plenty of clothes, but I wish I’d brought a week’s worth of socks and underwear, just so I don’t have to wash them so often.

All clothes washing is done by hand in plastic basins with cold water and a little detergent. They get the clothes amazingly clean. It’s a little time consuming, and it’s best to do it in the morning when you can let the clothes dry in the sun all day. I have a small clothesline strung up in my room where I keep my clean and mostly clean clothes hanging. You simply can’t wash most of your clothes after only one wear. There is so much dust in the dry season that you’re dirty as soon as you walk out the door. Since I gave up on washing and am asking my family to do it for me (which they are happy to do), I try to wear clothes a couple of times before asking for a wash.

Around the central courtyard of every Chijnayan home are several adobe buildings. The land where I’m living belongs to Abuelito (Nicolas), who is Geronima’s 83-year-old father. His skin is deep brown and creased, his hair white and short. This man is amazing. He’s up at the crack of dawn working every single morning, and he seems to work until sundown on who can say what. I’ve never seen him idle. I only understand about half of what he says, and sometimes he speaks Quechua, which I’m only beginning to learn a few basic words of. He’s a Seventh Day Adventist, so I guess I’ve never seen him work on a Saturday. Apparently about 30 percent of the people here are Adventists. Another 40 percent are Catholic, and the rest are some variety of Christian.

So the people who live in this household are four adults and two children:
Abuelito (83), Nicolas Zea Huancollo, first wife died in an accident when the first three kids were young; he remarried, had two more kids (Geronima and Maximo), but this wife died of some brain disorder when the kids were little. He figured he had bad luck, never remarried again, and raised the kids alone.
Maximo Zea Huancollo (35), Geronima’s brother, unmarried, no kids, finished secondary school, but the family couldn’t afford university.
Geronima Zea Huancollo (33), Abuelito’s daughter, finished elementary school only because she stayed home to help out her father; most people do finish secondary school here.
Hugo Yucra Quispe (30), Geronima’s husband, finished secondary school, but has seven siblings and couldn’t afford university.
Nayda Erika Yucra Zea (11), in elementary school and begins secondary school next year; parents want her to go to school two hours away in Puno so she’ll have the educational foundation to enter directly into university; they’re talking about her living in Puno alone during the week to attend school. Apparently, it’s actually pretty safe.
Jaqueline Yucra Zea (4), in kindergarten

Apparently there was no real plan about how to handle the marriages of next generation after Chijnaya was founded. What ended up happening is that families tended to blend based on which family had more room available. Some new homes were also built, but there were problems with this. Of course new families wanted their own homes, but older families felt like they had purchased all of the land and it rightfully belonged to them. In some cases the older generation owns some of the land where the younger generation lives or grows crops. The land ownership problem is becoming a much bigger problem now with another generation coming up, but I’ll talk more about that later.

I haven’t been invited into the house proper, and I don’t know if that will happen before I leave. The same is pretty much true for most of the other volunteers here. I’ve seen the bedroom of one other family where a volunteer works, but that’s it. He seemed very proud of his room which had a computer and TV. He’s a teacher of physics without a teaching job, which is not uncommon out here in el campo (the country). There are at least two other certified elementary school teachers (5 years of university to become one) who are milking cows for a living.

By the way, teachers are reasonably well compensated, but oddly they’re appointed by the regional government to the schools in which they work. That means that there are teachers living in Chijnaya without work; meanwhile, all but one of the teachers in the Chijnaya primary school come from outside the community and commute every day.

One exciting thing about the school for the volunteers is that there are two private bathrooms with flushing toilets and sinks, for the teachers only. The children also have a bathroom with three stalls, but you flush the toilet by pouring a bucket of water in it. Only the mayor has a sit-down toilet in the outhouse by his home, and I don’t think it is the flushable kind. You don’t really appreciate these little things until you’re squatting in an outhouse several times a day.

A little while ago I spoke with Nayda about personal customs regarding the home. It’s great having an 11-year-old around because you can ask stupid questions without feeling stupid. I asked if the home was considered private and that was the reason why I haven’t been invited in. She said yes, but she also told me what it was like inside.

The family dwelling is L-shaped with one door on the long side, entering from the courtyard. The first room you enter is the dining room. I imagine this serves as their family room, and they do have a TV which has come to my room a couple of times as well. Immediately to the right when you walk in is the parents’ room. They have what is probably a double bed in there. They also have a single bed, like mine, where the two girls sleep together. I have one bed in my room, which was formerly where the parents and daughters were sleeping, so I suppose each girl has her own bed normally.

To the left of the dining room are two pantry spaces where they keep potatoes, dry foods, whatever canned or bottled foods they might have, and meat. The short end of the L is a room shared by Abuelito and Maximo, who basically share finances. Geronima and Maximo cover the cost of their father’s food, and Maximo pays about 50 soles (US$16) per month to pay for his food.

There are two freestanding kitchens on the courtyard. The old one is Abuelito’s, but Geronima does most of the cooking. The old kitchen has a packed earth floor and a stove made of adobe. I know this is going to gross out everyone, but it is primarily fueled by cow poo. It’s not nearly as disgusting as it sounds. Many cultures use dung for fuel, and it’s perfectly safe. In the dry season there’s plenty of it, and first thing in the morning, Abuelito is out collecting all the dried dung from the animal yard. Whatever they don’t use for cooking goes into a little storage house next to the living quarters for use during the rainy season when the dung is too wet to burn. This old kitchen is well used and somewhat cluttered.

The other kitchen has a propane, two-burner stove. It is very neat and clean, but it only gets used occasionally. The propane costs about 1 sol per day (33 cents) if they use it to cook all of their meals, which is too much money to use all the time. Geronima says they get one propane tank about every three months. Because they have no hot water, they must boil water (using up gas) and wash their dishes in a basin. They do use soap and scrub pads for this, so everything is clean.

My family has a little store which basically opens whenever someone comes calling. They sell sodas (Fanta Orange and Inka Cola are very popular), bottled water, and a few other little things. The store is currently low on supplies, and they have to get the money together to restock. I was talking today with Geronima about the store, and she said she has plans to build a bigger one. She’d love to be a storekeeper. She’d really like to sell meat, because there is no butcher in Chijnaya. Everyone pays taxi fare (or walks or rides a bike) to Pukara on Thursdays to buy meat in the market there. I think selling meat is a great way for this family to increase its income, but they need some capital to buy a scale and some meat.

Today I planned for our group to go into Juliaca, a much larger town than Ayaviri, so we can actually do some shopping. Yesterday we spent most of our time on the Internet. Geronima is going with us so we get good taxi fares. We’ll take a taxi into Pukara (10 min.) then another taxi to Juliaca (45 min.) for about 6 soles, a little less than $2. I want to look at the prices to set up Geronima’s carneceria (butcher shop), which I bet would be less than $20. With a butcher shop here, the people could buy more meat because their taxi fare to Pukara could be used for food, and they’ll have more protein in their diets.

I find this interesting because Ralph’s dissertation many years ago was about aggression in the Andes. He found a link to the high-starch diet which causes glucose levels to spike and then often fall below normal levels. This causes easy irritation and grumpiness and contributes to arguments within families, with neighbors, etc. As with any guests, we generally don’t see these problems, but they do exist. If the people had more protein in their regular diets, their glucose levels would stabilize and there could be fewer social problems. Not that the problems are any worse here than what we see in cities, but adding more protein to the diet would make a difference, especially in their health.

I told Geronima that I wanted to help, but that I didn’t want it to cause any problems in the community. She said as long as my help is reasonably small, no one would necessarily think that it was something I helped to do. I don’t want any jealousy or hard feelings in my wake, so I’m trying to be careful. I have bought food for my family, but we’re the only ones who see it. Also, I will be giving them about 400 soles ($120) for housing me here for a month. They could say any improvements in their lives came out of that money, which everyone hosting a volunteer is getting.

It is a privilege to host a volunteer, so mainly people of importance here are the hosts. Hugo is the president of the new tourism committee. Another person on the same committee, Percy, is hosting another volunteer. (He’s one of the certified teachers who is milking cows.) The mayor has a volunteer, as does the director of education, perhaps another teacher, the veterinarian who does artificial inseminations with the cows and so on.

Even my family, however, couldn’t be called “well off.” They say everyone is about the same financially, but I think perhaps there are more differences than they know about. Since they’re pretty private in the family, others don’t necessarily know what the others have. My family says that in early spring, there are very lean times.


Wednesday, June 14, 2006
It’s 6 a.m., my normal waking hour. Two mornings ago I woke up at 5:30 and was wide awake. I took the opportunity to get dressed and climb up a hill next to the town to take pictures of the sunrise. I ended up staying up there for a couple of hours taking “aerial” photographs of Chijnaya. I got some good ones that I’ll try to upload.

It was interesting to watch the town wake up from above. At first, it’s dark and all you hear is the occasional rooster or donkey or cow. (Since my arrival, I’ve seen one airplane in the sky, and that was in Tinajani where the canyon is. It was weird!) As the sun starts to come up, you can see the people coming out into their courtyards and animal pens to begin their day.

A few begin to take their cows and sheep down the dirt roads of town to the hillsides to graze. Others walk out into the surrounding fields to load their backs or their burros with avena, oats on the stalk, which they cut by hand. I’ll try to send some photos of this. If a person carries it, they use a brightly colored, woven blanket which they fill with an overabundance of avena and sling it onto their backs. With burros they tie it up over their backs, and there’s so much avena that you can barely see the burro. In the dry season, the avena is very lightweight, so it just looks like it would be heavy.

Also in the morning the people feed their animals at home. The only real business here is the cheese factory, and I think everyone contributes milk. Each family has a different time of day when they milk their cows so there is a constant supply of fresh milk. By the end of the day, all of that milk has transformed into about 100 wheels of cheese. Each wheel is about seven inches in diameter and three inches thick.

The queseria is a community business. Weekly, everyone is paid by the liter for the milk they contribute. Everyone between the ages of about 18 and 40 work there in a rotating fashion, one week every two months or so, and they are paid for the week they work. Every penny stays in the community and is shared by everyone.

In the morning, the first buckets of milk begin to arrive. People milk their cows and bring the milk in buckets mostly on foot or by bike. The milk is completely organic because there are no pesticides, hormones or fertilizers used here. The fresh milk goes into vats where it is warmed and begins to solidify. One person runs run a wire cutter through it to make the curds and then strains them out and puts them in a bucket for hand pressing.

Three or four people standing at a slanted, stainless steel table press the cheese into terra cotta forms that are lined with rope (to give a nice texture to the round edge of the cheese). They add curds, press out the water, add more curds, pour hot water from the curd vats over the top, press, and add more curds until the cheese is mounded above the top of the mold. The water that pours off the table into a huge metal pot is reheated constantly (with propane) and reused to pour over the cheese as it is being pressed.

The completed wheels are transferred to another stainless steel table where it is trimmed down flat and the extra curds are returned to the table for pressing into molds. Each cheese is topped with a hand-cut, thick plastic wheel that will press the name of the town into the top once it goes through the final pressing. That’s how you know you’re getting genuine Chijnaya cheese.

A layer of filled cheese molds is placed on a square board in a large press, then another board is placed on top. More cheese molds are placed on top with another board until they reach the top of the press. They turn a wheel by hand to press the boards down and squeeze out all the extra water. They clean up the dairy, go home to eat, and come back four hours later to take out the finished cheeses.

The cheese lasts about a week unrefrigerated (around here anyway), but I’m afraid that tourists passing through on a big tour bus wouldn’t buy a cheese of this size. Because it it’s fresh and not aged, preservation of this particular cheese may not be possible.

We volunteers have suggested that they make “Baby Bells” for tourists. If people could buy a little collection of cheeses small enough to eat as a snack, I think they would. We’ve also mentioned the idea of adding herbs to the cheese (maybe once a week so they’re “exclusive” flavors) to add variety. The cheese is good as is, but it would be better with some flavors.

Having a store in Pucara would probably sell more cheese, and all of the profits would come directly to Chijnaya. They could rotate the store workers just like they do in the queseria, or they could designate people who are learning English quickly to work there.

The only other way for the dairy to bring more money into the community would be to improve conditions for their livestock so they will produce more milk. In the rainy season, the livestock areas become muddy lakes. The stables are made of adobe, and most people don’t have large enough stables to keep all of their livestock sheltered during these months. The cows produce less milk and sometimes become sick. Occasionally one will die, which could reduce the family income significantly, depending on how many cows they have and how much milk their cows produce.

For example, my family has 15 cows altogether. Abuelito and Maximo have seven cows, and Geronima and Hugo have eight. They are paid separately for the milk their cows give. Geronima’s prize cow, Olivia, is the best milk-producing cow in town (she won 1st prize last September). On a record day, she gave 14 liters of milk! This is when she had a calf and was averaging 12 liters a day, even with the calf feeding. Now she’s pregnant again and she produces about 5-7 liters a day. When a cow is pregnant she produces less and less milk. Also, the family doesn’t milk pregnant cows as much because they want the calf to be healthy and strong. The last month of pregnancy, the cow produces no milk, then suddenly there’s a lot.

The dairy pays 60 centimos per liter (US 18 cents). This month, my Chijnayan family will bring in about 160 soles (US $48) from milk, which is almost all of their income. The dry season (winter for them in the southern hemisphere right now) is a bad time for milk production, and worse if the cows are pregnant. Like humans, cows can be pregnant anytime, but there is not any kind of planning to maintain a more constant milk production by avoiding births in the winter. Then again, the cows give more milk once the calf is born, so that’s a boon in the dry season.

Many Chijnayans also embroider, but they don’t have much time for it (although they are making, from scratch, embroidered jackets especially for me, Diego and Josh). There’s not much division of labor in Chijnaya, and the older people are accustomed to the idea of everyone doing everything equally. If all you’re doing is milking cows and caring for crops and livestock, that’s fine. No special talent is required for that. Even making cheese is easy, but the older ones don’t do it because it is somewhat physically demanding.

But when you talk about creating a group of artisans, you have to focus on the people with talent. Also, if they’re going to sell custom-made pieces over the Internet, they need someone here to keep records, take orders, design pieces, etc. The money can still be shared with the community because it can be distributed through the Foundation, through the mayor, to improve the town. But there will simply have to be some people who don’t milk cows, tend crops or take livestock out to graze.

The older ones may see this as “not working” because it isn’t the type of physical labor they call “work.” The people with a talent for drawing and sewing the tapestries will spend a lot of time sitting down sewing at home or (even better) in the artisan shop with consistently clean hands (farmers aren’t exactly clean-handed people here, except for the week when they work in the dairy), there may be some community strife.

But back to livestock. Right now, two of my family’s cows are pregnant. During pregnancy their milk production decreases and then stops during the last month or two until the calf is born. Considering that cows gestate for nine months like humans, a pregnant cow is both a blessing and a curse. Once the calf is born, it will be two months before a female can give milk for the family's use. Meanwhile they're feeding and caring for it without any financial return.

They have an animal husbandry project here with a veterenarian who lives in Chijnaya. He does inseminations with Brown Swiss bull semen. This type of cow is hardy enough to live well in this climate and altitude and still produce milk. Insemination costs 20-30 soles (US $6-9), and it works about 70 percent of the time. They do have bulls here who do it the natural way, but insemination is pretty reliable and they can introduce a new strain of cow.

Holstein cows, like the black and white ones Chick-fil-a uses in their ads, are actually milking cows. (Yes, those cows are lying to you. They’d never be made into burgers anyway. Well, maybe when they're old. Ewww!) Holsteins can’t take the climate in the Andes; they get sick and often die. Geez, I know more about livestock now than I ever have in my life!

Livestock are also an investment. Animals can be bought and sold both in town and to outsiders, so families can generate emergency cash if they need to. It’s sort of like pulling from your savings account, except if you sell a milk-giving cow, you’re losing a whole lot more. They do butcher some of their animals, but so far I’ve only heard of sheep and pigs being slaughtered, and only for personal use. I haven’t eaten beef here or seen it for sale in town. Alpaca is the inexpensive red meat of choice here.

Improving milk production is one way to improve income here. The best way to improve milk production is to improve livestock conditions. The Chijnaya Foundation has been working on this for a year or so, and they’ve come up with building concrete stables. These stables will be durable, unlike the adobe, and they can also build in troughs for water and food so the animals don’t have to go out into the rain to feed. My family has an adobe stable, and only half of the cows fit in it. During the rainy season, the others stand around in the rain and mud and often become ill. This is really bad for the cows and the families.

The original engineer who designed concrete stables for the Foundation proposed that they would cost US $1,000 each. The Foundation worked with the design, numbers and materials and got the cost down to US $400. Still, this cost is prohibitive, so they kept working and finally got it down to US $250, which is doable. My family is planning to sell off at least half of their animals to pay for their concrete stable.

With the stables, there is less illness and higher milk production. This means they can make and sell more cheese. Currently, a distributor comes in and buys the cheese daily for distribution locally and as far away as Puno (2 hours by car at Lake Titicaca) and Cusco (4 hours away by car). The distributor pays 8 soles per cheese wheel (US $2.42) and sells them for 10-12 soles (about US $3.30). In the US, you probably wouldn’t think twice about spending $10-15 on cheese like this.

They can’t sell their cheese here in Chijnaya because no one will come here to buy it. There’s no commerce outside of eight little family-owned stores that sell the basics to the community. Pucara is five kilometers away, which is about 20 minutes by bike or 8 bumpy minutes by car down a rocky, dirt road—too far for the average Pucaran to travel for cheese. On the other hand, I learned yesterday that bread is such a big business in Chijnaya that someone from Pucara comes daily to deliver it. I suggested that Chijnaya Queseria should open a store on the square in Pucara.

The main income probably wouldn’t be from the people of Pucara, but from tourists. Several times a day, enormous, modern tour buses packed with shiny, clean tourists traveling between Puno and Cusco stop in the square at Pucara for 30 minutes to 2 hours. If the queseria had a storefront that was colorfully painted and included some English, I think they could sell some cheese, and I think they could sell it for more than 8 soles. That way, they’d make all of the profit. The store could have color photos of the queseria in operation along with information in English and Spanish. In addition, there could be information about the Chijnaya Foundation and a box for donations. A pictorial history of the town could also be on one wall.

In addition, the people here embroider tapestries for extra money. It’s an interesting story. During the 1960’s, one of the Peace Corps volunteers who worked here came up with the idea of the people of Chijnaya embroidering these tapestries which feature the people, animals and activities around Lake Titicaca, because that’s the area they fled when it flooded. They began making the tapestries, which became incredibly popular. Even the Smithsonian has some of the tapestries, and I’ve got one folded up here in my room that was made in the 60’s and looks like the one displayed in the Smithsonian. I’ll upload a photo of the tapestry in my room later.

Of course the downside to doing anything popular is that everyone else wants to do it, too. And they did. All over the region, and especially in Puno where the lake is, people began embroidering. Now these tapestries have glutted the market in the area and don’t sell for much. It’s an incredible disservice because everything is painstakingly handmade and they can take hundreds of hours to create. The tapestries are hardly worth making for the people here, except that they need the money so badly. To change this, the Chijnaya Foundation is preparing efforts to sell these tapestries as artwork in the US for a price that is more in line with the craftsmanship, effort and beauty of the pieces. It’s also possible to have the tapestries personalized. All of the profits will benefit the foundation, which in turn puts every penny back into the community for education, healthcare, livestock and so on. If you’re interested in making a tax-deductible purchase from the foundation, let me know.


Saturday, June 10, 2006

Today I posted to my blog for the first time in a week and a half. It occurred to me that as long as I have the use of a non-connected computer in Chijnaya, it would be better to journal daily and transfer the file to my blog. That way I can spend less time on the computer when I have Internet, which is usually in a town where I’d rather see the sights, and still have time to say everything I want. You may not want to read everything I write, but if you do, you’ll learn a lot.

We spent most of the day today in this awesome canyon-like place called Tinajani. We did a lot of hiking and took tons of photos. Hugo, Nayda and Jaqueline went with us, along with several other Chijnayans. Hopefully I can upload some photos in Puno next weekend. Check my Yahoo Photo site, too. (The URL is listed in one of my June 10 posts.)

We rode for an hour to Tinajani in what we have come to lovingly call the Rasta Van. It’s an old, boxy Toyota van with Rasta window stickers and some Chinese characters stenciled on the front doors. At one point, including children, we had 23 people crammed into it. This is the preferred mode of transportation in the altiplano. The more people you can cram into or onto any wheeled vehicle, the better. By the way, the 2-hour round trip cost a little less than $3.

The Chijnayans sent us off exploring while they cooked food and did some fishing. This is the dry season, so the river is very low. They use nets on a large rectangular frame to catch the fish. They position the frame next to the river’s edge with the net flowing downstream. Then they stomp around in the vegetation by the river’s edge to send the trout and catfish swimming, hopefully into the net. The biggest fish they caught today were skinny and about six to seven inches long.

While some people were fishing, others buried our favorite food—potatoes—in a hole, put wood on top and built a stone oven over it. They burned the wood to cook the potatoes and later dug the tubers out. They also cooked another tuber called oca, which is a little sweet and has a texture approaching cauliflower. It looked more like a cross between a small whitish carrot and a potato. By the way, they have some 60 varieties of potatoes here, and I think I’ve already eaten at least a dozen of each.

The fish was wrapped in newspaper and cooked, I think, in the oven on top of the potatoes. I wasn’t around when they were cooking it. Once it was ready, we all sat down on the ground and had a feast. Someone brought along a Chijnayan cheese, and we all got a chunk. We call it “squeaky cheese” because it squeaks on your teeth when you eat it.

There was also a thin sauce in a bowl for the potatoes. It was made of a white clay, yes clay, with some salt mixed it. It wasn’t bad, and it gave some moisture to the somewhat dry potatoes. The trout was excellent!

In ingenious Peruvian fashion, someone cut an empty, 20 ounce, plastic bottle in half and made a cup. We passed it around along with a 2-liter Fanta Orange and an Inka Cola (yellow soda that tastes like a cross between cream soda and bubble gum). This kind of passing of drinks is very common here, as we learned a couple of days ago.

On Wednesday, June 7, the neighboring town Pukara celebrated its 160th anniversary. All the other local towns were invited to participate in a two-day celebration. When you’re living in a rural town like Chijnaya, a visit to a town a little larger does seem like an event.

The big event of the day was a soccer game between Chijnaya and another pueblo which is seriously called Chonkawonka. We arrived at the stadium, a grassy field with an oval adobe wall surrounding it and a 360 degree view of the Andes, at around noon. Two other teams played two full games before ours began. I walked back into town when I realized what was happening so I could make phone calls home.

Pukara has one phone that allows international calls, and it’s a payphone on a noisy main road. There is about a 3 second delay when you talk, which can be frustrating, but for $3 I can talk for 40 minutes! It’s 30 cents a minute from Cusco, which is definitely a city by Peruvian standards, and there’s no delay when you talk.

After hanging out in Pukara for a bit and making phone calls, I went back to the stadium. When our soccer game finally commenced, one guy from our volunteer group named Derek played on the Chijnaya team. Derek is 6 foot 2, which is terribly tall down here. He scored two goals himself, and although I don’t remember the final score, it was a blowout and our team emerged victorious. Incidentally, Derek is from Dunwoody, where his parents still live. He graduated from Dunwoody High School in 2005 and now attends Pomona College in California.

We left the stadium just after dark. In the sun during the day, it’s easily 70 degrees, but it’s 15 degrees cooler in the shade. Once night falls, it gets cold fast. The team wanted to go into the Pukara town square to celebrate, so we all reluctantly went. We all thought we’d be back home before nightfall, so we didn’t bring our warmest clothes. Our hosts were very accommodating, and ultimately we were glad we stayed.

The initial celebration began with what has become a familiar practice to us in the last few days. One of the soccer players showed up with a red plastic crate. Inside were 12 beers, a liter each. The crate of beer came with one flimsy plastic cup. Everyone stood in a circle, and the person who bought the beer made a little announcement and gifted the crate of beer to someone in the circle. That person then said a few words of thanks and opened the first beer. Derek ended up with at least one case of beer for his soccer prowess.

The person who opens the first beer must pour a little beer in the cup and then slosh it on the ground in an easterly direction. This is a gift to Pacha Mama, or Mother Earth, who rose from Lake Titicaca thousands of years ago and traveled through Pukara to Cusco where she made a home with some other male deity whose name escapes me. (Most people here are some kind of Christian, but they still do little rituals like this.)

Once Pacha Mama has her offering, you pour your beer into the cup (often we’d only pour a swallow’s worth), then you pass the bottle to the next person in the circle, say “cheers,” and drink. (I think “cheers” is the first universal English word in Chijnaya.)

After you drink, you pass the cup to the person with the bottle, and so goes the beer until it’s empty. Another liter of beer is opened and passed. Often there are two or three bottles going around, sometimes in opposite directions. It’s easy to pass to the next person if you choose not to drink, but it’s polite to be in the circle.

The festivities for the evening were hosted by the mayor of Chijnaya, Pasqual (I don’t remember his last name). He made lots of announcements over a loudspeaker, partially talking about the volunteers in Chijnaya and all the things we would be doing. Turns out, most of the people in Pukara already knew who we were. News spreads fast in small towns. Then, as a total surprise, the mayor asked me, la Profesora Kate as everyone calls me, to say a few words to the 300 or so people in the square. Yikes! I did my best, and they seemed pleased.

Then someone from Pukara brought me a case of beer.

Fortunately there were lots of people in the circle. I think I ended up with two more cases of beer before it was over. I probably drank the equivalent of two 12 ounce beers altogether. There was Peruvian music playing, and all of the volunteers danced with people in Pukara right out there in the town square. There were also two big bonfires going, accompanied by traditional music and dancing. It was great fun.

After we were all tuckered out, we went to a restaurant for some mystery food that made most of us feel iffy by the next day. I had meds, but it didn’t stop the initial bowel problems. I was very disappointed to be ill because on Thursday there was a big parade in Pukara, and we gringos were going to dress up in traditional Andean peasant clothing and march for the entire town.

Everyone in Chijnaya left at 11 a.m. on Thursday–except for me. I stayed home. A couple of hours later, Geronima (my host mother) came for me in the Che taxi (it’s got stencils of Che Guevara painted on the back of it). I had been asleep, and I was a little weak, but before I could wake up all the way, I was bouncing down the road to Pukara.

All of the volunteers working in Chijnaya did dress up in Andean clothing and marched in the parade with the Chijnayan coalition. I’ve never heard the word “gringos” so many times in one day. (Here, gringo simply means a foreigner and isn’t a slur.) The people loved our efforts, however, and everyone seems happy that we’re here. We learned later from Ralph (Dr. Bolton), that no middle or upper class Peruvian would dress up and march in such a way, and by doing so, we connected closely to the people here. I’m glad we did it.

After the parade, there was more gifting of beer. I ended up with two more cases, and I drank maybe 8 ounces. The point is to be thankful and kind and share with everyone, so it’s as much ceremonial as it is recreational. After doing it a couple of times, the whole thing starts to grow on you.

We volunteers finally excused ourselves from the circle and went shopping in the square. Most of us have begun buying fruits and vegetables so we can reduce the starch in our diet. We’re having to explain to our host families that our diets are different back home, and we need some different foods in much smaller quantities. They eat like you wouldn’t believe, but then again, they do lots of hard physical work during the day. They’re also eating lots of carbs (potatoes, rice, barley, chicken broth and bread are staples) and not a lot of meat to sustain them throughout the day.

Word gets around that in Chijnaya, the people think several things about us. First of all, they constantly ask us if we’re cold. They think we don’t wear enough clothes. I think the clothes we wear are less bulky than theirs, but just as warm. They keep worrying that we’re going to get sick. They worry that we eat less than their two-year-olds. They try to pour hot drinks and soup and bread down us like we haven’t eaten for weeks. It’s all very sweet actually, but we have to explain that we don’t mean to be rude, but we just can’t eat another potato.

So buying our own food, which is super cheap, is a great option. All of the food here is organically grown because no one can afford pesticides or hormones or fertilizer. Everything is picked fresh, so the bananas, oranges and apples are phenomenal. All the meat is fresh too, but they don’t eat a lot of meat (too expensive for many people). In my home, we usually have some meat in the morning soup, and I will continue to buy it when I’m in Pukara.

On Thursday night, we had a going-away party for Joe Sisto and John Lee. Joe is an Atlanta businessman and medical anthropology student at GSU who is working primarily on the medical issues in the community, and he’ll be returning in August, hopefully with some medical specialists. John, from Pomona College, is making a video about the community to aid donations to the Chijnaya Foundation. He’s also studying for the MCAT and preparing to apply to med school during his senior year.

The volunteers and about 20 Chijnayans gathered in one of the eight town stores to say goodbye. This goodbye of course included a case of beer, served in the traditional way, the chewing of coca leaves (more on that later), and a round of their own moonshine, which was cut with some other sweet liquor and wasn’t really that bad. After all our goodbyes, Joe and John hopped into a taxi and left for Ayaviri. I heard tonight that Joe had arrived home, but John was still in Lima because he changed his flights and got stuck for a couple of days. Lima seems like a decent place to get stuck.

I know I’m jumping around a little, but back to Saturday. After the canyon, we went to a hot springs for our first showers since we left Cusco. We took a look at the man-made pool over the hot springs and decided it looked a little sketchy. We opted for the almost equally sketchy showers, which turned out to be cold but didn’t come with dozens of staring locals.

Until we got dressed and came out of the showers, that is.

After a cold shower, we did feel a little better and walked down to the pool to drop our feet in. Turns out the water is really hot. I almost changed into my bathing suit and jumped in, but decided to stick with just the feet. The sun was going down, and it was getting cold, fast.

We went into Ayaviri, and I spent my entire hour and a half on the Internet reading emails, uploading pictures and blogging. I would’ve liked to have eaten dinner in a restaurant, but communication seemed more important. After a bumpy bus ride home, I had a fried egg sandwich and an orange, which really hit the spot.