I am in bed, at Yame and Miguel's, it is 7:30am, and I have a throat infection. Melanie, a longstay resident workingn with an NGO in Urubamba, scolded me when I padded downstairs into the kitchen barefoot for a cup of tea. "For the sake of sounding like a mother..." she said, shaking her head. I tiptoed back upstairs and climbed back into bed, where I am now snuggled cosily with my lemon and ginger tea and wondering how I can knock this infection out of me in the shortest time possible. (I made a mental schedule - hot toddy, Paddy´s, Saturday. Instant recovery, to be sure.)
I finish my week at the school and leave feeling incredibly guilty about the paperchain doll massacre incident.
A few days later...It is now almost 5pm, and I am in the Real MccCoy, curled up on the worn brown sofa in the corner of the pub, feet tucked up under me. I like that I can take my shoes off here and just wear my socks, like I am at home. I think that is how they want backpackers to feel, especially those who have been away from home for a long time.
It is warm and cosy inside. There are only a few people, reading and sipping tea.
Travelling is a rollercoster of emotions. You can feel up and down from one minute to the next. Fearful and hopeful. In love one day, a complete skeptic the next. Angry and forgiving. Distant and close.
I reflect on my hike to Macchu Picchu. The journey there made me a feel a number of things: at first, I felt annoyed at the disorganisation (I was with a group and we were hiring bikes to cycle and hike there), and unappreciative. I allowed myself to feel frustration for some time...and then I remembered my Mum´s words, "I love you so much, because you never complain". I thought about that, and I said nothing, but felt guilty, because I felt like I was complaining on the inside, and this is no different to complaining out aloud.
When we got on the bikes though, a sensation of exhiliration took over. Flying down the mountain roads, the fresh air kissing and playfully biting my cheeks, I felt alive and truly happy once again. I felt an amazing rush as I sailed downhill, taking in the incredible mountainous scenery around me. I loved the swallows, I loved the dragonflies that dipped and dived in the clear blue sky, and it was so quiet that you could have heard the beating wings of a hummingbird. I listened for every small noise in nature that is possible for humans to hear. The sun shone. Our faces shone.
After lunch, we embarked on a dirt path that was extremely rocky. Until now, we had been on a paved road. So this was a little difficult. It began to rain, gently first, then heavily. We had a guide, Willy, driving behind us in a jeep and he suggested that the boys go ahead on the bikes, and the girls get into the back of the car.
Well. Nobody puts Beani in the back. I politely informed Willy that I would be going ahead with the boys. And off I went.
With a fresh dose of determination, thanks to Willy´s comment, I crawled at snail´s pace along the rocky path, cursing the suspension on my bike and wondering, with the boys so far ahead of me, whether girls really are the weaker sex after all (nothing that was going to stop me, of course, but it did infuriate me slightly). I stayed on the right-hand side of the road, so that jeeps and buses could pass, with Willy driving right behind me, on my tail. The bumpiness of the road shook me around until I felt like my insides had turned into a milkshake. My vision was blurry. Completely soaked from the rain, I gripped the brakes until my hands hurt, because I was still on a decline and I feared that if I went any faster, my brain and eyeballs would liquify. The road curved through the lush jungle.
Before, on the paved road, Brooke and I had sailed past waterfalls with air rushing through our lungs, screaming at the top of our voices, feeling the natural high that downhill biking in the Andes gives you without failure. Just a few hours later, I was tired, soaked through, hands hurting from all the braking, and feeling inferior to the boys. Instead of feeling resigned though, I told myself that it would be bad to wear down the brakes, so I turned and signalled to Willy that I was done, with a big thumbs up sign, and settled myself back into the jeep.
The next day, we started the hiking. I will fill this space in with facts and statistics later. But what I can say now is that hiking to Macchu Picchu is both amazing and hair-raising. A narrow - and I mean narrow - path wound around the mountainside, the drop below so steep and far that I experienced vertigo in a few places and my legs simply refused to move.
Falling, falling, falling. Why did I feel like I was falling, when I had my two feet firmly on the ground? Was part of me actually falling? Was part of my soul unable to resisit taking the plunge, an air spirit diving and catching the wind, souring through the canyons below, watching the mountainside stream away, an upwards blur towards the heavens? The free spirit part of me perhaps? There was definitely a part of me that felt like I was tumbling into the valleys far below. Every time a rock crumbled and fell, that rock was me, or the essence of me. My stomach would lift, as though the falling rock was that essence of myself, leaving my body behind. A sensation I have felt before but never been able to explain, something deep and mystical.
For quite a while, I felt as though the mountain could wake from a deep sleep, and heave and shake it´s body to free itself from all the tiny people that crawled along it´s belly.
(to continue...)
viernes, 30 de octubre de 2009
jueves, 22 de octubre de 2009
Paper-chain dolls in Urubamba
Imagine you are in a small village in Peru. It is a very hot day; scorching the backs of your legs and the top of your head. The sky is tall and blue and very clear. You are walking slowly along a dirt road, carrying a bagpack and swinging an imaginary waterbottle, wishing you´d brought it with you, and scanning the horizon for the farmhouse you are staying in. It is your first day of a stint of teaching in the local primary school; you have arrived early, spoken to the principal, and found out that your first class doesn´t start until midday, and it is barely past 9am. You decide to go back to the farmhouse...but you have lost your way.
On one side of the road is a tall mud brick wall. On the other, a row of homes with low doors, hobbit homes, also made from mud brick. The doors are all shut. Everything is quiet. There is not a soul around; everybody is inside, taking refuge from the sweltering heat. You pass an empty-looking shop, selling candy, bottles of water and cigarettes. You stoop low to enter the shop, to see if anybody is inside. No-one.
You continue along the road until you reach a fork in the road. Sweat rolls down your forehead and down the ridge of your nose, the shape of a question mark. Which way now? A lone donkey is tied up next to the mud brick wall, which you have been following for some time. There is literally nobody to ask. The donkey looks at you with soft blinking eyes, as if to say, "don´t ask me. I´m a donkey."
You take a left turn. There is a house painted mauve; the owners must have money to own a house dressed in colour. The house looks familiar. Next to it is a large cactus and a pot of geraniums, also familiar to you, but then again that is a normal sight in Peru. A clear stream murmurs along the right side of the road. You stop and dip your hands in it, then you wash your face. Mmm, it is so cool. The sun really is hot, and the water gives you instant relief.
A young woman is approaching. When she is closer, you ask in Spanish, "do you know where Miguel and Yume live?" She doesn´t know. You can´t remember their surname, either.
So you keep walking and turn another corner. More mud brick homes, cactuses and pots of geraniums. All you can think about is finding the farmhouse, taking your shoes and socks off and sinking into the hammock in the garden.
Several times, you turn back and attempt another route. But every corner is familiar now; the real path to the farmhouse will no longer ring bells even if you are on the right track. You pass the donkey with the absent expression six or seven times. It is almost like a dream, in which you are trapped in a maze. Every corner that you have already passed is etched deeper in your mind, like tracing over the same path on an etch-a-sketch.
There are mud brick walls on almost every side. You can barely see over them; the mountain tops peek over at you, and through a few cracks in the wall you can see a pretty garden, or a cobblestone courtyard decorated with hanging washing, or a field of corn, the scene changing every few steps. You keep following the brook upstream. It leads you to a field with a wall around it. Surely this was the field you took a short cut through early this morning? No, but this one has rows and rows of lettuce; the other was growing corn. Ah, here are the rows of corn, in the next-door field. But wait, there is another field over there, behind it. You lean against the wall, feeling thirsty and exhausted. Peering over the top of the wall and into the field, you see a capuccino-coloured calf rolling around happily amongst the lettuces. A cow, tied up nearby, lets out a loud "moooooooo". You have an urge to let out a loud grown, just like the cow did. Completely lost - for all the cornfields and mudbrick homes appear identical, and you can´t remember which parts of the stream you had skipped over and followed in the early morning - you find a nearby tree to sit under, and bathe in the cool shade.
A dying bee is struggling on the ground. You pick it up and watch it die on the palm of your hand. Then you stand up, walk over to the corner of somebody´s field, and throw it over the wall.
In doing so, you notice a couple of farmers ploughing the land. You wave. A man approaches you - he is elderly, with a wrinked brown face and a green woollen beanie. The beanie is much too small for him, and sits like a parrot on the top of his head. You ask whether he knows Miguel and Yume, and explain that you are looking for their farmhouse. He nods enthusastically - he does know them, in fact Miguel is godfather to his son. He will show you the way. He motions for you to follow him.
You follow behind the man as he swings his cane and leads you across the cornfields, over the bubbling streams, through whispering trees, and along the top of a mudbrick wall. You follow the wall for sometime, making left and right turns, as though you have found a way to cheat in a hedge maze by walking along the tops of the hedges. Somehow, you find the situation extremely funny - you have been wandering the village for over an hour now, when the morning's shortcut had only taken ten minutes - and scrambling behind the farmer, you resist fits of giggles. Eventually you catch sight of Yume and Miguel's garden with the rows of young corn, and the hammock hanging amongst a bed of bright flowers. You are greeted by the farmhouse dogs, Toby and Gitana. Gitana barks furiously at the farmer, probably because of the cane stick he is swinging by his side. A little embarassed at Gitana´s lack of propriety, you thank the farmer profusely and head towards the house for a drink. It is actually nearly time to go back to the school for the first hour of class.
So, this is how I spent my first day in Urubamba, teaching art and English in the village primary school. At least, that is what I was supposed to be teaching...the first hour was a 6th grade communications class! As it was the first day of spring, I broke the class into groups of four and they composed short songs about 'la primavera' (springtime). Although, I had to say, on this particular day it felt like the middle of summer.
The next day, after breakfast in the farmhouse, Yume's eyes shone as she described her idea of getting the 2nd grade kids to draw pictures of springtime on paper plates. Brilliant. Although I was supposed to be teaching painting, the school had absolutely no materials, apart from a couple of sets of coloured textas. So it seemed like a simple idea and I set off (knowing the route to the school pretty well this time, although Toby sensed my inherent lack of direction and accompanied me this time) with a bag full of paper plates and lollies to reward the class with.
Funnily, the teacher sat down with the children to draw and demanded my attention the whole time. When she wasn´t doing that, she was screaming at the children. In truth, I found her quite immature, much more so than her class. Which makes me question the meaning and value of 'maturity'...in that class that day, 'immaturity' and 'childish' took on completely opposite meanings...the kids who are supposed to be 'immature' act spontaneously on genuine feelings...whilst being 'mature' just means that a person has aged, has ripened, into something which is not necessarily better than the child. Becoming older just seems to mean gaining undesirabl traits and characteristics, like greed and desperation, not being spontaenous... My point?? Stay a child as long as you can!!!!
Anyway, I taught the kids English vocabulary about the springtime, and in the class after that we made paper chain dolls. I was a little horrified when the grade one-ers started cutting out their dolls. Forgetting that it is difficult for a small child to use scissors, I walked around the class just in time to see heads, legs and arms being chopped off...leaving a pile of massacred dolls on the teachers desk at the end...I still regret not having time to glue all the pieces together and stringing them up on the classroom wall.
I spent the evenings swinging in the hammock with Toby by my side, reading an Incan drama called 'Ollantay' and wondering what on earth to teach the next day, that doesn´t involve the slaughtering of innocent paperchain dolls.
To be continued...
On one side of the road is a tall mud brick wall. On the other, a row of homes with low doors, hobbit homes, also made from mud brick. The doors are all shut. Everything is quiet. There is not a soul around; everybody is inside, taking refuge from the sweltering heat. You pass an empty-looking shop, selling candy, bottles of water and cigarettes. You stoop low to enter the shop, to see if anybody is inside. No-one.
You continue along the road until you reach a fork in the road. Sweat rolls down your forehead and down the ridge of your nose, the shape of a question mark. Which way now? A lone donkey is tied up next to the mud brick wall, which you have been following for some time. There is literally nobody to ask. The donkey looks at you with soft blinking eyes, as if to say, "don´t ask me. I´m a donkey."
You take a left turn. There is a house painted mauve; the owners must have money to own a house dressed in colour. The house looks familiar. Next to it is a large cactus and a pot of geraniums, also familiar to you, but then again that is a normal sight in Peru. A clear stream murmurs along the right side of the road. You stop and dip your hands in it, then you wash your face. Mmm, it is so cool. The sun really is hot, and the water gives you instant relief.
A young woman is approaching. When she is closer, you ask in Spanish, "do you know where Miguel and Yume live?" She doesn´t know. You can´t remember their surname, either.
So you keep walking and turn another corner. More mud brick homes, cactuses and pots of geraniums. All you can think about is finding the farmhouse, taking your shoes and socks off and sinking into the hammock in the garden.
Several times, you turn back and attempt another route. But every corner is familiar now; the real path to the farmhouse will no longer ring bells even if you are on the right track. You pass the donkey with the absent expression six or seven times. It is almost like a dream, in which you are trapped in a maze. Every corner that you have already passed is etched deeper in your mind, like tracing over the same path on an etch-a-sketch.
There are mud brick walls on almost every side. You can barely see over them; the mountain tops peek over at you, and through a few cracks in the wall you can see a pretty garden, or a cobblestone courtyard decorated with hanging washing, or a field of corn, the scene changing every few steps. You keep following the brook upstream. It leads you to a field with a wall around it. Surely this was the field you took a short cut through early this morning? No, but this one has rows and rows of lettuce; the other was growing corn. Ah, here are the rows of corn, in the next-door field. But wait, there is another field over there, behind it. You lean against the wall, feeling thirsty and exhausted. Peering over the top of the wall and into the field, you see a capuccino-coloured calf rolling around happily amongst the lettuces. A cow, tied up nearby, lets out a loud "moooooooo". You have an urge to let out a loud grown, just like the cow did. Completely lost - for all the cornfields and mudbrick homes appear identical, and you can´t remember which parts of the stream you had skipped over and followed in the early morning - you find a nearby tree to sit under, and bathe in the cool shade.
A dying bee is struggling on the ground. You pick it up and watch it die on the palm of your hand. Then you stand up, walk over to the corner of somebody´s field, and throw it over the wall.
In doing so, you notice a couple of farmers ploughing the land. You wave. A man approaches you - he is elderly, with a wrinked brown face and a green woollen beanie. The beanie is much too small for him, and sits like a parrot on the top of his head. You ask whether he knows Miguel and Yume, and explain that you are looking for their farmhouse. He nods enthusastically - he does know them, in fact Miguel is godfather to his son. He will show you the way. He motions for you to follow him.
You follow behind the man as he swings his cane and leads you across the cornfields, over the bubbling streams, through whispering trees, and along the top of a mudbrick wall. You follow the wall for sometime, making left and right turns, as though you have found a way to cheat in a hedge maze by walking along the tops of the hedges. Somehow, you find the situation extremely funny - you have been wandering the village for over an hour now, when the morning's shortcut had only taken ten minutes - and scrambling behind the farmer, you resist fits of giggles. Eventually you catch sight of Yume and Miguel's garden with the rows of young corn, and the hammock hanging amongst a bed of bright flowers. You are greeted by the farmhouse dogs, Toby and Gitana. Gitana barks furiously at the farmer, probably because of the cane stick he is swinging by his side. A little embarassed at Gitana´s lack of propriety, you thank the farmer profusely and head towards the house for a drink. It is actually nearly time to go back to the school for the first hour of class.
So, this is how I spent my first day in Urubamba, teaching art and English in the village primary school. At least, that is what I was supposed to be teaching...the first hour was a 6th grade communications class! As it was the first day of spring, I broke the class into groups of four and they composed short songs about 'la primavera' (springtime). Although, I had to say, on this particular day it felt like the middle of summer.
The next day, after breakfast in the farmhouse, Yume's eyes shone as she described her idea of getting the 2nd grade kids to draw pictures of springtime on paper plates. Brilliant. Although I was supposed to be teaching painting, the school had absolutely no materials, apart from a couple of sets of coloured textas. So it seemed like a simple idea and I set off (knowing the route to the school pretty well this time, although Toby sensed my inherent lack of direction and accompanied me this time) with a bag full of paper plates and lollies to reward the class with.
Funnily, the teacher sat down with the children to draw and demanded my attention the whole time. When she wasn´t doing that, she was screaming at the children. In truth, I found her quite immature, much more so than her class. Which makes me question the meaning and value of 'maturity'...in that class that day, 'immaturity' and 'childish' took on completely opposite meanings...the kids who are supposed to be 'immature' act spontaneously on genuine feelings...whilst being 'mature' just means that a person has aged, has ripened, into something which is not necessarily better than the child. Becoming older just seems to mean gaining undesirabl traits and characteristics, like greed and desperation, not being spontaenous... My point?? Stay a child as long as you can!!!!
Anyway, I taught the kids English vocabulary about the springtime, and in the class after that we made paper chain dolls. I was a little horrified when the grade one-ers started cutting out their dolls. Forgetting that it is difficult for a small child to use scissors, I walked around the class just in time to see heads, legs and arms being chopped off...leaving a pile of massacred dolls on the teachers desk at the end...I still regret not having time to glue all the pieces together and stringing them up on the classroom wall.
I spent the evenings swinging in the hammock with Toby by my side, reading an Incan drama called 'Ollantay' and wondering what on earth to teach the next day, that doesn´t involve the slaughtering of innocent paperchain dolls.
To be continued...
sábado, 3 de octubre de 2009
Cusco, Part II: Rafting fun, cats in pubs, becoming a god-mother and other random things.
Where shall I start?! It has been probably a couple of months since my last posts, and naturally a lot of things have happened. South America is a fruit salad of adventures. Colourful, lots of variety, and the occasional bad bit of fruit (reference to my cat-in-pub incident, below.)
On Sunday, 6th September at 7:30am, I sipped coca leaf tea in a small café on Clle Plateros near the plaza in Cusco, listening to a Simon and Garfunkel song that was playing softly on the radio in the background, and explaining to an elderly frenchman on the bench next to me that I saw them in concert in July. I was waiting to meet up with a group to go on a three-day rafting expedition on the Apurimac river (one of the best white-water rafting rivers in the world). We were to meet at 8am, so I was a little early. Alain, the Frenchman, explained to me that he had first come to Peru in ´68 and that there were no tourists in Peru at that time, save for a small number of drifting hippies. I imagined what it would have been like, travelling at a time when there were no mobile phones, no facebook, no lines of tourists and flashing cameras, no big bus or tour companies. Of course, there are benefits to living in this day and age. Had I been born in Australia or New Zealand back then, I might not have ventured on trip like this, unless I had money and an independent spirit.
There were about 18 of us in total, plus the guides. About half were Israeli, and a New Zealand couple, a couple from Tassie, a couple from Poland, a kiwi girl on her own, a British guy, a Danish guy and myself. All around my age, and an awesome crew. We started with a bus ride of several hours then had a nice lunch by the river, where we got our gear ready. We got ourselves into groups, 6 people per boat. Our guide was Joselo, a bit of a cheeky monkey with a long pony tail. It is so hard to describe the trip...the Apurimac river is absolutely stunning...it gushed and roared as we navigated the most wild of the rapids (the class Vs), and flowed and golden and green in silence in the quieter parts, swirling and carrying us gently downstream. A canyon wall rose metres on either side...we passed waterfalls...and swallows and dragonflies skimmed and dipped the water. Large boulders and smaller rocks piled on either side of the river at the foot of the canyon, and in parts where the river was too difficult to pass through, we left our boats with the guides and clamboured over the boulders, meeting the boats further along where it was safe to continue.
The river cast a spell on me. I found myself falling deeply in love with nature and drawing energy from her that I have never felt before. It was one of those feelings of being truly alive...
The camping was stunning. We set up our tents on the sandy river banks and camped under trillions of stars. On the second night I slept on a big smooth rock, that curved up on four sides to form a sort of natural bedroom, protected from the wind, the sky full of stars as the ceiling. During the night, I needed to pee really badly. I realised I didn´t know how to get down from the rock, so I climbed up a bit higher and squatted on the edge. I think peeing on the top of a boulder in the Andes at night would have to be the strangest, most surreal sensation I have ever experienced. My hair blowing wildly in the wind; the ragged, black mountain peaks silhouetted against the midnight blue sky, on such a starry, starry night, and my pee trickling down the rock to join with the raging river, I felt like some kind of river goddess, or maybe a half condor woman (?!)...it was very strange!
The river's daytime brillance, and the sky that night, reminded me of a poem that is one of my Mum's favourites, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, 'Pied Beauty':
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
In the morning, we had pancakes with condensed milk for breakfast. It was so good. I was really energed for a third day of rafting. Changing into my wetsuit, though, I discovered the price I had paid for a beautiful campout under the stars: about 200 sandfly bites on my legs and ankles...
So, the rafting was fantastic, but moving on to the cat in the pub incident. A day before my rafting trip, Saturday morning, I was enjoying a big breakfast in the Real McCoy, which is the English pub where gringos flock to for vegemite toast, pancakes and Earl Grey tea. I was talking to my Irish friend Dave whom I met in Lima and was keen to watch some soccer that morning with Marcus and David, his travelling buddies. Suddenly, a friendly-looking black cat, identical to my cat at home Phoebe, jumped up on my lap, lured by my bacon. He was purring and sniffing the air, pawing playfully at my jeans. I stroked his head and played with him for a while, because he was so cuddly and affectionate. After a while, my face started becoming really itchy and my breathing quite fast. I asked Dave if his breathing was fast too, because I thought it could have been the altitude, which makes a person easily puffed. He said no, and maybe I should go to the bathroom and check out my face. Anyway, into the bathroom I hastily went, and saw that my face had broken out in hive-like bumps. I couldn't stop coughing, either. Now, it happened to be the Day of the Tourist, and the town was filled with tourists, locals and processions. The friendly owners of the pub called the doctor, but he took a while to arrive because it was simply impossible to enter the plaza de armas in a vehicle. When he did arrive, the condition had got worse and he informed me in a serious tone that I was "entering into an asthma crisis". The cat was swept up in the owners arms and shoved into a cupboard where he lives amongst a soft nest of cushions and blankets. A big needle came out. "That´s not going into my arse, I hope" I said, knowing full well where it was going. (There is only one way it is done in Peru.) Dave looked completely freaked-out. I was laughing, probably out of nervousness (I remember getting my brain scans back when I had an aneurism early last year, and finding myself laughing in the same way). Although, the situation was pretty amusing. Bending over in the tiny pub toilet with my pants down, I duly received my dose of steroids, giggling ferociously and gasping for breaths of air.
My poor bum! And my poor face. It was as puffy as a bowl of honey puffs.
Going back home to retrieve my asthma medication proved rather difficult. I couldn´t get a taxi; as they were all full, because of Day of the Blimmin´Tourist. The processions, with their trombones and trumpets and clarinets honking noisily, were completely blocking the road. And every road I turned down to get away from them, in search of a taxi, they seemed to follow me, in the way that the monster comes after you in PacMan. The sun was beating down; it was an incredibly hot day. My breathing wasn´t good. I called my roommate Brooke, and she agreed to pack a bag with my medication and meet me in the Plaza with it. However, the phone cut out before we could agree to an exact meeting place, so I decided the best thing to do was to go home, and continue my search for a taxi. Finally I found one and waved it down. When I got to the house, Brooke, bless her alpacca socks, had already left to find me. So back to the Plaza I went. I found her in the Real McCoy, the original source of the incident, and we indulged in a big plate of nachos and laughed about the whole thing. I parked myself on the sofa in the pub where I remained stationary all afternoon, and I even let the dear cat stretch across my legs and share in my laziness; I don´t bear a grudge.
The month of September passed really quickly. Lots of progress was made on the kitchen, and we were served our daily dose of chaos by the little kids in the school: more little footprints in the cement, lots of chasing around after the wheelbarrow we bought Marco, squeals emanating from within, and the constant cries of "empujame gringita, empujame gringita!"´s of the little girls on the swings (this means, push me gringo!). The project has been a lot of fun. We plastered, tiled, painted, grouted, filled in holes. At the end of the day, we barricaded the door so that we would not end up with more little footprints, which seemed to work pretty well.
I can´t really describe literally everything that has happened in Cusco. I´ve made a lot of friends, been out enjoying the salsa scene, ferreted around in the marketplace, that sort of thing. I can, though, mention a couple of random things that remind me of everyday life in Cusco:
* Trying anticucho on the street stall at night, near my house
* Football games
* Going to the zoo
* Ceviche and chicha morada with the crew at a local joint behind our house
* Going to visit Brooke at the hospital, and eating her hospital food and her cake
* Finishing all of Kevin´s meals
* Dancing salsa with Jose at the club with the creaky wooden floor that bounced up and down, and the live band
* Kevin´s awesome ceviche, and Brooke´s amazing macaroni cheese
* The day we had lunch with all the teachers at the school, and they put on 1980s disco music to eat to
* Going out for 'forest food' with Maritsa and her cousins, and being served a pile of meat that included a small, hairy paw in the middle of my plate!
And then there was the day I became a god-mother! To cut a short story long, a small boy at the school, named Luis, had injured his face quite badly (his father Toribio said he fell out of a window). One of the kind volunteers, an elderly gentleman named Michael from New Zealand, ensured he got some medical attention and asked me to translate for himself and for Toribio when they met to discuss the x-rays, as Michael didn´t speak any Spanish. I was happy to, but I was very surprised when we asked to be Luis´s godparents and to come to the baptism on the weekend. The next-day, Toribio brought two bead bracelets that he had made, and put them around our wrists. I was a bit reluctant but also touched so I agreed. On Saturday morning, 19 September, Lola (the girl who cleans the house) woke me up early for the baptism practice. I had my doubts; but I had given my word that I would be Luis´s god mother, and that I would be on the steps at the plaza at 9:45am. I had been out dancing and had a headache; I wished I could be a fairy mother, so I could just magic myself there, and lie in bed for longer. When I got there I saw Toribio crossing the road, and Michael with his floppy bush hat and bag of baptism gifts. I wondered if Toribio had walked. It takes him two days to walk from his village.
Toribio kissed us all and kept repeating the word "compadres". He seemed really happy. We went over to the Santiago church, and went into an office where the Padre made us repeat parts of the bible. It was quite boring, actually. I hadn´t had much to do with the Catholic church before, and not much desire to, what with its stance on homosexuality and contribution to the spread of AIDS. (I hope this doesn´t offend anyone, seriously.) But the church means a lot to the people of Peru, being an enormous part of religious and social life, and I was impressed to learn that the Catholic churches were happy to encourage the Incan belief in workshipping the sun, moon and other deities. They have a great belief in worshipping nature, particularly the land and the river that provide for them. The church never destroyed these beliefs, and somehow the two religions existed together, many people converting to Catholicism but keeping their ancient beliefs and worship practices.
The actual baptism was really nice. First, we attended the misa - mass - Michael and I, Toribio and his young wife Victoria, Brooke, Marco and his family, and of course little Luis. The mass went for quite some time. The church was full. The dim light and all the candles made me sleepy, and I distracted Luis with lollies. These things must be really tedious for children. The baptism itself was quite short. All I really had to do was hold a candle. Afterwards, we took some photos, and went out for cake to celebrate, as is the tradition. Michael read out a speech which he had had translated into Spanish, and the family were really happy. Victoria, Luis´s mother, is a Quechuan woman, meaning native to Peru and a speaker of Quechua. She dresses in the traditional stiff, colourful skirt, round hat and her hair in two long plaits, tied at the end with pom-poms. She doesn´t speak any Spanish or English, so we just smiled at each other a lot. It was a lovely night. Luis is very affectionate and jumps into my arms when he sees me. I am going to miss him a lot.
Next time I see Luis, he will have grown up...When is someone going to invent a magical medicine that stops that from happening...!?
On Sunday, 6th September at 7:30am, I sipped coca leaf tea in a small café on Clle Plateros near the plaza in Cusco, listening to a Simon and Garfunkel song that was playing softly on the radio in the background, and explaining to an elderly frenchman on the bench next to me that I saw them in concert in July. I was waiting to meet up with a group to go on a three-day rafting expedition on the Apurimac river (one of the best white-water rafting rivers in the world). We were to meet at 8am, so I was a little early. Alain, the Frenchman, explained to me that he had first come to Peru in ´68 and that there were no tourists in Peru at that time, save for a small number of drifting hippies. I imagined what it would have been like, travelling at a time when there were no mobile phones, no facebook, no lines of tourists and flashing cameras, no big bus or tour companies. Of course, there are benefits to living in this day and age. Had I been born in Australia or New Zealand back then, I might not have ventured on trip like this, unless I had money and an independent spirit.
There were about 18 of us in total, plus the guides. About half were Israeli, and a New Zealand couple, a couple from Tassie, a couple from Poland, a kiwi girl on her own, a British guy, a Danish guy and myself. All around my age, and an awesome crew. We started with a bus ride of several hours then had a nice lunch by the river, where we got our gear ready. We got ourselves into groups, 6 people per boat. Our guide was Joselo, a bit of a cheeky monkey with a long pony tail. It is so hard to describe the trip...the Apurimac river is absolutely stunning...it gushed and roared as we navigated the most wild of the rapids (the class Vs), and flowed and golden and green in silence in the quieter parts, swirling and carrying us gently downstream. A canyon wall rose metres on either side...we passed waterfalls...and swallows and dragonflies skimmed and dipped the water. Large boulders and smaller rocks piled on either side of the river at the foot of the canyon, and in parts where the river was too difficult to pass through, we left our boats with the guides and clamboured over the boulders, meeting the boats further along where it was safe to continue.
The river cast a spell on me. I found myself falling deeply in love with nature and drawing energy from her that I have never felt before. It was one of those feelings of being truly alive...
The camping was stunning. We set up our tents on the sandy river banks and camped under trillions of stars. On the second night I slept on a big smooth rock, that curved up on four sides to form a sort of natural bedroom, protected from the wind, the sky full of stars as the ceiling. During the night, I needed to pee really badly. I realised I didn´t know how to get down from the rock, so I climbed up a bit higher and squatted on the edge. I think peeing on the top of a boulder in the Andes at night would have to be the strangest, most surreal sensation I have ever experienced. My hair blowing wildly in the wind; the ragged, black mountain peaks silhouetted against the midnight blue sky, on such a starry, starry night, and my pee trickling down the rock to join with the raging river, I felt like some kind of river goddess, or maybe a half condor woman (?!)...it was very strange!
The river's daytime brillance, and the sky that night, reminded me of a poem that is one of my Mum's favourites, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, 'Pied Beauty':
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spáre, strange;
Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)
With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:
In the morning, we had pancakes with condensed milk for breakfast. It was so good. I was really energed for a third day of rafting. Changing into my wetsuit, though, I discovered the price I had paid for a beautiful campout under the stars: about 200 sandfly bites on my legs and ankles...
So, the rafting was fantastic, but moving on to the cat in the pub incident. A day before my rafting trip, Saturday morning, I was enjoying a big breakfast in the Real McCoy, which is the English pub where gringos flock to for vegemite toast, pancakes and Earl Grey tea. I was talking to my Irish friend Dave whom I met in Lima and was keen to watch some soccer that morning with Marcus and David, his travelling buddies. Suddenly, a friendly-looking black cat, identical to my cat at home Phoebe, jumped up on my lap, lured by my bacon. He was purring and sniffing the air, pawing playfully at my jeans. I stroked his head and played with him for a while, because he was so cuddly and affectionate. After a while, my face started becoming really itchy and my breathing quite fast. I asked Dave if his breathing was fast too, because I thought it could have been the altitude, which makes a person easily puffed. He said no, and maybe I should go to the bathroom and check out my face. Anyway, into the bathroom I hastily went, and saw that my face had broken out in hive-like bumps. I couldn't stop coughing, either. Now, it happened to be the Day of the Tourist, and the town was filled with tourists, locals and processions. The friendly owners of the pub called the doctor, but he took a while to arrive because it was simply impossible to enter the plaza de armas in a vehicle. When he did arrive, the condition had got worse and he informed me in a serious tone that I was "entering into an asthma crisis". The cat was swept up in the owners arms and shoved into a cupboard where he lives amongst a soft nest of cushions and blankets. A big needle came out. "That´s not going into my arse, I hope" I said, knowing full well where it was going. (There is only one way it is done in Peru.) Dave looked completely freaked-out. I was laughing, probably out of nervousness (I remember getting my brain scans back when I had an aneurism early last year, and finding myself laughing in the same way). Although, the situation was pretty amusing. Bending over in the tiny pub toilet with my pants down, I duly received my dose of steroids, giggling ferociously and gasping for breaths of air.
My poor bum! And my poor face. It was as puffy as a bowl of honey puffs.
Going back home to retrieve my asthma medication proved rather difficult. I couldn´t get a taxi; as they were all full, because of Day of the Blimmin´Tourist. The processions, with their trombones and trumpets and clarinets honking noisily, were completely blocking the road. And every road I turned down to get away from them, in search of a taxi, they seemed to follow me, in the way that the monster comes after you in PacMan. The sun was beating down; it was an incredibly hot day. My breathing wasn´t good. I called my roommate Brooke, and she agreed to pack a bag with my medication and meet me in the Plaza with it. However, the phone cut out before we could agree to an exact meeting place, so I decided the best thing to do was to go home, and continue my search for a taxi. Finally I found one and waved it down. When I got to the house, Brooke, bless her alpacca socks, had already left to find me. So back to the Plaza I went. I found her in the Real McCoy, the original source of the incident, and we indulged in a big plate of nachos and laughed about the whole thing. I parked myself on the sofa in the pub where I remained stationary all afternoon, and I even let the dear cat stretch across my legs and share in my laziness; I don´t bear a grudge.
The month of September passed really quickly. Lots of progress was made on the kitchen, and we were served our daily dose of chaos by the little kids in the school: more little footprints in the cement, lots of chasing around after the wheelbarrow we bought Marco, squeals emanating from within, and the constant cries of "empujame gringita, empujame gringita!"´s of the little girls on the swings (this means, push me gringo!). The project has been a lot of fun. We plastered, tiled, painted, grouted, filled in holes. At the end of the day, we barricaded the door so that we would not end up with more little footprints, which seemed to work pretty well.
I can´t really describe literally everything that has happened in Cusco. I´ve made a lot of friends, been out enjoying the salsa scene, ferreted around in the marketplace, that sort of thing. I can, though, mention a couple of random things that remind me of everyday life in Cusco:
* Trying anticucho on the street stall at night, near my house
* Football games
* Going to the zoo
* Ceviche and chicha morada with the crew at a local joint behind our house
* Going to visit Brooke at the hospital, and eating her hospital food and her cake
* Finishing all of Kevin´s meals
* Dancing salsa with Jose at the club with the creaky wooden floor that bounced up and down, and the live band
* Kevin´s awesome ceviche, and Brooke´s amazing macaroni cheese
* The day we had lunch with all the teachers at the school, and they put on 1980s disco music to eat to
* Going out for 'forest food' with Maritsa and her cousins, and being served a pile of meat that included a small, hairy paw in the middle of my plate!
And then there was the day I became a god-mother! To cut a short story long, a small boy at the school, named Luis, had injured his face quite badly (his father Toribio said he fell out of a window). One of the kind volunteers, an elderly gentleman named Michael from New Zealand, ensured he got some medical attention and asked me to translate for himself and for Toribio when they met to discuss the x-rays, as Michael didn´t speak any Spanish. I was happy to, but I was very surprised when we asked to be Luis´s godparents and to come to the baptism on the weekend. The next-day, Toribio brought two bead bracelets that he had made, and put them around our wrists. I was a bit reluctant but also touched so I agreed. On Saturday morning, 19 September, Lola (the girl who cleans the house) woke me up early for the baptism practice. I had my doubts; but I had given my word that I would be Luis´s god mother, and that I would be on the steps at the plaza at 9:45am. I had been out dancing and had a headache; I wished I could be a fairy mother, so I could just magic myself there, and lie in bed for longer. When I got there I saw Toribio crossing the road, and Michael with his floppy bush hat and bag of baptism gifts. I wondered if Toribio had walked. It takes him two days to walk from his village.
Toribio kissed us all and kept repeating the word "compadres". He seemed really happy. We went over to the Santiago church, and went into an office where the Padre made us repeat parts of the bible. It was quite boring, actually. I hadn´t had much to do with the Catholic church before, and not much desire to, what with its stance on homosexuality and contribution to the spread of AIDS. (I hope this doesn´t offend anyone, seriously.) But the church means a lot to the people of Peru, being an enormous part of religious and social life, and I was impressed to learn that the Catholic churches were happy to encourage the Incan belief in workshipping the sun, moon and other deities. They have a great belief in worshipping nature, particularly the land and the river that provide for them. The church never destroyed these beliefs, and somehow the two religions existed together, many people converting to Catholicism but keeping their ancient beliefs and worship practices.
The actual baptism was really nice. First, we attended the misa - mass - Michael and I, Toribio and his young wife Victoria, Brooke, Marco and his family, and of course little Luis. The mass went for quite some time. The church was full. The dim light and all the candles made me sleepy, and I distracted Luis with lollies. These things must be really tedious for children. The baptism itself was quite short. All I really had to do was hold a candle. Afterwards, we took some photos, and went out for cake to celebrate, as is the tradition. Michael read out a speech which he had had translated into Spanish, and the family were really happy. Victoria, Luis´s mother, is a Quechuan woman, meaning native to Peru and a speaker of Quechua. She dresses in the traditional stiff, colourful skirt, round hat and her hair in two long plaits, tied at the end with pom-poms. She doesn´t speak any Spanish or English, so we just smiled at each other a lot. It was a lovely night. Luis is very affectionate and jumps into my arms when he sees me. I am going to miss him a lot.
Next time I see Luis, he will have grown up...When is someone going to invent a magical medicine that stops that from happening...!?
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