Hannah and I are back from our stint in Peru for a few months to look for funds. We will be in the U.S. until sometime in the beginning of December, when we plan to head back to the wilds and hopefully see some of you there for a visit in the next year (our publicity-person-to-be, Amy, came and loved it... she wants to go back).
The latest on the movie plot line is that we are going to be filming ourselves as we try to do what we've learned from the Peruvians. We are getting a chakra (plot of land) and we are going to plant beans (these lovely big Lima beans) and peas (delicious when fresh) and probably corn and potatoes (both usually eaten with cheese). Getting home we have been disappointed with the potato selection available in the stores, not to mention the corn (it was just harvest season when we left). Not to worry, though, we are really excited to be home and there are lots more FRUITS in the grocery store, and there's almond butter and millions of kinds of bread. And here in the US there is hot water in the faucets --I'd forgotten all about that. It's cushy here!
We are going to be giving some talks in our respective high schools at some point, which will be good practice for the NPR interviews we want to do later in the project... Any information regarding those talks will be forthcoming. At present Hannah and I can be found in NY, editing when we're not working our day jobs (for now Hannah has the only day job--she's the token breadwinner).
While Hannah's working I'm going to write some articles to start our series of instructions for everyday peruvian mountain living on the Instructables.com website, which we might do in conjunction with Make Magazine. This is meant to be the start of the project in which we teach a class of about 15 students to make a magazine with step-by-step instructions on how to do things that they do every day, like make cheese or plow with bulls or irrigate corn using the canals--things that are second nature to the older folks but that the kids don't care to learn all that much. This way we'll record knowledge that might otherwise be lost and teach people how to communicate with the developed world at the same time. For that project we're looking for digital cameras (old ones are fine) and maybe a used computer or two (preferably macintosh). If you or someone you know has recently upgraded, please consider donating your old model to our project.
Big news for newsletter readers: we now have proper newsletter software set up (thanks to Hannah's friend Dan) and you can subscribe and unsubscribe automatically. It's very easy.
That's about it for the moment. Enjoy the photographs, and as always feel free to pass along this info to anyone you think might be interested.
Andrea
Related links:
Our site: seedling project
We will soon write for: Instructables
And a shoutout for people who are helping us.
Amy's site: adproductions
Dan's site: easy cgi
PS
For those of you who want more, down at the bottom you'll find that I've written out the story of how I lost my bag.
Here's a photo from Amy's trip--a bus we saw that had flipped over on the pampa. This was one of three bus accidents we saw (not the worst).
Hannah took this photo at an aporque in Tumay Huaraca. An aporque is when they hoe the soil up around the potato plants, usually done communally, with flutes piping (not the kind you hear in the subway) and plenty of chicha to drink.
This is a place in the field that typically receives more frost because of the way the ground is sloped. You can see in the photo that they have planted a type of frost-resistant potato just along that line, interspersed with a native type that is a bit more delicious. This technique means one potato helps protect the other against frost and guarantees a harvest--which means the farmers and their families will have food to eat.
Hannah took this photo at a cooking class given by the Cusichaca Trust where people learn how to cook foods with vegetables that can be grown locally. They also teach people how to grow the vegetables themselves. It's an important class because many people trade in their potatoes and fresh milk for store-bought noodles and canned Leche Gloria (evaporated milk).
Potato harvest in Andamarca--the bulls pull the plow and turn over the soil, while a crew of people help find the potatoes in the dirt (like little lumps of gold...). We ate freshly harvested potatoes with these folks, served with a side of chilis and cheese. They boiled a pot of water to cook the food right alongside the field.
I lost my bag of most important things on the combi that goes from Andamarca (my town) to Puquio (a minor but necessary hell hole in the mountains--you must cross it to get to Lima or Cusco). Leaving Andamarca we set all our bags down in a neat little row to be put on top of the combi but when we arrived in Puquio we were minus one.
I began asking the bus company lady what I should do. She told me to call Andamarca and see if I my things had been left behind. We called and told them my bag was missing. Meanwhile Hannah tried the internet. She got in touch with someone from Andamarca, but the message got a little garbled on account of the spanish and the fever she had from an illness we all often had but will not describe in great detail. So then we then thought the bag might be in Andamarca and that it might arrive on a subsequent bus.
The bus lady said that a man called Mambu had been seen taking care of a black bag and that I ought to look for him, but she couldn't tell me his last name or where I could find him. I wandered through the streets of Puquio for about half an hour, asking everyone I passed if they had heard of a guy named Mambu. It reminded me of the children's book 'Are You My Mother?'. I ended up in front of the locked door of the bus company, Etrapumsa, where I knocked politely with my fist and then when that didn't work, I knocked politely with a can of Leche Gloria (evaporated milk--one of my only remaining possessions as I'd been carrying it in my vest pocket). I got no answer but the people all up and down the street got a good laugh.
We gave up after that, and ate food, checked email and then we went to bed. At four a.m. I got out of bed and went into the cold pre-dawn to wait for the first combis from Andamarca to arrive. I ended up outside until six thirty am (that's how reliable the arrivals are) and I never saw my bag or the combi, and the bus company lady was about as helpful as a rotten log.
So we went to Cusco that day with a fancy new police report to say how my bag just disappeared, and we visited the consulate who took my name and number and tut-tutted us back out again. She thought for sure my bag had been stolen, which is what most people thought.
I went back to Andamarca, still kind of bummed that I'd lost my leatherman and my sleeping bag and my dollar copy of Earthly Paradise by Colette (my favorite book). We went all the way back to Andamarca and I began telling everyone in town that my bag was missing in case someone decided to help me out and tell me what I ought to do. I got many suggestions, most of which consisted of making the bus company pay me something. However, I knew that the bus company couldn't pay me what the things I had lost were worth. I had lost my digital camera, my passport, my rain gear. Total net worth of said bag was approximately one thousand dollars, which is what a family here earns in 2-4 years.
The big break finally happened like this. The other bus company told me to talk to the teacher up at the high school who had his own radio show in the next town over, and could spread the word fast. So we went up there and chatted and he took down my information (missing bag: reward offered) while about five people stood around and asked me questions. And then I talked with our friend William Zelada, who is a police captain, and he questioned the bus company lady in Andamarca. Their conversation went like this:
Zelada: do you know the name of the driver of the combi where she lost her bag?
Lady: Nope, we don't have those records. But he came by just this morning.
Zelada: Ok, well, was he the one who came in here in the early morning? Around four?
Lady: Yes, that was him.
Zelada: well, you tell him he's facing charges for not telling the police about that omnibus tipped over up there on the pampa. He drove by them, then drove through here and didn't tell the police about the accident.
Lady: Oh, that wasn't OUR guy. Did I say he came in at four? No, he came in around 8 am, just after the other company had arrived.
That was the interrogation. Then we all ate tuna fruits on the side of the road and shot the breeze.
Nothing happened for a couple of days. We went to Puquio again and dropped Amy off on a bus from there to Cusco, and came back. That night we went to the scissor dance competition in town with Pelayo, one of our good friends. Andamarca is famous for its scissor dance--a dance performed by young men who shake a special non-functioning pair of scissors to the accompaniment of a harp and two violins (or sometimes two harps and four violins). They compete against each other in ritual dance competitions that last sometimes for days. On the way to the competition we were stopped by one of the three water alcaldes (mayors) who I had met way back in August at the water festival.
"Pelayo," he said, "didn't this girl here lose a bag? My shepherd saw another shepherd find a bag up in the pampa and it had a camera in it." It turned out that Pelayo was somehow related to the guy who supposedly found the bag, which must have just fallen off the combi as we drove. The next day Hannah and I went up to find my bag with Zelada (the policeman), the town doctor (he didn't have anything else to do that day) and Pelayo. We went to the house of the shepherd and spoke with his señora (and pet the kitten whose whiskers were curled from sitting too close to the fire) and they brought out my bag. My bag! But it was missing the camera and some other few things, so we asked the señora where to find them. She didn't know, but her husband would be home soon and she told us we ought to ask him. We settled down to have some oranges with everyone in the house while we waited, and talked politics and about how frightening their dog was (smaller than a teacup but barks like a doberman on helium). Soon the boys got impatient so we got in the truck again and drove up to the pampa to look for the shepherd. We trolled along the roads looking for our man, who was reputedly tending a flock of sheep, not alpacas or llamas (and that is how we found him--lots of alpacas up there, not so many sheep).
We stalked out over the sagebrush plain for our meeting with the man of the highlands. Alfredo Flores was chewing a wad of coca leaves so black I think he must have been on it for at least a month. He didn't know about my bag just at first, but when we told him we'd already seen it he asked, "Now, aren't those documents kind of important?" But he would tell us nothing about the camera--"What camera? It didn't have a camera." That's when Pelayo broke in with some heavy negotiations in Quechua and after a few minutes everyone heaved a sigh of relief when Pelayo told the boys, "Oh, his son Coki has the camera." I had no idea what they were talking about, but the boys all say not to worry because they all play soccer with Coki and he's a fine chap. We headed back down to the house with the rancher in tow and we gave him his reward: 50 soles, a plastic bag full of grain alcohol and a big 2 liter bottle of Andina Kola. A little later that afternoon, Zelada dropped off my camera and my iPod charger (must've thought they went together). And that was that. Pretty lucky, I think.
Items still missing:
leatherman
thick white wool sweater
face wash
Zoe's ring
my comb
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