Father’s Day, and our last Sunday in Cusco, were as good as we wanted them to be. We started by conducting Sunday School in the back of the abandoned lorry in our builders yard, using it as a prison in our discussion of the persecuted church. We held our Sunday afternoon group in a field. The Father's Day service didn’t quite top last month’s Mothers Day service, but it’s never a bad thing to see Quechua fathers eating biscuits from a plate with no hands. We were given refreshments, which Sarah – Judas - helped to make, while I was being tucked up on a friend's sofa, trying to allay the plague I'd managed to get. The cup of what appeared to be orange jelly with sticks in seemed to be manageable - plus, you can’t say no - but to my dismay, it was warm. And when I tried to chug it, I encountered lumps. We got no closer to finding out why they put big pretzel sticks into the orange goo. Or why it was warm. Or why it was lumpy. I spilt most of mine on the floor.
This week, we face-painted the kids in our Sunday School, and only remembered after a little while of the congregation's laughs that we too had moustaches. We had another humiliating and intense afternoon of volley ball. Everytime we made a successful pass, they congratulated us loudly; everytime we were unsuccessful, they shouted "Inca strength!" at us, and everytime there was a brief pause, requested supportive chants in English. They thought it was hilarious. We won ourselves a lot of friends.
We've been reluctantly saying our goodbyes. We’ve had quite a few criers (including us), and we’ve been forced into promises to return straight to one of our preschools if we are ever in the area again. The church wanted to give us a goodbye service, which we were quite scared about, having seen their Mother and Father's Day services. We did our best puppy eyes and faces of fear (I said to one friend, "Look, Jose, we're very afraid of what they might make us do. We're your hermanitas and you have to protect us.") They got two chairs and the biscuits out, but the puppy eyes seemed to work and they presented us with gifts (including some great Peruvian hats!), told us how much they've loved having us, and then took a load of photos. In the evening service they did another formal goodbye, and got everyone up to hug us. They're very good at goodbyes, thanking us for our work in the kids' groups, saying they'll miss us terribly, telling us to come back soon. Everyone said how grateful they were for us being part of their church, which was particularly amusing from those who had stood up that very evening to introduce themselves as newcomers to the church...
It's very hard to answer the question "When will you be back?", because we have to be non-commital. (In response to our non-commitment, our favourite responses so far include "Well, what are you praying for?" and with another, we played the God card, and the chef whose chicken foot and neck we rejected a few weeks ago said "Of course, God has to want you to come back!") If it weren't for that final year of Uni next year, there's no way we'd be leaving.
Anyway, we didn't get to the jungle, but did go for a day trip to visit a friend's relatives. We pretty much had the perfect day, going for walks, and visiting an animal sanctuary, to see a condor and a puma and sit among parrots and other misc huge birds, who didn't seem to mind in the slightest that we were there.
Other than that, we helped to sell omlette sandwiches and coffee outside a church service, and we've been feeding our Peruvian friends banoffee pie, to their delight. We went to a friend's house and were served coffee from a plastic bag - grown and ground by her father, no less! (She then gave us some avocados freshly picked from her patio.) I visited the Latin Link STEP team in Urcos. We went to some more processions, including Inti Raymi, the annual ceremony for the sun god where hundreds of actors dress up as Incas and dance about in cloaks and great hats. Ironically, it was forecast to snow. (It didn't: this is Peru.) We went for breakfast in a French creperie, and went for our last cafecito with the team. I've nearly finished transferring the chords for the kids' songs into the Do Re Mi scale they use here. Fortunately I spent most of the nineties watching the Sound of Music so it wasn't too hard. We caught our preschool off-guard by teaching them "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes"...in Quechua. We went to fairground, and tried ceviche (a dish of raw fish). We've coped with some more intrusive questions, and Cusco sent us off with a bang this week: having managed to avoid some fairly inevitable things for over three months, this week, I've hung out of the door on the busiest bus, lost my camera to a nifty pickpocket, and trodden in fresh dog poo - in my sandals - at Sunday School. Still winning Dodge those Rabies though, for the win.
We are going to miss this place: the beautiful tiny Quechua women, the church, the hospital, the kids in our groups, the constant sneezes, the view from the window (everyday, when the alarm goes off, and I say to Saz "open the curtain?" to bright, cloud-free blue skies, and we decide it's probably worth getting up), our brilliant friends, the dogs roaming free, into our kids' groups, preschools, buses..., the humming bird in the garden, everyone in arctic wear in the hot sun: fleece pyjama bottoms, hats, shoes and socks, body warmers, polo necks, blankets wrapped around them, the dogs outside our house, who we have slowly befriended, spotting glowworms, the shouts of "Las gringitas vienen!", our wonderful family of Browns, attempting to learn Quechua, and that same tune that's played at church, song after song, week after week. But we still have time left of squashed buses, impressive hats, stares, ponchos, Peruvian timekeeping, everyone thinking Sazzle is 14, everyone assuming we're sisters/twins/I'm Sarah's mum. And there will probably still be plenty surreptitious photography, beeps from cars, being hit on in taxis etc. This time with Joel.
We're very sad to leave: it's been such an incredible time. We've learned so much, laughed so hard, and been embarrassed and uncomfortable beyond anything we could have expected. But now, the journey of a lifetime begins: 3 friends, 5 countries, 8 weeks. The line up is incredible. We'll be in touch.
“What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
jueves, 27 de junio de 2013
jueves, 13 de junio de 2013
Quechua Women Tests and the Gringo Killer
We've had two very different weeks. We moved out of Little America, got taught how to be good Quechua housewives, and for most of last week, trekked to Machu Picchu.
But first: cultural stop. Towards the end of May, Cusco had a huge festival. Corpus Christi is a a pagan ritual in catholic robes: huge statues of saints are paraded around the main Plaza, just like the old Inca mummies used to be, then get to have a sleepover in the cathedral with Black Jesus, and are taken back to their homes the week after. To celebrate, Peruvians eat the typical “chiriuchu”, which contains about three times as much meat as a person could eat, amongst other things: guinea pig, chicken, jerky, sausage, rabbit, cheese, corn and omelette. We turned up, saw some dancing, and some great masks and outfits, and, for once, didn't eat the questionable meat.
Anyway, that weekend we were apprenticed by various members of the church, who were keen to teach us how to shop, carry, speak, clean, wash, do sport, dress and cook like good Peruvian women:
They took us to the most Peruvian market in the dodgy area of town, to the meat stalls to buy 60kg worth of beef. They were beside themselves laughing at our reactions to the woman sat selling sheep heads, and we asked one too many questions to identify the misc bits and pieces laid out in boxes. We bought 70kg of potatoes from a woman who taught us some more Quechua while we were waiting, only to carry our purchases - between the four of us - back through the market, and down a full flight of stairs. (If I could pinpoint a moment when we definitely failed the Quechua Woman test, it was then). To the excitement and amusement of our friends from the church, we helped to cook and serve a Peruvian dish for 15 of them - apprenticed by a professional chef who has promised us lessons. At one point he handed me a bowl of water and a broom, to clean a lounge by sprinkling water all over the floor and sweeping. And the next morning, we were taken to help wash an incredibly dirty tablecloth by hand for the church anniversary, 20 minutes after it should have started. Admittedly, it wasn’t long before they said, “Move aside – she has washers’ hands”, and subbed in a native. We served food to 200 people, learned how to play volley, Peruvian style, and the weekend culminated in us sat wrapped up in church in beautiful Peruvian blankets, like proper Peruvian women.
All this was for the church's fourth anniversary. We turned up at church at 5am for our builders’ yard clear up, and transformed the mess of cement and dog poo into a flat area for a huge marquee and stage. It was a special six hour service that started extra-specially late. (Needless to say it wasn't long until we got as restless as the kids and escaped to the football field above to play games and sing songs with them.) There were sports tournaments in the afternoon (hence the volley), so we did our bit to cheer on the teams, which had everyone in stitches but it didn't faze us too much. We later got distracted by some girls who come to some of the groups we run, so we just played games with them until it got dark.
We didn't go to our usual Sunday afternoon group because of the anniversary celebrations. We later found out that the kids turned up anyway: two girls impersonated me and Saz, and took the session for us!
In other news, one night, our walk home turned into a Sports Night, where Saz and I and two friends carried and raced eachother down the main road in various forms: shoulders lifts/piggy-backs/fireman lifts etc. Saz and I dominated the 3-legged races. In these last two weeks or so we have sung until our voices hurt (mostly with the kids in Burns, and I've done a few solo concerts, squatting in the corridor with a 16-year-old lad, and sitting with an 11-year-old in Pediatrics), and I've helped lead worship on keys at 2 seconds' notice (the guy on guitar strummed the opening chord then got me up). We went to another incredible concert in the coliseum – this time of an Argentine called Marco Barrientos, and we've made some exceptional knitwear purchases. We made a group of thirty elderly Quechua people - whose feet barely touched the floor when they sat down - play 'Pin the Tail on the Llama' (some of my best artwork). And someone tried to pickpocket Sarah, but she turned around in time, took the purse back out of the man's hands, and told him firmly "no".
Questions of the week include “A lot of foreigners swim naked. Do you swim in your underwear?”, “What’s the exchange rate between the peso and the dollar?”, "Why are you white?", and various unanswerable questions about the size and number of English counties.
Annnd... we made it to Machu Picchu! We did a four day trek, around the 3rd biggest glacier in South America (the 2nd biggest one we can see from our house), and through a cloud jungle. This included a bonus zip-line tour over some valleys (ranging from 300m to 1000m in length!), hot springs, tents which frosted overnight, quinoa porridge, a path aptly called the ‘Gringo Killer’, pre-sunrise coca tea, poncho o'clock, sleepless nights, tropical weather, and lots of waterfalls. We had the same cook as on our last tour, which we could not have been more excited about. There were 10 in our team, and I laughed so much my stomach muscles still hurt – more so than my legs! We've really missed Brit wit! When we got to 4600m, we deposited our pebble offerings to Pachamama in a small ceremony, and became a family.
On Sunday we reached Machu Picchu. It was incredible. Our guide gave us a tour, then we hiked up to the Sun Gate, then did Huayna Picchu - the huge hill at the back of the pictures of MP. We checked the stats before we started walking up Huayna Picchu, and 2 or 3 people die every year from summiting it, so I was pretty scared. The path up was 45 minutes of narrow but steep Inca steps - it would appear Incas had extremely long legs but no feet - with a rope to hold onto when the steps were less-existent. I can’t quite explain that view from the top. We sat on the edge with our legs hanging over the side and had the Ultimate Picnic.
We're back in Cusco for our last fortnight, and we can't believe how quickly the time is going. We're going to the ACTUAL JUNGLE with some friends next weekend, so this one is our last in Cusco, and a pastor and his wife have invited us to go for a sleepover and to the countryside their family. Other than that, it's more singing, late night coffees, kids' groups, avoiding misc meat...
We're looking forward to our onward travels, but it's going to be very hard to leave.
But first: cultural stop. Towards the end of May, Cusco had a huge festival. Corpus Christi is a a pagan ritual in catholic robes: huge statues of saints are paraded around the main Plaza, just like the old Inca mummies used to be, then get to have a sleepover in the cathedral with Black Jesus, and are taken back to their homes the week after. To celebrate, Peruvians eat the typical “chiriuchu”, which contains about three times as much meat as a person could eat, amongst other things: guinea pig, chicken, jerky, sausage, rabbit, cheese, corn and omelette. We turned up, saw some dancing, and some great masks and outfits, and, for once, didn't eat the questionable meat.
Anyway, that weekend we were apprenticed by various members of the church, who were keen to teach us how to shop, carry, speak, clean, wash, do sport, dress and cook like good Peruvian women:
They took us to the most Peruvian market in the dodgy area of town, to the meat stalls to buy 60kg worth of beef. They were beside themselves laughing at our reactions to the woman sat selling sheep heads, and we asked one too many questions to identify the misc bits and pieces laid out in boxes. We bought 70kg of potatoes from a woman who taught us some more Quechua while we were waiting, only to carry our purchases - between the four of us - back through the market, and down a full flight of stairs. (If I could pinpoint a moment when we definitely failed the Quechua Woman test, it was then). To the excitement and amusement of our friends from the church, we helped to cook and serve a Peruvian dish for 15 of them - apprenticed by a professional chef who has promised us lessons. At one point he handed me a bowl of water and a broom, to clean a lounge by sprinkling water all over the floor and sweeping. And the next morning, we were taken to help wash an incredibly dirty tablecloth by hand for the church anniversary, 20 minutes after it should have started. Admittedly, it wasn’t long before they said, “Move aside – she has washers’ hands”, and subbed in a native. We served food to 200 people, learned how to play volley, Peruvian style, and the weekend culminated in us sat wrapped up in church in beautiful Peruvian blankets, like proper Peruvian women.
All this was for the church's fourth anniversary. We turned up at church at 5am for our builders’ yard clear up, and transformed the mess of cement and dog poo into a flat area for a huge marquee and stage. It was a special six hour service that started extra-specially late. (Needless to say it wasn't long until we got as restless as the kids and escaped to the football field above to play games and sing songs with them.) There were sports tournaments in the afternoon (hence the volley), so we did our bit to cheer on the teams, which had everyone in stitches but it didn't faze us too much. We later got distracted by some girls who come to some of the groups we run, so we just played games with them until it got dark.
We didn't go to our usual Sunday afternoon group because of the anniversary celebrations. We later found out that the kids turned up anyway: two girls impersonated me and Saz, and took the session for us!
In other news, one night, our walk home turned into a Sports Night, where Saz and I and two friends carried and raced eachother down the main road in various forms: shoulders lifts/piggy-backs/fireman lifts etc. Saz and I dominated the 3-legged races. In these last two weeks or so we have sung until our voices hurt (mostly with the kids in Burns, and I've done a few solo concerts, squatting in the corridor with a 16-year-old lad, and sitting with an 11-year-old in Pediatrics), and I've helped lead worship on keys at 2 seconds' notice (the guy on guitar strummed the opening chord then got me up). We went to another incredible concert in the coliseum – this time of an Argentine called Marco Barrientos, and we've made some exceptional knitwear purchases. We made a group of thirty elderly Quechua people - whose feet barely touched the floor when they sat down - play 'Pin the Tail on the Llama' (some of my best artwork). And someone tried to pickpocket Sarah, but she turned around in time, took the purse back out of the man's hands, and told him firmly "no".
Questions of the week include “A lot of foreigners swim naked. Do you swim in your underwear?”, “What’s the exchange rate between the peso and the dollar?”, "Why are you white?", and various unanswerable questions about the size and number of English counties.
Annnd... we made it to Machu Picchu! We did a four day trek, around the 3rd biggest glacier in South America (the 2nd biggest one we can see from our house), and through a cloud jungle. This included a bonus zip-line tour over some valleys (ranging from 300m to 1000m in length!), hot springs, tents which frosted overnight, quinoa porridge, a path aptly called the ‘Gringo Killer’, pre-sunrise coca tea, poncho o'clock, sleepless nights, tropical weather, and lots of waterfalls. We had the same cook as on our last tour, which we could not have been more excited about. There were 10 in our team, and I laughed so much my stomach muscles still hurt – more so than my legs! We've really missed Brit wit! When we got to 4600m, we deposited our pebble offerings to Pachamama in a small ceremony, and became a family.
On Sunday we reached Machu Picchu. It was incredible. Our guide gave us a tour, then we hiked up to the Sun Gate, then did Huayna Picchu - the huge hill at the back of the pictures of MP. We checked the stats before we started walking up Huayna Picchu, and 2 or 3 people die every year from summiting it, so I was pretty scared. The path up was 45 minutes of narrow but steep Inca steps - it would appear Incas had extremely long legs but no feet - with a rope to hold onto when the steps were less-existent. I can’t quite explain that view from the top. We sat on the edge with our legs hanging over the side and had the Ultimate Picnic.
We're back in Cusco for our last fortnight, and we can't believe how quickly the time is going. We're going to the ACTUAL JUNGLE with some friends next weekend, so this one is our last in Cusco, and a pastor and his wife have invited us to go for a sleepover and to the countryside their family. Other than that, it's more singing, late night coffees, kids' groups, avoiding misc meat...
We're looking forward to our onward travels, but it's going to be very hard to leave.
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