Chavin, Peru May 6-9, 1979
It was (another) amazing ride, first up and through the mountains, our red and white bus slowly serpentining its way, bumping and clattering over the rough dirt track. Until finally we reached the altiplano: a stretching sea of purple-green lichen and mustard-grey moss brightened only occasionally by happy mulit-coloured wildflowers. On the horizon, now looming up menacingly, now distant and serene, the jagged crystalline snow-peaks of the Peruvian Andes. I couldn't help feeling like an unwanted intruder in the vast silence of this top-of-the-world plateau. It was shortly after noon, but we were so high that the sun, even at its zenith, was scarcely out of reach. Its golden light, worshipped since Incan time, brought warmth and beauty even to this barren plain. But I had been in the Andes long enough to know the terrible cold that would descend as soon as the sun disappeared.
We began a slow descent into a bleak, but somehow beautifully desolate valley. Although it seemed too harsh a place for anyone to live, there were two little groupings of grass ‘igloos’, almost hidden amongst the giant rocks dotted liberally along the valley walls. The people who live here must survive mostly on the sheep and llamas they can raise – virtually no crops will grow here as it is so high, so cold, and so bleak.
Suddenly, from behind an immense lichen-splotched rock, a gaunt and ragged young girl sprang out towards our bus. Her hands and face were red and chapped and her large, black eyes, deep-set in the hollows of hunger, peered up at us dolefully from under a battered black hat. As our bus lumbered past, she swept her hat off her head and in a movement both swift and surprisingly graceful, reached out with it upturned towards us. The round blackness of its hollow crown, like some awful, gaping, hungry mouth, beseeched a motion-blurred gallery of window-framed faces: our bus rolled relentlessly on.
As we continued our slow serpentines down the slope, her gaping black hat and hollow black eyes pursued us. Evidently practiced in the art of chasing buses, she bounded down the giant stone terraces, keeping pace with us, and peering intently at each one of us, through each long and lingering bend. No one seemed to notice her; no one moved – perhaps no one except me was moved. I rummaged hastily hastily through my bag, finding two apples, some bread and a bit of cheese. I yelled at the driver to stop – ‘Pare! Pare por favor!’ Perhaps he thought I needed to be sick, or to relieve myself. Whatever his thoughts, he put on the brakes, and the bus came to a shuddering halt. I opened my window as far as it would go. The grating sound attracted the young girl, who was at the ready as I reached out and handed her the food. She graced me with a beautiful smile, stuffed the booty into her cavernous black hat and plunked it back on her head. Although it was something, I knew it was not enough. But right now, and here, it was all I had. Nevertheless her little face continued to haunt me, and haunts me still. How can she and her people live in such a bleak, inhospitable place?
Just outside of town - such a wonderful place to walk...
We continued our descent, passing through a somewhat more hospitable landscape with little adobe villages and fields of potatoes, corn, alfalfa and wheat – patchwork quilts of green and gold. And finally dropping into a narrow river valley with a fast-flowing river. Near the bottom,
the valley widened out just enough for the little town of Chavin to nestle, like a sleep-curled cat, at the foot of the mountains.
Our bus clamoured noisily down the rough cobble-stone street. Past wonderfully weather-stained buildings, heavy wooden doors and window frames, their soft, time-worn greyness here and there streaked with memories of blue and green paint. We stopped at a flower-filled plaza, and were immediately surrounded by a group of eager-eyed children. Chirping out snippets of English - “Hey Meester! How-are-you-I-am-fine-thank-you!” - they escorted us across the plaza to a large set of doors.
Inside, a courtyard busy with laundry, children, chickens, two horses and a pig: our 'hotel.' Our room, at the top of an old ladder, was small and dark. But it had a little balcony over-looking the plaza, and there I stood and watched as darkness and silence enveloped the village below.
The next day I wandered aimlessly through town. It has a decidedly quaint atmosphere, a friendly mountain-town-ness, and a certain sleepiness. The houses were all white-washed adobe with tile rooves and wooden doors – some double doors in Dutch fashion, the bottom closed to keep the critters out, or the children in, I presume. Everywhere I look I see a picture – vignette – that catches both my eyes and my heart: a green-gold field of corn with deep green grass beyond; fantastic mud-adobe walls topped with spikey century plants or broken tiles, sometimes interrupted by a wooden doorway, a lattice-work gate, or series of horizontal slats, and a little tiled roof overtop – a place to stand out of the rain.
Chavin is a real indian Indian town. Virtually all of the people here are indigenous ‘Indios’. Most are dressed in colourful rags, and all are working: many-skirted women and ponchoed men all carrying something on their backs in heavy woven shawls. Many old people and lots of dirty-faced children playing in the street with sticks, bits of string and cardboard, pieces of fabric crudely fashioned into dolls. I saw one boy with a small blue ball, but no toy trucks or cars or soccer balls or ‘real’ dolls. The kids traipsed around after me, their entertainment for the day. There were quite a few donkeys, mules and horses plying the dirt and cobble roads, heavy-laden with maize, cane, wood or sacks of food, corn, or alfalfa, sometimes dragging their lead ropes behind them, their master somewhere behind them on the road. But what struck me most was not the poverty, the harshness of these peoples’ lives, but their friendliness. Everyone greeted me with a genuine smile and a hearty ‘buenas tardes! – ola gringo!’ As I strolled around the town I had a feeling of well-being, calm and peacefulness. This town and its people touch a chord deep within me. I feel truly welcome here, almost at home.
I come across an open door: the mingled odours of baked bread, disinfectant and coffee spilled into the street. In the shadowy dimness within, a confusion of plastic, glass, paper and tin. Broad wicker baskets brimming with circles of golden-brown bread. Cans of condensed milk and thick, sweet papaya juice. Cellophane bags stuffed with strange pastas and grains. Cartons of many-coloured zippers and threads, razor blades, pencils and candles, cigarettes.
Across from the shop, a black-haired, black-eyed woman sat spinning wool on the smooth sidewalk stones. Her long thick braids and multi-layered clothing – skirt over skirt, sweater over sweater – crimson, lime green, hot pink and deep yellow, made her look like some gaudy over-stuffed church bazaar doll.
In town centre a little market where women and girls sat selling – and socializing. Before them carefully arranged pyramids of oranges, onions, potatoes and carrots, heaps of dried herbs, and colourful chickens, bound at the feet and clucking apprehensively. There was a chattering crowd in one corner. In its midst, an ample market-mama crouched behind a small kerosene stove, stirring a cauldron of potato-thick soup.
Multi-coloured women and drab bedraggled men stood in loose-knit groups, eating and talking and laughing at stories I couldn't understand. A couple of round-faced girls darted in and out with trays of hot corn tamales, sweet cheese-filled buns and honey-dripping donuts. The mixture of aromas, sweet, spicy and strong, quickened my appetite despite a recent hearty lunch. I’ll come back tomorrow, not so full...
The next morning I took a guided tour of the ruins. It must have been a very grand place: a huge area for jaguar fights. On one side a mammoth truncated pyramid, labyrinthed. A fantastic drainage system, underground. And of course the various friezes and carved rocks – jaguar monsters, and others, to me so reminiscent of ancient Chinese forms. Are there ancient connections here between these civilizations? The large rock, temple-shaped, and apparently used for sacrifices; elaborately carved and placed inside the pyramid. Under ‘ground’ – all such a mystery – who, what, why? And yes they used San Pedro, a hallucinogenic, and yes they used coca – and it was all over 2000 years ago.
Carving in stone. Jaguars with cheshire cat grins and oversized male parts.
Epocha Recuay (post-Chavin). 0-500 AD
That afternoon I walked out to the edge of town and beyond. To where low mud walls capped with sharp-needled cactii enclosed fields of wheat and close-cropped grass. I was breathing deeply, savouring the warmth of the sun, the sounds of the birds, the lemony dry freshness of the roadside eucalyptus trees. Feeling the magic of the Andes, my body and mind at once calm, yet alive and energized. On either side of the road there was a shoulder-high adobe wall; every so often a portal with a wooden gate or door, the house behind it somewhere down a dirt path, through a field of corn or cows. All so inviting.
And then I heard: “Ola, gringita! Gringeeeeeta! Venga, venga hablar con nosotros!” (Hello gringa, come, come and talk with us.) Two women and several children were sitting in the mid-afternoon sun, shucking corn in the compound of their stone and thatch hut. I wandered over to join them; they giggled with embarrassed excitement and shifted around to make a central spot for me. One of the women offered me a maize cane to suck, laughing as I tore the outer skin away, awkwardly, with my teeth, peeling back the outer layers to reach the inner strands. So sweet and juicy. “Rica, no? Dulce! Muy Bueno!” They were throwing the shucked corn onto an outspread woolen shawl, laughing and chattering away in Quechua, clearly amused by this gringa visitor, and very pleased with themselves for having drawn me into their circle.
Questions spilled forth in a sing-song mix of Quechua and Castellano. Where did I come from and what was I doing here? But of course 'Canada' could just as easily be the moon, and I, with my short, light brown hair and blue-grey eyes was clearly not like them. Children's hands reached out tentatively to touch my fine, machine-woven skirt, my cream-coloured skin, the soft frizzled ends of my wind-dried hair. After each touch, a scampering retreat: two tiny black eyes giggle-peeking out from behind mama's many skirts.
In a very short time the shucking was finished and the eldest woman – perhaps 25 years old or so, and very slight, rose to go. She said she was going to her uncle's, on the other side of the village, and asked if I would walk with her. I said I would, and with that she held up a corn-filled shawl towards me – “Gringa, tenga!” (gringa, take it!) – and wrapped the shawl firmly around my shoulders, tying it with a big knot at the front. Despite being fairly heavy, it was surprisingly comfortable. She picked up a squealing baby pig, and lifted it into the folds of her outermost skirt, a blue cotton flower-print skirt. Then she plucked up her little basket, and off we set to Chavin.
As we started down the path, she told me her name – a long string of Quechua sounds which I tried, unsuccessfully, to repeat. Laughing good-humouredly, she suggested I call her by her 'Spanish' name, Quinta, which means ‘born fifth’ – she was the fifth of seven children, only four of whom were still alive.
Like many of the Andean women I had met, Quinta wanted to know how it was that I, a twenty-eight year old woman, was still unmarried and childless. And why was I traveling alone and so far from my home? For them, these were concepts both fascinating and frightening. As I scrambled to find simple answers for thesecomplex questions Quinta smiled, and frowned, and shook her head, and laughed. “Our worlds are very different, gringita, very different.”
Then she became quiet for a time, and I could sense that there was something she wanted to say. Suddenly she stopped in her tracks and blurted it out: “Gringa, hay remedios para tenir ninos?” Did I know of any remedies that would enable her to have children? She told me a little more: “I am thirty years old. I have been married for ten years. Still I have no children. Soon I will be too old.” I turned to really look at her: filled with a sad kind of hope, a hope that knows its own futility. But, although she was thin, she looked healthy, with clear skin, strong white teeth and seemingly lots of energy. I couldn’t imagine what might be the problem. I told her that I had only a few vitamins with me: I didn't think they would help, but I offered them to her. She frowned, and said: “No, I do not think they will help. The year after I was married, I went to the clinic. The nurses were giving women free shots of vitamins, so I got one. But it didn't do any good.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I’d heard that DepoProvera, an injectable birth control method, was being tested on the poor people of South America before being made available in Western countries. Was that what she had actually been given? Could that account for her long-lasting infertility? There was no way to know, and it seemed to me there was nothing to be gained by suggesting that she might have been given not ‘vitaminas’, but a drug that prevented pregnancy. And the sad reality, for her, is that her barrenness not only affected her, making her deeply sad, but also made her a bit of an outcast in her community where childbearing is central to the lives – and value – of women. I felt guilty by association with the West and its callous and careless attitudes towards indigenous people – both at home and abroad. Fortunately Quinta dropped the subject, so I was – at least for now – ‘off the hook’....
We walked on, passing many indigenous people on the road, exchanging salutations in Quechua. There were always comments about the ‘gringa’ (the only word I understood) with a shawl of corn on her back who was walking with Quinta. I could only imagine what they might be thinking, but the banter seemed to be in a spirit of fun and good humour.
As we were walking I heard the faint sound of an airplane – it was high overhead, just a glinting speck in the vast blueness. I pointed up at it: “There, Quinta. There in the sky. That 's an airplane, and that's how I got here.” She looked up at the little speck, then back at me, then up again, and back, and said: “But gringa, how did you get up there?” I smiled: “The airplane comes down to the ground.” I gestured towards the road. “It lands at a place like this, on a road.” Again she looked up, and back at me. Her next question wasn’t so easily answered: “But gringa, how did you make yourself that small?”
I realized that no amount of explaining would help Quinta grasp the concept of air travel. And what did it matter? Somehow I had arrived here, where she was, and by chance we had met. That was all.
We came into town, on a street still puddled from yesterday’s rain, and crossing the ditch Quinta missed her footing. I was in front of her, but turned to look when I heard her laughing. She was looking down at her muddy shoe and leg, dirty-brown to the knee. And laughing. But we didn’t stop there. We walked on through the town, as she continued giggling and chattering to herself, mostly about her dirty wet shoe and leg, and greeting everyone – all the women sitting in doorways, and the men ambling home from the market, also with shawls full of wood, food, and children on their backs. There were lots of children hopping, skipping and running along beside their parents, giggling and shouting ‘Hola gringa! Gringa, hola!”
As we passed through the town centre, a thin, pixie-faced man hailed us. Chattering and gesticulating with inebriated animation, he bounced along with us for awhile, then abruptly trip-trotted off, calling back over his shoulder that he would meet us in just a few minutes. As we continued through town, Quinta told me that the tipsy elf was her brother, also due at her uncle's for dinner. Again I heard that weary resignation in her voice, saw it in the dogged way she plodded up the hill. I thought of the number of times I had watched as these good-natured hard-working women quietly escorted their drunken husbands, brothers and fathers out of the bar and back up the long road to home. For me, it was a sight both touching and tragic, and I wondered at the love, loyalty and kinship bound them, and how deep and strong it ran.
On the other side of the village we stopped to wait for Quinta’s brother. We sat together on the grassy road-bank, enjoying the last rays of the sun. She tied her pig by its little rope around her waist, her legs splayed out in front of her, one clean, one dirty, making us both laugh again. We were sitting opposite the ruins, and she asked me if there was a lot of gold in there. She’d heard they kept gold in there. She of course had never been to the ruins – it costs 70 sucres to get in. I told her there was no gold now, but there might have been once, a long time ago. She looked a little disappointed, but as usual she moved on quickly to another subject.
Quinta wanted to know what I carried in my bag. So I emptied it out on the grass there beside us. Toilet paper – what is that for? She laughed when I told her – imagine using special paper to wipe your bum! Hilarious. Next came my little change purse with my ‘plata’ (money) in it. We counted it all – there wasn’t much – together. I gave her several pieces, which she quickly tucked away in her skirt. Then my watch, and Swiss Army knife. She was very appreciative of the knife, saying she thought, with that, that I was very well prepared. She viewed it not so much as something to cut fruit or cheese with, but as a weapon for self-defense.
Quinta continued to pursue the most inexplicable concept: “gringita, are you travelling alone, completely alone?”
“Sometimes with friends,” I answered, “but mostly alone.”
An anxious brightness filled her eyes. “Aren't you afraid?”
“Afraid of what?” I asked.
“Afraid of the cold. I am afraid of the cold.” She reached out and touched my thin cotton skirt. “Only one skirt! Gringita, you have only one skirt! Don't you feel the cold?” To demonstrate her point, she lifted the four layers of skirts she wore: one cotton and three wool, and then felt, between her thumb and finger, the thinness of my one layer skirt.
It seemed such a simple question, but my answer got caught in that gap between cultures. Could I have said that the cold that I fear is one that no number of skirts or sweaters can keep out? Could I have explained that though I did feel cold here, I did not feel The Cold?
In the uncertainty of my silence, Quinta's concern intensified. “Gringita, where are you going to sleep tonight?”
“At the hotel, in the village.” I answered.
“Alone?” she asked.
“Yes, alone.”
“But gringita, how will you keep warm? Don't you feel the cold?”
How could Quinta, who relied on her family for warmth, understand the pile of blankets and quilts I used to keep myself warm?
She seemed almost to drink in my answers, repeating them to herself, or speaking to herself in Quechua afterwards. I wondered what she must make of me, living a reality so very different and foreign to her. She knows what’s needed to survive here: many skirts and a large family. She has the skirts; she hopes, one day, to have more family.
It was turning cold and beginning to rain. Quinta turned from me briefly and scanned the road for her brother. Turning back to me, she softly admonished: “Gringita, you must go back now. If you get cold, you will never get warm.” She insisted I go back to my hotel.
Reluctantly I rose to go. Quinta sat like a bright mountain flower, her colourful skirts billowing out around her. Looking up at me she said: “I hope I will see you again gringita. I hope I will see you again.” But in her voice I heard, and in her eyes I saw, that pathetic hope without hope – the hallmark of those who have waited too long for things that don't come. I reached down to embrace her, trying to form some kind of bridge across that persistent gap, and said: “You will. You are in my heart, and I am in yours.” She kissed my cheek, and I felt her arms close around me for a moment, and for that moment we were just two women, two women from worlds apart, who had met by chance, and who had taken the chance to share who they were with one another.
As I walked away, I felt a clutch of sadness, of regret, knowing I would not see her again. And so I turned around several times to look at her still sitting, splay legged, one stocking wet and dirty from where she had slipped into a muddy ditch, her four layers of skirts spread out around her, and her pig tethered to her with a rope around her waist, waiting for her brother to come. One final wave good-bye. But the memory of my time with her would be, I knew, indelibly etched in my mind, in my heart, and on my soul. It is encounters like this that make travel worthwhile, that keep us going when the going gets tough.
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