Ollanta Raymi

Yesterday was Ollanta Raymi, the Ollantaytambo version of Cusco´s famous Inti Raymi festival. Besides the Festival of Chockakillka, it´s the biggest festival of the year, and in my opinion, one of the coolest. Unlike the other festivals which were basically lots of chicha and dancing, Ollanta Raymi is unique for its full-scale production of a Quechua drama, the last of its kind in Peru.

The drama has been performed every year since 1780 on the Fortaleza, or the ruins for which Ollanta is famous. This year´s production included more than 450 actors from the town playing parts in the drama of Ollantaytambo. The entire play was in Quechua and lasted about 90 minutes, with sporadic  Spanish and English translation.

The Fortaleza sits at the edge of town and consists of a series of large steps built by the Incas that lead up to some questionably religious stones at the top of the mountain. Forgive me if I sound skeptical, but I´ve heard one too many tour guides wax poetic on the magic of the Incas. The truth is, no one knows for sure what they massive stone ruins were actually intended for. But no one can deny they are impressive.

The drama was supposed to start at 10 a.m., but the first act did not begin until noon. Classic example of Peruvian time. Although we were sitting in plastic lawn chairs at the base of the ruins in the direct heat from about 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., I´m really glad we sat as close to the action as we did. Even if I do feel a little sunburned.

The majority of the 450 actors served as dancers on the ruins or soldiers in the fight scene. Only about ten people actually had speaking parts. The basic plotline is that the great warrior Ollantaytambo wants to marry the Inca princess with a crazy name, but her father the Inca king forbids it and sends his daughter to jail for ten years. Nice, right? But he dies of ¨rage,¨ so I guess he got what he deserved.

The princess sits in jail for ten years but somehow has a baby with Ollanta, who grows up to be a kind of moody teenager who yells at her dad and makes him let her mother, the princess out of jail. He does, as during these ten years of bachelorhood he´s defeated the Inca king and become head honcho of all the land.

It wasn´t easy figuring all this out. An announcer with a very annoying voice would tell you before each scene what was going to happen, but it wasn´t always reliable or helpful. So our friend Modesto, who speaks only Spanish and Quechua, translated the drama into Spanish to our friend Catherine, who relayed the story in English to myself and Jarrard. Whew. A lot of languages going on there.

The production itself was arrestingly beautiful. The actors were dressed in bright colors of red, yellow, blue, purple and gold, and spread out along every terrace reaching up toward the sky. They would periodically dance to the traditional flute music, and then disapear to the back of the terraces so we couldn´t see them from down below. Watching 450 colorful dancers appear from seemingly nowhere on the drab stone terraces beneath the bright blue of the sky was just incredible.

After the drama ended we watched traditional dance troupes perform, and also did some exploring up in the ruins. Usually entry to the park runs about 70 soles, and we´d gotten in for 10 that morning. Gotta take advantage when you can.

Then my host mother made me go eat lunch at the food stands, since god forbid I go hungry. After eating what seemed like an entire chicken with my fingers, she brought me a trucha, or trout, still looking at me with it´s googly eyes. Can´t say that was too appetizing, but the fact that I didn´t realize it still had a head until I was halfway done is kind of impressive. Plus there´s no better way to feel like a local than to eat greasy meat with your fingers. And toss the bones and skin to stray dogs when you´re done.

Below are three links to videos of the festival:

Introducing the Drama from Eliza Kern on Vimeo.

Ollanta Raymi Dancers from Eliza Kern on Vimeo.

Quechua Dancing from Eliza Kern on Vimeo.

A view of the afternoon dancing from the ruins.

A man dancing.

A Quechua woman dancing.

Quechua girls dancing.

Two Quechua girls dancing.

A few Quechua dancers in mid-spin.

Dancers from Cusco.

Women from Cusco dancing.

The spectators in the afternoon.

Boys playing soldiers leaving after the performance.

Taking a bow.

Everyone comes out for one last hurrah.

The actors on the steps.

The end of the drama. The princess is being let out of jail.

A scene from the drama. My host sister-in-law, Doris, is on the far right.

Jacob got to be a drummer. He´s the tall American one in the middle with his drum pointed to the right.

Our friend Sandia also got to be in the play. She´s the girl in yellow on the right.

In this part of the drama, the Inca king is offering chicha to the sun god Inti.

The crowd watching the drama at the base of the Fortaleza.

Dancers on the walls of the Fortaleza.

Dancers at the top of the ruins. They were high up there.

They filled every row.

The dancers began to fill the terraces.

The fortress before the action began.

We had two hours in the hot sun before the drama began. But we did have good seats.

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Not the Sound of Silence: Catholic mass in Ollanta

We had planned to go to Cusco on Sunday to attend a llama fair and buy more cheese, but decided at the last minute that the cheese and llama pics weren´t quite enough to justify the time and expense of un viaje to Cusco.

Instead we went with our friend Catherine, another Awamaki volunteer, to attend the 10 a.m. Catholic mass in Ollanta.

It finally started around 10:20, which is about on par for Peruvian concepts of timeliness. There were hardly any people in the pews when the service started, but by the time it ended, it was standing room only in the back. Pretty typical.

Apparently mass is usually held in the larger church across the street from our house, but because of ¨construction,¨ it was held in the smaller chapel on the Plaza. Since the 7 a.m. mass was held in the church, this didn´t make a whole lot of sense. But we went with it.

The best part of the mass was definitely the priest, or padre, as he´s known. He looked to be about 25 years old, although apparently he´s in his thirties.

This actually wasn´t our first encounter with the padre. We´d seen him before at the Ollanta soccer game. He´s a member of the team, and when he screws up, people yell ¨dios mio padre!¨ It´s a riot. 

Because there were no bibles or hymnals in the pews, and you had to pay 20 centimos for a program, he called out the words to the songs and prayers and people repeated them back. He reminded me of myself teaching the first graders the way he rallied people to pay attention and speak up.

The hymns consisted of a pretty limited number of phrases and words and most people seemed to know them well. We obviously had never heard them before, but we were able to follow along by the end. It had sort of a call and response feel to it.

The entire thing was pretty informal compared to church services I´ve attended. There were babies crawling down the aisles, people coming in late, and dust and construction noise floating in from the Plaza. The padre was up there cracking jokes and made us start over again when we didn´t sing with enough vigor.

Kelsey, Jarrard, Catherine and I were cracking up when we realized that one hymn was sung to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel´s ¨Sound of Silence.¨ The words were not the same, but the melody was quite recognizable. I´m fairly certain none of the Peruvians have heard the original. Maybe they would think Simon and Garfunkel ripped off their hymns. Who knows.

A couple of random adults got baptized, a few people took communion, they passed around a butterfly net for collection, the padre rallied us for another hymn, and then it was over by 11:30. Besides having to kneel on a wooden bench for a while, it was a pretty lively and entertaining religious experience.

Maybe next week they´ll sing something to the tune of ¨Hey Jude,¨ another Peruvian favorite.

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Running into the sun

Yesterday I did something really brave: I went for a run.

I haven´t gone for a run in the month I´ve been here, for several reasons. It´s not acceptable for girls to wear shorts here. I feel nervous carrying my iPod around. Peruvians do not seem to exercise. We´re reasonably active in our daily lives.

But our diet of rice, potatoes, pasta, creamy soup, french fries, and bread is really starting to gross me out. Plus the Peruvians serve mayonnaise as a condiment with almost everything. Yesterday I ate what I´m fairly sure was liver just so I didn´t have to face another plate of pasta. I never finish all the food they give me here, but it´s hard not to worry about my health a little bit.

So the combination of the lack of nutritional meals and feeling of going stir-crazy led me to head out to the roads of Ollanta. And boy, did it feel good.

I didn´t wear shorts, nor did I attempt to run through the construction zone going on in the Plaza. But I did wear my iPod, if only to drown out the occasional whistle from men with nothing better to do than stand on street corners and loiter. And I ignored all the looks from Peruvians who were clearly wondering where the fire was.

The hardest part was running on cobblestones. All the streets in town are crafted from flat rocks with cement between the cracks, but it´s pretty bumpy going and I had to focus hard not to trip or twist an ankle. I thought of the rocks as my hurdles.

I headed through town and down the long road toward Jarrard´s house and the bridge crossing the river. Once I crossed the bridge and hit the dirt road outside town, it was absolutely peaceful and easier to run on than the cobblestones.

I only made it about twenty minutes outside of town before I felt completely exhuasted. The sun was beating down and breathing hard at 10,000 feet is no picnic. But it felt good to sweat and make some tracks.

It was probably the most idyllic run I´ve ever been on. Starting with my jaunt through picturesque Ollanta, I found myself rocking out to Beyonce as I ran on cobblestones, stretching on a 500 year-old Inca bridge, and waving to the train heading to Macchu Picchu as I passed entire families harvesting corn. Kind of beats a regular old track.

I´d forgotten how restorative a run can be, and I hope to make this part of my routine from now on. Maybe I´ll even stop and work on the Single Ladies dance on the Inca bridge next time. Who knows.

Jarrard´s picture of the road outside his house where I ran.

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Peruvian media: ¨Vecinos¨and ¨El Rey de Pop¨

One thing I can´t really get used to here is the total lack of newspapers and my diminished connection to ¨the outside world.¨ At home I read at least two print newspapers a day, plus a variety of online publications, and the occasional radio or tvbroadcast. I feel like I´m constantly in a race to keep up with everything that´s going on in the world.

Here, it´s a different story. There are no print newspapers where we are, and even in Cusco, one of the largest cities in Peru, the main newspaper rivals my hometown Bethesda Gazette for hard-hitting news coverage. I picked up a copy when we were there last weekend and the front page story was about senior citizens taking classes at the University. Not exactly Pulitzer worthy.

Supposedly only Lima has a decent newspaper, and transportation costs are too high to ship them to other cities in Peru. So most Peruvians get their news from the radio. I´ve tried to listen to it myself, but it often covers futbol games, plays popular love songs, and shouts in rapid Spanish that I can´t understand. It´s rough.

Television is another way people get access to the news, but it´s only mildly more informative. It´s usually tuned to the soap opera channel, and Kelsey and I have gotten very attached to ¨Vecinos,¨ or Neighbors, the popular telenovela here. We can´t always understand much of it, but you really don´t need the dialogue to follow along. The basic plot is that all the woman wear little clothing and have torrid affairs with doctors, policemen, doormen, other women´s husbands, or pretty much any man they can find. They then get caught in the throes of romance by someone else, and drama ensues. It´s extremely entertaining, and our family follows it religiously.

As for the news broadcasts, they´re pretty limited to local news. We haven´t heard much about the struggle in the Amazon between the government and the indigenous peoples, and I´ve had to check out the New York Times online to learn more. I did watch Peruvian televisioncoverage of Michael Jackson´s death, which was pretty interesting. They kept showing clips of the Thriller music video and yammering about ¨el rey de pop,¨ or king of pop.

No mention of the child molestation stuff. I don´t think Peruvians are very open talking about that kind of thing. Some Peruvian pop singer just died and it turns out she was a lesbian, and people here are very shocked by this. Interesting.

Online newspapers are great, but with internet a dollar an hour and high-speed a rarity, it´s hard being connected. So as much as my Spanish has improved from ¨Vecinos,¨ I´m excited to head back to American newspapers and more reliable news coverage.

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Pumamarka

Today was another myserious festival day where we had no school, so we spent the morning at Pumamarka, an Inca citadel about 7 kilometers north of Ollantaytambo.

Granted, we haven´t been to Macchu Picchu yet, but these were by far the most spectacular ruins I´ve seen so far. Pumamarka overlooks the Rio Patacancha in the middle of a valley surrounded by massive mountains.

We wanted to be back in Ollanta by a decent hour, aka lunch, so we decided to take pay a taxi driver to take us to Pumamarka and then hike the two-hour trip back to Ollanta afterwards. We´d been told the route was pretty flat, and it was, but there were definitely some steep parts on the way up that our driver was none too happy about and I felt guilty, but pleased, to be skipping.

The drive up through the valley was gorgeous, and we stopped several times to coax livestock out of our path. Our driver finally dropped us off about a 100 meters below the fortress. I´m pretty sure he´d had enough of potholes and cows and was ready to be done with us.

The view was breathtaking, the sun was shining, and the ruins were empty save a lonely-looking guard who let us in a wooden gate. We had the place entirely to ourselves for about two hours, during which we took innumerable silly pictures of each other, ate some avocados and cheese, and sang way too loudly than was actually necessary. We tipped the guard on our way out, mostly as an apology for our atrocious renditions of songs from the Sound of Music. But I swear, the hills were alive.

The walk back down through the valley was beautiful, and we saw every type of livestock in existance. We saw baby goats and sheep, and learned that cows have horns as well as the torros. Who knew.

We arrived back in Ollanta almost five hours after we´d left, with some catalog-worthy pictures of ourselves and a nice range of sunburns. Mission success.

(I´m trying out a new format for uploading pictures that´s way faster. You can click on any of the thumbnail images to expand them. Let me know what you think!)

The view of Pumamarka as we approached.

The Incas were awesome at building walls.

Kelsey looked very photogenic on this rock.

Hanging out in the ruins.

This room looked vaguely religious. Either that or they accidentally built a column in the middle.

The proportions weren´t exactly right here. Jarrard´s arms are too long. Or I´m too short.

Looking at Kelsey´s hand, or synchronized dancing?

We made fools of ourselves.

There was dancing too.

Looking down on the valley from Pumamarka.

Jarrard and me looking cool.

Queen of the world! Or the Urubumba Valley. Whichever.

Jarrard trying to get some catalog-worthy pictures.

Eating lunch. Avacado sandwiches rock my world.

Mama cows have horns too. Who knew.

Heading back down the valley.

The valley.

Me on the way home.

Jarrard on the way home.

El Rio Patacancha.

More cows.

Burro hanging out in the road.

Walking home.

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The Pitfalls of Being a Girl

We´ve been living in Peru for almost  a month now, and in addition to throwing rocks at dogs and manipulating an electric shower, Kelsey and I have had to learn to ignore a variety of compliments when walking around town.

To be totally fair, I don´t think it requires a whole lot to get whistled at in Peru. Today I was wearing the dirty clothes I taught in, a raincoat, and sneakers, but from the comments I got on the street I might as well have been hanging out in a bikini. As I said, it doesn´t take much.

The problem is that Kelsey´s height and my hair are pretty uncommon here. Even Peruvian men rarely reach more than 5´10, so Jarrard, let alone Kelsey, are pretty much considered freaks of nature. Our host mom finds Kelsey really useful for reaching high shelves in the kitchen.

And in Ollanta, hair only comes in one color: black. The kids in my fifth grade class were convinced I dyed my hair. I explained that no, in the United States hair comes in many different colors. They then asked if Kelsey dyed her hair. I´m not sure they understood.

So we´ve gotten used to ignoring whistles from strange men and deflecting awkwardly constructed English sentences saying something to the effect of ¨Beautiful lady. Where you from?¨ Most of them mean well, and unless they´re drunk we don´t think much of it.

We´d been told that it´s considered really indecent for girls to wear shorts here, and it´s true that you never see any female wearing anything above the knee, except for the confused-looking tourist. We thought this is because it´s so cold here, and this might be true. But I also think it´s because the Peruvian men would absolutely not even know what to do with themselves.

The funniest experience we had was in Cusco. The three of us were walking in one of the shopping districts and there was a man handing out fliers for something. He´d clearly been passing out the papers on autopilot, and started to hand us one, when he did a double take and actually started freaking out. It was the most enthusiastic ¨BEAUTIFUL LADY¨ I´d heard yet. I thought he was going to fall over. Kelsey and I started laughing hysterically, which didn´t seem to be the reaction he´d been looking for.

It seems to be more culturally acceptable to hang out on street corners and whistle at girls than it is at home. It´s particularly bad when we go to places where tourists don´t usually frequent. We discovered we were very popular at the futbol game among fans in the bleachers. Jarrard wants to join the Ollanta soccer team and play goalie. We think they´ll let him join if we promise to attend games.

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My Love-Hate Relationship With Clase de Español

I just registered for a Spanish class for the fall, and am having seriously mixed feelings.

Over the course of my academic career, my Spanish experiences have been spotty, to say the least. I´ve taken 12 semesters of Español since seventh grade, with varying levels of success and quality of instructors.

On one hand, all this Spanish has served me well. I´m often suprised by the extent of my vocabulary. Someone will ask me how to say something and the Spanish word will just pop into my head for no reason. Sometimes I won´t have used the word in years, but I´ll find it hanging out in my brain. This is the best case scenario.

But the downside of taking so much Spanish with so little consistency is that I have verb forms floating around my head like T-Pain on a boat. I can always come up with the verb, but whether I can conjugate it is anyone´s guess. People are forgiving, but there are times when it can be disastrous.

For instance, I was coloring with Jarrard´s host sister, Paulita, who is two years old. She was drawing a cat, or gato, (creatively named gato,) when I asked her why her cat didn´t have a head. But I used the wrong verb form and ended up asking her why she didn´t have a head. Whoops.

It´s certainly not my various Spanish teachers faults that I can´t conjugate verbs. That´s on me, more or less. But when I got here, I realized that I´d spent the last year of Spanish at UNC doing virtually no speaking in class. Aside from one or two formal oral interviews, I had not really been asked to formulate ideas in Spanish on the spot.

It definitely took a couple of weeks to get used to talking and thinking in Spanish, and it´s something I wish I´d done more of last year. My classes were heavy on grammar, which is great, but if you can´t produce this grammar in a conversation, what´s the point?

So I´m heading back to UNC Spanish, if somewhat reluctantly. It seems pointless to go back to learning the imperfect subjunctive when I just need to nail down the preterite and expand my vocabulary. But by the end of my eight weeks here, I´ll be on the cusp of actually being pretty functional in Spanish. It would be stupid to quit when I´m ahead, especially if I´m going to another Spanish-speaking country next summer.

So I´m going to do it, although not at 8 a.m. I figure I just can´t go around asking little girls why they don´t have heads.

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