Weddings

I had the privilege to take pictures of two different weddings in my time down here. Both have served as a sort of indicator to the excessiveness that permeates so much of my own culture in the US.

I shot the first wedding back at the beginning of September. I followed Esther, the bride, for the whole day, from putting on her dress to leaving for the hotel with her new husband. She got dressed in her parents home, a tin roofed, two-roomed place next to the river here in town. Her brother drove her to the wedding in a borrowed old Toyota corolla. The pastor married her and Jubenal, her new husband, in the small and slightly run-down evangelical church they had both attended since they were kids. They went eight hours away by bus to Cusco for their honeymoon and returned extremely happy.

I can't help but compare this to so many American weddings I see. There are so many lies that persist in much of our consumerist culture. I am not buying into the fairy tale idea that you have to spend $3,000 on a ring, $5,000 on a dress, and much more for a fancy venue simply because it is a special occasion. At the end of the day the purpose of a wedding, the celebration of the love between two people and joining them in a holy bond, remains the exact same. I do not see the juncture of an American couple who spend more than twenty grand on their wedding as any stronger than that of Jubenal and Esther.

Peruvian Slang

I thought I would list a bit of the slang from the region. The literal translations of some of the words are pretty funny.

Your woman = Tu flaquita (literally your skinny)

Cash = La plata (literally silver). I always feel like I'm talking like a pirate whenever I say this. Arg I would buy a new leg but don't have the silver!

Nice/well kept = charlie. Esto es un lugar bien charlie. This is a real nice place. A lot of the slang are spin offs of English words. Why a male name means well kept I'm not sure.

The act of copy and pasting = copypastear. It makes sense, just take two words you hear online and put them together into a verb. I always laugh at this one because of how obviously English it is.

Drinking alcohol = jugando soldado (literally playing soldier). This phrase comes from the action of taking a shot. Someone, somewhere thought it looked like you are shooting a pistol at your friends.

Stupid = Calabaza (literally pumpkin)

Big party = Tonazo (literally a loud noise)

Guachiman = Watchman. This comes from English but sounds and is spelled a bit differently.

Evangelical Movement in Peru

It has been interesting getting a sense of Peru's shifting religious landscape in my time living here. The country is at a real turning point and I am seeing that play out right in front of me.

Traditionally, Peru has been a heavily Roman Catholic country, just like the majority of Latin America. It still is that way; you can find a Catholic church in even the smallest of villages, but a new movement is rapidly gaining strength. The evangelical rise, as it has been dubbed, has swept through the country in the last few decades. Peru is now 12% evangelical and every major denomination is represented in most cities. From what I have seen, I would say this new development has an upside and a downside.
The downside would be that of the ever present American cultural imperialism. Most of the new churches have been established by American missionaries who have good hearts, but unintentionally bring their own culture at the expense of the locals'. A harmful mentality exists that locals can only worship Jesus through American traditions. The result is similar to what happened with the Spanish 500 years ago except that the cathedrals have been replaced with mega-churches and the hymns with David Crowder Band.

Now the upside is a completely fresh take for Peruvians on the character of Jesus. Catholicism has been so engrained in the culture that many, but not all, who say they are Catholic simply say so because it is the the norm. So many have lost any form of discipleship because of this vague cultural-religious mix. Again, this is not all who claim to be Catholic by a long shot but I would say it is the majority in Latin America. This evangelical movement offers a fresh, new, personal relationship with Jesus.

There is also a church here in Andahuaylas that has accomplished the best of both worlds and should serve as an example for missions work across the globe. It is non-denominational and works within the best parts of the Andean culture here in the sierra. The services are both in Spanish and in Quechua and the majority of their worship songs are from the region and sung in Quechua as well. They even have Huayno worship which I personally despise but it is a great example of worshipping the same God within a completely different culture.

Food Fun

I thought I would give you guys a list of the most interesting things I've been eating and drinking down here as well as a detailed explanation of their taste/texture/ability to stay in my stomach.

Queso de rocas (rock cheese): This is the most common way of making cheese up in the sierra. Someone puts fresh goat milk in a coke bottle and sets it in direct sunlight. After enough time passes for bacteria to grow and the milk has sufficiently hardened, they hang it up on clothes lines in the open air to age. I was told it ages anywhere from three to six months and is covered in flies for the duration. Once finished, the final product is a grayish wrinkled ball that could crack diamonds. After you gnaw on it for about fifteen minutes the center tastes like curdled milk. I ate this for three days straight when I first arrived and payed for it the following week because my stomach was still green. That would soon change though because the queso de rocas was only the start.

Caldo de vaca/oveja (sheep or cow head soup): This is the most common breakfast when you are in the campos. The cow head is usually shared because of its size. The cook places the entire thing in a very large pot where it simmers until ready to eat. Once cooked, each person takes a turn scraping the meat they want off the face. The eyes are reserved for the cooks and each could be a meal in themself. I got lucky with the sheep head soup though because it came to me in full, complete with two succulent eyeballs. The taste of a half-cooked sheep eye is not terrible, I would compare it to fat on a steak but the texture, however, is a different story. The first bite into the eye pops it and releases all of the juicy fluids into the back of your mouth.

Chicha amarilla (yellow chicha): Chicha is one of the most common drinks in Peru and comes in many forms, all derived from different types of maize. Purple chicha is quite tasty and, luckily, the most common. Its yellow brother isn't quite as good. Yellow chicha is the only type which is alcoholic and if I had to describe the taste i would say it is a bit like sour mushrooms. The texture is also that of glue and it doesn't slide down very easily.

La canya (cane alcohol): This is the equivalent of Peruvian moonshine. It is most commonly made in the houses of rural residents by distilling the sugar cane plant to a nearly poisonous level. Canya is by far the strongest alcohol I have ever tasted. It would put everclear to shame. This has earned it the title of agua del infierno (hell water).

El extracto de la rana (frog juice): I saved what I thought was the most entertaining treat for last. The frog juice is unlike anything I have ever seen. A woman works a booth advertising this stuff in most local markets. There is a counter, a bin full of live frogs, and a blender. You choose your frog and it is placed live into the spinning blender. The result is a liquified sludge with the consistency of yogurt and a slight fishy overtone. This was the only food that almost came back up but I managed to keep it down. Apparently it will be good for my mental health and fertility now which is why most people drink it but I have serious doubts.

I currently only have photos of the sheep head soup and frog juice but will try to take some of the other delectables and post them soon.

My Least Favorite Music on the Planet

I have been so annoyed in the past few months by a certain type of music that I decided to write a blog post about it. "Huayno" is the local obsession in much of the Andean region in Peru. The vocals are ridiculous and make grown women sound like they are little girls giggling. A male voice usually accompanies the women in the background and he says the same line over fifty times in every song. Con todo el cariño de/With a lot of love from (village where he happens to be from) and Eso! Eso! Eso!/This is the good stuff! This is the good stuff! This is the good stuff! are the most likely phrases. The lyrics are almost always about broken hearts and runaway lovers, These singers are backed-up by an assortment of repetitive violin and harp lines. Every driver in the region is blaring this god-awful concoction of "melodies" wherever they happen to go. The stores in the streets, the trucks, the restaurants, everywhere is huayno. I got my first taste of the music in the first few weeks of traveling here. We drove in an over-crowded, dusty, 2WD van at 15,000 feet over some of the bumpiest roads in the region without water for five hours. I always had a sufficent headache. The huayno blaring over the radio made it a migraine. I now understand why they play a different form of Andean music for the tourists in Cusco. I doubt they would sell very many whino CDs. As harsh as I am on this stuff the locals love it, and I can't hate on that but, personally, I will not be downloading any anytime soon. Below is a link to some typical huayno.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi5syFGvnUA&feature=related

Machu Picchu

The much anticipated day had finally arrived. We woke up at an early 5 am to catch the first bus up to the famous ruins just in time for sunrise. We had the option to either walk from our hostel in Aguas Calientes at 3:30 am or take the bus for nine dollars at 5:30. I was very glad I chose the latter option as it was pouring rain for all of the early morning. Machu Picchu itself is right in the middle of Peru's cloud forest, a region of thick jungle that is cooler and wetter because of its high altitude, and our guide said that there is usually only one or two days a year where it doesn't rain at all. This made for some spectacular scenery. Our group arrived at the site just a few minutes before sunrise and everything was socked in. I was able to snap a few cool looking shots of the ruins flowing with mist before the sun rose.

Once it did rise, so did nearly all of the clouds and we could all see the ruins and Huayna Picchu, the mountain behind the citadel, in complete and full detail. It was incredible and could not have been better lit for photos. The clouds had dissipated, but not completely. There were still wisps of moisture blowing off of every peak. After a sufficient amount of picture-taking we started our tour. Abraham, the guide, pointed out every important piece of architecture and its significance. The Incans had built each building in Machu Picchu without any mortar or sealant. Every stone in every building is perfectly chiseled to fit in with stones around it. Abraham said that when the walls are made this way they are water-tight. The mortar-free construction is also the reason Machu Picchu has survived over six centuries of earthquakes. The plumbing system in the ruins is also incredible. The builders sloped each terrace in the city perfectly,so that any rain water would be discarded into the valley below. After an entire morning of downpours we didn't see a single standing pool or puddle of water. Any of the water waste used by the villagers was also funneled into a channel and discarded in a similar way. I found it amusing that the Spanish called these people barbarians when they had precisely engineering infrastructure that would surpass any in Europe for the next few centuries.

Abraham also told us the fantastic adventure story of the rediscovery of the city by a westerner in 1911. Hiram Bingham was a Yale professor on an archeological trip in South America. the purpose of his journey was to find undiscovered remnants of the cultures before the Spanish. He was a real-life Indiana Jones. Bingham was traveling down the nearly deserted valley of the Urubamba river when he happened upon a farmer living near what is modern day Aguas Calientes, at the bottom of the valley. The farmer told him that he had found a large set of completely overgrown, but still intact, ruins when he walked up a mountain down the valley a year ago. Bingham hired him as a guide and found what would be the biggest discovery of his life. For the next few years, with funding from the National Geographic Society, Bingham led an operation to clear the cloud forest overgrowth from the ruins. It would become one of the best known landmarks in the world.

After thoroughly exploring the ins and outs of the mountain-top city I started to walk up the Inca Trail with three others from the group. Our destination was the IntiPunku, Quechua for sun gate. This is a small set of ruins at the crest of a ridge behind Machu Picchu where hikers on the Inca Trail get their first view of the ancient citadel. It gave us a completely different view where all of Machu Picchu, along with the Urubamba Valley, is completely visible. From here I really got a glimpse of how many people visit the ruins. Every alleyway and walkway had crowds. It certainly took away from the feeling of Machu Picchu being the mysterious, lost city of the Incas but was also a demonstration of the tourist dollars being flooded into the area. This economic benefit is clearly seen from Machu Picchu to Cusco. All of the artisans, the tour guides, the hotel and hostel staff would be without jobs if it were not for the tourists. I got to thinking that it would be quite difficult to maintain the appeal and culture of the area while still addressing the economic necessity.

We took the train back to Cusco later that night and I enjoyed one more day in Cusco before heading back home to Andahuaylas. Getting back was quite an ordeal that could have been avoided if there was the slightest bit of organization in the bus system here. When buying my ticket, I asked if there were any buses direct to Andahuaylas. They said no and that I would have to take one to Abancay and then a van to Andahuaylas. I wasn't too frustrated until the bus that I got off of in Abancay read on its message board that it was continuing on to Andahuaylas. Why I was told there were no buses home, I don't know. To make matters worse, I was also told that the first van would not drive to Andahuaylas until 3 AM. It was then 12 PM. So I waited, trying to sleep a little on my backpack, on the floor of the Abancay bus station for three hours. I promptly went to bed once I arrived at the house after another night of sleepless travel.

The Inca Jungle

After my time in the city I embarked on a four day adventure that would head through the jungle and arrive at Machu Picchu. We were all picked up at the hostel early and driven to a unnamed pass at 14,000 feet which marks the border between the sierra and the selva, the highlands and the jungle. This is where we started our 10,000 foot mountain bike descent. I was amazing going through so many different environments in only two hours. Every 2,000 feet we went down, the ecosystem was completely different. There were snowy peaks all around when we started at the pass, including Salkantay which is one of Peru's highest at 20,691 feet, then banana plants as well as a good amount of humidity when we finished. I started biking with two jackets and finished wearing only my shorts. In two hours it was like we had traveled between two different planets. We had time for the rest of the day to get to know the others in the group a bit. Our troop was truly international. There were people from Israel, Canada, South Korea, New Zealand, the US, and Uruguay. Our guide's name was Abraham and he is a new father who lives in Cusco. He was excellent and knew the answer to every single question we asked him about the Incas, Peru, or the region.

The next morning we started to walk along an only recently discovered part of the original Inca Trail towards the town of Santa Teresa. This is one of the few sections that is considered completely original and without improvements. It was carved into the side of the mountain face over 600 years ago and still stands today. We hiked along this trail through the "seja de la selva" literally the "eyebrow of the jungle" which is the phrase Peruvians use to describe the region where the mountains and the jungle meet. Our journey was always fueled by a lot of water and a lip full of coca leaves. Abraham made sure to inform everyone that coca itself was not cocaine, was not illegal in Peru, and would not harm anyone who chewed it. The coca functions like a 5 hour energy ad. It is a great energy booster for a long time and there is no crash later. It does make your mouth quite numb though. Our day finished at the hot springs in Santa Teresa where we all enjoyed a nice dip despite the air being the same temperature as the water.

Getting up the next morning, the whole group was excited for the zip lines. They were set up all throughout a canyon outside of Santa Teresa where we got to fly over the Urubamba river at 50 miles an hour. It was good fun and cut off a significant chunk of the distance we would have to walk if we didn't use them. From the zip lines we started hiking again towards Aguas Calientes, the town closest to the ancient Inca citadel of Machu Picchu.

Cusco

I have just now arrived back in Andahuaylas after an incredible week in Cusco, the Inca Jungle, and Machu Picchu! I decided to break up my stories about the trip into three posts because so much happened. The journey started buying a bus ticket. Most of the travel here, both for common Peruvians and backpackers tight on cash, is by bus. The buses are a real gamble too and my family had told me that when paying the same price you could end up with a bus that has reclining beds or a bus that has chickens in the aisle, especially when traveling in an area that sees little to no tourists like the route from Andahuaylas to Cusco. I was also reminded that you have to bargain for literally everything. Even when buying a ticket from a national bus company the teller told me a price that was much higher than it should have been. I ended up getting the ticket for 25 soles or around 10 dollars which was decent.

The other thing I had heard about the buses is that you have to vigilantly guard your belongings. Everyone in my family and the people I have talked to say that they have had their things stolen many times on the buses when they are dozing off. A Swedish pastor here in Andahuaylas told me that he had his wallet and cell phone stolen as he was sitting on them and didn't even realize it. For this reason, I didn't sleep at all during the eight hour ride. I also triumphantly walked off the bus with both cameras, my phone, my wallet, and my iPad all accounted for.

The bus got into Cusco at four in the morning and I was exhausted so I promptly took a taxi to the Loki Hostel where I was staying and fell asleep on a couch in their TV room. Waking up six hours later, I explored the hostel a bit and found it to be an incredibly interesting place. The structure itself was one of the first Spanish hacienda houses in the city of Cusco and was the exact location where Tupac Amaru II, an indigenous leader in the 19th century, planned his nearly successful revolt against the Spanish.

After walking around a bit I met four Australians who said they were going bungee jumping in an hour. They asked if I wanted to join and, of course, I couldn't pass up an opportunity to jump for the second time this year. Off we went to a place called the Action Valley just outside the city. This jump was 100 times safer than the one I had done previously at Victoria Falls. It was complete with a double safety harness, a neck brace, and the instructors giving you step by step instructions of how to prepare yourself with breathing exercises. We all threw ourselves out of the cable car 320 feet up without any problems. Easy. The adrenaline high is unbeatable though; our fingers didn't stop twitching for a solid hour.

I spent the next day wandering all of the ins and outs of Cusco. It is a fascinating city. All the the buildings are built in a valley surrounded by three hills and the rapid population growth is pushing more and more houses up the hills. No street in the center is much wider than a medium-sized car and they are sprawled upon a variety of different slopes. The whole city reminded me a lot of Venice but without the water. It seemed like the perfect setting for a Peruvian Thief Lord. I also thoroughly enjoyed the benefits of being in a much more global city than Andahuaylas. The people overall were more aware of the outside world, I could listen to more than one type of music and the food, oh the food. The old adage "you can get that anywhere back home" was the opposite for me. I got my hands on as much fast food as possible after only eating rice, beans, chicken, and eggs for the majority of the past two months. KFC. Mickey D's. Starbucks. I had it all. That succulent Big Mac was most definitely a highlight of my time in Cusco.

Lima, Andahuaylas, Chiara, and Chaccrampa

Well this is my first ever blog post! I am completely new to it but thought it would be the best way to let people back home know what I am up to, where I am staying, and what it is like. I am currently writing to you from the town of Andahuaylas, where I am living, but have been to three other places in Peru before now. My trip started in Lima where I stayed with my wonderful hosts the Perez family. I had never been to Lima and didn't quite know what to expect. I had heard it dubbed the "theft capital of the world" and one of the worst cities for crime in South America. I also heard it has a thriving restaurant scene and is up-and-coming. I found both of these assertions to be fairly true. We went all over the city by taxi in the two short days I was there and the driver always seemed to talk about a crime he had witnessed or a new restaurant. I'm not sure if that was just what I picked up on because it was what I had read beforehand or not but the two topics seemed to define Lima. While driving throughout the city I got a sense of how polarized it is. The brand new theater hall, which rivals any you would see in LA or New York with its changing light scheme and immaculate design, is directly across from Nueva Esperanza, one of Lima's poorest neighborhoods. I thought this proximity between rich and poor could be one of the main factors in the city's high crime rate. For lunch the day before I left we went to a traditional Peruvian restaurant in the Barranca district. Barranca is the artist hub of Lima and all of its buildings have maintained their colonial architecture. I ate papa huancaina and ceviche, two classic Peruvian dishes.
The next day I flew out to Andahuaylas. I flew over the Andes nearly the entire time and the views were great. An hour later I landed on the single runway at the Andahuaylas airport. Immediately after getting off the plane I could tell that this environment was different from Lima. It seemed like some cheesy tourist trap, with Andean women in their bright clothes and alpacas right next to the runway. But it wasn't and I was the only white person for some distance. If you mention Andahuaylas to most people who have visited Peru they will have no idea where or what it is. It's not because it is extremely small (it has about 50,000 people) but because it is far away from the tourist hubs of Cusco, Iquitos, and Arequipa and its population is almost all locals. All of the Peru guidebooks I looked at didn't even mention Andahuaylas or put it on the map and I started to wonder if this was all a big joke. The airport is about 10 miles out of town up the mountainside. When I got into the city there was the county "fair" set up which happens every Sunday. Andahuaylas is the agricultural hub of a large part of the sierra and many of the stalls at the fair had hand tools and grain for sale. It is also the closest town to the valley where the last remaining faction of the Shining Path, a terrorist organization which fought the government in the 80s, is operating. The Shining Path now mostly does drug-related business but Andahuaylas is their exporting hub for processed cocaine from the edge of the jungle. Because of this there is always a large number of police and military throughout the city. The people in the town are generally shorter and darker-skinned than in Lima because of the larger indigenous prevalence. The short factor didn't serve me well the first few days as I slammed my head against every possible doorframe and stairwell.
My host family's home and the office where I am working are next to each other and just up the hill from the Plaza de Armas and downtown Andahuaylas. It has been fun getting to know the family over the past few weeks. The dad's name is Francisco and he is a pastor and construction worker. The mom's name is Katerina and she works at the house as a tutor for disabled kids. They have two children, Daniel and Sara, who are 14 and 12 respectively. The house is a big, old, half-remodeled, modge podge of a modern dining room and living room with a very old kitchen and antiquated bedrooms.
After I got settled for a day I was introduced to the staff of Paz y Esperanza, the Christian human rights organization that I am working for. It's a team of 14, excluding me, and not one of them speaks English. This is good though because it is forcing my Spanish to improve. I am working in their communications office and have been assigned to maintain their blogs, write excerpts for the local newspapers about PyE projects, document the problems they are facing with photos and video, and document the projects they are running to help solve these problems.
My first assignment was to take pictures and video of the work PyE is doing in two extremely rural communities, Chiara and Chaccrampa. The project they are running there is called Bilingual and Intercultural Education. I accompanied some of the staff in bringing new Quechua calendars to the schools in these communities. The main problem these schools are facing is a disconnect between the education and the environment in which the kids live. At home they all speak Quechua but the teachers in the schools speak Spanish. The government mandated curriculum doesn't address the depth and differences in how these rural children have been taught since they were born. That is what PyE is changing. The new calendars are based around the Incan agricultural calendar, something the kids lives have been oriented around for centuries. What they learn to do and what activities they take part in are all determined by the Andean time of the year. It was amazing to see their reactions when we brought the new calendars. The previously boredom-ridden faces instantly lit up as they started reading the calendars in their own language and relating to the pictures in each season. This gave me a lot of hope for Christian organizations. The effectiveness of this project seemed irrefutable to me, someone who is usually quite critical. Paz y Esperanza's depth and respect for the local culture is something I've rarely seen in American Christian circles.
Despite my spirits being lifted by PyE's work, traveling in these parts was no fun at all. It took us 6 hours to go 60 miles in a 2wd van on a 6wd road. It was also impossible to sleep because of the constant side-to-side and up-and-down. We stayed one night in the only "hotel" in Chaccrampa which consisted of a mattress on the floor of a room that I had to hunch down in to walk around. The meals were also all local and quite harsh on my Western stomach. I ate a cheese that was harder than diamonds and a lot of maize. I am still feeling the effects of these. I will hopefully update this with a post soon but for now I'm signing off. There are pictures at the bottom here of various things I talked about. Once I can use a computer and not my iPad on Monday I will caption them. I hope everyone reading this is doing well!