I left the field for good yesterday morning, and as exciting as it was to be headed back to the world of internet and showers, I'm going to miss some things about Ccasapata. Watching the sun rise every morning over the hills towards Paucara and listening to the obnoxious raucous of the local music have their charm.



In trying to figure out what I'm taking away from the experience, this article that Daria sent me a little while ago comes to mind. The article is by some dude named Ivan Illich and about how unproductive and even imperialist-minded it is for Americans, particularly college students with little expertise, to travel to Latin American in an attempt to 'help.' While I certainly don't see myself as here in Peru to try and 'fix things' I do think I've realized the importance of this work being done by Peruvians. A lot of the time I felt unable to help or participate because I don't understand a word of Quechua, or because I have absolutely zero experience growing potatoes. Yes, there are plenty of people in the U.S. with tons of experience with potatoes, but even they have no experience with the particularities of the environment here in Chopcca. Dissemination of new technologies to communities is really important, but even that process needs to involve the farmers, and I think needs to be done by people who are from the region.

That is certainly not to say that I think people from the U.S. have no role in the process of sustainable agriculture, poverty and malnutrition reduction, and adapting to climate change. Rather, we have an enormous role given how influential American policies and the American lifestyle are around the world economically and environmentally. I think it is much more daunting a task to try to address these things in the U.S., but I think ultimately that is a more productive route. And I think collaboration around the world is also really important.

But I think the things that I will really remember from this experience are more along the lines of how artificial my life is in some ways - on a day to day basis how little I really know about every convenience or process that is at work to result in the efficiency and comfort of my daily activities.

Last week I spent 5 days in the city of Huancayo, which feels like a different world. Between stuffing my face with chocolate cake and empanadas and pollo a la brasa, I went out to a disco with my co-worker, spent a day at a regional gastronomic festival, climbed the nearby mountain Huaytapallana, planted olluca and mashua in a community field outside the city, and somehow ended up on a date with a pro soccer player.

The whole trip really made me realize how different each part of Peru is. I met a group of guys from Lima on my tour up Huaytapallana. They had no idea that there was such a thing as purple corn - a crop that is very common around Huancayo. Compared to them, I know way more about life in the rural highlands. This also made me realize what a small subset of Americans I really know. My knowledge of agricultural towns in the U.S. stops at what I learned in the Jane Smiley book A Thousand Acres.

Near the top of Huataypallana

Lechon, relaxing in style at the gastronomic festival as they wait to be eaten

8 Agosto
    I’ve never before experienced so many emotions related to showering, but here I feel really anxious about how cold it is going to be, and also really excited because I am always so, so dirty and being clean sounds heavenly. I took one shower in the actual shower here, and have never been so cold in my life. Since then I’ve resorted to boiling a pot of water, and then dumping it into one of the plastic containers we have for doing laundry. I mix it with some cold tap water, and it is just large enough that I can put both my feet in, but not sit down. But it’s warm, and that is more wonderful than words can describe. By the time I’m done, the water is the tannish orange color of the dust that covers every surface in this world, but I feel reborn.
    I’m also learning a ton about what it’s actually like to work in communities. It’s frustrating! The community is incredibly closed. In some ways, the Peruvians who work with Yanapai are just as much outsiders as I am. They don’t have the same traditions or even language as the people here, and they definitely aren’t accepted as anything other than ‘them.’ The people here haven’t had a lot of education, especially the women, so trying to lecture to them really doesn’t work. They aren’t shy about talking over you or blatantly not paying attention. They also often learn the practices that Yanapai wants them to implement, but they don’t do them. It’s unclear exactly why, but they just have all these traditions that are really strong. And I just can’t relate to that.

2 Agosto
    Sometimes it feels like even the llamas and sheep and cows that I pass are staring at me. I haven’t seen a white person since I arrived over 2 weeks ago, and the people here don’t seem to know how to respond to me. The men often want to ask about farming or ranching in the U.S., which I unfortunately don’t know very much about. They are also interested in politics, but don’t seem to know much about U.S. policies except that they don’t like them. The women often make jokes about how I’m going to burn up in the sun, and how I probably have to do so much more work here than in my life in the U.S. I guess in a lot of ways they’re right - I don’t do nearly as much mundane housework back in Minnesota. I’m beginning to learn why appliances were invented. I find myself spending maybe 30% of my time here doing laundry, cooking, washing dishes, etc. In a way, since I don’t have a lot of other things to do, it is nice to spend my time doing all these things for my livelihood. I’m also more and more aware of how little I actually know how to do in my life. Here the people fix their own electricity, cope with dirty or sometimes no water, build their own houses, butcher their own meat, grow their own food, make many of their own clothes, change their own gas. There are so many people with so many skills in my life. With out all of them and their work, I wouldn’t know the first thing about the conveniences that make my life possible.
    The women also frequently ask me if I’m used to life here by now. I don’t really know what to say to that. I am used to it in that I’ve got a routine, I know my way around, I know how to use the stove and toilet in the house and I know where to buy eggs and cheese. But I could never really get used to life here. It’s too different. I think it’s actually really important for me to remember who I am and what I like to do. Just because I’m in Peru doesn’t change who I am and what I enjoy. Sure I have to be flexible about some things (no matter how badly I want it, there will never be a hot shower), but it would just be confusing to try and pretend like I fit in here. Yesterday I went for a run to Sotopampa, a nearby town just down the dirt road. The road workers suddenly decided that since I wasn’t wearing field clothes it was okay to whistle and cat call. Everyone I passed looked at me like running for exercise was the strangest thing they had ever seen in their lives. But fuck it, I like to run and I’m getting tired of everyone looking at me like I’m an alien. Even if I am the first person they’ve ever seen from the U.S., they’ve now seen me for 2 and a half weeks so get over it already.

3 Agosto
A list of skills I’m acquiring that will be most likely be useless in the developed world:
    How to make a toilet flush when the water has stopped running
    How to rapidly peel potatoes (for every meal)
    How to water the (dirt) floor
    How to effectively hand wash everything I own
    How to say “no” in Quechua
    How to comfortably sit 5 across in a normal sized car
    How to tell whether my Soles notes are counterfeit
    How to butcher a lamb
    How to prepare the organs of said lamb
    How to butcher a guinea pig
    How to remove the husks of quinoa
    How to coat the outside of pots with oil before cooking over an open fire
    How to cure alpaca meat
    How to select a good pig for purchase, based on the color of its teeth and whether or not it has bacteria in its throat
    How to adorn a cow for the festival of Santiago
    How to make adobe bricks for housing construction
    How to prepare a pachamanca (oven dug in the ground and lined with stones that cook the food)
    How to not eat the skins of any fruits or vegetables