Week/Weekend 2: In the Swing of Things

Our second week went well, with a good deal of business decisions being made. I´ve got to give props top my partner Michelle, who stuck it out for two days while I jaunted around on one of the random adventuresd I´m prone to taking, but I´ll get into that later.

Monday we did a typical half yoga half English lesson. The yoga was great: it´s mostly just tstretching wth some stengtheing exercises thrown in the mix. I had to reach back to my swimmer days to find stretches that would be appropriate. We did something taht I though worked really well: we held each position for ten seconds and had the women count form one to ten while in the position. Then we would do the position (if aplicable) on the other side and have them count from eleven to twenty. I think this really helped in number retention. For English we went over clothing items, things the women are making and trying to sell to tourists. We made a poster with all the items in picture form; I´m a real believer in visual learning. Then we would ask the women what they were making. Invariably, they would respond in Spanish and we would have to prompt tehm to respond in English. (The people who were making ponchos got off easy, as the word is the same in both languages).

Tuesday and Wednesday I skipped town to go to teh Fiesta de la Viurgen del Carmen in a pueblo about 5 hours away. The virgin is supposidly very miraculous, and every year the festival brings in at least 5 times as many tourists as residents. There´s non-stop dancing and music for two days with teh highlight being on teh second day when teh virgin is brought out of the church and paraded around the town. I got there Tuesday at 1pmish, just in time to witness the beginning of the dancing. And wow, was it dancing! Each dance had around 30 or 40 participants, fully dressed in elaborate, detialled costumes as anything from doctors and nurses to bulls and matadors to African slaves. The costunes were made up of thopusands of beads, sequines, plaster and, ocassionaly, the dead animal. The dances represented a variety of things. The doctors and nurses all became infected with malaria and ended up on the floor shaking like eplilectic patients, the matadors acted all high and mighty (presumably a reference to Spanish haughtiness), the African slaves held likenesses of closed fists and raised them in a black power sign. There were also bakers and bread-women, adorable little girls in traditional garb and men with whips who took turns hitting eachother. Before every dance came a strangely decorated man with a whip, whose job it was to move teh crowd out of the way so that the dancers had room. Invariably, being a very white tourist, I was picked on: I gave a high-five to one whipper, kissed the mask of another, and was pertend shot at by a third.

The dances lasted until about 8 at night, at which point all the dancers went to eat and get drunk at local homes. The rest of us hung out in the plaza, talked and listened to the band, whcih didn´t stop playing all night. All through the day the townspeople had been working hard assembling the magically-looking structurs made of wood and tissue paper. They were about 30 feet high and had parts that spun about. They were some of teh most beautiful things I´d ever seen, straight out of a fairytale about flying-machienes. At about 10 at night I found out that these weren´t flying machienes after all, but fierworks. One by one, the three beautiful structures were lit up with the spinning parts spinning even faster, setting off beautiful colors and, eventually, fading into darkness. It was a beautiful and (partdon the repitition) magical show.

As the town of Pocartumbo houses about 3000 people and, at festival time, has around 20000 people in it, there was no hotel or hostel or even floor to stay on. But that was no problem, because all of teh student-aged tourists (those with less money) also had no place to stay. So we all hung out in the plaza, dancing until early in the morning. At three or so I hopped on a convi (a van packed full of people) to head to Tres Cruses, a mountian about 2 hours away where the sunrise from May to July is supposed to look halucinogenic: the sun bounces about, there are halos and sometimes it looks as if stars are falling from the sky. Unfortunately, when I arrived at 5 or so, it was extremely cloudy, so I didn´t get to witness the sunrise as intended but, I did get to take a nice hike and experience being entirely above a beautiful layer of clouds that was possibly more celestial that naything I´ve experienced since.

At 7 we made our way back to Pocartumbo and, at 11, I headed back to Cuzco and, from Cuzco, Urubamba. I got to Urubamba at around 5, in time for a group dinner cooked by volunteers. As it was Wednesday, after a deliciously American dinner, we headed top The Muse, a volunteer-oriented lounge, to do our weekly game of Tirva (sort of like jepordy, but in teams). And the I promptly went home and fell alseep.

Thursday was business as normal and, after Spanish class and a hard bit of brainstorming and planning with Michelle, we helped the Yanahuara women to decide upon an attendance plan. Lately, we´ve been having a lot of women miss meetings, so this was a way for us to figure out how to encourage more women to come more regularly (or, as it turned out, how to discourage less women to miss less meetings). What teh women decided is that we would reduce meeting times from 5 to 3 days a week. I think this is a great change because market day, Wednesday, sees a particularly low attendance and, with the new schedule, no one will need to come Wednesdays. The women also decided on a 1 sole penalty for every missed meeting (the proceeds of which would go toward buying the whole group something) and a prize for the women who showed up on time most often. We also decided to switch teh order of things. As it´s been, volunteers have been teaching for an hour, and then the women have had an hour to knit. What we decided is that it would be an incentive to stay for the lesson if the women could knit first for an hour, and then have their volunteer-led lesson.

Thursday night there was a big party to celebrate two of the ProPeru volunteers getting married. You heard me right, they got married in Peru. It was a big to-do with their host families prepairing a big meal and lots of music. Very different and interesting. The couple, Canadians of 19 and 20, put it as practice for ´real world marriage,´ as the Peru marriage doesn´t hold in Canada.

Friday we continued on the business-focused mentality and hammered out the responsibilities of the board of directors (president, vice president, treasurer etc.). It took much longer than anticipated, and we spent the whole session on that, as opposed to on yoga as we had planned. Still, it was important for every woman to know here roles, rights and responsibilities.

I really think that the work of this week, especially the attendance rules, will help Durazxno Ti´kay be more cohesive as a group. And I hope the other things will help them as an organized business.

The weekend was full of adventure: On Saturday we went to the ruins of Oyantetumbo, an ancient Incan city, followed by the ruins of Saqusaywaman, an ancient Incan sun temple. Then it was off to Cuzco to explore and spend the night. On Saturday I got up at around 6, hit up too many churches to count for mass, climbed to a beautiful lookout over Cuzco, and generally experienced the city wthout the masses of tourists that it attracts. I found teh market by accident and ended up spending a while pouring over fruits veggies and lambs heads (ew!) of all sizes, shapes and colors. Then I followed the abandoned train tracks to a poorer part of town and discovered the market there, significantly smaller than the other. I finished by stopping into a beautiful galary exibit by a man whose works come straight out of fantasy novels: twisted figures and dream-like colors. It was great.

Sunday we headed back top Urubamba via the Pisac ruins and, after, teh Pisa market. The market was overwhelming, filled with the same goods over and over, and overpriced. Still, it was beautiful and I was able to find some truly magnificient works. We got back to town and }went out for curry (yes, there´s curry in Urubamba) and then slept full and happy.