here, there, everywhere

For our first month in Ollanta, home was a homestay with Yoni, Alcides and Pierro. Their house was actually still being built when we lived there, but our room was quite nice, and the temporary kitchen turned out to be pretty cozy (and Yoni is an awesome cook!). I'd been really worried about living in a homestay, but it turned out to be a really nice experience with a really warm, kind family who we adored. We managed to fumblingly communicate despite our horrible Spanish (I think mostly thanks to Yoni, who is really patient and good at sifting out meaning from broken, baby Spanish) and had a great time goofing around with the awesome seven year old Pierro, who gave me a stack of his pogs on my last day "to play with in America." 

Pierro looks way happy for a kid who hates the taste of Pisco Sour foam.

I'm really glad we lived in the homestay for the month that we did (it was too expensive to stay longer), and would definitely recommend it. Particularly if you end up with Yoni's family, because they're awesome.

From the homestay, we moved into the Awamaki volunteer house, which, with five other people and seven puppies, was at full capacity and then some. It was a bit like being in a college dorm again, albeit with way more dogshit on the floor, but we lived with some really nice people, and it was much more affordable than the homestay (and I eventually did find away to avoid getting electric shocks from the shower, so, good times all around). 

A few (okay, a great many) photos from a four day excursion into the cloud forest two weeks ago, to learn how to use natural dyes with Awamaki's master weaver Daniel Sonquo and his lovely family. 

We left Ollanta at 4 AM and caught a fruit truck in nearby Calca - minus the fruit, fortunately, but plus about twenty people, a box of baby chickens, and some furniture.

Parobamba itself is a small town with amazing views. Our first day there, we went for a hike down to Daniel's family chakra (farmland), collected some dye supplies and met his bees: 

... and hung out with his awesome sons, Acknar (8) and Nilson (12). These guys definitely vied with our host brother Pierro for awesomest kids in Peru. 

... with help from (or at least the company of) Nilson and Acknar, of course... 

Daniel's wife Leonarda still managed to get quite a lot of weaving in as well. Their collaborative works are some of the most beautiful things sold in the Awakami store, and we were able to buy a few things from them directly, which was exciting (actually, I was even able to commission a gorgeous, half-woven piece with the tools still in it - hard to describe but so, so pretty) 

By the time we were done, we had a staggering array of colors in an even more staggering amount of three kilos of yarn per person, which, even for me, is quite a lot of yarn. Fortunately, I was able to find a home for most of it back in Ollantaytambo - the rest is sitting next to me in a flour sack here in our hotel in Cusco, waiting to be taken to the post office, because there is no way I can carry it all with me throughout South America! 

By far my favorite volunteer project was getting portraits of the women who make up Awamaki's two weaver's cooperatives, based in the rural communities of Patacancha and Kelkanka. Most of the Patacancha weavers already have photos and bios published on the Awamaki website and in the shop, but when I got here, none of Kelkanka weavers did, so getting to photograph them was really fun. I went up to Patacancha thee times, and further-afield Kelkanka once, and mostly just hung around while they had their meetings or taught tourists to weave, and tried to get candid shots of the women smiling (or at least not openly glaring); fortunately, they were given a heads up as to why I was there, and thus were pretty accommodating about being photographed... 

 

... even if it took waiting for three hours for some of them to crack a smile (Eustalkia, in the photo above, I'm looking in your direction). 

In all honesty, volunteering with Awamaki has been a mixed experience, but no matter how frustrating some aspects of the organization got, I'll always be happy that I got the chance to spend so much time photographing the incredibly patient, friendly women of the weaver's cooperatives. I think it definitely helped me become a little less shy about approaching people for photos, and also more patient about taking my time to get better photos rather than just taking them as fast as possible. 

With meetings that can run on for several hours, I had lots of down time to also grab a few photos of the weaver's children, who often tagged along - how awesome are those hats? 

So in case you were wondering what I've been up to down here, that's pretty much it (or at least, the best part of it!) You can see all of the weaver portraits I did (mostly mine are the Kelkanka ladies, plus some of the larger sized Patacancha weavers as well) at the Awamaki website here. 

Having been around weavers and their weavings for two months now, I'm probably quite late in posting these photos. Not being even remotely able to weave myself (despite the best efforts of the Quechua woman who 'taught' me to weave a hideously orange bracelet that will not be pictured here nor anywhere else), I am a bit in awe of the ability of so many people here to make the incredibly detailed weavings you saw in the last post out of an indistinguishable pile of string. 

Most weavings here are done using a backstrap loom, which hooks one side around a tree or post (or stick, as is the case below) and the other side around the weaver's waist so that you can sit down and weave wherever you like. Most tourists who try it this position for the first time find it pretty uncomfortable, and not surprisingly, many of the weavers suffer from related back problems. 

The part that's hardest for me to wrap my mind around is the way the entire design is determined by the setup of the loom - which mean the weaver has to decide exactly how everything's going to look before she even starts weaving. The chalina above, by the way, is one of the only times I ever saw any sort of preparatory notes accompanying a project (though how awesome is a checkerboard scarf of llamas?!) 

Our NGO offers weaving lessons in one of the communities they work with - when tourists go up to nearbye Patacancha for a weaving lesson, this bracelet above is the type of thing they end up weaving. I went up fairly early on in our time here, and was pretty glad to gain an appreciation of what goes into weaving early on. 

above: Cipriana, the weaver who got stuck teaching me. Sorry, Cipriana. 

It took me one and a half bracelets to even begin to grasp what Cipriana was trying to show me. In my defense, the lesson is largely non-verbal, with only a few Spanish words thrown in - the weavers speak primarily Quechua, so my first time weaving was also the first chance I had to hear what Quechua actually sounds like, as the weaving teachers chatted amongst themselves and we tried to make sense of the string in our laps (I'm pretty sure I heard Quechua for Hey guys, I got the dumb one!). By the end of the second bracelet we made, I had a faint idea of the procedure, but there's no way I could do it on my own. I'd like to be able to someday. 

(For now, I still prefer watching other people weave, or learn to weave).

One of my favorite aspects of working in close proximity to Andean textiles over the last two months has been getting to spend so much time staring at the iconography, or pallay, that's worked into most designs. Pallay, a Quechua word meaning "to pick up" (in reference to the actual act of weaving), generally take the forms of aspects of daily life - animals, lakes, flowers and celestial figures. 

Maybe it's because I stare at pallay for hours while working in Awamaki's Fair Trade shop, but I really like them: 

Some are easy to identify, like this bird.

Others... not so much. 

This guy's confused too. (Actually, this guy is probably Incan hero Tupac Aymaru?) 

One of the weavers I photographed said that frogs were among her least favorite pallay, but I think they're kind of cute. 

And of course, llamas! So many llamas. 

Like I said, maybe it's because I stare at these for hours on end, but I find pallay to be kind of amazing -  Many of these designs have been around for hundreds of years, and often different regions have their own distinct pallay. Though I can really only identify the most basic and literal pallay myself (I *think* those diamonds in the photo below are lakes, flowers, or possibly stars - but I wouldn't put money on it), I love the way the iconography has transformed the way I look at textiles here, from something that's merely decorative to something that tells a story. 

above: school kids from town and from a more rural community. 

A few photos from the parade in honor of Ollantaytambo's town anniversary. It felt like pretty much everyone in the surrounding area turned out to hear the massively long speech in the plaza before marching in the three hour long parade. You wouldn't think a parade that just loops around the plaza would be capable of being three hours long, but you'd be wrong. I'm pretty sure I saw some people march twice. 

That's our host mom, Yoni! 

Awamaki and its affiliated staff, volunteers, homestay families and crafts people marched a triumphant last, three hours after the first groups started. I weaseled out of marching to take photos; I would have felt more guilty about this had I not spent four hours painstakingly making eight of these signs that you see them holding. I've never killed so many permanent markers in a single sitting, but I think they turned out OK? 

Also, there was an old lady proudly carrying this guinea pig! I have no idea why, but at the end of the parade she chucked it into a burlap sack and went home. Best! Parade! Ever!