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). 

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! 

I never thought I'd voluntarily watch a bullfight, but when these (non-killing) ones were announced as part of the celebrations for Ollanta's town anniversary festivities, Iain and I figured, why not? It turns out bullfights in Ollanta go something like this: you show up at the town's tiny bullfighting ring at the what everyone said was the right time, and wait an hour before a marching band heralds the arrival of a random crowd of people who jog through the stadium and then leave: 

At least they were having a good time? 

A few minutes after them come the matadors (in pink socks!) and also a clown.

And then we all wait another fifteen minutes for the bull to show up, while the matadors pose for pictures and yawn, and vendors ply the crowd with yet more of the same ice cream, cotton candy and beer they've been selling for the past hour.

Finally, the first bull is eventually coerced into the ring. Waving of colored flags commences. 

The matadors do in fact wear very tight pants, were you curious.

Eventually the bull is lasso'd and dragged back out of the ring, much to (I'm assuming) its relief. Iain and I stayed for two fights, and then left; it turns out we missed some drunk guys jumping in from the crowd and one even getting mildly gored and then fighting with the police - something I think I'm okay with having missed.

So that was my first, and most likely my last, bullfight. I'm glad I saw it - and am extra glad that it was of the non-bull-killing variety - but mostly we just felt bad for the bulls and a bit freaked out by the idea of random people drunkenly hopping in the ring. Next time, I think I'm happy just to sit under the cork tree and smell the flowers.