here, there, everywhere

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.