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| Gorilla Dancer |
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| Jimena Medina |
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| Sculptor |
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| Jimena's nearly finished piece |
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| Jimena Feliz |
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| Local gangster mutts |
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| Sally |
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| Nemesio |
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| Nemesio with his hearing aid and Yeny |
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| Nemesio's pups |
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| Nemesio's pups- Not sure why the artwork |
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| School getting a new roof |
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| Early-Morning Cusco Rapid/Sardine Transit... |
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| Cusco construction with pedestrians |
Julie came down with a bug on Sunday and we were compelled to remain home because of it. She is all better now. We have experienced a bunch of computer issues during the week and this has resulted in low image production. This has been a most frustrating aspect of the week. We finally seem to have resolved the issues on Friday.
In the plaza we cross on our way to work, a pavilion had been erected to house a sculpting competition. These artists all came from Cusco. They each had a large chunk of sillar, technically this is an andesitic weakly welded ash-flow tuff that is common to the Andes. Arequipa is largely constructed of this rock and it is white-ish in the sunshine. Anyway, it was fun for us to walk through each day and watch the sculptors' progress. One, in particular Jimena Medina, did an especially fine job.
Many years ago, our maid told us that there was a “condenado” man living in Espinar. She said this with the greatest fear. She told us that the meaning of this was more spiritual than any other thing. The man was condemned to wander etc. In reality this fellow was probably mentally off and wandering the streets of Espinar. However, this week a friend of ours told us the same story about a village she frequents. Every disappearance, of men, in particular is attributed to this condemned man. When Rich suggested that maybe it was a convenience to explain men who abandon their families, she said, “No, they always find them dead…” Well, who knows but it all seems part of the modern day mythology of the Andes.
On another note, we had visits with three relatively educated people, this week who seemed seriously stunned by the fact that we drink water. All of them were clear that they needed liquid but the idea of drinking straight water had not really occurred to them. It is one of those things that we take for granted in the non-third-world where we can drink water at will from the tap, despite government fluoride conspiracies ;) Alright, we will grant that it is not exactly pleasant to drink the Edgewood water, but most places, it tastes pretty good and has a decided lack of parasites, at least living ones. It partially explains the fact that when we have been hospitalized here in the past, they just would not give us a drink of cold water. It was all hot! People have become accustomed to drinking hot drinks, juice and pop. Even the juice, if they add water is hot. We boil water, of course, because, well, paramecia etc. just aren’t enjoyable. Still, we have to have our water straight!
Friday night we went to our favorite hamburger joint, “Papacho’s.” It was delicious as always, and on our walk home we ran into a parade celebrating the anniversary of one of the “Percussion Schools” in Cusco. The street was filled with dancers and each group had their own band, some more in tune than others. One group had men dressed as big gorillas with big plastic crawdads, crabs or lobsters pinned on them. We still haven’t figured that out! It was fun and strange.
Some friends of ours from Espinar mentioned that they had been looking for a dog and we told them about our friend Nemesio near the Amargura steps who has always tried to palm dogs off on us. We ran into him and we told him that we had some candidates for his dogs. Coordinating between him and our friend Yeny, we set up and took her to meet him and check out the pups. Today we met him and the pups only to discover that, like all good puppies, these had grown and are now too big for her to smuggle onto a passenger bus. We have to devise an alternate plan…
Today, while we went for our walk, we say a group of boys playing with their tops (trompos in Spanish) in a school yard. The tops are made of wood with a metal spike at the bottom. They wrap the string around them and send them flying. They pick them up still spinning and try to knock out their opponents. They were amazingly skilled at the game.
As we were heading home we heard more music and noise. The streets were again full of different dancers for the opening of the religious festival “Senor de Qoyllor Rit'i” (Quechua qoyllor star, rit'i snow,"star snow") or Star Snow Festival. This is a spiritual and religious festival held annually in the Cusco Region of Peru. Since we’re not Catholic we have to look up some of these events to figure out what is going on.
From Wikipedia:
“According to the Church the celebration originated in 1780, when a young native herder called Mariano Mayta befriended a mestizo boy called Manuel on the mountain Qollqipunku. Thanks to Manuel, Mariano's herd prospered, so his father sent him to buy clothes for the two boys in Cusco. Mariano took a sample of Manuel's clothes but could not find anything similar because that kind of cloth was only worn by an archbishop. Upon this discovery, the archbishop of Cusco sent a party to investigate but when they tried to grab Manuel, he became a bush with an image of Christ hanging from it. Thinking they had harmed his friend, Mariano died on the spot and was buried under a rock. An image of Christ painted over this boulder became known as the Lord of Qoyllor Rit'i, which means Lord of Star Snow.
Contrary to the Catholic myth, the festival is known to the local descendants of the indigenous population of the Andes as a celebration of the stars. In particular the Pleiades, which disappears from view in April and reappears in June and signifies a time of transition from old to new and the upcoming harvest and New Year, which for the locals begins on the Winter Solstice. The festival, from the pre-Columbian perspective, has been celebrated for hundreds if not thousands of years.
The festival takes place in late May or early June, to coincide with the full moon, one week before the Christian feast of Corpus Christi. It consists of a number of processions and dances in and around the Lord of Qoyllor Rit'i shrine. The main event for the Church is carried out by ukukus who climb glaciers over Qollqipunku to bring back crosses and blocks of ice which are said to be medicinal. The main event for the indigenous non-Christian population who still celebrate their old spiritual beliefs is the rising of the sun on the Monday morning where tens of thousands kneel down to the first rays of light as the sun rises above the horizon.” There you have the “official Wikipedia” explanation. There were groups of dancers representing the jungle, the mountains, tricksters and many more. It was fascinating to watch.
