We met our mission president and wife Saturday morning for our five hour trip to Puno. While we were waiting at the designated gas station a pick-up truck backed up and side swiped and Toyota Corolla type car. Wow, what a show! The screaming and yelling and gesticulating were wild, someone was getting hit on the head with a crutch and the growing crowd of onlookers all shouted their two cents worth of knowledge. It was really something, we backed up away from the fray and watched, fascinated with the antics of all involved. The people who had their car hit stood in front of the truck so the driver couldn't escape.
We can only imagine how difficult and convoluted dealing with insurance is here, if either driver even had insurance on their cars, in the first place. Finally, the driver of the pick-up truck talked some more with the driver of the sedan and the pick-up truck took off. Shortly after the police showed up and the crowd surged forward screaming and yelling that the truck went up the hill. The police didn’t talk to the driver of the sedan at all; they just turned on their siren and went screaming up the hill after the fugitive. This was just another morning in Cusco.
We were relieved when the president pulled up and we could escape the chaos. We had a pleasant enough trip to Puno. The country side is beautiful and Rich pointed out all kinds of interesting geological formations. The Altiplano has undergone a good deal of glaciation not to mention all of the uplift that built this range of mountains. Julie says it makes the drive much more interesting. The Altiplano is starting to green up and once the rainy season starts it’s gorgeous with water running in every little drainage. We arrived in Puno in time to get some lunch before our meetings. President and Sister Harbertson went to their stake conference meetings and we took a taxi to the bus station to travel to Juli for the interviews Rich had to do.
The bus station was amazingly organized and it was easy to get on a combi for the 1 ½ hour ride to Juli. The drive is lovely around Lake Titicaca and we arrived easily in the Juli Plaza and only had to walk down the hill a block to get to the church.
The branch was having an open house/missionary evening and they had quite a few investigators. It looked like they had a successful night. Julie visited with the members and missionaries while Rich did his interviews. We always have a chuckle because wherever we visit, there are always members who want pictures taken with us. We should never be surprised that a bald gringo with his wife is such a novelty. We then walked back up the hill and caught the return combi for Puno. On our way back the skies opened up and dumped on us with hail and rain. It was a spectacular storm and happily our driver was very cautious so we made it back to Puno in one piece. We grabbed some dinner and were grateful for bedtime.
Sunday morning we went to the Puno Central Stake Conference where they were releasing an outgoing stake presidency and sustaining a new presidency. Elder Uceda the Area President was here for this meeting so the church was packed. It was warm and we really struggled to keep our eyes open! Elder Uceda is Peruvian and what a powerful example he is to his fellow countrymen. Lots of times native members will think that things are easier for the North Americans that they don’t have struggles and difficulties like the native people have, so living the gospel is easier for the foreigners. It is always wonderful to hear someone like Elder Uceda, one of their own, discuss living the gospel and yes, it can be done and done successfully and with great joy and happiness. It was a great meeting and a wonderful spirit was there.
We had to leave quickly, because President Harbertson’s father had passed away earlier in the week and they were having the viewing Sunday night. Through technology they were able to participate at the viewing and because his father had been a Seventy, they were able to set things up via satellite so that he could speak at his father’s funeral on Monday. Sister Harbertson said it all went well and was perfect.
We took Monday off for our Preparation Day to get laundry done, groceries bought and other errands that needed to be done. Rich has had some foot pain so Julie went to work on Tuesday and Wednesday. Nothing is easy in a third world country. On Tuesday, Rich went to get some of the items we needed for Thanksgiving. The most entertaining of these this year was the sage (salvia). We have never seen this in the grocery stores so Rich asked his Quechua teacher. She said that it would have to be in the central market. Once there, Rich went to the ladies who sell herbs and spices. They shook their heads and sent him to the ladies who sell the curative herbs. These are those used by the curanderos (witch doctors essentially. Needless to say this promised to be somewhat irregular.
Once he asked two or three for sage and received the ominous head-shake, he began to fret.
The fourth was the charm. She said, “All I have is dried salvia.” Rich accepted that. A sol later, he had a package of dried sage, roots and all. It turned out to be virtually unusable and we wound up substituting thyme and rosemary with the sage leaves we could salvage and, what the heck, some chipotle! So glad we brought plenty. It turns out that pretty much everything is better with chipotle, but then, we knew that.
While Julie was working on Wednesday, Rich had to go out to the poultry distributor by the airport to get two turkeys. Turkeys for Christmas are a relatively new thing in Peru and turkeys don’t make an appearance in the stores until mid-December. The turkeys he bought were about 21 lbs each and cost $2.00/lb! We were missing the states for sure. They were frozen and were dropped in a gunny sack and Rich was on his way with a sack of turkeys over his shoulder. Because of last year’s adventures, Rich made sure that the taxi would wait for him because there are almost no taxis in this area of town.
We didn't work on Thanksgiving Day. We made a sweet potato pie and prepared the stuffing. We tried twice to make a pecan pie, but still had no success. They are so easy at home, but the high altitude is a monster to bake with. We prepared our turkeys and carried them down three floors, out the gate, around the corner and half way up the street to the oven to roast. It is a huge wood burning oven and 3 ½ hours later our turkeys were beautifully golden and ready to go. We took our stuffing, pie and ice cream and Brother Agüero with his nine year old daughter Marisol came with us with their bucket of chicha morada (the spiced purple corn punch) to pick up the turkeys.
We needed a station wagon taxi to carry all the goodies and Brother Agüero could not have flagged down a worse taxi! It was completely falling apart and Julie was sure it wouldn’t make the 30 minute ride to the Mission Home. Turns out she was right! We were climbing the steep hill up to the Mission Home when the car starting jerking and sputtering and the elderly driver said, “oh I need gas.” We were already behind schedule so we paid him less than the agreed on fare, unloaded all our food and started hiking up the hill.
It was quite the sight with Rich and Brother Agüero carrying the piping hot turkeys, Julie with a pan of stuffing and a pie balanced on top and Marisol with the ice cream and limes for the drink. Brother Agüero would walk awhile put his turkey down on the curb and jog back to get the chicha. And repeat the procedure all over again. It was even more comical because we were dressed in our church clothes, so we made quite the parade. We passed a middle-aged couple sitting in their car and just a minute later they backed up to us and asked where we were going and could they help us. They were wonderful and we loaded all our food in the back of their car while we explained about Thanksgiving and that we were members of the church etc. They were so gracious and we were very thankful for them!
We had a wonderful dinner with all of the mission presidency and their families and Brother and Sister Rhoades, the other senior missionary couple working here. The food was delicious. We were able to visit with most of our children and Julie’s brothers and we relished our second Thanksgiving in Peru.
We got a new insight on folk beliefs this week. Rich’s Quechua teacher came into the school and asked the man who opens the classrooms for them what he was doing with the “Ruda.” Ruda is a pigweed/milkweed plant with noxious smelling yellow flowers. He jokingly told them that they were to keep away evil female spirits. However, later Charo explained that the real story is that the ruda is used to keep away the “bad wind.” People put it in vases all over the place. We had thought it was chamomile until now. Anyway, she went on to tell Rich that when she was a young mother, she was about to take her baby girl out in the street. Her grandmother confronted her and told her that she could not do that. She might get a dose of the bad wind and so it was unacceptable. When Charo insisted, the old woman grabbed a small bunch of Ruda, opened the baby’s wrapping and tucked the weeds inside. “There,” she said, “now you can go…”
Later, our other friend Raquel confirmed these traditions. She said that when one travels he/she should always carry Ruda and alcohol because; SOMEONE might just open the window on the bus and let in bad air… The cure is to rub Ruda between your hands, sniff it and then rub it on your forehead. We guess that the stifling smell it emits just spooks off the evil spirit wind…
We were pretty pooped Friday morning so we decided we needed another day off to recover, do laundry, vacuum, mop, iron and get things ready for the upcoming weekend adventures. By then, whatever Rich had done to his foot seems to have healed and all is good. We hope your holiday was wonderful!
