Tire Smoke, Upheaval, Wrath and Rage

Smoke from burning tires

Battleground Expulsion

Owner with his shovel

Police kickin' back

Muneca 

Roof Cat

Roof Cat 2

A trunk-full of chickens

A trunk-full of chickens

Saturday Evening Sky

We went on or usual walk Monday morning and noticed a big crowd around the corner and not far from our apartment. As we got closer we saw smoke and realized there was a fire. Amazingly, there were no fire trucks or anyone trying to put it out. When we approached it, we recognized that tires were burning and people were throwing rocks and pieces of cement at the fire. Strangely, it was not in the street. We thought that was a strange way to put out a fire. Then we saw the police in their riot gear and talked to a man who was watching. We learned that a property owner was evicting some people for not paying rent or some other reason. 

The friends of the evicted people were angry with the property owner and the property owner was trying to protect what was his. There was a lot of yelling, cursing and rock throwing and at one point the angry crowd surged forward over the wall and it seemed that they began assaulting the people inside the wall. Shortly after that, the crowd charged out again with the property owner wielding a shovel behind them. All the while the riot police just stood and watched.  We guess they were there to make sure no one was killed, but that was it. We even wondered how effective they might be should a life be threatened in truth. However, the police are paid so little, about $500.00/month, that they might figure, why risk my life for this? It made for an interesting walk.

Tuesday morning, we attended our missionary zone meeting and then Rich went to work in the afternoon and Julie worked at home doing laundry etc. Rich taught his last Isaiah class Tuesday night. We now have Tuesday evening free until March, when institute starts again.

We spent Wednesday orienting Pat and Dawn Johnson, the new senior missionary couple. They will be helping with the Family Tree/Search program, which will be great. They are really excited and enthused and look forward to their time here. We took them to the San Pedro Market which is the big central market in Cusco. We also introduced them to our tailor friend who has made suits for Rich. We pointed out different shops and places that would be of interest to them and then met with Elder and Sister Rhoades for lunch. We had a great time.

We figured if we average taking two weeks per shelf to image the books in the archives we have about 72 weeks’ worth of work left to do. That’s almost exactly how much time we have left on this mission. Yikes! Happily, we can work through some shelves more quickly, so we’re going to do our best to finish this project. 

Saturday, we did our running that we might have less of that sort of stuff to do during the rest of the week and we hope to be able to really crank out some photos!

Rich continues with his Quechua classes. He is gaining more confidence as understanding goes but it is a challenge. A fascinating language since it has very, very little in common with the Indo-European languages with which we are familiar. He’s going to put it to the test on Sunday with a run to Pitumarca with the Johnsons. More next week…