We Travel World

The real thing
Gentleman playing the flute in Paucartambo. His clothes are real, and his Quechua is flawless. I have to start this blog by saying thanks for all of your comments and feedback. Its amazing to feel so well supported by my coleagues and friends. Todays blog will vary substantially from those that I have previously posted. This has been a week of reflection and hard work. My weeks of Quechua lessons have manifested themselves in some interesting ways that I would like to share.

First of all, a brief description of a regular day in my life here. I know that the travel and the photos are great, but so is the regular life that I am living. I attend class Monday through Friday from 9am to 1pm. I go to Acupari Language School and thanks to the St. Lawrence Spanish Teachers Fellowship, I get one on one Quecha lessons for the duration of the time I spend at school. My teacher is a young woman, Maritza, who studied Quechua at the local Quecha University here in Qosqo. She was born and raised in Paucartambo, a very small town about four hours drive from Cusco. Interestingly, in this part of the world, that means that the first electric light arrived there in 1981. She
Weaver
Woman weaving, she still uses a worn down animal bone to bring her stitches tight.speaks a very traditional version of the Quechua language that is very specific to the region around Cusco, Peru. Her parents are shop owners and continue to raise animals, plant, harvest and maintain a very traditional way of life. Her life is an interesting mix of that which is country and that which is urban and educated. She is truly a God-sent part of this trip. Without her help, teachings and insights, I would have had a very different experience in this country.

When I got sick a couple of weeks ago, it was Maritza who showed up at my doorstep on a Saturday night to take me to the hospital, get me into a specialist, walk all over town to find the prescriptions that I needed at a fair price and lend me 50 Soles when the lab work, doctors offices and pharmacies had dried out my wallet. It was with Maritza that I traveled to the Fiesta de la Virgen del Carmen, Watoqto and with whom I will shop tomorrow morning at 7am to get my gifts at the lowest prices in all of Cusco. We have class in her spare room when her children are
Paying Tribute
Women in a cementery sharing stories of the lives of those who came before them.home sick from school, and walk the streets after class chatting up the Quechua speakers in the markets. She truly defines the word teacherand I can only hope to someday pass forward her kindness and openess to a student of my own.

That having been said. Learning Quechua really is the pain in the butt that it is cracked up to be. The vocabulary looks like the mixed up words in the Sunday paper that my mother is always unscrambling. The combination of gluttural noises, an incredible number of vowels per consonants and the fact that every book is published with different spellings for the same words makes every day in class an adventure. I have discovered a beautiful simplicity in grammar that I wish could be shared with languages like Spanish and English. Most of all, I have uncovered a deep dark secret that is held in the hands of the campesinos (country folk).

The city of Cusco is living a lie. I have seen school girls in their uniforms enter a restaurant bathroom and change into a traditional costume, borrow a baby sheep and patrol the streets having their photos taken by the tourists for the fee of one Nuevo Sol. They makes extra money after school; the toursit is none the wiser that he just got dooped. When you attempt to speak to the people in traditional dress on the streets of Cusco, especially around the plaza in their own language, they dont know it. They are city folk, with no more knowledge of the language and culture of the ancient ones than your average tourist. It saddens me that they represent a people whose lives are steeped in tradition, faith, hard work and a culture older than the ruins around them. Their families are the ones who built the great temples that the Spanish destroyed.

The city of Cusco represents a culture confused by the tourist dollar. Guides who live in urban homes go to classes in order to learn the Quechua expressions that they regurgitate to the tourists on busses and at ancient sites. The teachers at these universities are well versed in the writing of the chronicler Garcilaso (Who lived in Spain for 40 years before writing about Peru). They have read books and spoken to the scientists who have uncovered and studied the ruins around this beautiful place. But on the chalkboard of their classroom in the center of the city, they mis-spell the Quechua words, leave out important religious festivals and traditions and worst of all, speak of the Incas as a dead people. Much as our American History Textbooks fail to recognize the millions of Native Americans in the United States who werent killed by Kit Carson and live on, preserving their culture and languages today. It is the people educated in these classrooms who tell the story of the Inca to the tourist. They fund the traditional dance expos and publish the scholarly articles and create the publications that we tourists see in the travel agencies and museums.

Today in my school a poster appeared announcing a presentation of traditional dances. The director of this event, I have seen before. He was at the festival in Paucartambo, doubtless doing research for his program. As an uninvited, he went to the houses of the dancers, took some video and photos, spoke to no one and left. His dance expo is called Kusikay. There is no such word in the Quechua language, I checked in my newly acquired dictionary today and it was verified by my teacher. The word is in fact, either a mispelling of Kusikuy, the command form of the verb to be happy or a mix of the verb to be happy and the verb to be, kay. Unfortunately, thats not the only thing that he screwed up. His advertising posters tell us that they are representing the traditional dances of Paucartampu. A complete mispelling of the name of the town that traditionally hosts the celebration where these dances are performed. To those of the town of Paucartambo, this is an outrage. To the tourists, it is an insight into the ancient culture of the Incas. To me it is the inability of those in power in the tourism industry and academia to admit that they are not the know all source for information on the Inca culture.

I went to an awards ceremony for the school of fine arts in Cusco today. Men in black suits gave each other red medals and pats on the back for their acomplishments in the arts and cultural preservation. In a ceremony that lasted hours, only one song was performed in Quechua. More time was devoted to a promotional video for the copper mine that provides corporate funding to the project. All of the arts and crafts that one can purchase in the markets here are now produced in a factory in the center of the city. Quality control officers double check the synthetic alpaca to be sure that it looks like the real thing and the women in the markets pretend to knit. Their half finished knitting projects never grow from one day to the next. They do not speak the language of their ancestors.

I have spoken at length to my Quechua speaking friends, those who grew up outside the city limits. They are saddened by the situation and feel that they have no control over the toursim machine here. My teacher shares her culture through her language. My host mother is the only one in the house who speaks Quechua, she didnt teach it to her children. There is an element of shame placed upon those who speak the ancient language and observe its customs. They are seen as backward, uneducated, dirty, and poor. They are not ones to consult for information regarding the great Inca people. In fact, they are the great Inca people. Their hands are dirty from turning the earth and their poverty is the result of centuries of being swept under the rug. The universities dont ask about their traditions and dont visit their homes. If they did, they would discover that the last Inca didnt die and that the oral traditions are being passed along in a language that the academics cant be bothered to learn.

I asked a guide the other day to help me with my Quechua homework as a part of a new social experiment. He had spent the day teaching us Quechua words and culture. He was forced to admit to me that he didnt speak the language. It was already obvious through his poor pronunciation of the Quechua words he regurgitated out of his college textbook. I have been asking restaurant and store owners the meaning of the Quechua words that they use to name their businesses. I particularly choose the places with nonsensical or badly spelled Quechua vocabulary painted onto their exterior walls and engraved into their glass doors. The woman in traditional dress behind the counter doesnt know the answer to my questions. The are taken aback when the gringa tells them not to worry, their store name means nothing at all. Many restaurants choose to use the spelling Cuzco because it seems more traditional. It means pack of dogs. I had a great sandwich last night in a cafe called cafe punchay. The word punchay in Quechua means day, but without the gluttural stop, the spanglified version means nothing. As it turns out, the cafe is owned by a German gentleman.

I sign off today with feelings of saddness regarding this city. It is not an unfamiliar feeling, I had the same one this spring as I walked out of the home of a Navajo grandmother in her 90s. If the world were right, we would be learning from college textbooks about native cultures published by panels of elders. We would have guides with earth under their fingernails, the smell of a wood fired oven and fresh roasted beans on their clothes and the stories of their grandparents fresh in their minds. The college professors would have to conduct classes in Quechua and fluency would be a pre-requisite for university acceptance. There would be more than two Quechua students at Acupari Language School and I would be sharing a chicha with the elders instead of sharing my thoughts online.