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Published: March 9th 2009
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Tried to make Hummus tonight and while I can´t call it a success I have called it supper. I´m back in this very small town, Lircay, that´s very nitch and warm, despite it´s nights of freezing mountain air. Tomorrow, I´m going up to one of the local pueblos to help with a reforestation project. It´s all Peruvians that will be working so I think it will be nice bit of cultural exchange as usual. In fact, I think I´m the only foriegner for a good two hours in any direction.
Little over a week ago I was in Lircay but instead of reforestation I was helping with potato farms. Some of the time was spent actually digging canals in the fields. But one of those days we did something extra special and went on a "potato investigation"! I know I know. How did Pete get hooked up with such a sweet deal to be investigating potatos? Ok, so despite my obvious skeptivism of the excursion and use of my time here in Peru, I went along with a smile to see what it was all about.
We hit the trail at seven in the morning in a jam-packed pick-up.
Our team consisted of students, graduates, and professors from the local university, me and an Irish girl. After 45 minutes up mud slicked roads hugging the contours of sheer mountainsides we arrived in a little pueblo.
*Note* Although my fear of driving off a cliff has watered down slightly, the spotting of 1 ton rocks sprawled across the roads which have fallen from above is not terribly encouraging.
We were led into the inner yard of one of the houses and a mysterious drink was served to all the guests. Now I think I could draw you a diagram to illustrate but the higher your curiosity of what you´re ingesting is, the higher the chance it´ll be something you´ve regretted intaking. As we sat enjoying our potions I happened to notice a group of woman in beautifully colored dresses, with little sombreros and babies wrapped to the back, gutting the insides of a sheep they had executed not 5 minutes before. The women were jabbering away as if they were getting their nails done as they flushed out the inner intestants of our wooly friend. The children played around the corpse as if it were just a big
rock on the ground- just another Friday for them.
Soon we climbed a large hill to check out the crime scene. We toe tagged every row of potatos with a name like "clone 1", "clone 2", "clone 3" and so on. At the same time I noticed that many of the local men were climbing up the hill from all directions. They were coming from all their homes and villages to meet the Investigators. As I found out, the purpose of the whole excursion was to discover which type of potato was doing the best. And to decide which plant was the most "successful" they drew the locals for their insight. Hence, the farmers would inspect all the potato types (Clones 1-20) and vote with maiz seeds on which was best. We then proceeded to do the same activity with the same plants but at a lower altitude. The entire goal was to see which plants did the absolute best at a specific altitude and then go on to clone that one and reinvest it back into the land. The study itself actually became really quite interesting.
The biggest upshot for myself was meeting a group of people
who rarely ever meet a foriegner. Dryly, the first questions were in regard to how I grow potatos back in my land. But you talk long enough you can squeeze by the potato phase and share other things. Once, when the university crew were talling up the seeds, the group asked me what my profession was. Being unemployed and graduated nearly a year ago I said, "Soy un filósofo." Oohs and Ahhs followed by hushed discussions and nods of thier heads. It was the greatest response I have or ever will recieve from that statement.
Ah, but little did Pete know that this somewhat egotistical response would get him into trouble. Soon enough we were all back at the original house sitting and discussing the results of the day. After some questions and thank-you speaches, one man pointed to me and said, "Explain your profession, if you would." Uhhh right. Discuss my metaphysically abstract field of study and translate it into Spanish in a way that potato farmers in the Peruvian Highlands would understand it noting the fact that Spanish is a secondarly language after Quidua for the entire audience. Ah, shit. It kind of went like
this-
"Well, let´s see now. Yeah, well, you see, anyone can be a philosopher. All you have to do is philosophize about things. Liiiike, potatos. Yeah, you could philosophize about potatos. (How do you philosophize about potatos? Wait what am I saying? Just keep talking!!) Well, see potatos are important right? I mean, am I right or am I right guys? *grunts, hear-yehs, and nods of heads* So I guess the point is to find these things that are important to you. And then ask why they are important to you. (Wait am I actually going somewhere with this?) In short, it´s thinking about the things that matter most to you and figuring out why that´s the way it is. That´s what a philosopher does." *Puts up a weak grin*
...And they applauded!! And not even like a "You´re ackward so here´s a pat on the head" type of mercy applause but just a solid normal one. Now not to belittle my presentation of amazing achievements of academia and linguistics but it is true that everyone got a round of applause after they said anything, even a simple thank you to the group. But hey, I´ll take what
I can get. After our presentation was finished lunch was served to everyone, but firstly to the guests.
Now jusst before I could ask what was on the menu I already knew. They gave me a milky soup with a big chunk of just-slaughtered sheep. Oh happy day. Now maybe in my more savage days I would have enjoyed the fresh cut, but I hadn´t eaten red meat in about a year by this point. So to say the least it pulls you in a couple directions when you have a bunch of people looking at how you´re enjoying their finest dish while you´re just fishing for the vegis until they stop looking. But in the end I did the polite thing and took a big savage chomp out of the meat with my bare hands. When I did I got a slap on the back of my head. The Irish girl scolded me,
Dee- "Hey, now you can´t do that!"
Pete- "Why not? I´m not a vegitarian."
Dee- "No, but I am and you´re making me look bad!"
When we got up to leave, we went over to the ladies who had cooked all day to
thank them. Well, they just sort of smiled and shook there head and would take a step back. Boy, I thought, my Spanish is failing at this point. Can´t even say thanks for the meal without some miscommunication. Then it was brought to my attention that none of the women could speak Spanish. But how could that be? All the men spoke Spanish really quite well. How could their spouses be so in the dark about it? I don´t know and no one I´ve asked really has given me an answer outside of "Maybe they just don´t want to learn." I suppose these villages don´t get much interaction with outsiders. If there is any at all, like business, it almost would never be with the local women. Just the men. Just the men.
Since the potato excursion, I´ve done a bit of traveling around, meeting people and getting to know the country, but with nothing much to say about yet. Now to get some sleep for a big day planting baby trees!
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