the morning and saying good-bye

I have decided that that sleepover, from Thursday to Friday, will be the last time I will be going to the school. So Friday morning finally came, and I really did not know what do to. All the children went to their classrooms. I did not want to go back to the fourth-grade classroom, sit there all day, doing nothing. After everyone started their studying, I decided that I would take a few pictures around the school and run away :) :) .
As much as the teachers told me not to go away quietly, I realized, they knew that Friday would be my last day, they did absolutely nothing about it. I had brought the cake, which I decorated with Willka Tika flowers- the cake looked like one BIG flower...- and that was it. They did not bring, organize or say anything.
So I went all around the school, taking last pictures of the mountains, of Chumpi and Poques,

Yovanna's litte hut. She and Teo slept of the bed. 

Our shoes. Some of their's are not less torn than mine....

At Willy's house, eating breakfast. There really was nothing to eat except for mote which is cocked corn. The corn, because it has been drying for months, is very hard. They cook it for hours-three four at a time. But it is never enough- in my opinion. We drank barley tea which was absolutely delicious. BOILING though...

Willy's mom. I have no idea what her name is.
The ladies do everything with their hats. They keep them on both inside and outside.
When I first saw these ladies, the 'originals' walk around with no leggings or socks, I thought are they not FREEZING?!
But first of all, they are used to the cold.
Second, the day before, in 'my fourth-graders' we did some recycling plastic bottles making them into bags. All the girls knew how to knit amazingly, and very quickly too.

 Their teacher, Madalaine, said that the girls are taught to make their own clothes. Even though nowadays they mostly buy their jackets, every girl has another layer of skirt underneath her skirt, which she knits on her own. Here you can see the other layer- yellow. This helps them keep warm.

The school after Carol straightened it out. It still needs to be finished but when it will be, the students will have so much more space to play and be outside it is pretty amazing space-inconvenient they were before. It really does look good.   

Every Friday and Monday they have a gathering of all the students together. Here you see many first-graders wearing their new obligatory-
50162. Chumpi Poques hats. 

 I went behind the school and found this farm. You can see the school far away- the blue thing. Outside the school it is a different world.
Quiet- tranquilo as they say.

Chumpi over looked by the mountain. 

I walked a little further on ad to my surprise found this drop- the road. Everything is very steep- depending on each other to keep it straight.
More mountains.

                                         And walking down the road, hurrying, I saw this man.
The people up there do not use these Chinese-made half plastic bags which tare after one use. Their everyday bags are large pieces of cloth, about 1.5m on 1.5m.

They take the cloth, square, and put it on the floor. Fold two of the four opposite side on top of one-another. The two left ...

use as handles to put of the back and tie. 

                                          And continue walking....

The last thing I wanted to do before I 'escape' was take a class-picture with the fourth-graders.


That was a difficult tasks....
Took a lot longer than it should have

(Can you see their blue hats?)

When I said, let's do a class-photo, they were all like YEAHY! And I thought that it would take two minutes and that's it. But no. Half pf them, instead of coming up to the front just sat there.
Where was Madalaine you ask? She was starting getting ready, with some other teacher, the decoration of the party for Chumpi-Poques anniversary. They just spent the whole day doing that. Making decoration and marching- but that came later.

Here you see the boys going crazy. From left to right- ( I forgot his name....), ( I cannot recognize him), Andres, then going up, ( I do not know his name, he is very quiet), Wilfredo, Roger and Aparizio.

                                     It was kind of  real mess trying to bring them together.

They have both gathering of the school on Fridays, but also it is 'bring your traditional clothes day'. Here you see tiny Yudit wearing her traditional clothes. She was the girl I sat next to all these days. Next to her is Yoni, a girl and the other girl I cannot recognize...

           Finally this idea came up that to take a picture of only the girls, later the boys.

 That did not really work well either.....

Then the boys.

                              Us all together. I am next to Roger- with his plastic glasses.

                                              :) :) :) :) :) the girls are not less energetic

          

            Some, like these boys here, LOVE taking pictures. But some girls- are hiding at the back.

Remembering all the fun football games we had. Then they suddenly started waving their Peruvian flags like crazy...

I will miss them, playing football, talking. But I am happy that I left.

I did want to run away. But this picture taking took SOOO long- I went almost at the end of school.

so what happened to the cake?

The first one-
turned out like bread.

But it was actually pretty tasty. Just a sponge bread-cake. Antonia told me the recipe just off the top of her head, so I did what she told me to, but then just like that the oven turned off...
Luckily this is not one of those types of cake which take hours to make. 15 minutes. So three others and me made a new one. :)


Now the NIGHT time:

I brought marshmallows- to put over the fire.
The teacher of the third grade, Matilde, a girl from the 9th grade who I have been in contact with from the beginning Yovanna, and her best friend Teofilia- just Teo- were the only one in the school in the night time. Ho yes, there was this other teacher, her name is complicated I get it confused, Felicitad or something like that. Feliz in Spanish is happy, so her name is something happiness. But she was not very happy. She stayed in her room all the time and did not really come out until we called her again and again. So when I showed them how to do the marshmallows, they were so surprised. They said it is like honey- not really but what ever. Matilda was so surprised, laughed all the time when she put her marshmallow on fire. She ate only two or three in fire. The next morning, when she talked to the other teachers, she said that it gave her a headache. Why was she sooo excited about it that night I do not know.

The school at night time. 

Both Yovanna and Teo live on top of a mountain, a part of Poques, two hours away. Yovanna has a little house right next to the school. It is not really a house- it is basically a room. More like a storage room. She does not stay there very often- does not like it.  Both she and Teo go up the mountain everyday after school. There they have electricity, food.  The nigh when I stayed, it was only an exception because I was there, and the three of us would sleep together in that little hut. 

Right next to her house it Willy's house, a boy from the fourth grade. His family is like hers. She calls his parents uncle and aunt, and he is like her little brother. Surprisingly, she only has one older sister- usually they have five, six, seven siblings-  who has been traveling in Argentina and has just come back to Lima. Up there, some people do not even know what Cuzco is. All the white people they see, gringos, come from the United States- that is what they think. So for her sister to go out of Poques and to to other countries- is is rare. None of the Peruvian people I have met here have ever left Peru.

The girl in the orange is Teo, standing in Willy's kitchen. After we ate the marshmallows, we said good-night to the teachers, brought the mattress and blankets which Jessica has in the directory to Yovanna's house and went to Willy's for dinner.  

 Willy's parents own a shop. So that night, almost the end of the weeks, there were five or six men, celebrating the fact that they got a job by drinking chicha. They were all drunk. That was in the shop. Just around the corner is Willy's kitchen, where we went to make something to eat.
Their green kitchen.
 While we were eating leftovers, an elderly man came, drunk, and started talking to me. First in blurry Spanish but then in Quechua. All of a sudden he started crying and crying. What did I DO? Yovanna translated. He said that today he finally got a job, and decided to drink just a little bit, in honor of that fact. So my interpretation of him crying was that because he was drunk,  he thought I was some kind of priest or something, and was asking for my forgiveness.
Later on, Willy's mom threw him out. :)

 Guinea pigs. Cat. When I went to Willy's a while ago with Jessica and Liz there were chickens running all over. This this time there were no chickens. Just 'cuys' running all over, huddling in the corners, trying to get some shelter from the cold.

                 There were many cuys. In a cage, here you see them huddling together. 
 The next day I counted how many there were. There were more than 25 I am sure about that. They were just one ball it was hard to differentiate...

Dinner- we made runtus, eggs in Quechua. This white bubble on the right in the pan is the fried egg. They pure quite a lot of oil, so when the egg is pured in, it make loud noises and these huge bubbles. It was tasty. There was left over tallarin- spaghetti with this sauce. Talarin is usually made in an oven. They pure huge amounts of spaghetti with tomatoes sauce in a backing dish, over that they throw slices of egg and olives. Mix milk, water and lemon juice, pure that over, sprinkle with cheese and and cook until the cheese has melted. This massive pie-like dish comes out. It is tasty.
I do not know how they made the tallrin- they have no one. Probably just tossed everything in a pot. 

Willy and his friend were playing with these ceramic pigs and different animals. I took a picture.   Wily managed to escape. 

From left to right- Yovanna, Teo, Willy and his friend. They have no sink in the house. Just this water bottle filled with water. When we were there, it was almost empty. To clean the dishes they have this pail. Most of the dishes do not fit in there- you can see the pail by Yovanna's feet- see through plastic. They pure a little bit of water in there, and that's how they wash. They do have soap, luckily...

After we ate, we went back to Yovanna's house. I made my bed on the floor. Once the sun goes down, it is almost completely dark. When the moon is out, there is surprisingly a lot of light. But that night there was no moon. I gave Yovanna and Teo one of my three blankets. I slept in my clothes. It was pretty cold in the night...
I was happy when the morning came.
We woke up at 5:50.

has it ever happened to you...

 that you got yourself into something, you were supposed to bring something, prepare something, and just the day before, before you even started doing this thing, you asked yourself-
WHY am I doing this?!?! you barely remember how you got yourself into this mess.

That  just what happened to me. The mess that I got myself into is-
bringing a cake.

Let me tell you how it happened:
On Thursday, a little less than a month ago, (I really do not remember how it happened) but I told the teachers in the school that I would be bringing a cake. I do not remember how the conversation got to this subject, but they somehow made me say that I will be bringing  cake on the following Tuesday. It was a conversation of three of four other teachers and myself, and they all started getting excited saying: I am not going to eat ANYTHING this weekend so that I will have more space for the enormous cake YOU will be bringing.
OR I can already imagine how this cake will be, five or six FAT layers HAHAHA with flowers, leaves from Willka Tika.
With a BIG smile on the face...
So finally that Tuesday came, and I was great full that I did not have to make that cake because that day I went to the JUNGLE :) !!
And I forgot about that silly cake.
Last week, when I came back to school and met Jessica on the bus, she said- the teachers were very upset that you did not bring the cake.
When I got to the school, Madalaine, the teacher of "my fourth grade" asked, Where is the cake?
not in a very joking-tone. The teacher of the third graders, Matilda, said- did you forget to bring hte cake AGAIN?
I said to both of them that I will be bringing that cake some time in the next three weeks, just before I leave. They gave me a disappointed face- we have to wait THAT long?
I thought to myself- have these teachers NEVER eaten a cake in their lives?
On the following Thursday, in the early morning when all the teachers gathered around, going into the car, Madalaine asked me again when are you going to bring the cake?
In the afternoon- the same question.
Matilda and the fifth grade Sylvia have invited me to stay a night at the school- because they leave so far away. they stay up in the mountains during the week- they have their little houses and go back home on the weekends.
That day I decided- I will not becoming to the school on Tuesday, and on Thursday I will stay the night, bring the bloody cake then and that would also be the last time I would go up.
That was last week. Tomorrow- Thursday- has come, and the cake is still not made. 2:30 in the afternoon. Because there are not guests in WIllka TIka, there is also no food. No butter. No flour. And I have no idea what kind of cake I will be making. Even less how am I going to carry it and squish in the bus, later in a car with 10 other people?

This is the gate to the school- which tomorrow I will enter, leave the next day and never look back.

 The school- all class rooms are here visible except for the 5th and 6th- there are on the building cut out on the right.

Wednesday- today- lunch time.
I have no cake recipe and I really do not want to go and print something out of the internet.
I ask Antonia for her help. She says no problem. What kind of cake do you want to make?
I do not really know. Anyway, she says, there is nothing here. You have to go to Urubamba to get the ingredients. Here, with all the fields, no one buys flour and butter. AND, all the things that we need will not costs you less than 15, 20 soles.
OR you can buy a cake for 40 or 60 soles- already made and decorated.
No thank you.
One of the workers just went off to Urubamba to get some food for unexpected guests. I HOPE that he brought the things we need...

The building of the never-used-library.
Carol has started a new project at the school, which she wanted to do during the holidays but never got the permissions for. Just in front of the library there is a little hill. On top of that hill the kitchen, a part of the playing ground and the two houses of the teachers stand. The older students have constructed a volleyball net in the middle of all of this. Volleyball is surprisingly a very beloved game here- sometimes even more than football. This mountain was once filled with grass but is now mostly mud due to the fact that the children play there so often. Carol's project is to straighten out that hill. She started yesterday. Came with tractors, machines and two architects from Willka Tika. She called 120 parents, mostly men with two women to help her do the job. The ground is very hard and full of rocks, so the job after one day is not finished.

The entrance door- the small, yellow house-through the door- is the kitchen. All of the earth in between that and the red lines inside the school will be made into terraces. I am not really sure how this will look but I do hope it will be for their benefit .

                  The whole school- without the building to the left- is on quite a steep hill.
                                               The building to the left is a kinder garden.

The very beginning of Poques. The 'walls' of the kinder garden are seen here. The house just left of the road in the background is Willy's house. I went there once for breakfast. It was quite an experience- chickens, guinea pigs and a cat are running and catching every little piece of food, before it even manages to fall on the floor. Outside there is a HUGE pig- eating all day. The houses are surprisingly big - with two stories...

                                  I am going to see what is happening with that cake...
                                     and hopefully I do not have to go to Urubamba.

fingers crossed...

August - the Month of the Burning

                    April-May is the month of harvesting, while August is the month of planting. 
Planting the seeds of different crops now means that by January-February the crops will be ready for harvesting.

After gathering all the crops- corn, green bean, quinoa, grass in during the two months of April and May, the land rests until August, with all the roots and stems left to dry.

Corn takes 6 months to grow fully while grass only three.


A corn field in the day-time. All the of the stems are being pulled out, with the root, and thrown into a pile. They make many piles and as they do, they burn each pile. If they is luck, there is wind, spreading the fire, making them less work.

 Antonia, one of the workers in Willka Tika- she is actually Carol's "right hand". She is everyone's boss, and Carol is hers. She and her family, Eulogio- husband and Cristian, 11 year old son- without an "h", have kind of adopted me. In the last few weeks there have been no guests at Willka Tika, so I have been sleeping in their house, helping them around the house, cooking, eating with them and working in their field. Just behind Willka Tika, hidden away from the road, Antonia has a small house and a field, which Eulogio often works at. Many years ago, before she had a family, Antonia lived there, and later her brother, Mario, who also works in Willka Tika lived there with his growing family. Two years ago, he moved away with his wife and young son to a different house, a lot bigger, which is still being reconstructed, and left the house. Since then, no one has lived there. A few weeks ago, Antonia decided to start kind of like a project with that house, bringing it back to shape. Her plan is, in the next year, to grow a garden, paint the walls, build a proper kitchen and later rent it out.

To get the house back to living conditions a lot of work has to still be done- we already have done a lot- but not enough. Just last week we worked one whole day in the house, planting seeds for grass for the guinea pigs using bulls, collecting all the dry leaves to burn, cutting down huge eucalyptus tree and gathering all the wood for fire. 

I have been surprised by how many eucalyptus trees there are in this area. The cover the house completely. The guests who come into WIllka Tika have no idea there re houses just behind that wall
of stone and trees. These tree leave many dry leaves-  here you see Cristian to the left, Eulogio to the right and Antonia in the middle collecting both the leaves and the dry corn stems to burn.

                     Could you even have guessed that Willka Tika is just 100m from this place?

in the early hours

A Thursday, a going-to-school day, I decided to go out and walk to Urubamba to catch the bus taking me to Lamay.

 I had to leave early, the bus leaves Urubamba at 6:10, and it is a half an hour walk. It is very dark at 5:30, but every minute after that it just gets lighter and lighter. Here you see the mountains starting to light up...

These two pictures really almost exactly the same, I just really like the way the sun starts lighting up everything.

                                              The road I had to follow- leading to Urubamba. 
        In this picture here it looks like there are many lights lightning up the street- there are no.

The same road in the opposite direction- continue straight straight, well, you can't really go straight up because there are very steep mountain- which you have to cross. The whiteness at the top of the mountain is at this early hour clouds, but in the day time, this mountain called Puerto de Malaga is visible, and is filled with snow all year round. If you continue on this road, going up up up and, exatly on the other side of Puerto de Malaga is where the jungle starts. And if you continue on and on you will finally reach Brazil- but that is a trip of more than 20 hours by car.

The same road about 20 minutes later.

What the houses look like. There are many little shops- like this one- all over the place, also in Chumpi Poques. They sell different things, soap, oil, bear- like here in the picture. They sell both more 'modern' things such as cookies in plastic packages, chewing gum and chocolate, and Peruvian things such as this thing you eat, the word starts with 'ch' but i forgot the name. It is kind of like popcorn- only tastier-always come in sweet forms and its form is elongated. To tell you the truth, I am not sure how they make it but they do not pop it. But it is dry like popcorn...
They also sell chicha, a Peruvian 'campesino' farmer's drink, which you will be difficult to find in the touristic places. There are more than 20 different kinds of chicha made out of quinoa, corn, apples and different plants. Each one has a different colour- all natural- pink, white, yellow. Some contain alcohol- the fermented ones. They sell chicha in these HUGE one litter or 800 ml glasses, and people drink one, two (and go on) six, seven glasses while sitting with the friends chatting. They can do this the whole day. Builders, building houses, will not come to work without knowing that they have a big plastic bottle so that in their break they can go get chicha. It is very cheap- a 4 litter bottle costs not more than 2.5 soles, which is like 70 cents of the euro. Children as young as 3 years old have these huge glasses. They get one once they can hold it, sitting down, laying it on their laps. They drink it like water. I do not like it. It has a very sour taste and has absolutely no taste of the product it was made out of.
In these shops they also sell the coca leaves, in small plastic bags. Farmers take about half a hand full of leave and chew it all day. They chew it in one side of their mouth, making it into a ball. This gives them energy, sufficient for climbing high mountain and working all day in the sun.

                                              Chicon.