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.

THE COMPUTER ROOM

When my dad suggested, and I agreed, that I will help with the computers, I had absolutely no idea that it would turn out the way it did. One might think that working with the younger ones, first and second graders will be easier- doing easy things. And anyway, why do first and second graders start dealing with computers? The whole thing is their size. They have to stretch their necks and still are barely able to see anything...

The 1st graders. Don't they look peaceful? Especially the girls? With their colourful ponchos, hats and skirts...




In real life, they are the most work.
They are just vicious.
The boys are a picnic compared to them. 

Everybody together. There are more computers on the left side of the room. 


The beginning of the lesson;
about 50 pairs of legs run at full speed into the room, crashing into ... everything.
They sit themselves in pair or triplets around one computer, their feet dangling while they stretch their heads to get a better look t the black screen.
As I switch the computers on, they make a loud BIP sound. Because there are many all in a row there are about 10 or 15 BIPS right after each other. Very often there are more, because the children like to press on that button with their knees again and again.
What the teachers of both the 1st and the 2nd graders always do with their students in the computer lesson is the program PAINT. Always the same. Draw a wasi- house. A maki- hand.
These children barely understand any Spanish so the whole lesson is in Quechua, which sounds like Japanese mixed with Arabic.

 So let me explain what the boys do;
The boys both speak and understand more Spanish than the girls, making them talk to me more. While I am still turning on the computers, one or two boys come up to me, their computer has already been put on, and say over and over again- Ayuda me! Ayuda me! - help me! help me!
I say, one moment, let me just put o the computer and then I will come.
I turn around to switch on the computer- five little voices scream Ayuda me! AYUDA me!
These boys are so small, when I try to move them aside I have to be careful not to step on them.

 The computers have all been put on, and now I have to go and open the PAINT program in all of them. I have no idea where the teacher went to ...
Both the computers and the program are on and working and I go and see if anyone needs help. The second the boys see me looking around the class, about one from each computer gets up, marches in my direction ayuda me! ayuda me!! One of them starts pulling my pants in the direction of his computer- they all start pulling some part of my clothes. Ayuda me! Necesito ayuda! Patting on my back. Ven Aka! - come here.
I go to one of them. What is the problem?
I don't know how to erase. 
But I have showed you last lesson.
I don't know how to move the mouse.
Cannot he next to you help you?       The one next to him looks blindly at me, not even listening to what I am saying.
When I try to show him he takes the mouse away, him hands are filled with mud and unwashed food-rests.
I go to the next computer. What is the problem?
Borrador- eraser.
Here look. Take the mouse up here...         The one from the computer I just helped starts pulling my clothes. Borrador! Borrador!

I wonder HOW these kids ever learn something. But to tell you the truth, SOME of them, can actually DRAW something. I don't know what difference they have in their brains, but there is at least one boy in each class who sits the WHOLE lesson on his chair and manages to draw a duck.

Now the girls...
Every time I come to help a computer where girls sit, I know that I will have to change something on that computer.
Let me give you an example.
Two girls are sitting in front of this computer. Both the computer and the program are on, working well. The girls just sit there. Don't take the mouse, or the keyboard. Just sit and stare at the whitens of the screen.
I ask them- do you not want to draw?
They look at me and start laughing their heads off, covering their faces with their skirts.
Do you not want to draw?
They laugh even louder.
I go to the next computer.

One girl is taking control of the moue, the other stares at her friend on the other side of the room.
The girl taking control of the mouse is holding it upside-down, not understanding why she cannot draw. I show her and ask her neighbor why she does not participate in drawing. The girl just looks at me. I ask again, do you not want to draw?
She just stares. I give her the mouse, she does not take it. I start drawing a house, she just looks at the screen. Just watching. Her friend has had enough, take the mouse and holds it upside-down again.
Not the next table.
These two girls, almost climbing on the table the computer is on, one is tapping like crazy on the keyboard while the other one is 'taking care' of the mouse. I look at the screen. Something is wrong.
Both of these girls have managed to close the pain program, open every OTHER program on the computer, including those ' an error has occurred' AND manged to switch the preference of the screen from being vertical to horizontal.
I have no idea how to do that...
I just look away, go to another computer and let the teacher deal with it- who has come back from the dead :) .

Sometimes girls get their own computer. But they do not USE this chance of being alone and work more. They work less. Does not matter what I say, I really do not think they understand, they blank blick. I go the teacher and ask her if she could maybe to this girl in Quechua, explain to her.
The teacher says, ho THAT girl. Yeah, she is a lost cause. She goes to her, says something in Quecha and smacks her butt. The girl just sits there.
A lost cause.

 

On Thurdsay, most of the children wore their traditional clothes and not their normal gray uniform because a large group of about 30 Dutch students has come to visit. The whole day the whole school got ready. Classes were stopped after less than one hour, and no one really knew when these 'gringos' will be coming. They picked flowers, put out chairs

 and even organized  play. 


Here you can see them, in front of the classrooms of the 5th and 6th graders.
Some children wear their traditional clothes on a regular bases, but that is only the minority.

                                                         The actors.

 And the play started...
I asked the teachers if they knew how old these students are, if they speak Spanish. They just said yes yes. But of course, it was a no no. They had no idea how old or how many they were. None of them spoke Spanish. Any of them barely spoke English.
This massive group of white white very tall young students, between the ages of 16 and 20 came up through the entrance-door of the school, more than an hour after the classes were finished. All the younger students from Chumpi Poques ran to them, with flowers in their hands. These Dutch students, mostly girls, looked very pale, cold and out of breath. Their hands were full of huge backpacks, and they did not look very happy, I can tell you that. The sun was shining and it was pretty warm, but they huddled together on the chairs put out to them, not really talking. Jessica welcomed them all in Spanish, only to realize that they understood absolutely NOTHING. They had about 2 or 3 Dutch guides with them, who also did not speak Spanish, 2 Peruvian guides and a huge staff, of about 7 people making their food. They were planning on spending two nights- what they brought with them, the local people could not even dream of having in the homes; gas stoves, pasta, jam, bread, potatoes, apples, things to make pancake and hot chocolate.
When Jessica realized they did not understand anything, she asked me to come and translate. When I did so, their puzzled face-expression did not change. Only when one of their guides translated into Dutch did they smile- but just a bit. 
The whole school was gather around these 'gringos', leaving a large space for the 'show'.

One of the girls looking out of the circle. In the middle of the show, the Dutch people decided to show us something and they did  little dance. They ALL had EXACTLY the same pants on- with variation of colour, gray, black, brown and green. 

Two first graders watching the show.

Their sandals. That is how they walk around, in rain, mud and sunshine.

One day about a month and a half ago, it was a very cold and wet week. The clouds were all down, covering the mountains almost totally. The farmers had a rough time because at that time they left their corn to fry so that it could be planted in this time. But with constant rain for a week, most of it got bad. Down in the valley it was warmer than up there. One day, it started raining harder than usual. It then turned to hail and then to snow. It has not snowed in Chumpi Poques in a period of more than 10 years. The students came to school in their regular clothes. Ooooo, that day, it was really very cold. I do not want to think how these children suffered- their feet frozen. Luckily the snow only stayed on during the morning, and later melted away.

On good sunny days, the children run up the small hill to the kitchen, with their red bowls, to get lunch. They sit and eat outside. Lunch is actually really tasty- rice with lentils and potatoes, sometimes soup  with potatoes, rice and a taste of fish. When it is raining and the weather is bad, they all huddle under the roofs or stay in the classrooms.
There is just one problem with lunch. The moms of the community have to come and cook for the whole school. One or two make these huge pots. However, what happened this week was that no mom wanted to come and cook, so the children did not get anything to eat all day. Some of them have to walk up to two hours to get to the school, and only get dinner late, when their parents come back with the sheep and llamas.
Somehow they survive. They have- and they will.

It's actually CHUMPI not CHUMPE

Everyone who has ever given me information about Chumpi Poques has always said Chumpe, Chumpe. It was only yesterday, or the day before that, that I was looking at pictures of different schools with Empe, schools the Willka Tika Foundation has helped, did she make me realize there has been a mistake. Not a big one, but still, I was telling everyone about the community Chumpe Poques. Chumpe does not exist. Maybe there is a community, on different mountain, region of Peru.
Anyway, my point IS:
Please fix in your memory and change the "e" at the end of the first word to an "i". Maybe this will help...
In Peru, Hadar Zaslansky has helped in a community, in the middle of nowhere in the Anden mountains, called CHUMPI Poques.
I think Chumpi sounds a lot more Anden-like, Quechuan, than CHUMPE.

No??

I went into the dirección- Leherezimmer and found this- the "6" from the name of the school 50162 has fallen down- I would say it's very Peruvian to leave the things that fall down but I guess other countries would do the same...

 LAMAY- this is where we stand and wait for the car taking us up to Chumpi Poques. School just started again  this week after a two-and-a-half-week holiday, marking the middle of the year. They only have that one holiday during the school year; their summer holidays is 2-3 months.
So after we came back from the holiday, the time of the school moved up 15 minutes- from 8 in the morning until one in the afternoon. Good thing for us, we only have t wait until 7:15 to take the car up, not all the way until 7:30.
On the first day back at school, I asked Liz,
why have the times changed?      
A WEIRD reason- the cold.

The sun and does go up more and warms up more in 15 minutes, but not THAT much...
They have their reasons...

These are the kind of cars we go up and down in. They look really small here for some reason...

I have a record of how many grownups we were once in there- guess.

13

It was very uncomfortable- I can tell you that at least... 

How did 13 grownups fit in there you ask?

5 in the very back, 4 sitting comfortably on the three-er place, me kvetching between their legs and the 2 seats in the front, two in the front and the driver.

BUT that is my record with only grownups. When I went with Antonia's family to the

¡jungle! Quillabamba :D Mandor- Pockomocko really...

(I made it :D :)!! The really very amazing- but that's a different story for a different time)

So there once we were

16 - SIXTEEN people. 10 grownups- including me- and 6 children.

For reason there I was really very comfortable- I sat in the very very back, on a sack of... potatoes? or bananas? something.

 Back to Poques- I have been getting on best with the 4th graders. They have welcomed me and I play with a group of 5 or 6 boys football all the time. the girls are too scared...
I bought this pair of earrings, a man and a woman, made out of glue and thread. Whenever I wear them, everyone, grownups included, say
how cute!
 But the children, go CRAZY. They start laughing loud, pointing, touching. They can't stop starring at them. The fourth-graders joke it's my parents. They say- your parents are hungry!
I have the same kind of people but on a pin on my jacket. They found it today. They head of the man fell with his green hat. They said- your father is headless!
Here you see one of the boys- Willy holding "my parents" up. He may be the smartest one in the class.

Poques- Chumpi does not have a sign because it is so small... 

The school. The primary- 1st- in blue building to the left on the left. 2nd, next to the 1st. 3rd- the big blue building, bottom floor to the left. 4th grade next to that. 5th and 6th are both in the building here kind of hidden away- to the right of the picture, on the platform. The secondary 7th, 8th and 9th are on the second and third floor. The computer room is on the third floor to the right.

The yellow building  is the toilet. STINKY.

The library is to the very very back. They complain how the do not have enough books, but the books they have in the library are never used. 

..........??