Fiesta is Yauyos, part 2: the horses

In a post a while ago, I described the fiesta in our provincial capital. I'm finally getting around to posting the second entry I wrote about it. Here goes.

This fiesta is one of the biggest of the year in our region; it runs most of the week. On Wednesday, I went into town to see the day that features the horses.

I arrived at lunchtime, and the orchestras and horse riders were heading in for almuerzo.

By the time I finished buying school supplies for my English classes, they were heading back to the Yauyos plaza

With the rest of the crowd, I walked through the maze of the marketplace to the plaza.

It was raining, and a ring of umbrellas surrounded the field where the horses performed.

I had to peek under the umbrellas of the people in front of me to see the horses.

Some couldn’t see at all.

Others just didn’t care.

All around the plaza, riders waited to perform.

And kept themselves amused in the meantime.

I was proud to see that there were many horses and riders from Marco. This is a Marco rider on Yerba Buena (Peppermint) executing the caracol (snail) move.

From the viewing stand, the judges gave scores.

And an orchestra played. As you can see on the sousaphones, they are the “band of love”.

Because it was pouring rain, the musicians were crowded under the awning or their umbrellas.

 Some had music stands, others used clothes pins to attach their music to the back of the player in front of them.

Meanwhile, all around the outer edge of the plaza, other orchestras paraded with their dancers.

And people sold food in the rain.

Reducing the flock

In a previous post, I mentioned that we're experiencing a lot of flooding of the pastures around our town. One result of that is that there isn't enough pasture for all our family's animals. My host family decided they needed to butcher two of the sheep so that the rest can survive.

I woke up this morning to the sound of a sheep's final words. The butchering took place in our courtyard, right outside my window.

The butchers came early in the morning, with all their tools.They are very, very good at what they do.

The pelts will be sold, as well as mot of the meat. They separated the innards for various uses. Almost nothing went to waste.

Bye-bye sheep. See you at lunch.

World-wise schools, letter #3

Dear class,

Thank you for your letters. I am doing well here in Peru.

Just after I last wrote to you, I was in a parade for saving the environment. There is a lake near us that is in danger from pollution. I marched with the people who want to make the lake into a nature reserve to help protect it. A lot of the children from our region were in the parade, too. 

Then we had Christmas and New Year’s holidays. There was a lot of dancing in the plaza in Marco during the New Year celebration. Every neighborhood has its own costumes. They practice throughout the year. There are many opportunities to dance because there are many holidays here. This is the dance team for the Jajachaca neighborhood in Marco.

After the holidays, I started teaching summer school. One subject I teach is English as a foreign language. There are 67 children in our summer school, divided into 3 classrooms. The youngest classroom is for age 5 to 8. The middle classroom is for ages 9 to 11. The oldest classroom is for ages 12 to 16. So far I have taught them words for meeting people, like “Hello” and “How are you?”, and colors, and numbers and parts of the body. They like learning English.

Here is a picture of my students practicing words for parts of the body.

 I taught them the songs “Hokey-Pokey” and “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” because those songs have lots of words for parts of the body. Do you know those songs?

I also teach environmental education because I’m here in Peru to help take care of the environment. One day, the whole school focused on trees. The children made a list of all the reasons they could think of to plant trees. Our school came up with 14 different reasons to plant trees. One was because trees give the air oxygen. Another was because the leaves, bark or roots of some trees can be used to make medicine. I bet you can think of other reasons, too. Then, all of my students planted trees at our school. There were baby trees left over from a tree planting project in the town. No one wanted them. My students rescued these trees and planted them at the school. They did a great job!

As I told you before, I am growing trees also. They are special because they’re a native species of Peru. The tree is called ‘tara’. We’re helping to restore it because it is very good for the soil here and provides a healthy habitat for Peruvian native species of birds and insects. The leaves are good for stomachache if you make a tea of them. My little tara trees have just sprouted. We’ll plant them in a few months when they’re big enough.

We have a new member of our household. One of our cows had a calf! He doesn’t have a name yet.

Now I’ll answer the questions that you asked in your letters. You sure had a lot this time!

The total number of animals at my house (chickens, turkeys, Guinea pigs, cats, dogs, sheep and cows, but not counting the bees) is around 80. One of you wanted to know what the animals are for. We eat the chickens, turkeys and Guinea pigs. The sheep are for wool and for meat. The cows give milk that we drink and that my mother makes cheese with. The bees give us honey. The cat kills mice and the dogs guard the house. My family grows potatoes and beans—we eat some and sell some. No, we don’t grow tomatoes here, it’s not warm enough.

Yes, I do like living here. It is very interesting to live in a new country. As a Peace Corps volunteer, I’m a part of the community, not a tourist. I like that. I miss the United States and my family and friends sometimes, though.

For Halloween I was a dancer with pink and yellow veils.

No, they don’t play American football here. They play lots of soccer, which is called futbol in Spanish.

Yes, I am calm here. It’s a quiet kind of place.

Many of you want to know what Guinea pig tastes like. I think it tastes like pork. The thing is, the animal is so small that you don’t really get that much meat. They usually serve it in a spicy sauce that’s like taco sauce. It’s not my favorite.

Our dogs are named Donkey and Colita. Here’s a picture of them. Colita is the white one.

The cat is named Michin. Yes, it is a little scary to hear her chasing mice in the ceiling at night.

You had lots of questions about weather and seasons. How long is a day in winter? Well, I don’t notice that much difference in the length of day as the months go by. I think that’s because we’re so close to the equator. Right now it is summer, and it gets dark by 7 at night. Summer is rainy season. It rains every day, sometimes for just an hour, sometimes all day long and all night, too. Winter will arrive in June, and it will be dry with colder nights and slightly shorter days. It might go down to freezing a few times. It almost never snows in Peru. Last week it snowed high in the mountains and completely stopped traffic for a day because they aren’t used to dealing with snow. It never gets very hot here, though. Even the hottest days aren’t more than 65 degrees. Most of the time it’s about 55 degrees.

Yes, some of the people here believe in Santa.

A few of you asked what I do for a living. Normally I teach college in Colorado. In Peru, I work in the Peace Corps environment program. That means that I do things that are good for the environment, like planting trees, helping with trash cleanup programs and teaching about nature in the schools. One of you asked if I miss my old job. No, I don’t. I like what I’m doing. Another of you asked what I’ll do after my two years in the Peace Corps. I haven’t decided yet. I may go back to my old job, or I may not.

Yes, I like animals. It’s a good thing I do, because my family here are farmers.

The altitude—yes, at first it made me sick. I felt a little dizzy and if I climbed up the stairs it was hard to catch my breath. I felt weak. But now I’ve been up here above 11,000 feet for 2 months and I feel better. I just sleep more than I used to. Maybe my body needs the extra rest. The highest place I’ve been in Peru so far was 15, 807 feet. Here it is:

You asked why I left my other town to come here. All Peace Corps volunteers in Peru train in one town at first, where we have a Peace Corps school, and then move to new towns afterward. There were 57 of us who were in training together, but all of us live in different towns now, in places all over Peru.

So far, I haven’t gone on vacation, so I can’t answer the question about what I do for vacation yet. It sounds like many of you had fun during your Christmas vacations. I stayed in my town for the holidays and had good holiday meals and made a pretty nativity scene with my family.

You had some questions about the pictures in my last letter. No, the birthday cake wasn’t mine, it was my host mother’s. Her name is Fabiana. What it says on the cake is “Feliz cumpleaños Fabiana, con mucho cariño”. That means “Happy Birthday Fabiana, with much affection”. Another picture several of you asked about is the first one. No, it’s not a zoo picture. The taller animal is a llama and the smaller one is an alpaca. They are pets that live at a hotel near here. There are free herds of llamas in my state but they live a little higher up in the mountains.

Yes, I like movies, too. Sometimes I watch them on my computer. I just watched E.T. in Spanish. There is one movie theater in my state. It’s in the state capital. I haven’t watched a movie there yet, but I want to.

The reason my road isn’t paved is because it’s expensive to pave roads and keep them in good repair. In Peru, the highways are paved, just like in the United States. The main road that comes to Marco is paved. But all the rest of the roads in the town are gravel or dirt. 

Why can’t you get pizza in Peru? Good question. Well, you can get it, in the big cities, but not so much here in the country. I think part of the problem is that the kind of cheese everyone makes in Peru isn’t the right kind for pizza.

No, I don’t have any relatives in Peru. I live with a family and call them my mom and dad and sister and nephew, but they’re not really my relatives.

Yes, the people chase the cows out every day. But why do they bring them home at night? Good question. One reason is that they bring them home to milk them. Another reason is because they don’t have cowboys or sheperds that stay with the animals to protect them. Instead, the custom is to bring them home so they don’t get stolen and so they can be cared for.

That should answer most of your questions. Thank you for all the letters. It was very fun to read them. I look forward to your next letters.

I hope you are working hard in school and enjoying the winter in New Mexico. Please give my regards to your families.

Your friend in Peru,

Alane

 

Flooding

It’s been raining most of the time, day and night, for the past few days. I knew my usual route would be terribly muddy. This is what one section of it was like the previous day.

 So I decided to walk home from the highway on the road that cuts across the pastures instead.

The pastures are flooding badly. Each family in the valley has a specific area to take their cows, sheep, donkeys & horses to. They take them out each morning and bring them back to their homes each evening. Some of the pastures are completely flooded now, forcing those families to stake their livestock in less desirable locations or keep them in the barns and bring in fodder. This was all dry land, with animals grazing on it, last week.

These cows have lost half their usual pasture and did not seem very happy about it.

 The road flooded, but we all had to use it anyway.

My feet got wet. By the time I got home, my pants were soaked up to the knees.

These women had gathered beans and were waiting under a tarp for their ride to show up. They had many bags of produce to take to the market in Jauja.

 Harvesting was probably not much fun with this much water in the bean field.

I met some of my students on the road. “Senorita Elena! Buenas tardes!”

Peruvians tend to just ignore the rain. In any case, they had their boots on. In my English class, these girls are learning numbers. This morning we played Bingo, in English.

The best thing about this rainy season flooding is that the water birds come much closer to my house. They fly in to enjoy the new ponds that have appeared. I like watching them.