A Culinary Interlude

There's a scene that comes to mind in the midst of eating guinea pig, as if you're not so much eating the beloved North American pet as you're watching yourself eat it. That scene—for me, at least—is from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I imagine myself as the culturally-sensitive Indiana, slurping on the thorax of a large Indian cockroach, smiling, telling his skittish, implacable lady friend, who is audibly pining for “real” food (also me, by the way, just not as adventurous or heroically five-o'clock shadowed), to just eat it, to suck it up, because this is an act of kindness, really, this cultural exchange, this sharing of food and culture, especially food that is considered a specialty and delicious and non-pet-like in this very specific part of the world. When faced with food I'd rather not eat, but would also rather not insult others by refusing, I think of Harrison Ford and his dietary resolve; I think of Doctor Jones.

Andean Highlands

After researching several options for volunteering in the Cusco area, we discovered an amazing non-profit organization located about an hour southeast of Cusco. The project produces high-quality dolls made by women who come mainly from impoverished areas in the Andean highlands, providing them with fair wages, a harmonious work environment, and teaching them real skills—all in an effort to improve their lives and the lives of their children. So we wrote the directors, went to visit the project's utopic campus in the mountains, and decided, yes, this is where we wanted to spend the next two months or even the next two years of our lives.
In what capacity we would be serving as volunteers, however, was somewhat ambiguous upon arriving, and I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to contribute anything meaningful to the project. We spent the first couple of days getting to know the women and children of the project (there are about 30 women who are steady, full-timers, most of them native speakers of Quechua). After Dacia and I took turns getting food-sick (never in my life have I felt more like a fire hose), we started to figure out how we fit in. I began teaching English to the three women who run the shop in town, which for me is always fun and interesting, and I installed myself as the daily source of entertainment for the children. (They now refer to me as el profesor de trucos, or the teacher of tricks, because I taught them how to do several magic tricks.) Dacia, in addition to learning how to make the dolls, began teaching stretching classes to the women, most of whom suffer from occupational injuries associated with sewing, as well as classes in typing and Internet skills. We've been with the project now for about three weeks and things are going swimmingly.

Aside from my daily English classes and teaching children how to pull off their thumbs, I've been busy putting into motion a project I'd come up early on: a community puppet theater. Since we are essentially living in a doll factory, there are all the necessary materials for creating quality puppets. I came up with four characters and a loose series of stories. Once the theater and puppets are finished, I see us putting on a show every friday night (with popcorn, of course). The shows will be episodic in nature and will have some English mixed in as one of the characters, dare I reveal, is a non-Spanish speaking Gringo. There is also a boy (the protagonist) who is a precocious story-teller, an alpaca (the boy's best friend) who thinks for sure he's a dog, and a woman from the Peruvian highlands.

Cusco and its customers

Like Prague or Paris, Cusco is beautiful in a very unfortunate way.

We learned this little factoid about twenty minutes or so into our week-long stay. Everywhere you turn you're offered massages and/or finger puppets; excursions to Machu Picchu and/or shoe shines. It's really exhausting. And yet, while the amount of solicitation is overwhelming, it’s also completely understandable: look down any one of Cusco's streets and you'll find herded upon its squamous stones anglo-aggregates of safari khaki and convertible pants. They move in droves, with their cameras slung like fruit and their faces bathed in SPF 40. The galaxy that separates the local population from these brigades of travelers-born-again, with their bus fortresses and irrigating capital, is obvious on many levels. And if you're anything like me, you inevitably become self-conscious of your similar-ish appearance to the latter; how such an appearance signifies money and a certain inclination for taking (and maybe paying for) photos of one's Alpaca. Inevitably, you tire of repeating the motto No, gracias, No, gracias and begin to avoid all eye-contact, becoming a devout scholar of the ground as you pass on from one mercantile insurgency to another.

But still, Cusco is beautiful, and no form of empire—neither the Spanish nor Old Navy—could have ever made it otherwise. (Pictures to come)