The (real) Inca Sacred Valley

Is it bad when poverty doesn't shock you--and you wonder if it's because you've "seen worse" or you've simply become numb to it? Or is it worse when it does shock you--because it means you're unaware of what goes on in the world? I guess it's good I'm not traumatised, or how am I going to help the volunteers process what they see? But is it really normal that a baby sleeping in a wheelbarrow in a mud house full of dirty pets does not shock me?

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Today, finally Maricarmen and I made it to the Inca Sacred Valley. Saturday we couldn't go because it got too late doing stuff here in Cusco, Sunday because I was so sick Saturday night and Sunday I could barely lie down straight, and yesterday because I was recovering and working here (we updated the website with pictures and info, and soon we'll be an NGO with the name Comunidades Unidas and our own webpage!).

Today we drove to the Sacred Valley (with a 2 hour delay because the woman guarding the garage was not there so we couldn't get the car) and it is AMAZING. The beauty of the place is unbelievable--and I haven't seen any of the Inca ruins (I'll take a day trip on a weekend). First we went to Racchi, the only community higher than Cusco in altitude...the mountains have this wave crest shape, with glaciers on top, and so many shades of green. It may sound strange, but these mountain lands are extremely fertile and within a very small area you have different climates and can grow different crops, from corn to potatoes, cabbage, onions, etc. Most people are farmers, and they own a plot of land since a land reform of the 1970s. However, they are still quite poor (by conventional western definition of the term, I guess), they work the land in very traditional ways with no modern machinery or technology and many communities have no electricity.

We stopped to talk to a family who hosted a volunteer last year, and gave the daughter a ride to the market at Huallabamba. On the way we stopped at Hurubamba, the district's capital...it's interesting to see palm trees growing at about 1800 mt! We had lunch in a small shop whose owner is going to rent us a room where I will stay when I go to visit volunteers in the Valley communities. (For about 75 euro cents you get a lunch of vegetable soup and main course of rice and vegetables).

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Finally we arrived at Huycho, where Maricarmen and Geoff have a piece of land, and we were looking for Onorio, the man who had the key to the field. They told us he lived further up the (amzingly beautiful) road. Of course the road was impossible by car and we walked about half an hour up the mountain, asking directions to people along the way, who told us--in Quechua--to keep going up. I'm going to sign up for a Quechua course together with Maricarmen tomorrow. Today was my first day in the field, and I realised it's not a linguistic extravagance of mine, it's going to be a matter of communicating with people. We met one woman who didn't speak a word of Spanish, various people who used it just to communicate with us, and every single person in the communities speaks it with this strange foreign accent (just like me...).

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Eventually we saw Onorio working in the corn fields. Poverty might not shock me, but generosity will never end to shock me. First he gave us fruit (a fruit I'd never seen before, with orange seeds with black seeds inside them) and we walked to his house. The house was 2 floors, made of mud bricks, with a million dollar view. When Onorio knocked a little boy opened the door and another came to look out of the window. We walked in and there was the baby sleeping in the weelbarrow, he opened his eyes, looked at us, and fell back asleep. We set on a little wooden bench in the patio where dogs with tiny newborn puppies and cuy roamed around, and 8-year-old Ferdinan was washing potatoes and wanted to cook some for us. His 11-year-old brother Cristian brought us hot mate (herbal tea) and Onorio gave us this vegetable, which in my ignorance is best described as a giant zucchini (prob 5 kg). I realised that the Peruvian etiquette in these situation is just the same as the Nicaraguan one: you take a few sips (or bites) of whatever you're offered, and you give the rest to the kids.

We walked back down to Maria's land and I learned Onorio has another son who was working in the field and a baby daughter his wife had taken to the fields with her. And still I ask mysefl: what are we doing? What's wrong with the way these people live their lives? But there's the risk of becoming very condescending here. I'm going to elaborate more on these thoughts once they're better elaborated in my mind...

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I think I found a good host family for my first volunteer coming next month, but I still need to check everything out better. Oh, and we're not going to Pilcopata (the jungle) this Friday, because the roads are so bad because of the rain that it took Freddy 3 days to come by truck with the materials for Maria's door for their house in Huycho!