Saturday it snowed on Pampa Blanca, where the mine was located, making it all blanca. Sunday was nicer, so we set off from the mine carrying the slab of bacon and the pound of butter which Mr. Williams had kindly given us. He drove us from the dining roorn up to the dredge after breakfast. On the way we passed an alpaca which for some superstitious reason the Indians had never sheared in its whole life long. Its hair hung in a straight and flowing curtain all the way to the ground beneath its feet.
We began walking from the dredge. I was carrying 80 pounds and Lisa 40. Our progress was slow. Gradually, the dredge became smaller and smaller far back on the plain. Soon we could see it no longer. The sky, the plain with its gullies and hills, and the ice above us on the mountain, closed peacefully around us. We stopped for a leisurely tightening of the shoelaces and a munch of bread. Gringoes out in the wide open spaces of Quechua land. Soon we saw a herd of alpacas, and high above us on a ridge, I saw an Indian herder standing. I wondered how I would hail him were I too an.Indian. But alas I wasn't, so I didn't hail him at all. We trundled on up into a draw which led up toward the right side of the mountain, and the Indian quietly disappeared with his herd.
We passed some cattle. Fat cattle, which surprised me. I didn't know cattle could grow fat at 16,000 feet. We drifted up a ridge and down the other side and crossed a creek. The foot and pony path became more distinct. Every week or two, I supposed, someone walked or rode this way in order to trade.
A young man appeared ahead of us. He rode a white pony and drove two mules ahead of him. The sight of two strange gringoes frightened his mules and it took him a moment to get them back under control. He then came over to us and asked where we were going. We told him Sina, and he said that that was where he was from.
"Why are you going?" he asked.
"Oh, I want to study Quechua," I replied.
"You're off adventuring then," he said and he smiled.
"That's right."
He spoke good Spanish, and was about the same age as we.
About three o'clock that afternoon we got tired and lay down under a rock overhang to rest. Soon we fell asleep, so that when we woke up about dinner time it was clear that we were in a fine spot to spend the night. We set up our tent and sleepily cooked up some stew made of dried minestrone soup over my primus stove.
The rainy season had begun, and the next day kept itself shrouded in clouds. We got a few peeks at the 20,000 foot summit we were passing, though. We travelled quite well that day. We climbed up perhaps a thousand feet that morning, and finally reached a pair of huge cairns at about noon which marked the high point of the pass. We must have been up to at least 17,000 feet before we plunged down the swampy tundra on the other side into the mist toward lunch. The afternoon was spent descending. We lost the track once in a swampy spot, but generally it became clearer and clearer the lower we got. People. Where are all the people? Just before lunch we had passed some Indians, probably women, resting on the other side of a wide gully with some horses. They had not hailed us, so we had passed by, again feeling uncertain about our manners.
Late into the afternoan we descended the track. It had joined a larger track on the floor of the deep valley into which we had descended. This same valley descended dramatically downward from 16,000 feet to the jungle at 3,000 feet, all within the space of about 60 miles. And no roads had been built into the valley, thus leaving it free of the industrial age with its hectic banging of pistons and flywheels. We wandered down the track until nearly dark. We had seen no one else. The sides of the valley were steep, and I was well ahead of Lisa hunting hurriedly for a level spot off the trail in wkich to set up the tent and spend the night. I finally settled for one that was half good and wandered back to meet Lisa. I was afraid that she might have been run longer than a chased goose and disgusted as a wet hen, but there she was, still smiling. We set up the tent in a hurry, because it was starting to rain. We stretched two panchos over the tent to act as a rain fly, and I 'm glad we did because it rained all night and well into the next morning. Actually it rained most of the next day. We spent a long spell in the tent in the morning, enjoying the small protection our tent gave us against the drooling lousy weather. 'Yes, the rainy season has begun,' we thought over and over to each other.
The sides of the valley were still steep, and the day's trek brought many a game of hopscotch played on stepping stones which the Indians had placed across the creeks which cascaded down the sides of the valley. We met a few people on the trail in the early part of the day. They spoke no Spanish and seemed pretty goddamn surprised to see us, and were pretty mystefied as to what to try and tell us. I was squeaking out my greeny Quechua, young and innocent as a newborn Indian babe. The only problem was that I didn't look like a newborn Indian babe. I looked like a 6' 6", 24-year-old red-haired gringo. At least my eyes are brown. So the Indians continued uphill and we went downhill.
This being our third day out, we were beginning to wonder where old Sina was, anyway. We passed two collections of huts, yet saw only one man. He told us that Sina was still 3 leagues away. I hoped that was close, because I didn 't know what a league was. It started raining again. We walked with our panchos on, hanging over our packs, looking like two green hunchbacks. The vegetation thickened. We were getting lower. We saw some fields. We saw quite a few fields in fact. Still no people. The rain got really lousy and the day became late afternoon.
We passed a graveyard and Lisa said, "How interesting! Let's go look at the graves!"
But I thought about some of the things I had read in my anthropology courses about how Indians generally think gringoes are all size shape and variety of devils, body snatchers and rapists. I said, "Hmmm, better not. Respect for the dead and all. Never know what they might think if they saw us poking around in a graveyard."
A mile or two later we heard a shout come from a house. It was raining especially hard, so it was an especially welcome shout. We were invited for coffee and a sit inside a school house. Two men were there and they seemed to accept our presence as fairly unextraordinary. They were the educated sort who had no doubt been through high school on the outside. We would have liked to stay longer out of the rain, but our hosts apparently had other places to go, so we were soon on our way again.
Now the valley was continually splotched with potato fields so we knew that the village of Sina could not be too much further ahead. I looked up above the trail where I was walking and saw a hat behind a green bush. I called hello and the hat moved.
Lisa said, "Hey Cam, I saw someone running just like mad down the trail ahead of us!" The gringoes were approaching Sina. Aside from another hat or two, we still saw no one.
At dusk we walked into the village. No one was visible. We walked further in among the houses. At last we caught sight of a man. He walked right over to us and began exhuberantly explaining things to me in Quechua. I understood that he too was a stranger in this village. He gestured scornfully at the houses and said that the only reason he was there was to do some business; that he was only passing through.
"Everybody's over there," he added, and began walking. We followed and suddenly came into an open area, and there were all the men. They all jumped around to look at us and at once we were engulfed in a great flurry of greetings and handshakes.
"There's no hotel here," one of them said, meaning that we would simply have to pass on. Nobody seemed to have any idea of how to proceed, but eventually we were invited into the governor's house. I explained first that we needed a place to spend the night, but added that we would be most pleased if we could stay for two or three weeks in order to learn something of their language and how they lived their lives. I added this in a casual offhand manner, and no one said anything.
Once inside the governor's house, we were given a bench to sit on while the 20 or so menfolk crowded in from outside. We all seemed still at a loss. Many of the men were whispering among themselves. Then one of the men asked the governor if he didn't have an official directive of some kind from the Peruvian government which explained what was to be done should strangers walk into the village. Sure enough, the governor had a paper clipped to the wall which he took down and proceeded to slowly read. Everyone listened, but as the sentences of official sounding Spanish passed by, I didn't see any lights being lit up on anybody's faces. I barely understood a word of it. After he had finished, the governor looked up and still no one looked any more enlightened than we had been before. I decided that it was my turn to do something. There is nothing worse than silence mounting.
Six weeks earlier, all the way back in Iquitos on the Amazon, I had bought a $15 guitar. I had succeeded in transporting it all this way without smashing it, and there it was, tied up in some green plastic on the back of my pack. Some of the men had been looking at it, so I said, "I will show you my guitar." I unwrapped it and handed it over to them. They all laughed and pointed to one of them and said that he knew how to play. He took the guitar and held it, but as we learned later, Alberto had to be drunk before he could play. Soon they handed it back to me, so I sang them Ghost Riders in the Sky, which is always an instant success. We all managed to grin and nod and chatter for a minute or so. Then silence stared us in the face again. The governor thrust a question out into the gloom: "And now will you tell us why you have come?"
"I am a student of anthropology and the Quechua language," I explained. "I and my wife (in Peru I often referred to Lisa as my Señora for the sake of simplicity) are looking for a small village in which to find out how the Quechuistas live their lives and especially I want to learn how to speak the language. And we thought that your village would be a wonderful place to do that if you don't mind. If you'd prefer, we can continue along the trail. tomorrow."
That time a few ideas began to dawn. Some of the Indians I think understood.
"To see how we live?" one asked.
"Yes, our customs," another explained to the first.
:For example your potato fields," I rushed to explain. "I would like to know how you grow your potatoes."
"Oh!" A dozen faces began to look relieved, "Well then tomorrow we will take you up to show you our potato fields!" someone volunteered.
More or less satisfied, everyone filed out and left us to go to sleep. We slept out on the floor of the governor's house in the room where his seven children slept. I don't know for how long their little pairs of eyes remained peering at us before they went to sleep. We were soon asleep.
Pre-dawn rooster right outside the door. No white-people sleep. The kids are getting up. Out of our sleeping bags. Crazy, mixed-up lost white peope. What'll I do? Should I pay for the rub-on remedy the governor had brought the night before for Lisa's knee? He told his kid to go get some from the store! What store? I didn't expect to find a store here.
Here comes a kid with coffee and bread. No one comes to join us. Everyone is busy.We eat our bread and coffee and wander out through the chickens. Did I see a woman through the smoke in the next room? Is she the governor's wifel Should I go inside and say hello? No, she's very shy.
Well, Lisa, let's wander down this way. The sun came out. A flood of little girls stopped, standing in clusters, each with her finger stuck pensively in the corner of her mouth. No one is going to come to oggle at us this morning! The little girls watch us uncertainly. Then one came winding her way through the tall greenery and shyly handed Lisa a flower. Oh my god! A flower. How did these little girls know that only little storybook girls did that? Every one of them had now to make her donation of flowers to Lisa until Lisa had such fistfulls that the danger of dropping some made it difficult to receive more. Finally the smallest and shiest little girl tiptoed over and contributed her flower. This was ridiculous. How could we stinking wealthy and hopelessly polluted gringoes ever hope to match this? Lisa smiled and opened and closed her eyes with each additional fistful, for that was all she could do. In English it would be so easy, but in Quechua? Or Spanish? Very few of the children used any Spanish. Try to cram a heartful of feeling through the sodastraw of a language you don't know.
Emilio came walking along the path.
"Good morning."
"Good morning."
Now we were three adults talking importantly amidst the children. The children peered up at us and listened. "I am one of the schoolteachers," said Emilio. "You will have to come visit our school. Let's go children! Time for school!" And off they went. The children had disappeared for the morning. We meandered back up toward the little plaza onto which opened the entrance of the governor's house.
BeeBopdeeBopBop towelling themselves off from their morning wash down at the other end of the plaza, sonafabitch, two little Guardias. Kid Guardias about 19 or 20 years old. Had the asshole sargent in Ananea said anything about Guardias in Sina? Perhaps he had. So we trooped over to say hello. One of them had just trotted off to the stream to shave and their toothpaste and other accoutrements of civilization lay sunning themselves on the rocks there.
"He'll be back in a minute," said Jose the Guardia as he stood there tapping out a little rhythm with his toes. BopBopeeDoodleDee, Tum doop a bop bee Zam Bam! This Guardia wasn't anything like the evil sargent in Ananea. "My name is Jose!" Bop Bop a ZeemZam.
"I'm Felipe and this is Lisa," (I always use my first name in Peru since Cameron means "shrimp"), and I said a word or two about how we were hoping to find a place to live for a week or two. Then the other Guardia arrived and he smiled more and was more relaxed.
"These guys are lookin' for a place to stay," explained Jose to his friend Augosto. "Do you know of any vacant houses?"
"Hmmm," said Augosto, "let me see." And then along came the governor. "These people need a house to stay in," said Augosto, and soon it was decided that Roberto would be the person to ask. And before much of the afternoon was out, Roberto had appeared and we had a house. He said we could have it for a month, as he was staying in his other house in another village 2 1/2 hours walk up an adjoining valley. So we gave him a dollar which the Guardias later told us had been unnecessarily extravagant. Our house was one of three houses in the village with a roof of corrugated steel, the other two being the town meeting house and one of the two village churches. I was a little disappointed that our house was not to have a roof of straw like all the other houses in the village. But except for the roof our house was the same as all the others with its stone walls loosely but cleverely fitted together; its earth floor, and its raised sleeping platform of bamboo slats -- no wider than a narrow single bed. Roberto went about storing his belongings in a side room which had a lock on it, while we tried to explain that we would like to use as many of.his cooking utensiles as possible. I kept having the feeling that our message was getting through in reverse and he thought we were telling him to get all his stuff the hell out of there. Meanwhile, Lisa was trying to get Roberto finished and out of the house so she could settle down to arranging everything in her new home -- the first she had had in several months -- exactly as she wanted. I kept wanting to remind her that it was really Roberto's house after all, but as far as she was concerned she had been waiting for months for this moment and this house was hers.
While Lisa set about preparing our first home-cooked meal, I walked over to a spot on the edge of the plaza where ten or fifteen men were finishing digging out the square foundation for a new house. A trench about a foot and a half wide had been dug around the 8X12 foot perimeter. The last scrapings were being thrown out just then, and soon one of the kid Guardias came over with a bottle of his favorite beverage. Pure alcohol could be obtained cheaply from the trucks which came every Saturday to 8 miles above the village, so this pure alcohol was the base for any drinks, and often they drank the pure alcohol. It seemed that since the village was too high for any corn to grow, the traditional Peruvian chicha was not part of the drinking diet in Sina. But the Guardias had lots of money and provisions, so when they drank they mixed the alcohol with anise, sugar and warm water. Jose the Guardia had just scampered over with his bottle when I realized that the cornerstone had just been placed the trench. The bottle of drink and a pile of coca leaves were placed on the cornerstone and I realized, "Oh goodie! Here I've only been here one day and already a ritual!" Soon people began picking up the coca leaves and counting out a specific number of them -- a dozen or so. They arranged the leaves carefully in their hands, as though they were playing cards, and once they were counted and arranged, they were placed in a tin cup and some of the drink was added. Then the cup would be given to one of the peons. It suddenly became obvious that I had so far had dealings exclusively with the village elite. There were a number of Indians standing about -- the ones who no doubt had dug the trench -- whose pants and shirts were rough-woven of a cloth that looked like burlap, and who spoke no Spanish at all. The cup would be handed to one of them, and they would throw it down the length of the trench while the others yelled, "hueyfalalay," and "q'intukuy, taytay." Just as I began wondering about this waste of good booze, I discovered that we people were about to get our turn. The bottle was passed around along with coca leaves and cigarettes.
It was about that time that I learned whose house it was going to be: Alberto's, the village drunk and buffoon; the one who knew how to play the guitar -- once lubricated with a little alcohol. Alberto told me that we would then sit on the ground within the area that would eventually be house and drink until dawn. I assumed he was either joking or wishfully thinking. It was already late. I was afraid I was already late for Lisa's supper, as the kid Guardias had already scampered over with 6 or 7 bottles of drink which had taken us already an hour or two to consume. Meanwhile it was getting dark and everyone seemed to have melted away, so I melted away to dinner too.
An hour or two later it was raining, which is nothing unusual in Sina during the rainy season. I decided that the very least I could do would be to contribute our two US Army panchos for a roof, so I carried them out to Alberto's new house and helped set them up. I began to realize that Alberto hadn't been kidding about his vigil. Other people began to return from their dinners. One quiet little man with big wide open and friendly eyes told me not to bother to go up and spend the night drinking. "They're drunks. Bad people," he told me. I was tired anyway and the idea of sitting outside drinking in the cold 'till dawn didn't attract me. But I did want to at least go up and say hello. So I wandered back up and sat down under the panchos. Talk was going pretty slowly. Alberto and the two kid Guardias were officiating, pouring out the warm anise-flavored alcohol.
"Como las onzes de oro!" Jose the Guardia would scream out after each gulp and laugh like an old glutton. "Like drinking ounces of gold," it said, and I assumed that that was what certain people must say somewhere when they drink. That's probably what they say in Lima. The two kid Guardias were from Lima.
A few candles burned bravely against the night wind. Alberto was nursing a plastic Japanese portable transistor record player that nobody had any good batteries for, but by god we had music. I had to admit that plastic and out of tune as the music was, it cut a little festivity into the night. We drank a few bottles of the Guardias' ambrosia. The peons sat quietly a few feet away and took small sips of drink when it was passed their way. It was clearly not their night for celebration. They were very quiet and looked infinitely patient. Jose the Guardia tapped his feet and jiggled his knees like a jigsaw.
A few more people arrived. I was surprised to see the quiet fellow who had warned me not to come enter and sit down under the pancho. Someone told me that he was the other of the town's two schoolteachers. His name was Cristobal.
Before long I found myself feeling warm and cozy under the pancho. People talked over the scratchy huaynos, as the Indian music is called, and I found it very easy to just sit and try and listen. Nothing was being demanded of me. The candle flames grew warmer and warmer.
They were talking of people. Names I didn't know: Umberto, Santiago and dozens of others. But I listened and eventually figured out one or two relationships. So and so is brother of so and so.
"And he is not here!" said Alberto. He had been talking for some time. He had thanked everyone who had helped to get his new house off to such a marvelous start. I suddenly realized that Don Teofilo, the governor was not among those present. He had been the one to lay the cornerstone during the afternoon.
"I'm so glad, so very very happy that you all are here now... here now to help me begin this house on this night in such a fine way. My fiance, who lives in Bolivia will one day be here and we will live here together so happily, because of all you wonderful people who have come here tonight when even my own brothers have not come. Yes, that is why I'm crying now. Because on this night, this one night which is so very important to me, my own brothers have deserted me. Yes, left me unhappy and completely deserted. Yes, so that is why Don Cristobal, I am so grateful that you havc come tonight. Salud! Don Cristobal mi amigo!" he sobbed, now standing.
Cristobal told him that he was most honored to be there and that it was truly wonderful to be able to contribute to Alberto's so well-deserved happiness!
"And you, Emilio!" Alberto continued toasting and thanking each person individually which gave me a golden, golden opportunity and I learned all their names. ..almost, anyway. Alberto's speech soared on for half an hour. I was swept in. I was truly in Latin America. I thought of my cousins and aunt and uncle who live in Albany and thought, 'Oh they would love this. Such godawful sentimentality. How they would love it. And that 's why they're so wonderful. It's because they're so sickeningly sentimental.' And the thought made me all sticky and then warm inside.
So before long I stood up and said, "I have only one thing to say. I would like to say only one thing! Alberto, here Alberto you are having your house opened in such aperfect way with the help of such fine friends, yes I would like to say only one thing:"
"Como las onzas de oro!" shouted Jose the Guardia.
My voice tightened with emotion, "I would like to say that you, Alberto, who live here in Sina, if you have one or two friends, if you have only two friends!... Then you have more than most people in Los Estados Unidos who have lots of money. With only two friends then you have more here in Sina than any of them, because, no, you cannot buy friends with money!"
I don't think Alberto's response indicated that he had followed me all the way through. I didn't think any of their responses quite equalled the inspired effort I had just so sincerely made. What a strange gringo. They did not. seem to know quite what to make of me. But, Alberto thanked me from the bottom of his heart and I knew I had been a success. Now I felt that the evening would soon be over for me and began to feel sleepy. The speeches died down, and soon it was time to stand up and leave. I promised that I would begin helping with the construction of the house the very next day, not knowing that all the work that was to be done on that house during our two and a half week stay had already been done. It was perhaps an hour past midnight and Lisa had by now been lying alone in her sleeping bag for a long time.
The next day we decided to go and see who lived on the other side of the big green valley. We walked down the trails that led toward the stream, passing on the way the bushes behind which we were becoming accustomsd to to take our early morning craps. Every morning while I was in Sina, the very moment I would open my eyes and look out of my big blue sleeping bag, I would be suddenly seized by a momentous desire to take a crap. Up in the morning and on with the pants and the boots and off down the trail to one of the few and far between green bushes that were left between the potato fields. There I would rock happily on my haunches vaguely hoping that no one would pass by. Once away from Sina and back in the clutches of the private flush toilet my schedule returned to normal, which never includes the need to rush out of bed in the mornings. But in Sina it worked well as my alarm clock, I suppose, although as the days went by, we became more and more delinquent. We slipped each morning closer and closer toward a decent l white man's hour for getting up. Rising time eased itself around from five until we were eventually getting up at eight, a good four hours after our good neighbor Cristobal's day had begun. But then we were white folks, and what can you expect from white folks?
On this particular day I believe we were still keeping up appearances by rising early. Soon we were passing our bushes on our way down to the stream. An elegant little bridge made from a perfectly rectangular slab of stone laid across the top of a miniature canyon some 15 feet deep stretched across the stream.
We began climbing the trails and passed two households where we saw no one. At the third and highest, we found two women at work weaving a rug. One was nervous and reluctant to try and communicate. The other, a thin wiry and seemingly old woman, was playful and vivacious. Neither woman knew any Spanish at all, so communication struck sporadically, like lightening in a forest. When we missed altogether, the playful lady would look up at me and laugh, her eyes chock full of happy electricity. Ilateria is her name. Her mother was still living and was said to be over 100 years old.
Ilateria spoke a crisp and clean Quechua that brought her glottalized consonants crackling out of her mouth like clankings from a blacksmith shop. Pure joy to listen to. Except she spoke so rapidly and excitedly that by the time I would have a single word finally nailed down wriggling in my head, why she would have changed the subject. She found my hopeless ineptitude just plain funny. I don't think she could believe that anyone could miss tbe point so completely.
Lisa sat down between the two women and watched them pass balls of yarn back and forth. They were stringing a web back and forth on a rack held between four sticks jammed in the ground. And if one of them dropped the ball, Lisa would retrieve it. I figured women should inevitably be able to find their own way to get along, so I trotted down across a smaller side stream and up the other side to a large and quite isolated household where I met Amelia. Amelia asked me to sit down, and soon she had me trying to explain to her all the reasons I had for being there, and she seemed to approve of all of them. I felt like a son talking to his mother. I could tell by the look in her eye that she felt I was doing the right thing. Amelia spoke Spanish, and although I had studied Quechua for a year and a half and never really studied Spanish, I could of course communicate infinitely better in Spanish. lt was like old home week after talking with Ilateria, although not half so enticing.
Amelia and her brother Jacob were the only two residents of Sina who had not either been born in Sina itself or within a hundred miles or so, that being the apparent radius within which Sineños found their spouses. Amelia and Jacob had come from an entirely different region of Peru. I am not certain how long ago they had made their move, and I have no idea why. Perhaps it was 20 years ago. Being to a certain extent foreign themselves, they could perhaps sympathize a shade more readily with our position. At any rate, Amelia was always ready to give us some lettuce from her lettuce patch, or to fry up a guinea pig. After my first visit of an hour or so, I knew I had found a good friend in this 50-odd year old little lady who perked around under her black felt hat. She made me promise to bring Lisa over as soon as possible, gave me a handful of lettuce, and I wandered off feeling very successful.
Back on the other side, out in front of our house, a very worried looking little boy came up to me and said, "I bring you," in Spanish and looked at my kneecaps.
"Who?" I asked.
"You,'' he said.
''What for?" I asked.
"In order to cook," he replied somewhat dubiously.
Knowing that we weren't living with any cannibals, I thought, 'Oh my, we 've just been invited to dinner. Why this is our first invitation to dinner!'
I fell in behind the Ilttle fellow and we set off to his house. Along the way I prepared myself by thinking all the most polite things I knew how to say. In the house lay a very sick man. He was lying by his stove which his wife was worriedly tending, and he held his stomach and sounded very miserable indeed.
"Stomach ache, diarreah, cough, everything!" he told me. "Do you have any remedies, Señor? I have good dry firewood I can give you in order to cook with!" So that's what his little son meant by "in order to cook!" Poor little fellow. The kids get asked to do all the dirty work around here. ("Go fetch the gringo. Perhaps he can help us.")
"I do not think I have much," I told him. "In fact I am afraid that I have nothing at all. But perhaps the Señora has something. I will go and ask her," I said knowing that I could then go sort through my pill collection and see what I had.
"Some remedy, please Señor."
"Yes, I will go and ask the Señora."
Up in our house I found a bottle of Acrostantin V which a doctor in St. Louis, Missouri had prescribed for me saying, "I have no possible way of knowing what kind of antibiotic you might need in Peru. You ask for a "broad spectrum" antibiotic, but it is just not possible to prescribe something. But I'll give you a prescription for a couple of courses of Acrostantin V. It's fairly broad, and you could always try it." So I wrapped up ten of the large pink capsules, carried them down to the sick man's house, and explained to him how to take them.
"I don't know whether they will help or not," I said, "but you can try it."
"Thank you very much, Señor."
"His kidneys. His kidneys hurt too," his frightened wife added.
'If only I were a Doctor,' I thought as I walked back through the darkness up to our house.
Every Saturday was market day for Sina. Four trucks came to the top of the 16,000 foot pass which marked the end of the valley which descended to Sina. A road ended there at a spot called Iskay Cruz, which means "Two crosses." At the end of the road are two piles of stone each with a wooden cross implanted. So every Saturday the trucks bring soap, flower, alcohol, cookies and dozens of other items to the lonely and icy spot at Iskay Cruz, while the villagers from Sina trudge 8 miles up from 10,000 feet to 16,000 feet to meet them. Usually they bring potatoes with which to trade.
Lorenzo knocked on my door at 3:00 am according to our plan made the day before. I had decided to go to market, and Lorenzo had offered to travel with me. There was no moon behind the clouds, so the night was a very black one. Lorenzo already had four horses loaded with potatoes and ready to go. Driving the horses in front of us, with a cold and misty near-rain hanging close about us, we stumbled up the trail above the village. Lorenzo had a carbide miner's lamp which seemed in no way inferior to my battery powered lamp.
We walked along as fast as we could, shushing the horses along in the darkness ahead of us. Peruvian horses know a completely different language. Our cluckings, and Whoa Boys would be completely lost on them. The only way to get them to go is to walk behind vigorously whispering "Pasa pasa!" and "Shh! Shh!" while twirling a rope or a stick just within their range of vision behind them.
Lorenzo and I spoke hurriedly and quietly as we walked along. Our walk was brisk and our talk was brisk. Our minds seemed stiffer than our limbs in the pre-dawn blackness. I settled into asking questions about Quechua. Lorenzo became my teacher, and I hardened up my brain and learned as much as I could, while my soul had trouble unbending itself and crawling out from underneath its early morning stone.
About 7:00 we began walking along with some other Indians. They gave us some boiled potatoes and I gave them some hard candy. One of them asked me if I had pills I swallowed to teach me Quechua. The others looked at him as though he were not very bright.
By 9:00 we reached the top, and there wero the trucks. Goods were spread out on blankets on the ground. Many of the Indian women who had come with the trucks nursed their Swedish primus stoves inside tin cans and came up with hot coffee despite the stiff wind and below freezing temperatures. Some huddled behind the trucks or lay on the ground behind their sacks while others hurriedly bargained to conclude their business. Someone asked Lorenzo who I was and he told them I was living in Sina.
"He knows Quechua," he added and I cleverly spouted a few words. "He's a Sineño," he laughed and I felt glad that soon we would be walking back down the trail toward home.
'These lousy trucks don't have any claim on me now,' I happily thought. I spent an hour or so examining the availiable goods. I had come ostensibly to buy some butter and jam. Neither was to be found. I did buy a handsome pile of goodies, however, which we eventually loaded on the horses which had carried Lorenzo's potatoes. Lorenzo had brought 200 pounds of potatoes which he sent to his wife in Juliaca. He told me that they were worth 400 soles, which is $8.80. Not bad.
I was surprised and delighted to find Amelia. She and her white-haired brother, Jacob, had left the night before and slept under the overhang of a rock along the way. She had come to see if an item which she had requested had arrived. It hadn't. But she had some potatoes to sell, and I was pleased to see that she had no doubts about their quality and the price that she was to be paid. Jacob had brought up some wooden boxes which he had made to sell. Jacob was one of Sina's two carpenters. Amelia did say that the old fellow had been pretty tired out by the climb, however, so he'd already begun the descent.
A ten or twelve year old kid walked over to me and slyly informed me that he had some trout to sell. He said he had just caught them in one of the nearby lakes. A little crowd gathered. Everyone wanted his trout.
"Six soles apiece," he announced, and we all began to reach into our pockets, anxious not to miss out on the fine looking fish. Suddenly Amelia appeared on the scene and announced that the fish were only worth 3 soles apiece. Unfortunately for the young fisherman, Amelia's tone of voice had left no doubt whatsoever about how much the fish were worth: 3 soles or 6.6 cents. The poor fellow asked for 4 soles, but the question had already been settled. We all returned some of our money to our pockets and quietly paid only 3 soles apiece for the fish. I bought two and gave one to Amelia.
By about 11:30 our horses were packed and we scurried off back down into the valley towards Sina. Lorenzo and I ran for a mile or so, until the sidos of the valley, the wonderful protective valley in which Sina lay, shielded us from the winds and the sun fell warmly upon us. A very poor looking Indian sat panting upon a rock. Lorenzo told him he'd better hurry if he was to catch the trucks, so off he went, churning up the rocky valley with his bare toes, with two hand hewn boards across his shoulders. Lorenzo explained that he had left two days earlier from 40 miles below in order that he might sell those two shaggy boards. I had understood Lorenzo tell the fellow that he didn't know whether anyone was up there who would buy the boards or not.
Soon we caught up with Amelia who was steaming along jumping from rock to rock over the water and mud. We quit running and for the next three hours we talked and talked and basked in the ease of tumbling homeward, while I happily showed off my new acquisitions from the morning's language lesson. Eventually we met with someone who explained that Jacob had apparently taken a side trip of some kind, so Amelia decided to wait for him. Lorenzo and I and another man continued onward. My conversational energy was used up. Lorenso discussed important issues with the other man, while I remained silent. Lorenzo, you see, was Sina's alcalde -- one of the three officials of the town -- and therefore actually quite an important man.
Every six months he was the recipient of Peruvian government money to which Sina, as an acknowledged and represented Peruvian village, had a right. The sum was either 1500 or 15000 soles which means either $33.30 or $330.00, unfortunately I didn't get it straight. But Lorenzo, as alcalde -- a position which he would fill for three years -- had the responsibility of representing Sina in the nearest district capitol, receiving the money, and seeing to it that it was used to benefit the town as a whole. He.said that the present project involved providing more comfortable quarters for their Guardias, which I was disappointed to hear since the lousy Guardias already had a high enough salary to live like drunken pigs.
Suddenly a chicken appeared ahead of us on the trail. "Where's the owner?" asked the alcalde.
"I don't see any," replied the other man, and Lorenzo was off in a flash. For several minutes our somewhat stiff and respectable alcalde pursued that chicken as it climbed higher and higher up the side of the valley. Finally he came back down.
"It was too fast for me," he said.
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