Greetings everyone! I know that it's been quite a while since I've posted anything, and for that I make no excuses other than to say that it's been a little busy lately.
For those of you looking for the conclusion to my South American Odyssey, fear not. I've got several things waiting in the wings and will back-post them so they appear after the current stuff.
As most of you know, I'm now in New York with a new job, and I move into my new apartment in Brooklyn today! I'm ready to have my own digs again and get settled into a routine.
I’ve been reading a lot of modern British fiction lately, mostly on the subway to and from work in Midtown, and am starting to think that I should design a course about it including my recent reading materials: Atonement and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Of course, Virginia Woolf has been on my mind as well, adding another dimension to the turbulent consciousnesses at play in my fictional frame of mind. With this as a caveat, today was a good day.
I haven’t had a good day in a while. Let me qualify that to say that I also haven’t really had a bad day in a while. I’ve been floating, carried along by the tide of my life and its responsibilities, without much of a thought to how I was really doing. The shock of moving to New York is starting to wear off, and the multiple new elements of my current life are becoming familiar with varying speeds. Getting used to being around Rachael and Mandi took nearly no time at all, as was expected. Equilibrating to the subway, life in the big city, and the logistics of life without cars and box stores took a little while, but it was the good kind of adjustment. I finally deposited a paycheck in the bank, for the first time in nearly 12 months, alleviating near financial disaster and credit card debt.
Then today, I finally got comfortable at work. Not only do I feel more confident in meetings and have started to express my opinion, I've had some real conversations that made me feel more connected to the people at the office, and I bonded with the interns about traveling and Harry Potter. I’m in this bizarre age no mans’s land at work: the interns are all several years younger and still in college, but most of the staff is 30+. Makes it a little harder to find immediate common ground, so when something does come along it feels good.
And I can tell you it feels pretty fucking good to have an apartment.
It’s small, and my bedroom is even smaller (no really, it’s tiny), but it’s freshly remodeled with a phat phridge and high-btu gas range. That almost makes up for the galley-sized kitchen and the room that I’m not even sure will fit a full bed. It’s small, but it’s mine, and I found it thanks to weeks of grueling searching. I discovered it with my own brain and judgment amidst the swirling chaos-filled vortex of the New York City housing market, designed to suck the soul and money out of anyone who dares approach.
Last night, I felt the excitement building as I drove north through Brooklyn from my current “home” near Prospect Park. I passed Grand Army Plaza for the first time and had a (nearly) subconscious flashback of Harry and Sally standing in front of the huge archway after their marathon drive to the Big Apple. Brooklyn seemed to welcome me, and then it smacked me around a little for being wide-eyed and enthusiastic, like any good New Yorker would. Due to nighttime driving and me not being quite aggressive enough in a minivan at traffic circles, what should have been a 10-15 minute drive turned into 25 as I zig-zagged my way towards what I hoped was my apartment. Eventually I honed in on Clinton and Dekalb, snagging a parking space directly in front of my new front door. I sped up the five flights of rickety stairs (not yet remodeled, unlike our spanking new apartment) and found to my delight that not only the electricity and gas were on (I have no idea who has been paying the utility bills), but all the ceiling fans have cute little remote controls on the walls. Throwing open the windows to the cool night air, the first non-rainy non-sauna-like evening that we’ve had in a few weeks, I did a giddy little dance in the living room before taking a couple of loads of my stuff out of the van. The thought of my things in the back of the car sitting on the street in New York had been in the corner of my mind all week, and there was a part of me that kind of expected to come back every evening and see a window smashed and all my stuff gone. Now, that little corner of my mind is free again!
Once I had satisfied my need to fill the blank canvas of the new apartment, I decided that not only would hauling stuff up the stairs be more pleasant on this refreshing summer night, but that being on the roof would be too. I turned out the lights in the apartment, went into the stuffy hallway to make sure that all the locks worked, closed the door and climbed the 1/2 flight of stairs leading to the roof. Pushing tentatively on the door to see how it opened, I swung it wide open once I discovered it had no locking mechanism that might trap me out of the building. Then, I stepped out onto the spongy surface, not sure if I was allowed to be there, or if the old roof would support my weight. I walked over the ceiling of our apartment to compare the view from my bedroom window (not much different than what I see from one floor below), then walked around the stairwell’s skylight and faced south.
The lights of downtown Brooklyn sparkled at me through the clear dry air and I turned slowly to get the panoramic view: the diffuse aura of Manhattan rising mauve up from behind the nearest buildings’ silhouettes, the Chrysler building glowing at me from an alley, and the stars desperately competing with the mass of luminosity produced by this city to sustain its nearly 18 million inhabitants. Then, and only then, did I truly understand that I was now one of them. I live in New York. I whipped back around to take it all in, watched the polka-dots of the Brooklyn Bridge disappear into layers of offices, condos, brownstones, windows, and signs, and then my vision blurred a little as I realized that I was crying.
Dozens of emotions converged in me in that moment when I turned around in circles on the roof of 290 Clinton Street looking at the sky, my new home below, and the boroughs around me. The burden of searching for a home was gone, I was free to begin my daily life. Energized, excited, elated, and exhausted I let myself take a moment to think about all that I’ve accomplished in the past month since I left New York in May, in the wake of a surreal and interview-laden visit. A bit of pride poked its way into my consciousness, followed by relief, anticipation for the future, and a thread of pure joy. And then, as the cool air passed over my tired body, I truly felt the emptiness that I had been waiting for since I left New Hampshire.
Thus far, I have been remarkably successful in staving off that emptiness, keeping it away from my conscious mind with daily tasks, immediate practical concerns, reestablishing connections with old friends, partying in the city, and expressing myself creatively. But when I get tired, stop thinking or stop doing, I fall into old thought patterns worn into my synapses by several years of constant repetition. There on the roof, in the midst of this incredible moment, the feeling of what I have lost became almost as acute as what I have gained. I say almost because that little vacuum of loss is not enough to induce regret or any kind of remorse. I still think that the major decisions that I’ve made recently are the right ones for me, those which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness (thanks Jane). Yet within all that self-satisfaction had almost forgotten that it hurts to have someone that you thought you would be with forever tell you that they just don’t ever see that happening. When that feeling gets to you, it makes you catch your breath a little, like someone punched you in the chest. I know how lucky I am to have other, more pleasant emotions fighting to take the place of that emptiness, but nothingness is a little hard to get rid of.
In the meantime, I've been working on having something to take the place of that emptiness, and the attempt has not been entirely unsuccessful. I've been trying to be responsible, to act like the adult that that I am, pay the bills and make sure the electricity stays on. But in the midst of all that, I need moments like last night on the roof. Life is made for moments like that, and if you haven't had one in a while, then maybe you should think about why.
Things are not perfect, and it will still take some time for me to fully adjust to my new social and geographical context. I'm liking New York, and I love my friends. So right now, I'm here and I'm finding my place in the bustling city. I am here, and yes, Mrs. Ramsay, it is enough. It is enough!
If, on a winter's night a traveler outside the town of Malbork, leaning from a steep slope without fear of wind or vertigo, looks down into the gathering shadow...on the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon around an empty grave, what story there awaits its end? -italo calvino
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Uruguay: the little country that could!
“So what prompted you to go to Uruguay?” My father asked me over the phone from Montevideo.
“Because it’s there.”
Not a fantastic answer nor entirely true. It does have a pleasing rhetorical air to it.
To be more honest, I wanted to see the country of cows and corrida sheep that produces my favorite brand of knitting yarn. No, my woolen adventures in Peru were not enough to satiate a lust for South American textiles. After a good deal of unfruitful online research, I emailed the only address I could find for Manos de Uruguay, the company that produces a fantastic hand-dyed sheep’s wool that retails for around $13 per skein in wool boutiques (I refuse to call them “stores” or “shops” because this implies fair pricing, instead of the ridiculous gouging that occurs in knitting stores all around the country). Unfortunately, the silly people told me to contact their US distributor to buy yarn, not very useful when I’m in Uruguay.
There were a few other appealing features to Uruguay, including its famed beaches; nearly half of the 13 million people in Buenos Aires flee to the resort town of Punta del Este for the summer to sit packed like sardines on the sand. We heard from a fellow norteamericano traveler that Punta del Diablo, a small town on the Brazil-Uruguay border, was a much more pleasant place to unwind from the rigors of the road, so we made plans to speed east once we entered the country and lie around on deserted beaches until it was time to meet a friend of mine in Mendoza.
We bid adieu to Buenos Aires from the Buquebus (lit. BoatBus) which took us across the Rio de la Plata at sunset, then spent our first real day in Uruguay trying to figure out the monetary value of the Uruguayan peso while visiting the quaint colonial city of quaint nomenclature, Colonia. Yet another UNESCO World Heritage site, the old city was mostly filled with bus loads of tourists and nasty mosquitoes, so we chose to languish in the shade of our hostel and wait for a bus to Montevideo. I then noted several mutant mosquito bites, some of which may be the vestiges of Iguazú mosquitoes, which have now swelled into inch-long bumps. A little disconcerting. We’ll see how that goes.
At this point, I was engaged in an email exchange with another yarn company, Malabrigo Yarns, whom I’d stumbled across on some Google searches for Manos de Uruguay. They seemed much more welcoming than the Manos staff, so I hoped that I’d be able to visit their warehouse. Just before we left for Montevideo, I found out that the warehouse wasn’t in the city center, but in a neighborhood of unknown location called El Cerro (lit. the mountain/peak). I didn’t really know what that meant, not being familiar with the local geography, and let it wait until we arrived.
In the beginning of our trip, we ripped out the sections of our general South American guidebooks that related to countries not on our itinerary. Clearly we weren’t going to make it as far north as Ecuador, and it’s not exactly safe to be in Colombia as an Anglo blonde—those pages went in the trash. As we go, we tear out the section of the book for a city, carry it in our pockets, and then leave it behind at the bus station. This keeps our thick books from taking up too much precious backpack space, and gives a wonderful sense of closure to each leg of the journey. We were a little too zealous in our book weeding four months back, not imagining in November that we’d ever get to Uruguay. Oops! Thus, when we arrived in the country, we didn’t even have the exchange rate, let alone a map of the places we were to visit.
Five brochures later I figured out where El Cerro was, and we checked in to a decent hostel in downtown Montevideo. The next morning, I had planned to meet one of the yarn people at 11:00 am at the warehouse, whose location I finally pinned down in the Industrial Center...but somehow we both slept through the alarm until 10:45. Mortified, I write an apology to the company and head off to the bus station to find a way to get out to the Parque Industrial. Several people I asked said flat out that there was no way to get there by bus. One driver, trying to be helpful, told me to take the 124, buy a transfer ticket, go to another terminal, find the connection to Santa Maria, and then ask someone how to get to the Parque Industrial. No thanks, I’ll take a taxi.
Nearly defeated, I was about to throw in the towel when one last email came through from Malabrigo. The person with whom I had emailed for several days gave me the warehouse phone number and the cell of some guy named Antonio. Since the warehouse phone didn’t work, I called Antonio. “¡Hello Thea, how are you! Everything well?” was the surprisingly cheerful response to my uncertain “¿Hola?” When I mentioned that I was trying to get over to the warehouse, Antonio immediately said “Oh no, don’t go in a taxi. I have to go over there this afternoon, so I’ll pick you up from downtown.”
Presto! All of my problems are solved. I scheduled meet him in an hour at a designated street corner, told him roughly what I looked like, and then waited until 2:45. Sure enough, at a quarter to three a small Cheverolet pulls up in front of me and Dave, driven by a forty-something man with dark hair and glasses.
As we would find out in our conversations both to and from the Malabrigo dyeing center and warehouse, Antonio is one of three directors of the company, an ex-architect who couldn’t find work after the economic Crisis of 2001 and started developing kettle-dyed wool for US and European markets. I felt a little bad explaining the way that I found out about Malabrigo (I had never used the product, but Manos de Uruguay wouldn’t talk to me), but the little internet research that did that morning gave me a good feeling about the stuff. There are little old ladies in the Midwest and West coast who go nuts for this wool, so much so that they started about a half-dozen blogs about it! It really is hand-dyed in enamel or aluminum kettles (I know because I saw the pots!), just like someone would do in their own house, which produces interesting variations in color intensity that I find makes amazing garments. Like Manos, they offer several multicolored products, more difficult to dye but also more interesting. I mentioned that I liked the Malabrigo version called acuarela (watercolors), and Antonio humbly explained that he invented the dyeing process that produces lovely watery color transitions. This was the same guy who picked me up on a street corner in the capital just to take me to see the wool warehouse. He had no idea who I was, how much money, if any, I had to spend, or what relation I had to the company.
As we wound our way around Montevideo Bay, we told him a little bit about our trip and ourselves. Naturally, the conversation turned to sheep. I learned a little more about merino wool, augmented later by a fascinating internet history of the originally Spanish merino sheep. D’s own sheep-ey past let him talk shop with Antonio a bit, discussing the plight of the modern sheep farmer plagued by falling wool prices little demand for meat.
It’s clear that Uruguay, while having suffered from the same economic crisis as Argentina, has been much slower in rebounding from it. Construction projects in the city seem to have been put on hold, and the restoration of the historic colonial neighborhood is nearly nonexistent.
Poor marginalized Uruguay, the younger sibling of larger nations, still has a core of emphatic citizens more racially diverse than the population of its southern neighbor, and a strong cultural heritage. I had no idea that tango was as much an Uruguayan phenomenon as Argentine. Carlos Gardel, the über-famous tango singer whose life-sized portrait stood outside the gelato shop next to our apartment in Palermo, got his start in the tango scene in Uruguay before moving to Buenos Aires; the composer of “La Cumparsita,” the allegedly most popular tango in the world, was from Montevideo. I’m not surprised that they didn’t mention that during our tango show at Café Tortoni, the hottest spot for aesthetic and political intellectuals in late 19th century Buenos Aires.
Three cheers for Uruguay: it’s got heart even if it doesn’t have fame. ¡Olé, Olé, Olé!
As our conversation progressed, we followed the horseshoe shaped bay around to the opposite shore, a slightly rougher neighborhood full of impromptu housing and defunct industrial warehouses. Antonio pulled the car into what looked like an abandoned factory. Guess what… it was an abandoned factory. Together with other young businesses, Malabrigo purchased an old meat-processing plant and is in the process of converting it into offices and modern warehouses. We were gently herded into a steel elevator that once hauled beef carcasses up to elevated conveyor belts, feeling quite like livestock ourselves.
We stepped out of the elevator, walked down a snaking hallway and the mood changed completely. What used to be a bare concrete slaughterhouse is now filled floor to ceiling with hundreds of kilos of rainbow wool. Three women stood at tables weighing and tagging skeins as the afternoon sunlight poured into through enormous windows. Overwhelmed by the quantity of wool around me, I stared for a minute trying to process all of the different shades, shapes, thicknesses, and textures crammed on 12 foot high plywood shelving units laid out in aisles down the room. Antonio chuckled at my bewilderment and introduced me to some of the staff at Malabrigo. I wandered about, choosing colors and debating over merino or more traditional wool, while Antonio did his daily walkthrough of the warehouse. He greeted all six of the employees with a smile, clarifying some organizational concerns and keeping tabs on the boxes lined up for export to the US. Once I had my fill of picking out yarn, he offered to show us the dyeing facility on the top floor of the building before we returned to downtown.
[Abrubt segue followed by long tirade against industrial agriculture...can you keep up?]
What I have noticed on my many bus rides through the Argentine, Chilean, and now Uruguayan countryside is that many times animals coexist on the same pastures. The interconnectedness of grazing life is difficult to deny. The domesticated animals are not isolated from wild ones: hawks perch on fence posts looking for prey in the same fields that feed the cattle, sheep and horses. This sense of the natural world, the complexity of a living ecosystem, is lost with the creation of suburbia. In the supermarket, the personification of mainstream American life and a rarity down here in the land of specialty stores, everything is packaged or shrink wrapped and separated into specific categories. It’s hard enough to imagine that the T-bone and the flank steak or the liver all came from the same animal, let alone imagine that cow walking through a field among grub-eating egrets or lying under a shady tree. People have become so used to sterilized, processed food that most don’t even know what to do with a whole chicken.
In South America, with the exclusion of Buenos Aires, its own mini-country, there are urban areas and rural areas. The sprawling housing developments peppered with chains of mega-stores is an American creation, although the disease is spreading. Here, even people who spend most of their lives in a city have some connection to the natural world and things that grow. A businessman might keep horses out in the country, middle class people usually have family that lives on a farm or in a tiny out of the way town. Fortunately, Argentines are still very demanding in the quality of their beef, so the few feed lots that ranchers have established in order to raise profit margins have had little market for their inferior quality product. Back at home we’re not so informed.
In the United States, it is more than likely that the average person never comes into direct contact with nature. My family always went camping for vacation until I was a teenager and my parents constantly garden, so I often forget that there are millions of Americans who have never experienced the real fear of getting lost in the woods at dusk, watched a seed grow into a plant (or wither and die, as the case may be), or seen an animal in the wild. The lack of experience and understanding of the natural world distorts people’s perception of their place in the world, further distorting American culture. This seemingly meaningless absence trickles down into society, changing the way that Americans eat, dress, and move around the world. With industrial agriculture, cows, chickens and pigs are treated like machines than the complex and diverse organisms that they are. Having access to food that comes from real animals that run around and breathe fresh air shouldn’t be a luxury that you can only access by taking a several thousand mile flight. Synthetic fibers comprise most of the textiles that find their way onto shelves. People drive huge cars that churn through gasoline, but they drive them down paved highways in cities, not over gravel roads.
I don’t advocate becoming a vegan, burning my car and wearing hemp clothing, but rather making conscious decisions where and why you spend money. Last week at the Plaza de Mayo, a woman selling a locally produced magazine told me “Every peso is a vote.” Not a new thought, it is an idea that merits remembering. I dropped a big chunk of my budget at Malabrigo Yarns, and although it may be a miniscule portion of their annual revenue, it is a big deal to me. I am glad to support a company that treats its employees well, is run by passionate people who care about their product, who recognize the beauty of doing something by hand. Antonio comes to the warehouse every day to inspect the colors of each kilo of yarn and make sure it meets his expectations. The workers dyeing, packing, and sorting wool had fresh air, natural light from huge open windows, and seemed to be friendly enough with each other to enjoy a laugh every once in a while.
The dyeing facility on the top floor was shockingly rudimentary, with the aforementioned kettles and people meandering about, stirring every few minutes. Antonio mentioned that one of the major renovations they are hoping to have in the near future is a larger drying room: essentially a dehydrator the size of a studio apartment, to dry larger volumes of wool at a time. Business seems to have been good lately, but clearly the Crisis is in the back of everyone’s mind.
As I leave Uruguay, I can look out the window and see clumps of merino sheep scattered over the rolling fields, munching away and sharing the pasture with the cows, just like Antonio said they did. I think about the eight kilos of yarn strapped to the bottom of my backpack and wince a little at the thought of hauling it on and off of buses for another month and a half. But in addition to weight, this wool has a little more depth, a better story than it would as a chemically generated polymer spat out by a petroleum-burning factory. I’m okay with lugging it around for a while. It’s actually an honor.
I don’t know what will happen to Malabrigo Yarns, whether they will be able to negotiate the grey area between economic growth and industrialization, whether it will be able to keep its soul and commitment to high quality goods at fair prices, or if its leadership will end up sacrificing quality for higher production. I’m happy to have seen it the way it is now, and can only hope that my purchase acts as a vote of approval to help them keep doing what they do.
“Because it’s there.”
Not a fantastic answer nor entirely true. It does have a pleasing rhetorical air to it.
To be more honest, I wanted to see the country of cows and corrida sheep that produces my favorite brand of knitting yarn. No, my woolen adventures in Peru were not enough to satiate a lust for South American textiles. After a good deal of unfruitful online research, I emailed the only address I could find for Manos de Uruguay, the company that produces a fantastic hand-dyed sheep’s wool that retails for around $13 per skein in wool boutiques (I refuse to call them “stores” or “shops” because this implies fair pricing, instead of the ridiculous gouging that occurs in knitting stores all around the country). Unfortunately, the silly people told me to contact their US distributor to buy yarn, not very useful when I’m in Uruguay.
There were a few other appealing features to Uruguay, including its famed beaches; nearly half of the 13 million people in Buenos Aires flee to the resort town of Punta del Este for the summer to sit packed like sardines on the sand. We heard from a fellow norteamericano traveler that Punta del Diablo, a small town on the Brazil-Uruguay border, was a much more pleasant place to unwind from the rigors of the road, so we made plans to speed east once we entered the country and lie around on deserted beaches until it was time to meet a friend of mine in Mendoza.
We bid adieu to Buenos Aires from the Buquebus (lit. BoatBus) which took us across the Rio de la Plata at sunset, then spent our first real day in Uruguay trying to figure out the monetary value of the Uruguayan peso while visiting the quaint colonial city of quaint nomenclature, Colonia. Yet another UNESCO World Heritage site, the old city was mostly filled with bus loads of tourists and nasty mosquitoes, so we chose to languish in the shade of our hostel and wait for a bus to Montevideo. I then noted several mutant mosquito bites, some of which may be the vestiges of Iguazú mosquitoes, which have now swelled into inch-long bumps. A little disconcerting. We’ll see how that goes.
At this point, I was engaged in an email exchange with another yarn company, Malabrigo Yarns, whom I’d stumbled across on some Google searches for Manos de Uruguay. They seemed much more welcoming than the Manos staff, so I hoped that I’d be able to visit their warehouse. Just before we left for Montevideo, I found out that the warehouse wasn’t in the city center, but in a neighborhood of unknown location called El Cerro (lit. the mountain/peak). I didn’t really know what that meant, not being familiar with the local geography, and let it wait until we arrived.
In the beginning of our trip, we ripped out the sections of our general South American guidebooks that related to countries not on our itinerary. Clearly we weren’t going to make it as far north as Ecuador, and it’s not exactly safe to be in Colombia as an Anglo blonde—those pages went in the trash. As we go, we tear out the section of the book for a city, carry it in our pockets, and then leave it behind at the bus station. This keeps our thick books from taking up too much precious backpack space, and gives a wonderful sense of closure to each leg of the journey. We were a little too zealous in our book weeding four months back, not imagining in November that we’d ever get to Uruguay. Oops! Thus, when we arrived in the country, we didn’t even have the exchange rate, let alone a map of the places we were to visit.
Five brochures later I figured out where El Cerro was, and we checked in to a decent hostel in downtown Montevideo. The next morning, I had planned to meet one of the yarn people at 11:00 am at the warehouse, whose location I finally pinned down in the Industrial Center...but somehow we both slept through the alarm until 10:45. Mortified, I write an apology to the company and head off to the bus station to find a way to get out to the Parque Industrial. Several people I asked said flat out that there was no way to get there by bus. One driver, trying to be helpful, told me to take the 124, buy a transfer ticket, go to another terminal, find the connection to Santa Maria, and then ask someone how to get to the Parque Industrial. No thanks, I’ll take a taxi.
Nearly defeated, I was about to throw in the towel when one last email came through from Malabrigo. The person with whom I had emailed for several days gave me the warehouse phone number and the cell of some guy named Antonio. Since the warehouse phone didn’t work, I called Antonio. “¡Hello Thea, how are you! Everything well?” was the surprisingly cheerful response to my uncertain “¿Hola?” When I mentioned that I was trying to get over to the warehouse, Antonio immediately said “Oh no, don’t go in a taxi. I have to go over there this afternoon, so I’ll pick you up from downtown.”
Presto! All of my problems are solved. I scheduled meet him in an hour at a designated street corner, told him roughly what I looked like, and then waited until 2:45. Sure enough, at a quarter to three a small Cheverolet pulls up in front of me and Dave, driven by a forty-something man with dark hair and glasses.
As we would find out in our conversations both to and from the Malabrigo dyeing center and warehouse, Antonio is one of three directors of the company, an ex-architect who couldn’t find work after the economic Crisis of 2001 and started developing kettle-dyed wool for US and European markets. I felt a little bad explaining the way that I found out about Malabrigo (I had never used the product, but Manos de Uruguay wouldn’t talk to me), but the little internet research that did that morning gave me a good feeling about the stuff. There are little old ladies in the Midwest and West coast who go nuts for this wool, so much so that they started about a half-dozen blogs about it! It really is hand-dyed in enamel or aluminum kettles (I know because I saw the pots!), just like someone would do in their own house, which produces interesting variations in color intensity that I find makes amazing garments. Like Manos, they offer several multicolored products, more difficult to dye but also more interesting. I mentioned that I liked the Malabrigo version called acuarela (watercolors), and Antonio humbly explained that he invented the dyeing process that produces lovely watery color transitions. This was the same guy who picked me up on a street corner in the capital just to take me to see the wool warehouse. He had no idea who I was, how much money, if any, I had to spend, or what relation I had to the company.
As we wound our way around Montevideo Bay, we told him a little bit about our trip and ourselves. Naturally, the conversation turned to sheep. I learned a little more about merino wool, augmented later by a fascinating internet history of the originally Spanish merino sheep. D’s own sheep-ey past let him talk shop with Antonio a bit, discussing the plight of the modern sheep farmer plagued by falling wool prices little demand for meat.
It’s clear that Uruguay, while having suffered from the same economic crisis as Argentina, has been much slower in rebounding from it. Construction projects in the city seem to have been put on hold, and the restoration of the historic colonial neighborhood is nearly nonexistent.
“Who knows anything about Uruguay, or Montevideo? Who wants to come here? It’s all Buenos Aires. That’s what happens when you have big neighbors.”Sandwiched between giants like Argentina and Brazil, Uruguay’s economic future has been subject to the fortunes of its immediate neighbors, something that Malabrigo and companies like it are trying to remedy. By marketing its artisanal product to more diverse markets like the US, Europe, and Asia, they hope to protect themselves against an often unreliable South American economy.
Poor marginalized Uruguay, the younger sibling of larger nations, still has a core of emphatic citizens more racially diverse than the population of its southern neighbor, and a strong cultural heritage. I had no idea that tango was as much an Uruguayan phenomenon as Argentine. Carlos Gardel, the über-famous tango singer whose life-sized portrait stood outside the gelato shop next to our apartment in Palermo, got his start in the tango scene in Uruguay before moving to Buenos Aires; the composer of “La Cumparsita,” the allegedly most popular tango in the world, was from Montevideo. I’m not surprised that they didn’t mention that during our tango show at Café Tortoni, the hottest spot for aesthetic and political intellectuals in late 19th century Buenos Aires.
Three cheers for Uruguay: it’s got heart even if it doesn’t have fame. ¡Olé, Olé, Olé!
As our conversation progressed, we followed the horseshoe shaped bay around to the opposite shore, a slightly rougher neighborhood full of impromptu housing and defunct industrial warehouses. Antonio pulled the car into what looked like an abandoned factory. Guess what… it was an abandoned factory. Together with other young businesses, Malabrigo purchased an old meat-processing plant and is in the process of converting it into offices and modern warehouses. We were gently herded into a steel elevator that once hauled beef carcasses up to elevated conveyor belts, feeling quite like livestock ourselves.
We stepped out of the elevator, walked down a snaking hallway and the mood changed completely. What used to be a bare concrete slaughterhouse is now filled floor to ceiling with hundreds of kilos of rainbow wool. Three women stood at tables weighing and tagging skeins as the afternoon sunlight poured into through enormous windows. Overwhelmed by the quantity of wool around me, I stared for a minute trying to process all of the different shades, shapes, thicknesses, and textures crammed on 12 foot high plywood shelving units laid out in aisles down the room. Antonio chuckled at my bewilderment and introduced me to some of the staff at Malabrigo. I wandered about, choosing colors and debating over merino or more traditional wool, while Antonio did his daily walkthrough of the warehouse. He greeted all six of the employees with a smile, clarifying some organizational concerns and keeping tabs on the boxes lined up for export to the US. Once I had my fill of picking out yarn, he offered to show us the dyeing facility on the top floor of the building before we returned to downtown.
[Abrubt segue followed by long tirade against industrial agriculture...can you keep up?]
What I have noticed on my many bus rides through the Argentine, Chilean, and now Uruguayan countryside is that many times animals coexist on the same pastures. The interconnectedness of grazing life is difficult to deny. The domesticated animals are not isolated from wild ones: hawks perch on fence posts looking for prey in the same fields that feed the cattle, sheep and horses. This sense of the natural world, the complexity of a living ecosystem, is lost with the creation of suburbia. In the supermarket, the personification of mainstream American life and a rarity down here in the land of specialty stores, everything is packaged or shrink wrapped and separated into specific categories. It’s hard enough to imagine that the T-bone and the flank steak or the liver all came from the same animal, let alone imagine that cow walking through a field among grub-eating egrets or lying under a shady tree. People have become so used to sterilized, processed food that most don’t even know what to do with a whole chicken.
In South America, with the exclusion of Buenos Aires, its own mini-country, there are urban areas and rural areas. The sprawling housing developments peppered with chains of mega-stores is an American creation, although the disease is spreading. Here, even people who spend most of their lives in a city have some connection to the natural world and things that grow. A businessman might keep horses out in the country, middle class people usually have family that lives on a farm or in a tiny out of the way town. Fortunately, Argentines are still very demanding in the quality of their beef, so the few feed lots that ranchers have established in order to raise profit margins have had little market for their inferior quality product. Back at home we’re not so informed.
In the United States, it is more than likely that the average person never comes into direct contact with nature. My family always went camping for vacation until I was a teenager and my parents constantly garden, so I often forget that there are millions of Americans who have never experienced the real fear of getting lost in the woods at dusk, watched a seed grow into a plant (or wither and die, as the case may be), or seen an animal in the wild. The lack of experience and understanding of the natural world distorts people’s perception of their place in the world, further distorting American culture. This seemingly meaningless absence trickles down into society, changing the way that Americans eat, dress, and move around the world. With industrial agriculture, cows, chickens and pigs are treated like machines than the complex and diverse organisms that they are. Having access to food that comes from real animals that run around and breathe fresh air shouldn’t be a luxury that you can only access by taking a several thousand mile flight. Synthetic fibers comprise most of the textiles that find their way onto shelves. People drive huge cars that churn through gasoline, but they drive them down paved highways in cities, not over gravel roads.
I don’t advocate becoming a vegan, burning my car and wearing hemp clothing, but rather making conscious decisions where and why you spend money. Last week at the Plaza de Mayo, a woman selling a locally produced magazine told me “Every peso is a vote.” Not a new thought, it is an idea that merits remembering. I dropped a big chunk of my budget at Malabrigo Yarns, and although it may be a miniscule portion of their annual revenue, it is a big deal to me. I am glad to support a company that treats its employees well, is run by passionate people who care about their product, who recognize the beauty of doing something by hand. Antonio comes to the warehouse every day to inspect the colors of each kilo of yarn and make sure it meets his expectations. The workers dyeing, packing, and sorting wool had fresh air, natural light from huge open windows, and seemed to be friendly enough with each other to enjoy a laugh every once in a while.
The dyeing facility on the top floor was shockingly rudimentary, with the aforementioned kettles and people meandering about, stirring every few minutes. Antonio mentioned that one of the major renovations they are hoping to have in the near future is a larger drying room: essentially a dehydrator the size of a studio apartment, to dry larger volumes of wool at a time. Business seems to have been good lately, but clearly the Crisis is in the back of everyone’s mind.
As I leave Uruguay, I can look out the window and see clumps of merino sheep scattered over the rolling fields, munching away and sharing the pasture with the cows, just like Antonio said they did. I think about the eight kilos of yarn strapped to the bottom of my backpack and wince a little at the thought of hauling it on and off of buses for another month and a half. But in addition to weight, this wool has a little more depth, a better story than it would as a chemically generated polymer spat out by a petroleum-burning factory. I’m okay with lugging it around for a while. It’s actually an honor.
I don’t know what will happen to Malabrigo Yarns, whether they will be able to negotiate the grey area between economic growth and industrialization, whether it will be able to keep its soul and commitment to high quality goods at fair prices, or if its leadership will end up sacrificing quality for higher production. I’m happy to have seen it the way it is now, and can only hope that my purchase acts as a vote of approval to help them keep doing what they do.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Peru, or "Mommy, can you buy me an alpaca?"
Cuzco, Sacred Valley
So far, my favorite fauna has been Bolivian: the llama with its tasty steaks and warm wool, the squirrel-rabbit fusion vizcacha, the fussy and fabulous flamingoes, the skittish vicuña. But the one I had been waiting to see l could hardly be found in Bolivia, save two trussed and decorated pet-like ones on Copacabana’s beach. Yes, I would have to wait until I crossed the Peruvian border to see herds of the best animal of all, the alpaca. Not only are they cute and demure, but they produce the best wool in the world, save that of those crazy Indian goats. I waited nearly a month, asking at every new town “Is there any place that sells straight wool?” instead of the shawls, hats, scarves, and llama-covered sweaters that could be found all over Northern Argentina and Bolivia.
Finally, in Cusco, I hit the jackpot. I found an outlet of a wool factory in Arequipa. Not knowing that I would later find myself in Arequipa on a quest for condors, I picked up a bit of baby alpaca. I felt a little guilty, not having actually seen a real alpaca yet, but I had high hopes for camelid sightings for our time in Cusco.
Before the 1940’s and the publicity surrounding Machupicchu, Cusco was a sleepy mountain town with only a few hundred inhabitants. As the fame of the Lost City of the Inkas grew, so did Machupicchu. An economically depressed backwater became the hub of archaeology in Peru, and a gold mine for tourism.
The city has adapted to foreign tastes and cultures, boasting vegetarian restaurants and Irish pubs, American retirees and European backpackers. Our second day in the city, I tried to take a picture of Dave in front of a series of stones in a wall which form the shape of a puma and a serpent (not camelids, but still cool), two of the three sacred animals of the Inkas. A wrinkled old woman, at least 75 years old, walked into the picture with a llama and refused to leave. She was tricked out in traditional garb: woven skirts with bright colors, an embroidered vest, and a bowl shaped hat with tassels. I didn’t really feel like engaging in a battle of wills with a seventy-something small Peruvian woman, so I snapped my picture and Dave tried to subtly hand her a coin. Apparently one sol wasn’t enough, and she wanted more; that’s some serious attitude. She and her llama don’t take any shit.
Cusco, or the Gringo Capital of South America as it is often called, was a great base for expeditions into the Sacred Valley of the Incas, and very attractive, but it smacked of the U.S., Europe, or some other Westernized country. People were friendly and nearly all spoke a bit of English, in homage to the idol of the dollar and in respect of the city’s main source of income. The food was great, if you wanted to pay exorbitant prices, but the good cheap places were always swarming with tourists, most of whom couldn’t speak a lick of Spanish. The owner of one of our favorite restaurants was unfortunately one of such people. Our first meal there, I thought that she couldn’t possibly have any authority at this establishment with such sentences as “Pu-ays, tay hablo tomorrow por-kee yow no sabo ahhh-hhora.” Ach. Oh well. The only reason that we kept coming back was the thick crusty panini sandwiches and divine mint lemonade.
Museums abounded in old buildings razed by the Spanish, and the vestiges of Inka culture were visible all through the city. One of the best was the Museo de Arte Precolumbiano (MAP), complete with a swank café in the central courtyard just like Manhattan museums. Clearly catering to wealthy cosmopolitan travelers, the museum came about because Lima’s Museo Larco had thousands of artifacts languishing in some basement storage facility, and someone had the brilliant idea to take them out and move them to Cusco. Kudos to them, I say. The art was worth the USD $15 admission, with wonderful abstract pieces from the Peruvian coast that looked remarkably like Picasso’s cubist sculptures. According to the signs, Pablo himself visited South America and was inspired by some of these ancient forms. Modernist art at 1200 B.C.E? Who would have thought? There were camelids here too—golden llamas and other small icons from wealthy priests’ homes or city temples. I was almost tempted to bring home a stone replica of one of the lost breeds of long-haired alpaca, but I decided that heavy alpaca kitsch was much less cool than alpaca wool.
Every store in Cusco sells carved llamas, and if that weren’t enough, vendors take them to the touristy places outside of town too. At Sacsayhuaman, the ancient Incan fort which guarded Q’osqo and provided celebratory grounds for the still celebrated Inti Raymi summer solstice festival, before we even reached the entrance three people offered bite-sized pumas, alpacas, and llamas from what looked like a very heavy knapsack.
One thing that I love about Inka culture is that they took their visual symbols seriously. The puma, master of the earthly realm, was not only a deity but the shape of the capital city. The zigzagged walls of the fort form a jagged set of teeth for the puma of Cusco. Llamas, sacrificed at various points in the year, were food for the gods.
Another fantastic but anachronistic Inkan delight is the word Sacsayhuaman itself: when pronounced it is nearly indistinguishable from the English “sexy woman.” Adding to the linguistic hilarity is that the Quechua translation means approximately “satisfied falcon.” There’s a whole lot going on there that seems quite funny, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
Today, Sacsayhuaman is still interesting not only because of its archeological merits, but because it is a place that the Cuzqueños truly own. All of the historical sights are free for residents on the weekends, but it seems like Sacsayhuaman is the one that is the most visited. Its large green expanses and natural rockslide serve the city as much as a public park as an ancient ruin. Unlike Machupicchu or Qoricancha, the old temple of the sun turned into (of course) a Catholic church, Sacsayhuaman is a place for the people of the city; it is alive. Teenage couples take picnics up the hill and make out; old ladies sit on the stones and read; little kids slide down the rocks, just like grown men did in the old daguerreotypes from the museums. It was good to see that there is part of Cusco’s history that the people of Peru actually get to enjoy, instead of selling it to tourists. The only downside that I found was the lack of llamas.
Arequipa
Once we actually got to Michell & Co.’s “Alpaca Mundo” in Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city and southern industrial center, I was in heaven. We had a tour of the store and office complex, recently renovated to include three art galleries of Peruvian paintings, a museum of old wool refining machines, and a separating room, where the 12 different natural colors of alpaca wool are sorted. I got to see some of the suri alpacas, with their dreadlocked wool hanging down in sheets to their ankles. Then, to my utter delight, I was directed to the wool outlet! Hours of fun commenced, and I ended up with 6 kilos of merino, sheep, alpaca, and baby alpaca wool. Next winter in the ‘states is going to be so fun.
Arequipa was actually the first real city that we went to in Peru, and also the last. It has a city center, real businesses and locals, and a culture that is not centered around a famous historical site. True, there were beautiful things to see and old monuments, but they formed part of the city, they weren’t the reason for the city. We came there for two reasons, and ended up extending our planned two day stay for over a week. When we left Cusco, the mother hen owner of our hostel told us that we just had to stay with her friend Mercedes, who runs a tour company and rents out several rooms of her home to students. What the heck, we said, and arrived at Mercedes’ door at 9:00 am after a fantastically horrible overnight bus ride.
I had not slept for five minutes on the 10 hour trip, having been steamed like a blue crab by heating vents on the side of the bus which kept the ambient interior temperature around 90 degrees. If I’d had a beer and a box of Old Bay Seafood Seasoning to sprinkle on my head, I could have lived out a crustacean’s death throes trapped in an enameled metal bus, praying that the lid would open and release the steam. Unfortunately, there was no ventilation, so I pressed my face against the freezing cold window all night, wishing that just a teensy bit of the forty-some degree outside air would come inside.
Mercedes welcomed us to her home in a purple bathrobe with curlers, shuffled us into a bedroom cluttered with old furniture and computer accessories, and we fell immediately asleep. While we stayed in her house, there was another family as well, friends of hers from Cusco, who we would eat breakfast with and share our afternoon tea. Yes, I missed my Argentine café con leche, but it wasn’t a bad trade off to be able to chat about Latin America, travel, and life with real people from Peru. It was so hard to reach la gente in Cusco, with the tension of tourist and local strongly demarcated in dress, appearance, language, and eating habits. People either seemed to be putting on a show of culture or blatantly advertising some agency or product. In Mercedes’ apartment, we were both visitors to Arequipa, canceling a few of the impediments to conversation that can make it difficult to get to know people. D and I looked forward to breakfast, always with some sort of fresh fruit juice (Mercedes was adamant that fruit was the way to be healthy), fresh bread and chamomile tea to go with friendly conversation and plans for the day.
We left Arequipa after just two days of alpaca-filled fun for Colca Cañon (more to follow, when I scrape together some time), one of the few places left where you can see wild Andean Condors. Now those are some seriously large birds.
There were less smiles and hugs waiting for us when we returned from the trip, the cause of which was unclear for some time. Mercedes’ younger sister Doris let us in to an empty apartment, to a different room that strangely had most of the same old furniture in it. We were pretty tired and dusty, so we sat down for tea with Doris and half of the cuzqueño family, who were leaving for home that afternoon to join the grandmother and son, already waiting in Cusco. Along with participating in an animated discussion of Cuban history and politics, we learned that it was the sisters’ father’s 80th birthday that week. Festivity preparations were already under way, building to a fever pitch around the time we planned to leave. Now that we understood what the semi-chaos was around the house, everything made more sense.
We spent a good deal of our time recovering from our Colca trek, but still had time to see some of the sights of Arequipa.
One entire afternoon we wandered through the mini-city of the Santa Catalina Monastery, four square city blocks of nuns complete with its own market, plaza, and neighborhoods. Life as a catholic nun was not a heck of a lot of fun if you weren’t loaded with money. The best part of the visit, other than the huge “SILENCIO” stenciled and carved into the entrance arch, was seeing a real locutorio. This is amusing because there are “locutorios” all over South America. In contemporary parlance, it is a call center, generally including internet services, where you can go into a phone booth and make calls in private. In the monastery, the locutorio is a hallway or room with double grates or other obfuscation so that family members could speak with the nuns once a month. It differs depending on the location, but is basically a few holes in the wall for supervised communication with the outside world. A little more rustic than the locutorios that were our only connection to friends and family in the far away North.
We also tried to pay a visit to Juanita, the frozen Inkan child-sacrifice, but she was on her annual world tour from January to April, so we saw her understudy Susie. The Andean Sanctuary museum, Juanita’s home, would have been more interesting had the air conditioning not been turned down low enough to turn all guests into mummies as well. I learned some interesting things about llamas and Inkan symbolism, but was distracted by my chattering teeth.
We saw the colonial city constructed with blocks of bright white lava rock called sillar, the new commercial and banking center, and the residential neighborhood where Meche, her cat, and two noisy dogs live.
Oh, and David ate a guinea pig. It had peanuts on it so I couldn’t.
Peruvian cuisine is something that is struggling to come into its own, but the possibilities are exciting. Traditional country food, like tamales and choclo (giant corn) is incredibly rich, with a depth of flavor that North American industrial corn will never be able to match. A huge biodiversity of potatoes, with their myriad colors, textures, and flavors provide the foundation for many potentially interesting meals, especially when combined with rocoto and ají, the Andes’ hottest peppers. Finally, though it requires proximity to water for the freshest fish, the star of Peruvian gastronomy, ceviche, is out of this world.
In Cusco, we splurged on our first night out on the town, testing out a nuevo-Peruano restaurant called “A Mi Manera” (My Way). Yes, folks, it is named after the Frank Sinatra song. We were the only people in the restaurant at 7:00 when we placed our orders with an amazingly friendly waiter who, while he and the staff attended our table, was taking down the restaurant’s Christmas decorations. I ate seven different types of potatoes that night, all of them in our appetizers. Nearly burned my mouth off on a stuffed rocoto pepper, but once I discovered that you’re supposed to combine it with lots of melted cheese and fluffy roasted potatoes, everything was okay. Also that night I had my first true Peruvian ceviche. I was skeptical of any seafood related dishes in the landlocked Cusco province, but the pejerrey (kingfish) was freshwater, from nearby Lake Titicaca. When the ceviche came out of the kitchen, mounded on my plate were feathery slices of fish in a barely creamy citrus sauce, all tossed with fresh herbs and thinly sliced sweet red onions, all of my fears vanished. I love ceviche because it tastes so fresh and simple, but balances strong flavors well. The textures are different than sushi, which is mostly soft; the contrasts of fresh vegetables and the cool, soft but spicy fish is perfect. By the end of the meal a few more guests trickled in, but we were glad to have had the place to ourselves to enjoy a spectacular introduction to Peruvian food.
The rest of Peru’s food wasn’t quite so exciting, but we did find an amazing sandwich shop that showcased some classic peruvian flavors. Each of the dozen or so sandwiches could be topped with one of ten sauces, my favorites being sauce (elderberry), aji mild and spicy, ajillo (aioli-garlic mayonnaise), and the argentine chimichurri (garlic, parsley, and chili). Juanito, of “Juanito’s Sandwiches” was there pretty much every night along with lots of Beatles music to make Dave happy. Our favorite, after the loaded roasted vegetable, was something called a cuzqueño, too delicious to be real. Two savory tamales sprinkled with sauce berries, just like the ones they sell at the bus stop and by the cathedral, topped a few slices of roast pork butt, or lechón, with nothing more but a slice of tomato and a leaf of lettuce, makes an entire meal. I think D once ate two in one sitting. We dined at Juanito’s nearly twice a day until we had eaten so many sandwiches that no more would fit. An A+ for eating, and not in any guidebook.
The last site of Peruvian deliciousness was in Arequipa, one that we stumbled across one day looking for a cheap lunch. Nina Yaku, it was called, and to this day I have no idea what it means. We walked by the restaurant several times; it is one of many on a touristy street near the Convent, nearly indistinguishable from a half dozen other well-decorated restaurants with a fixed menu. Upon closer investigation, they offered several vegetarian specialties on the menu, as well as creative sounding dishes. We took a chance on it one afternoon, and I ordered the set menu for $15 soles (about 4.75 USD): a cold beer and that day’s ceviche. Not only was the ceviche corvina (a small fish kind of like snapper but tastier), but it was fantastic! Accompanied by roasted sweet potatoes and rocoto strips, it was the perfect Peruvian lunch. We came back the same night for dinner, it was so good.
The best thing about Nina Yaku was that in addition to its fantastic food and friendly wait staff it had a stuffed alpaca smiling down at everyone from the wall. It was the same sort of alpaca that I’d run across in a few ritzy shops in Cusco and continued to lust after during my stay in Peru. Yes, I am nearly a quarter century old, but I still have a soft spot for stuffed animals. These little alpacas, made with real alpaca pelts, are about 18 inches long and feel like little clouds. I knew that if I’d asked the price it would have wound up in my suitcase, traveling the Southern Cone with me until April. With a little trepidation, I left Mr. Alpaca in the store. Maybe someday I’ll be back in Peru to indulge my camelid addiction.
Eventually it was time to leave highlands to head back south again, this time to Chile. I was eager to have a glimpse of the ocean again, after months in the mountains, but I would miss my furry friends dearly. Hasta luego, alpaca!
So far, my favorite fauna has been Bolivian: the llama with its tasty steaks and warm wool, the squirrel-rabbit fusion vizcacha, the fussy and fabulous flamingoes, the skittish vicuña. But the one I had been waiting to see l could hardly be found in Bolivia, save two trussed and decorated pet-like ones on Copacabana’s beach. Yes, I would have to wait until I crossed the Peruvian border to see herds of the best animal of all, the alpaca. Not only are they cute and demure, but they produce the best wool in the world, save that of those crazy Indian goats. I waited nearly a month, asking at every new town “Is there any place that sells straight wool?” instead of the shawls, hats, scarves, and llama-covered sweaters that could be found all over Northern Argentina and Bolivia.
Finally, in Cusco, I hit the jackpot. I found an outlet of a wool factory in Arequipa. Not knowing that I would later find myself in Arequipa on a quest for condors, I picked up a bit of baby alpaca. I felt a little guilty, not having actually seen a real alpaca yet, but I had high hopes for camelid sightings for our time in Cusco.
Before the 1940’s and the publicity surrounding Machupicchu, Cusco was a sleepy mountain town with only a few hundred inhabitants. As the fame of the Lost City of the Inkas grew, so did Machupicchu. An economically depressed backwater became the hub of archaeology in Peru, and a gold mine for tourism.
The city has adapted to foreign tastes and cultures, boasting vegetarian restaurants and Irish pubs, American retirees and European backpackers. Our second day in the city, I tried to take a picture of Dave in front of a series of stones in a wall which form the shape of a puma and a serpent (not camelids, but still cool), two of the three sacred animals of the Inkas. A wrinkled old woman, at least 75 years old, walked into the picture with a llama and refused to leave. She was tricked out in traditional garb: woven skirts with bright colors, an embroidered vest, and a bowl shaped hat with tassels. I didn’t really feel like engaging in a battle of wills with a seventy-something small Peruvian woman, so I snapped my picture and Dave tried to subtly hand her a coin. Apparently one sol wasn’t enough, and she wanted more; that’s some serious attitude. She and her llama don’t take any shit.
Cusco, or the Gringo Capital of South America as it is often called, was a great base for expeditions into the Sacred Valley of the Incas, and very attractive, but it smacked of the U.S., Europe, or some other Westernized country. People were friendly and nearly all spoke a bit of English, in homage to the idol of the dollar and in respect of the city’s main source of income. The food was great, if you wanted to pay exorbitant prices, but the good cheap places were always swarming with tourists, most of whom couldn’t speak a lick of Spanish. The owner of one of our favorite restaurants was unfortunately one of such people. Our first meal there, I thought that she couldn’t possibly have any authority at this establishment with such sentences as “Pu-ays, tay hablo tomorrow por-kee yow no sabo ahhh-hhora.” Ach. Oh well. The only reason that we kept coming back was the thick crusty panini sandwiches and divine mint lemonade.
Museums abounded in old buildings razed by the Spanish, and the vestiges of Inka culture were visible all through the city. One of the best was the Museo de Arte Precolumbiano (MAP), complete with a swank café in the central courtyard just like Manhattan museums. Clearly catering to wealthy cosmopolitan travelers, the museum came about because Lima’s Museo Larco had thousands of artifacts languishing in some basement storage facility, and someone had the brilliant idea to take them out and move them to Cusco. Kudos to them, I say. The art was worth the USD $15 admission, with wonderful abstract pieces from the Peruvian coast that looked remarkably like Picasso’s cubist sculptures. According to the signs, Pablo himself visited South America and was inspired by some of these ancient forms. Modernist art at 1200 B.C.E? Who would have thought? There were camelids here too—golden llamas and other small icons from wealthy priests’ homes or city temples. I was almost tempted to bring home a stone replica of one of the lost breeds of long-haired alpaca, but I decided that heavy alpaca kitsch was much less cool than alpaca wool.
Every store in Cusco sells carved llamas, and if that weren’t enough, vendors take them to the touristy places outside of town too. At Sacsayhuaman, the ancient Incan fort which guarded Q’osqo and provided celebratory grounds for the still celebrated Inti Raymi summer solstice festival, before we even reached the entrance three people offered bite-sized pumas, alpacas, and llamas from what looked like a very heavy knapsack.
One thing that I love about Inka culture is that they took their visual symbols seriously. The puma, master of the earthly realm, was not only a deity but the shape of the capital city. The zigzagged walls of the fort form a jagged set of teeth for the puma of Cusco. Llamas, sacrificed at various points in the year, were food for the gods.
Another fantastic but anachronistic Inkan delight is the word Sacsayhuaman itself: when pronounced it is nearly indistinguishable from the English “sexy woman.” Adding to the linguistic hilarity is that the Quechua translation means approximately “satisfied falcon.” There’s a whole lot going on there that seems quite funny, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
Today, Sacsayhuaman is still interesting not only because of its archeological merits, but because it is a place that the Cuzqueños truly own. All of the historical sights are free for residents on the weekends, but it seems like Sacsayhuaman is the one that is the most visited. Its large green expanses and natural rockslide serve the city as much as a public park as an ancient ruin. Unlike Machupicchu or Qoricancha, the old temple of the sun turned into (of course) a Catholic church, Sacsayhuaman is a place for the people of the city; it is alive. Teenage couples take picnics up the hill and make out; old ladies sit on the stones and read; little kids slide down the rocks, just like grown men did in the old daguerreotypes from the museums. It was good to see that there is part of Cusco’s history that the people of Peru actually get to enjoy, instead of selling it to tourists. The only downside that I found was the lack of llamas.
Arequipa
Once we actually got to Michell & Co.’s “Alpaca Mundo” in Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city and southern industrial center, I was in heaven. We had a tour of the store and office complex, recently renovated to include three art galleries of Peruvian paintings, a museum of old wool refining machines, and a separating room, where the 12 different natural colors of alpaca wool are sorted. I got to see some of the suri alpacas, with their dreadlocked wool hanging down in sheets to their ankles. Then, to my utter delight, I was directed to the wool outlet! Hours of fun commenced, and I ended up with 6 kilos of merino, sheep, alpaca, and baby alpaca wool. Next winter in the ‘states is going to be so fun.
Arequipa was actually the first real city that we went to in Peru, and also the last. It has a city center, real businesses and locals, and a culture that is not centered around a famous historical site. True, there were beautiful things to see and old monuments, but they formed part of the city, they weren’t the reason for the city. We came there for two reasons, and ended up extending our planned two day stay for over a week. When we left Cusco, the mother hen owner of our hostel told us that we just had to stay with her friend Mercedes, who runs a tour company and rents out several rooms of her home to students. What the heck, we said, and arrived at Mercedes’ door at 9:00 am after a fantastically horrible overnight bus ride.
I had not slept for five minutes on the 10 hour trip, having been steamed like a blue crab by heating vents on the side of the bus which kept the ambient interior temperature around 90 degrees. If I’d had a beer and a box of Old Bay Seafood Seasoning to sprinkle on my head, I could have lived out a crustacean’s death throes trapped in an enameled metal bus, praying that the lid would open and release the steam. Unfortunately, there was no ventilation, so I pressed my face against the freezing cold window all night, wishing that just a teensy bit of the forty-some degree outside air would come inside.
Mercedes welcomed us to her home in a purple bathrobe with curlers, shuffled us into a bedroom cluttered with old furniture and computer accessories, and we fell immediately asleep. While we stayed in her house, there was another family as well, friends of hers from Cusco, who we would eat breakfast with and share our afternoon tea. Yes, I missed my Argentine café con leche, but it wasn’t a bad trade off to be able to chat about Latin America, travel, and life with real people from Peru. It was so hard to reach la gente in Cusco, with the tension of tourist and local strongly demarcated in dress, appearance, language, and eating habits. People either seemed to be putting on a show of culture or blatantly advertising some agency or product. In Mercedes’ apartment, we were both visitors to Arequipa, canceling a few of the impediments to conversation that can make it difficult to get to know people. D and I looked forward to breakfast, always with some sort of fresh fruit juice (Mercedes was adamant that fruit was the way to be healthy), fresh bread and chamomile tea to go with friendly conversation and plans for the day.
We left Arequipa after just two days of alpaca-filled fun for Colca Cañon (more to follow, when I scrape together some time), one of the few places left where you can see wild Andean Condors. Now those are some seriously large birds.
There were less smiles and hugs waiting for us when we returned from the trip, the cause of which was unclear for some time. Mercedes’ younger sister Doris let us in to an empty apartment, to a different room that strangely had most of the same old furniture in it. We were pretty tired and dusty, so we sat down for tea with Doris and half of the cuzqueño family, who were leaving for home that afternoon to join the grandmother and son, already waiting in Cusco. Along with participating in an animated discussion of Cuban history and politics, we learned that it was the sisters’ father’s 80th birthday that week. Festivity preparations were already under way, building to a fever pitch around the time we planned to leave. Now that we understood what the semi-chaos was around the house, everything made more sense.
We spent a good deal of our time recovering from our Colca trek, but still had time to see some of the sights of Arequipa.
One entire afternoon we wandered through the mini-city of the Santa Catalina Monastery, four square city blocks of nuns complete with its own market, plaza, and neighborhoods. Life as a catholic nun was not a heck of a lot of fun if you weren’t loaded with money. The best part of the visit, other than the huge “SILENCIO” stenciled and carved into the entrance arch, was seeing a real locutorio. This is amusing because there are “locutorios” all over South America. In contemporary parlance, it is a call center, generally including internet services, where you can go into a phone booth and make calls in private. In the monastery, the locutorio is a hallway or room with double grates or other obfuscation so that family members could speak with the nuns once a month. It differs depending on the location, but is basically a few holes in the wall for supervised communication with the outside world. A little more rustic than the locutorios that were our only connection to friends and family in the far away North.
We also tried to pay a visit to Juanita, the frozen Inkan child-sacrifice, but she was on her annual world tour from January to April, so we saw her understudy Susie. The Andean Sanctuary museum, Juanita’s home, would have been more interesting had the air conditioning not been turned down low enough to turn all guests into mummies as well. I learned some interesting things about llamas and Inkan symbolism, but was distracted by my chattering teeth.
We saw the colonial city constructed with blocks of bright white lava rock called sillar, the new commercial and banking center, and the residential neighborhood where Meche, her cat, and two noisy dogs live.
Oh, and David ate a guinea pig. It had peanuts on it so I couldn’t.
Peruvian cuisine is something that is struggling to come into its own, but the possibilities are exciting. Traditional country food, like tamales and choclo (giant corn) is incredibly rich, with a depth of flavor that North American industrial corn will never be able to match. A huge biodiversity of potatoes, with their myriad colors, textures, and flavors provide the foundation for many potentially interesting meals, especially when combined with rocoto and ají, the Andes’ hottest peppers. Finally, though it requires proximity to water for the freshest fish, the star of Peruvian gastronomy, ceviche, is out of this world.
In Cusco, we splurged on our first night out on the town, testing out a nuevo-Peruano restaurant called “A Mi Manera” (My Way). Yes, folks, it is named after the Frank Sinatra song. We were the only people in the restaurant at 7:00 when we placed our orders with an amazingly friendly waiter who, while he and the staff attended our table, was taking down the restaurant’s Christmas decorations. I ate seven different types of potatoes that night, all of them in our appetizers. Nearly burned my mouth off on a stuffed rocoto pepper, but once I discovered that you’re supposed to combine it with lots of melted cheese and fluffy roasted potatoes, everything was okay. Also that night I had my first true Peruvian ceviche. I was skeptical of any seafood related dishes in the landlocked Cusco province, but the pejerrey (kingfish) was freshwater, from nearby Lake Titicaca. When the ceviche came out of the kitchen, mounded on my plate were feathery slices of fish in a barely creamy citrus sauce, all tossed with fresh herbs and thinly sliced sweet red onions, all of my fears vanished. I love ceviche because it tastes so fresh and simple, but balances strong flavors well. The textures are different than sushi, which is mostly soft; the contrasts of fresh vegetables and the cool, soft but spicy fish is perfect. By the end of the meal a few more guests trickled in, but we were glad to have had the place to ourselves to enjoy a spectacular introduction to Peruvian food.
The rest of Peru’s food wasn’t quite so exciting, but we did find an amazing sandwich shop that showcased some classic peruvian flavors. Each of the dozen or so sandwiches could be topped with one of ten sauces, my favorites being sauce (elderberry), aji mild and spicy, ajillo (aioli-garlic mayonnaise), and the argentine chimichurri (garlic, parsley, and chili). Juanito, of “Juanito’s Sandwiches” was there pretty much every night along with lots of Beatles music to make Dave happy. Our favorite, after the loaded roasted vegetable, was something called a cuzqueño, too delicious to be real. Two savory tamales sprinkled with sauce berries, just like the ones they sell at the bus stop and by the cathedral, topped a few slices of roast pork butt, or lechón, with nothing more but a slice of tomato and a leaf of lettuce, makes an entire meal. I think D once ate two in one sitting. We dined at Juanito’s nearly twice a day until we had eaten so many sandwiches that no more would fit. An A+ for eating, and not in any guidebook.
The last site of Peruvian deliciousness was in Arequipa, one that we stumbled across one day looking for a cheap lunch. Nina Yaku, it was called, and to this day I have no idea what it means. We walked by the restaurant several times; it is one of many on a touristy street near the Convent, nearly indistinguishable from a half dozen other well-decorated restaurants with a fixed menu. Upon closer investigation, they offered several vegetarian specialties on the menu, as well as creative sounding dishes. We took a chance on it one afternoon, and I ordered the set menu for $15 soles (about 4.75 USD): a cold beer and that day’s ceviche. Not only was the ceviche corvina (a small fish kind of like snapper but tastier), but it was fantastic! Accompanied by roasted sweet potatoes and rocoto strips, it was the perfect Peruvian lunch. We came back the same night for dinner, it was so good.
The best thing about Nina Yaku was that in addition to its fantastic food and friendly wait staff it had a stuffed alpaca smiling down at everyone from the wall. It was the same sort of alpaca that I’d run across in a few ritzy shops in Cusco and continued to lust after during my stay in Peru. Yes, I am nearly a quarter century old, but I still have a soft spot for stuffed animals. These little alpacas, made with real alpaca pelts, are about 18 inches long and feel like little clouds. I knew that if I’d asked the price it would have wound up in my suitcase, traveling the Southern Cone with me until April. With a little trepidation, I left Mr. Alpaca in the store. Maybe someday I’ll be back in Peru to indulge my camelid addiction.
Eventually it was time to leave highlands to head back south again, this time to Chile. I was eager to have a glimpse of the ocean again, after months in the mountains, but I would miss my furry friends dearly. Hasta luego, alpaca!
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
The Heart of America
PREFACE: At one point I had pretensions of sending this in to a travel magazine, but thanks to my inexperience and lack of connections in the magazine world, some schmuck at the New York Times fucking wrote the same article that I was going to write. His isn’t as cool as mine, and he didn’t speak Spanish.
Part 1: The Inkas, the Quechuas People
As most 5th grade history students learn, the Spanish Conquistadores demolished the Inka culture fairly quickly after arriving in South America. An astute youngster might even know a couple of other pre-Columbian ethnic groups from other parts of the Americas, what a quipu is, and will surely be able to recognize the most famous, the most publicized of all early American cities, Machu Picchu.
Unfortunately, the history lesson ends there; at least in the United States, most school curricula do not include much before 1500 in the way of American History. Even as a Spanish major in college I received little more than a perfunctory tale of South America: conquest and slaughter followed by U.S. exploitation and continual political instability. One of the things that I was eager to absorb in my travels to Peru was some of the mysterious history that provides the backdrop to South America’s story.
For me the most obvious starting point is what Ché called the Heart of America, the capital of the Inkan Empire, Cusco, or Qos’qo in Quechua. From there, I had a myriad of ways to begin my exploration of ancient indigenous people, lost cultures, and recovered histories.
It took several days of adjusting to equilibrate myself to the foreign influence in modern Cusco, a city whose entire livelihood is built on the tourism industry. Everything was more expensive than Bolivia, my last destination, where the dollar is 8 bolivianos, as opposed to 3.2 Peruvian soles. Prices are in American dollars, and nearly every restaurant menu is translated, if not written in English. There are ad hoc guides on the street corners offering well-rehearsed five-minute summaries of important Inka sites and constructions; old women and small children dress in traditional costumes, carrying lambs and puppies, or guiding llamas in ridiculously photogenic fashion. Snapshots available for a fee, of course. Along the bustling routes from the hostels and hotels to the historical center of town, cries of “Massage Señora? Pedicure, Lady?” burst out of every shop window. The echoes rang in my ears for days. It was not until I embarked upon the ancient Inkan pilgrimage that I understood the reason for the proliferation of massage parlors and personal hygiene services; after 4 solid days of hiking up and down mountains, you need a few creature comforts.
Part 2: El camino inka
Many people come to Cusco just for the Camino Inka or Inca Trail, and I was one of them. I wanted to see the famous Machu Picchu I remembered from postcards and the poser on my highs school Spanish classroom’s wall. The mystique of the Inka culture and my painful ignorance of it made this one of the must-see places in the world; visiting the ruins was something that one just “had” do to.
In my research before the trip, I found out that the Peruvian government strictly regulates the traffic on the Trail. The first restriction is that only 500 people per day are allowed to enter the trail. These 500 spots include tourists, guides, and the chaski, sometimes called porters, who carry the tents, food, and extra gear. I knew that the trail was heavily traveled, that some conservationists even advocate closing it off to protect it from overuse, but that walking for four days in the footsteps of the Inkas was worth the effort. Since we were traveling in the low season, we secured our spots on the trail only a month in advance and waited for our departure date of January 8th, just at the beginning of the rainy season.
During the winter, some people reserve permits for the Trail a year in advance, placing quite a premium on the trip. Companies charge anywhere from $250 to $1000 for the 4 day classic Inka Trail which takes fit and energetic travelers from Cusco to Ollantaytambo by bus, from the Piscakucho Checkpoint at km 82 to Machu Picchu on foot, then from Machu Picchu back to Cusco by train.
Our guide whisked us off in a bus at 6:05, picking up passengers intermittently as we drove through a sleepy Cusco. I took the opportunity to catch up on my rest until we reached Ollantaytambo, the last town before the trailhead. There, I grabbed a quick pre-hike breakfast of fresh toast and coca tea to get energized for the trip.
The coca leaf is a key element of highland life. Its symbolism and restorative powers are remnants of pre-Inka times and the Quechua peoples are adamant that it remains a part of modern society despite coca’s association with the cocaine supply chain. In the Museo de Arte Precolumbiano (MAP, the Pre-Columbian Art Museum) you can see small statues of Pacha Papa, the husband of Mother Earth, with a bulge of coca leaves in his mouth, looking just like rural farm workers all over Peru. Our guide on the Inka Trail, David, made himself what he called “the real coca-cola” each morning in an empty Coke bottle: hot water, a bit of sugar, and a handful of coca leaves. This concoction is a great way to hydrate on the trail. Having suffered bout of altitude sickness a few weeks before, I experienced firsthand the benefits of coca: my nausea abated and I was able to function a little more normally at 3500 meters above sea level. After that, I was sold on the plant’s benefits. Steamy coca tea replaced my morning coffee in Peru, and helped me make it up the infamous 4200 meter Warmiwañusca (Dead Woman’s Pass) on Day 2 of our hike. It refreshed me after lunch, and thawed me out after a four hour hike in chilly rain to our last campsite, Wiñawayna (Forever Young).
The weather did not improve on the last day of our trek, when we were scheduled to enter the legendary Machu Picchu through Inti Punku, the Sun Gate. The night before, the two-day trekkers joined the other hikers staying at Wiñawayna, and the chaskis went home freeing up about 300 more spaces on the trail. Thus, on day four of the hike the number of tourists doubled, creating a log-jam of hikers at the last campsite. Most groups woke at 4:00 am to be first in line at the last checkpoint on the Inka Trail before the Machu Picchu UNESCO Sanctuary. At 5:00 am I found myself in the midst of a line of multicolored rain ponchos waiting for dawn and the opening of the checkpoint. The dawn never really came; the sky gradually turned more silvery than charcoal, and before I knew it I was one of nearly 200 trekkers rushing for some unknown reason down the last 6 km of the Inka Trail.
I could understand the preoccupation with early arrival if there were some mindblowing vista at the destination point. However, following a set of logical calculations, I knew that if it was drizzling and we were walking through the clouds (literally!), there would be absolutely zero chance of seeing the traditional Machu Picchu snapshot from the top of the mountain. When the trail came to the last set of huge Inka stairs, I paused for a moment before gathering what strength was left in my body. My legs, already shaking already from lactic acid buildup for three days, plus lack of oxygen, were not moving at their quickest. I started up the steps, which were about three feet wide and between six and nine inches deep. Most of them were about 18 inches tall, quite a large distance for people of normal size. Getting up stairs like this is no easy task under the best of conditions, but added to the difficulty of the dimensions, imagine a cliff face on your left and a several hundred foot drop immediately on your right; there’s no hand rail, just clouds. Then, on top of that, add two days’ worth of rain streaming down the mountain via the fastest route possible: the stairs. Did I mention that I was also carrying a backpack?
I’m not a hiker. I didn’t come on the trip to push my body to its physical limits, to beat some record time from Piskakora to Machu Picchu, or to scramble like a mountain goat over dangerous rock faces. Thus, I was more than a little angry when a group of six people decided that it was imperative that they pass me on the stairs. I was clearly going much too slow for their tastes, and they absolutely had to get to the fogged-in Sun Gate two minutes before I did. Heaven forbid they might miss something. So there I stood, balancing on the largest step I could find, teetering on the precipice side of the stairs trying not to look down the stairs in vertigo and tumble down through dozens of tourists to a wet, rocky end, while some jerk on a mission and his five friends whizzed by me on the left. At least the last few of the group had the decency to let me move over to the rocky side of the stairs, instead of pushing me closer to the edge. Finally, a more sane and more considerate hiker asked if I was okay and let me proceed slowly up the stairs. By the time I reached the top, the adrenaline wore off and I was left cold, wet, and furious two kilometers from Machu Picchu.
When people end up in large groups, their minds generally turn to mush, and even the best of human beings becomes consumed with a sense of selfishness that I abhor. It was this sort of situation that I encountered at the end of the Trail; being stranded on the stairs was frightening, and legitimately dangerous. This group’s guide asked them not to race ahead, and looked beleaguered when they ignored his advice. When I finally reached the top of the stairs, no more than five minutes after the group of people in such a hurry that they had to nearly push me off a mountain, they were panting, waiting for their guide to catch up. I hope their little race was worth it.
A few kilometers down the trail, I reached the Sun Gate well before they did, to find what I knew would be there: impenetrable fog. The rain let up a bit, but we were still standing on a mountain in the middle of the cloud. There was no Machu Picchu bathed in the magic light of dawn, no sunkissed ruins, only grey mist.
Part 3: Alturas de Macchu Picchu
The Machu Picchu that I experienced had a different sort of mystique than the one in the postcards; it was eerie, hesitant to reveal its secrets and guarded in its majesty. The surrounding peaks were sketched out in the watery shadows of a Japanese ink painting, and the ruins faded in and out of the mist as our small tour group wound its way up and down the narrow stairs that traverse the city. I left my camera in the dry safety of the coat check with my backpack, too tired to care about taking pictures once I passed through the theme-park turnstiles into the Sanctuary area to begin the official tour.
Later on that morning the sun came out, just as our small group was ready to board a bus down to Aguas Calientes and a hot lunch. With the good weather came tourists by the busload, spreading out over the grassy terraces and stone steps like ants at a picnic. I was exhausted, nearly too tired to drag my legs up the hundreds of steps in the city itself, and recently embittered by the stupidity of human beings in large numbers. Maybe someday I’ll go back to Machu Picchu with my camera on a sunny day, but it will be a different mountain, not the fog enclosed sanctuary that I explored one January dawn.
For all its beauty, elegance, and meticulous preservation, Machu Picchu wasn’t the magical destination I desired. My four days on the Camino Inka will remain in my memory for decades to come, but the journey was more rewarding than the goal. I put my body through the same rigors the Inka priests and pilgrims experienced, and seen dozens of the 85 micro-climates in the landscape. Thus, went I reached the summit, the holy city in the clouds, I was perplexed and disoriented when I realized that the other 600 some people wandering around the city had not shared the same experience. The women in high heels teetering along the terraces, the freshly showered and comfortably attired retirees with their enormous hats and cameras, and the hurrying daytrippers did not come through the cloud forests, sleep in the mountains, or appreciate the strength and stamina of Inka pilgrims on the holy road. A British-operated luxury train pulled them through the valley along the Urubamba River, oblivious to the trials and beauties of the trail.
Machupicchu is a museum. It is carefully taken care of, studied with precision by hundreds of archaeologists with international grants, highly regulated, and bears the golden stamp of approval from United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization’s World Heritage Foundation. There are a dozen of ways to get there, depending on your physical fitness or the depth of your pocket book. It is beautiful, awe-inspiring, and everything that the posters advertise, but it no longer evokes the spirit of discovery. Hiram Bingham, an anthropologist who brought the attention of the Western world to Machu Picchu, took most of the small objects back to Yale University for study. Unfortunately, the Peruvian government did not supervise the excavation and cleaning, giving free rein to the American historians. In a silly romantic way I wanted to feel history, not preservation. With its pristine lawns and manicured stones, the site requires constant maintenance. It isn’t the same place that the Inka used as his seat of power, where the Inka and his people catalogued the stars and revered the stars.
Just as the old Machu Picchu was lost to the world for centuries, the poetic solitary Machu Picchu is also now just a thing of legend. This wasn’t Neruda’s Machu Picchu, the Old Mountain lost to the world; a place of silence, water, hope, and struggle that speaks through the depths of the rocks of the tragic betrayal of one of America’s greatest cultures. This was modern Peru overseeing a fantastic economic resource. Ché and Neruda’s mountain and its city are lost to the world, for better or for worse. Bingham may have found the city for the history books, but the Western world’s “finding” it and adding it to the modern canon of sacred places took away some of its power and spiritual weight. It shrunk the heart of America.
Part 4: Choquequirao
The nonexistence of my mythical Machu Picchu led me to a trek on another, less-traveled trail. This time the road lead to Choquequirao, one of the last refuges of the dying Empire where the Incas fought the Spanish conquistadors. All the guidebooks and several Cusco locals warned against embarking on the Choqueqirao trek during the rainy season for fear of mudslides and other weather-induced catastrophes, but after surviving three days of rain on the Inka Trail, I figured things couldn’t get much worse. We scheduled the trip with a small local company, after searching around for the absolute lowest price. At $180 per person for four days, the Choquequirao trip cost nearly half of the Inka Trail. I knew the food would be more basic than the four course lunches and dinners on the way to Machu Picchu, but from the cordiality and frankness of the people who worked in the tiny tour office, I had hopes for an interesting trip.
From the beginning, this trip was different. Our taxi was late, so we sped through Cusco with a frantic tour employee to be shuffled onto a bus to Cachora with a guide and our cook carrying three dozen eggs on top of his backpack. To cut the early morning chill, I grabbed two tamales from the vendor hauling a 30 pound canvas sack of steaming corn masa through the aisle of the bus. In a daze, I ate my breakfast along with fifty odd Peruvians on their way to work. I awoke from a nap with the news that we were about to get off the bus, but when I looked outside all I saw were mountains and farms, no towns, no street vendors hawking walking sticks or other tourist fare. We took a frenetic taxi down a twisting dirt road to the town of Cachora, maiming a sheep on the way to the city center: two paved blocks leading to a small square with an enormous ancient tree. I waited patiently while our guide ran around town gathering provisions and making sure the mules and their driver were ready to go. Due to environmental restrictions no pack animals are allowed on the Inka Trail; I was glad to have a little help on what I knew would be a more difficult hike. After a short first day’s hike, we reached our campsite. Instead of a dozen raised sand beds filled with trekkers’ tents, our tent waited for us in a verdant glen. Only one other couple was staying at the campsite, creating the sense of a peaceful refuge. As the sun set, a pair of hummingbirds swirled around the clearing collecting nectar, and I was reminded that I too needed to stock up on energy for the hike ahead.
The ascent to Choquequirao, which we started at 6:30 a.m., was one of the most physically challenging tasks I have ever accomplished. Thanks to our pre-season training on the Inka Trail, we were in good shape and equilibrated to the altitude, which changed from 1800 to 1550 m.a.s.l (meters above sea level) as we went down to the Rio Apurimac, then jumped from 1550 to 2400 by lunchtime. Luckily, Eduardo our guide prodded us out of bed early with coca tea, so we did most of our hiking while the western face of the mountain was in shade. Contrary to all of the warnings, there was hardly a drop of rain on the entire trek; no gushing stairways of water and trails partially obscured with mudslides like I found on the Inka Trail. We were incredibly lucky with the weather. Even with idyllic weather conditions, trudging up a mountain is exhausting. We made it to the highest point after 3.5 hours of hiking, and I was amazed to hear Eduardo tell us “you walked well.” Not knowing what that meant, I asked him to elaborate. The last group that he took up the mountain, not accustomed to the altitude or hiking with packs, needed over seven hours to finish the same trail. After a relaxing lunch at a tiny farm on the hillside, we set off along the final 10 kilometers to the ruins.
From afar, there doesn’t seem to be much on the mountaintop. It’s clearly terraced but the warmer climate zone and humidity make the mountains like tropical greenhouses, perfect for vivacious jungle-like foliage. Choqueqirao is covered in vegetation, part of a living, aggressive forest.
Eduardo was right, this wasn’t Imperial Inkan architecture, with immense seamlessly-joined granite blocks. The buildings are more rustic, made of layered pizarra stones joined with mortar. The edges are rough, just like the cleaning process at the site. It was built in a rush as a refuge from the advancing Spanish armies. At Machupicchu I observed at least a dozen workers picking moss out of the bricks with dental instruments, whereas at Choquequirao there were two men with pickaxes clearing brush and one resident archeologist. Because of some misguided structural restorations in the 1970’s including concrete supports, the ruins of Choqueqirao don’t qualify for the title of a World Heritage site, and consequently don’t qualify for the restoration grants that go along with UNESCO’s endorsement. Bizarrely, France is quite interested in the site’s historical value and provides much of the current funding.
In the warm afternoon light after our grueling hike we were practically the only ones on the top of the mountain. A few humans dotted the grass: our guide, the harriero, D and I, and the scientist. We walked up in the breezy silence to the ceremonial ground: a circular lawn created by slicing off the next closest peak to the palace and stared down the canyon into the heart of the Andes, lush peaks before us, and a few snow-capped ones in the distance. We tromped about the ruins, taking fake Ché pictures like the ones I remembered from Motorcycle Diaries, alone in the sculpted doorways of Cuzco and Machu Picchu. Now we were the intrepid explorers: exhausted and sweaty with more fly bites and scrapes than I care to remember, but we’d made it to a place where history wasn’t so entangled with Western colonialism. Where we could sit outside the palace and listen to legends told from a local as a few scrappy clouds raced through a clear blue sky.
The next morning, in a cool fog and light drizzle, we explored the agricultural sections of the ruins, found the ancient architect’s house, and then had to be on our way back: we had to hike the entire trail back again. No luxury train filled with attractive women modeling alpaca products, or men doing the masked devil dance (complete with the historical caricature mask of the white bearded devil—think there was a hidden message there?), we were back on our own foot power. We plodded along the ridge back from Choqueqirao, and at each sinuous curve of the trail the mist swallowed a little bit more of the city, wrapping up its secrets again for someone else to discover.
Part 1: The Inkas, the Quechuas People
As most 5th grade history students learn, the Spanish Conquistadores demolished the Inka culture fairly quickly after arriving in South America. An astute youngster might even know a couple of other pre-Columbian ethnic groups from other parts of the Americas, what a quipu is, and will surely be able to recognize the most famous, the most publicized of all early American cities, Machu Picchu.
Unfortunately, the history lesson ends there; at least in the United States, most school curricula do not include much before 1500 in the way of American History. Even as a Spanish major in college I received little more than a perfunctory tale of South America: conquest and slaughter followed by U.S. exploitation and continual political instability. One of the things that I was eager to absorb in my travels to Peru was some of the mysterious history that provides the backdrop to South America’s story.
For me the most obvious starting point is what Ché called the Heart of America, the capital of the Inkan Empire, Cusco, or Qos’qo in Quechua. From there, I had a myriad of ways to begin my exploration of ancient indigenous people, lost cultures, and recovered histories.
It took several days of adjusting to equilibrate myself to the foreign influence in modern Cusco, a city whose entire livelihood is built on the tourism industry. Everything was more expensive than Bolivia, my last destination, where the dollar is 8 bolivianos, as opposed to 3.2 Peruvian soles. Prices are in American dollars, and nearly every restaurant menu is translated, if not written in English. There are ad hoc guides on the street corners offering well-rehearsed five-minute summaries of important Inka sites and constructions; old women and small children dress in traditional costumes, carrying lambs and puppies, or guiding llamas in ridiculously photogenic fashion. Snapshots available for a fee, of course. Along the bustling routes from the hostels and hotels to the historical center of town, cries of “Massage Señora? Pedicure, Lady?” burst out of every shop window. The echoes rang in my ears for days. It was not until I embarked upon the ancient Inkan pilgrimage that I understood the reason for the proliferation of massage parlors and personal hygiene services; after 4 solid days of hiking up and down mountains, you need a few creature comforts.
Part 2: El camino inka
Many people come to Cusco just for the Camino Inka or Inca Trail, and I was one of them. I wanted to see the famous Machu Picchu I remembered from postcards and the poser on my highs school Spanish classroom’s wall. The mystique of the Inka culture and my painful ignorance of it made this one of the must-see places in the world; visiting the ruins was something that one just “had” do to.
In my research before the trip, I found out that the Peruvian government strictly regulates the traffic on the Trail. The first restriction is that only 500 people per day are allowed to enter the trail. These 500 spots include tourists, guides, and the chaski, sometimes called porters, who carry the tents, food, and extra gear. I knew that the trail was heavily traveled, that some conservationists even advocate closing it off to protect it from overuse, but that walking for four days in the footsteps of the Inkas was worth the effort. Since we were traveling in the low season, we secured our spots on the trail only a month in advance and waited for our departure date of January 8th, just at the beginning of the rainy season.
During the winter, some people reserve permits for the Trail a year in advance, placing quite a premium on the trip. Companies charge anywhere from $250 to $1000 for the 4 day classic Inka Trail which takes fit and energetic travelers from Cusco to Ollantaytambo by bus, from the Piscakucho Checkpoint at km 82 to Machu Picchu on foot, then from Machu Picchu back to Cusco by train.
Our guide whisked us off in a bus at 6:05, picking up passengers intermittently as we drove through a sleepy Cusco. I took the opportunity to catch up on my rest until we reached Ollantaytambo, the last town before the trailhead. There, I grabbed a quick pre-hike breakfast of fresh toast and coca tea to get energized for the trip.
The coca leaf is a key element of highland life. Its symbolism and restorative powers are remnants of pre-Inka times and the Quechua peoples are adamant that it remains a part of modern society despite coca’s association with the cocaine supply chain. In the Museo de Arte Precolumbiano (MAP, the Pre-Columbian Art Museum) you can see small statues of Pacha Papa, the husband of Mother Earth, with a bulge of coca leaves in his mouth, looking just like rural farm workers all over Peru. Our guide on the Inka Trail, David, made himself what he called “the real coca-cola” each morning in an empty Coke bottle: hot water, a bit of sugar, and a handful of coca leaves. This concoction is a great way to hydrate on the trail. Having suffered bout of altitude sickness a few weeks before, I experienced firsthand the benefits of coca: my nausea abated and I was able to function a little more normally at 3500 meters above sea level. After that, I was sold on the plant’s benefits. Steamy coca tea replaced my morning coffee in Peru, and helped me make it up the infamous 4200 meter Warmiwañusca (Dead Woman’s Pass) on Day 2 of our hike. It refreshed me after lunch, and thawed me out after a four hour hike in chilly rain to our last campsite, Wiñawayna (Forever Young).
The weather did not improve on the last day of our trek, when we were scheduled to enter the legendary Machu Picchu through Inti Punku, the Sun Gate. The night before, the two-day trekkers joined the other hikers staying at Wiñawayna, and the chaskis went home freeing up about 300 more spaces on the trail. Thus, on day four of the hike the number of tourists doubled, creating a log-jam of hikers at the last campsite. Most groups woke at 4:00 am to be first in line at the last checkpoint on the Inka Trail before the Machu Picchu UNESCO Sanctuary. At 5:00 am I found myself in the midst of a line of multicolored rain ponchos waiting for dawn and the opening of the checkpoint. The dawn never really came; the sky gradually turned more silvery than charcoal, and before I knew it I was one of nearly 200 trekkers rushing for some unknown reason down the last 6 km of the Inka Trail.
I could understand the preoccupation with early arrival if there were some mindblowing vista at the destination point. However, following a set of logical calculations, I knew that if it was drizzling and we were walking through the clouds (literally!), there would be absolutely zero chance of seeing the traditional Machu Picchu snapshot from the top of the mountain. When the trail came to the last set of huge Inka stairs, I paused for a moment before gathering what strength was left in my body. My legs, already shaking already from lactic acid buildup for three days, plus lack of oxygen, were not moving at their quickest. I started up the steps, which were about three feet wide and between six and nine inches deep. Most of them were about 18 inches tall, quite a large distance for people of normal size. Getting up stairs like this is no easy task under the best of conditions, but added to the difficulty of the dimensions, imagine a cliff face on your left and a several hundred foot drop immediately on your right; there’s no hand rail, just clouds. Then, on top of that, add two days’ worth of rain streaming down the mountain via the fastest route possible: the stairs. Did I mention that I was also carrying a backpack?
I’m not a hiker. I didn’t come on the trip to push my body to its physical limits, to beat some record time from Piskakora to Machu Picchu, or to scramble like a mountain goat over dangerous rock faces. Thus, I was more than a little angry when a group of six people decided that it was imperative that they pass me on the stairs. I was clearly going much too slow for their tastes, and they absolutely had to get to the fogged-in Sun Gate two minutes before I did. Heaven forbid they might miss something. So there I stood, balancing on the largest step I could find, teetering on the precipice side of the stairs trying not to look down the stairs in vertigo and tumble down through dozens of tourists to a wet, rocky end, while some jerk on a mission and his five friends whizzed by me on the left. At least the last few of the group had the decency to let me move over to the rocky side of the stairs, instead of pushing me closer to the edge. Finally, a more sane and more considerate hiker asked if I was okay and let me proceed slowly up the stairs. By the time I reached the top, the adrenaline wore off and I was left cold, wet, and furious two kilometers from Machu Picchu.
When people end up in large groups, their minds generally turn to mush, and even the best of human beings becomes consumed with a sense of selfishness that I abhor. It was this sort of situation that I encountered at the end of the Trail; being stranded on the stairs was frightening, and legitimately dangerous. This group’s guide asked them not to race ahead, and looked beleaguered when they ignored his advice. When I finally reached the top of the stairs, no more than five minutes after the group of people in such a hurry that they had to nearly push me off a mountain, they were panting, waiting for their guide to catch up. I hope their little race was worth it.
A few kilometers down the trail, I reached the Sun Gate well before they did, to find what I knew would be there: impenetrable fog. The rain let up a bit, but we were still standing on a mountain in the middle of the cloud. There was no Machu Picchu bathed in the magic light of dawn, no sunkissed ruins, only grey mist.
Part 3: Alturas de Macchu Picchu
The Machu Picchu that I experienced had a different sort of mystique than the one in the postcards; it was eerie, hesitant to reveal its secrets and guarded in its majesty. The surrounding peaks were sketched out in the watery shadows of a Japanese ink painting, and the ruins faded in and out of the mist as our small tour group wound its way up and down the narrow stairs that traverse the city. I left my camera in the dry safety of the coat check with my backpack, too tired to care about taking pictures once I passed through the theme-park turnstiles into the Sanctuary area to begin the official tour.
Later on that morning the sun came out, just as our small group was ready to board a bus down to Aguas Calientes and a hot lunch. With the good weather came tourists by the busload, spreading out over the grassy terraces and stone steps like ants at a picnic. I was exhausted, nearly too tired to drag my legs up the hundreds of steps in the city itself, and recently embittered by the stupidity of human beings in large numbers. Maybe someday I’ll go back to Machu Picchu with my camera on a sunny day, but it will be a different mountain, not the fog enclosed sanctuary that I explored one January dawn.
For all its beauty, elegance, and meticulous preservation, Machu Picchu wasn’t the magical destination I desired. My four days on the Camino Inka will remain in my memory for decades to come, but the journey was more rewarding than the goal. I put my body through the same rigors the Inka priests and pilgrims experienced, and seen dozens of the 85 micro-climates in the landscape. Thus, went I reached the summit, the holy city in the clouds, I was perplexed and disoriented when I realized that the other 600 some people wandering around the city had not shared the same experience. The women in high heels teetering along the terraces, the freshly showered and comfortably attired retirees with their enormous hats and cameras, and the hurrying daytrippers did not come through the cloud forests, sleep in the mountains, or appreciate the strength and stamina of Inka pilgrims on the holy road. A British-operated luxury train pulled them through the valley along the Urubamba River, oblivious to the trials and beauties of the trail.
Machupicchu is a museum. It is carefully taken care of, studied with precision by hundreds of archaeologists with international grants, highly regulated, and bears the golden stamp of approval from United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization’s World Heritage Foundation. There are a dozen of ways to get there, depending on your physical fitness or the depth of your pocket book. It is beautiful, awe-inspiring, and everything that the posters advertise, but it no longer evokes the spirit of discovery. Hiram Bingham, an anthropologist who brought the attention of the Western world to Machu Picchu, took most of the small objects back to Yale University for study. Unfortunately, the Peruvian government did not supervise the excavation and cleaning, giving free rein to the American historians. In a silly romantic way I wanted to feel history, not preservation. With its pristine lawns and manicured stones, the site requires constant maintenance. It isn’t the same place that the Inka used as his seat of power, where the Inka and his people catalogued the stars and revered the stars.
Just as the old Machu Picchu was lost to the world for centuries, the poetic solitary Machu Picchu is also now just a thing of legend. This wasn’t Neruda’s Machu Picchu, the Old Mountain lost to the world; a place of silence, water, hope, and struggle that speaks through the depths of the rocks of the tragic betrayal of one of America’s greatest cultures. This was modern Peru overseeing a fantastic economic resource. Ché and Neruda’s mountain and its city are lost to the world, for better or for worse. Bingham may have found the city for the history books, but the Western world’s “finding” it and adding it to the modern canon of sacred places took away some of its power and spiritual weight. It shrunk the heart of America.
Part 4: Choquequirao
The nonexistence of my mythical Machu Picchu led me to a trek on another, less-traveled trail. This time the road lead to Choquequirao, one of the last refuges of the dying Empire where the Incas fought the Spanish conquistadors. All the guidebooks and several Cusco locals warned against embarking on the Choqueqirao trek during the rainy season for fear of mudslides and other weather-induced catastrophes, but after surviving three days of rain on the Inka Trail, I figured things couldn’t get much worse. We scheduled the trip with a small local company, after searching around for the absolute lowest price. At $180 per person for four days, the Choquequirao trip cost nearly half of the Inka Trail. I knew the food would be more basic than the four course lunches and dinners on the way to Machu Picchu, but from the cordiality and frankness of the people who worked in the tiny tour office, I had hopes for an interesting trip.
From the beginning, this trip was different. Our taxi was late, so we sped through Cusco with a frantic tour employee to be shuffled onto a bus to Cachora with a guide and our cook carrying three dozen eggs on top of his backpack. To cut the early morning chill, I grabbed two tamales from the vendor hauling a 30 pound canvas sack of steaming corn masa through the aisle of the bus. In a daze, I ate my breakfast along with fifty odd Peruvians on their way to work. I awoke from a nap with the news that we were about to get off the bus, but when I looked outside all I saw were mountains and farms, no towns, no street vendors hawking walking sticks or other tourist fare. We took a frenetic taxi down a twisting dirt road to the town of Cachora, maiming a sheep on the way to the city center: two paved blocks leading to a small square with an enormous ancient tree. I waited patiently while our guide ran around town gathering provisions and making sure the mules and their driver were ready to go. Due to environmental restrictions no pack animals are allowed on the Inka Trail; I was glad to have a little help on what I knew would be a more difficult hike. After a short first day’s hike, we reached our campsite. Instead of a dozen raised sand beds filled with trekkers’ tents, our tent waited for us in a verdant glen. Only one other couple was staying at the campsite, creating the sense of a peaceful refuge. As the sun set, a pair of hummingbirds swirled around the clearing collecting nectar, and I was reminded that I too needed to stock up on energy for the hike ahead.
The ascent to Choquequirao, which we started at 6:30 a.m., was one of the most physically challenging tasks I have ever accomplished. Thanks to our pre-season training on the Inka Trail, we were in good shape and equilibrated to the altitude, which changed from 1800 to 1550 m.a.s.l (meters above sea level) as we went down to the Rio Apurimac, then jumped from 1550 to 2400 by lunchtime. Luckily, Eduardo our guide prodded us out of bed early with coca tea, so we did most of our hiking while the western face of the mountain was in shade. Contrary to all of the warnings, there was hardly a drop of rain on the entire trek; no gushing stairways of water and trails partially obscured with mudslides like I found on the Inka Trail. We were incredibly lucky with the weather. Even with idyllic weather conditions, trudging up a mountain is exhausting. We made it to the highest point after 3.5 hours of hiking, and I was amazed to hear Eduardo tell us “you walked well.” Not knowing what that meant, I asked him to elaborate. The last group that he took up the mountain, not accustomed to the altitude or hiking with packs, needed over seven hours to finish the same trail. After a relaxing lunch at a tiny farm on the hillside, we set off along the final 10 kilometers to the ruins.
From afar, there doesn’t seem to be much on the mountaintop. It’s clearly terraced but the warmer climate zone and humidity make the mountains like tropical greenhouses, perfect for vivacious jungle-like foliage. Choqueqirao is covered in vegetation, part of a living, aggressive forest.
Eduardo was right, this wasn’t Imperial Inkan architecture, with immense seamlessly-joined granite blocks. The buildings are more rustic, made of layered pizarra stones joined with mortar. The edges are rough, just like the cleaning process at the site. It was built in a rush as a refuge from the advancing Spanish armies. At Machupicchu I observed at least a dozen workers picking moss out of the bricks with dental instruments, whereas at Choquequirao there were two men with pickaxes clearing brush and one resident archeologist. Because of some misguided structural restorations in the 1970’s including concrete supports, the ruins of Choqueqirao don’t qualify for the title of a World Heritage site, and consequently don’t qualify for the restoration grants that go along with UNESCO’s endorsement. Bizarrely, France is quite interested in the site’s historical value and provides much of the current funding.
In the warm afternoon light after our grueling hike we were practically the only ones on the top of the mountain. A few humans dotted the grass: our guide, the harriero, D and I, and the scientist. We walked up in the breezy silence to the ceremonial ground: a circular lawn created by slicing off the next closest peak to the palace and stared down the canyon into the heart of the Andes, lush peaks before us, and a few snow-capped ones in the distance. We tromped about the ruins, taking fake Ché pictures like the ones I remembered from Motorcycle Diaries, alone in the sculpted doorways of Cuzco and Machu Picchu. Now we were the intrepid explorers: exhausted and sweaty with more fly bites and scrapes than I care to remember, but we’d made it to a place where history wasn’t so entangled with Western colonialism. Where we could sit outside the palace and listen to legends told from a local as a few scrappy clouds raced through a clear blue sky.
The next morning, in a cool fog and light drizzle, we explored the agricultural sections of the ruins, found the ancient architect’s house, and then had to be on our way back: we had to hike the entire trail back again. No luxury train filled with attractive women modeling alpaca products, or men doing the masked devil dance (complete with the historical caricature mask of the white bearded devil—think there was a hidden message there?), we were back on our own foot power. We plodded along the ridge back from Choqueqirao, and at each sinuous curve of the trail the mist swallowed a little bit more of the city, wrapping up its secrets again for someone else to discover.
Soccer in MIA
I stumbled across an article in the Sunday Magazine about a soccer team in suburban Georgia made up of political refugees from all around the world. Not surprisingly, they encountered prejudice, hardships, and financial difficulties throughout the season, as well as having to fight for their right to a practice field. Sounded pretty damn familiar to my own experiences at Central, so I decided to let the NYTimes know that it's not only foreign refugees who struggle to find success on the soccer field, but people right here at home too.
Check out the article, it's pretty great. Refugees find Hope and Hostility on the Soccer Field
Here are some of my thoughts.
It is easy to think that because Ms. Mufleh's players are refugees, their situation is different from other soccer teams here in the US. My own girls' soccer team in Miami had a similar dynamic to the Fugees' despite it being in a regular public high school. I joined Teach for America in 2004 and began teaching high school English in one of Florida's many failing schools. Frustrated by a lack of progress in the classroom, I began coaching the girls' varsity soccer team with another TFA Corps member.
When we arrived, the girls' program was one year old. They did not have uniforms, balls, or a field to play on. The old coach was a substitute teacher who would often not show up to games, let alone practices. The 11th grade captains did most of the coaching. Many of the girls did not have the raw talent that the Fugees brought with them from their home countries. They had never touched a soccer ball before, or had only watched their brothers play. Our school, Miami Central Senior High, is a mix of Haitian Americans, Latinos, African Americans and Caribbean immigrants. In many of these cultures, girls do not traditionally participate in sports. Soccer, especially, is seen as a male domain.
When I showed up to our first practice, I was discouraged. Soccer has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I joined my first team at 5 and played Division III soccer in college, so I am fairly familiar with the game. Two of the girls had cleats, none had shinguards, and maybe four knew how to pass the ball. I think that about half knew how many people should be on a soccer field for a game.
From then on, I threw myself into the team. As my professional life as a 9th grade English teacher degenerated into chaos and disrespect, I knew that at 3:40 when school got out my team would be there. As Ms. Mufleh noted, coaching a team of children who are bonded by more than upper-middle class sports enthusiasm is much more than a twice a week job. I drove kids home from practice when their parents worked night shifts, explained in Spanish to a father who commuted 5 hours a day for farm work in Immokalee that his daughter would be safe at practice, wouldn't walk home after dark, and that only I would take her home. On the weekends, we shuttled the kids to the movies to encourage team bonding and organized scrimmages against the private club teams from Hialeah. When a girl ran away from her foster home, my co-coach let her stay at her apartment until she got back on her feet.
The girls became like my own family, and although I played the "bad cop" coach in charge of fitness, drills, and soccer tactics, they came to recognize that my demands for commitment and hard work came from my desire to see them succeed.
Now that the team had adult advocates who were fighting for them, it took off. We reminded our principal and Athletic Director that Title 9 demanded that they find money in the budget for uniforms and soccer balls. We held strategy sessions in my classroom on rainy days to discuss tactics and positions. Mandatory weight lifting, nutrition lectures, and after school tutoring became standard parts of the soccer regimen. The first year, five players were almost ineligible due to failing grades or standardized test scores, and most of the girls considered a bag of Doritos and a Coke a pre-game snack.
In soccer terms, we had the most successful seasons that Miami Central has ever known. A team that had never scored a goal in league play went to winning four games in our second season.
If this were all that these girls accomplished, I would be ecstatic. Yet these teenagers have more responsibilities and problems than anyone twice their age should ever have to deal with. Soccer was a time when they could let go of their other lives and be part of a unit, a team. A strict rule was that all conflicts stayed off the field, but as a coach we had to be there to support the players when their sometimes fragile social structures weren't enough.
Our goalkeeper, who probably could have walked on to a D III college team if she hadn´t joined the Air Force straight out of high school, broke her tailbone in the middle of our second season. The school's medical insurance wouldn't pay for a hospital visit and x-rays, let alone rehab, and her mother didn't read enough English to fill out the doctor's questionaire. The team raised enough money to cover the hospital bills, but we lost our best player. She came to every single game for the rest of the season.
Our captain, a straight A student and AP scholar, won sportsmanship awards and was accepted in the Florida Bright Futures Scholarship program which guarantees a free 4 year education at any state school. Unfortunately, she is not a naturalized citizen of the US. Although she was born in the US, her parents, from the Bahamas, never filled out the paperwork to make her citizenship legal. She is now living at home, attending community college. There are some problems a coach just can't handle, but that´s part of the job.
It is hard when a student has to miss a game for the funeral of a classmate who was shot near the city reservoir a few blocks from school. You hate to lose players to after school jobs, but if you're one of 5 kids with a single parent making minimum wage, there aren't many options.
In spite of being a Title 1 school with more than 70% of students on free or reduced lunch, when we all didn't have electricity for two weeks during hurricane Rita, one of my players offered to have the coaches over to use the power generator.
There are so many teams just like Ms. Mufleh's here in America, and although Miami doesn't often resemble the rest of the 49 states, it is part of our country. I am so proud to have been able to be a part of these girls' lives and teach them about being part of a team. For some of them, there are very few reasons to be optimistic about school or their future, so seeing real success on the soccer field is empowering. Being their soccer coach was so much more than a part-time job, it being part of a family, a community, a bonded social unit
I left Miami in 2006, but when I went visit this winter and say hello to the girls, I was able to see them in their new green uniforms with enough balls for practice, ready to warm up for their first game, lead by a new captain and many familiar faces. In spite of the struggles that they encounter every day in their lives, even without their old coaches, they were still a team. "Coach Williamson!" they shouted when I stepped out of the car, and coming from those girls it felt so good.
Check out the article, it's pretty great. Refugees find Hope and Hostility on the Soccer Field
Here are some of my thoughts.
It is easy to think that because Ms. Mufleh's players are refugees, their situation is different from other soccer teams here in the US. My own girls' soccer team in Miami had a similar dynamic to the Fugees' despite it being in a regular public high school. I joined Teach for America in 2004 and began teaching high school English in one of Florida's many failing schools. Frustrated by a lack of progress in the classroom, I began coaching the girls' varsity soccer team with another TFA Corps member.
When we arrived, the girls' program was one year old. They did not have uniforms, balls, or a field to play on. The old coach was a substitute teacher who would often not show up to games, let alone practices. The 11th grade captains did most of the coaching. Many of the girls did not have the raw talent that the Fugees brought with them from their home countries. They had never touched a soccer ball before, or had only watched their brothers play. Our school, Miami Central Senior High, is a mix of Haitian Americans, Latinos, African Americans and Caribbean immigrants. In many of these cultures, girls do not traditionally participate in sports. Soccer, especially, is seen as a male domain.
When I showed up to our first practice, I was discouraged. Soccer has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I joined my first team at 5 and played Division III soccer in college, so I am fairly familiar with the game. Two of the girls had cleats, none had shinguards, and maybe four knew how to pass the ball. I think that about half knew how many people should be on a soccer field for a game.
From then on, I threw myself into the team. As my professional life as a 9th grade English teacher degenerated into chaos and disrespect, I knew that at 3:40 when school got out my team would be there. As Ms. Mufleh noted, coaching a team of children who are bonded by more than upper-middle class sports enthusiasm is much more than a twice a week job. I drove kids home from practice when their parents worked night shifts, explained in Spanish to a father who commuted 5 hours a day for farm work in Immokalee that his daughter would be safe at practice, wouldn't walk home after dark, and that only I would take her home. On the weekends, we shuttled the kids to the movies to encourage team bonding and organized scrimmages against the private club teams from Hialeah. When a girl ran away from her foster home, my co-coach let her stay at her apartment until she got back on her feet.
The girls became like my own family, and although I played the "bad cop" coach in charge of fitness, drills, and soccer tactics, they came to recognize that my demands for commitment and hard work came from my desire to see them succeed.
Now that the team had adult advocates who were fighting for them, it took off. We reminded our principal and Athletic Director that Title 9 demanded that they find money in the budget for uniforms and soccer balls. We held strategy sessions in my classroom on rainy days to discuss tactics and positions. Mandatory weight lifting, nutrition lectures, and after school tutoring became standard parts of the soccer regimen. The first year, five players were almost ineligible due to failing grades or standardized test scores, and most of the girls considered a bag of Doritos and a Coke a pre-game snack.
In soccer terms, we had the most successful seasons that Miami Central has ever known. A team that had never scored a goal in league play went to winning four games in our second season.
If this were all that these girls accomplished, I would be ecstatic. Yet these teenagers have more responsibilities and problems than anyone twice their age should ever have to deal with. Soccer was a time when they could let go of their other lives and be part of a unit, a team. A strict rule was that all conflicts stayed off the field, but as a coach we had to be there to support the players when their sometimes fragile social structures weren't enough.
Our goalkeeper, who probably could have walked on to a D III college team if she hadn´t joined the Air Force straight out of high school, broke her tailbone in the middle of our second season. The school's medical insurance wouldn't pay for a hospital visit and x-rays, let alone rehab, and her mother didn't read enough English to fill out the doctor's questionaire. The team raised enough money to cover the hospital bills, but we lost our best player. She came to every single game for the rest of the season.
Our captain, a straight A student and AP scholar, won sportsmanship awards and was accepted in the Florida Bright Futures Scholarship program which guarantees a free 4 year education at any state school. Unfortunately, she is not a naturalized citizen of the US. Although she was born in the US, her parents, from the Bahamas, never filled out the paperwork to make her citizenship legal. She is now living at home, attending community college. There are some problems a coach just can't handle, but that´s part of the job.
It is hard when a student has to miss a game for the funeral of a classmate who was shot near the city reservoir a few blocks from school. You hate to lose players to after school jobs, but if you're one of 5 kids with a single parent making minimum wage, there aren't many options.
In spite of being a Title 1 school with more than 70% of students on free or reduced lunch, when we all didn't have electricity for two weeks during hurricane Rita, one of my players offered to have the coaches over to use the power generator.
There are so many teams just like Ms. Mufleh's here in America, and although Miami doesn't often resemble the rest of the 49 states, it is part of our country. I am so proud to have been able to be a part of these girls' lives and teach them about being part of a team. For some of them, there are very few reasons to be optimistic about school or their future, so seeing real success on the soccer field is empowering. Being their soccer coach was so much more than a part-time job, it being part of a family, a community, a bonded social unit
I left Miami in 2006, but when I went visit this winter and say hello to the girls, I was able to see them in their new green uniforms with enough balls for practice, ready to warm up for their first game, lead by a new captain and many familiar faces. In spite of the struggles that they encounter every day in their lives, even without their old coaches, they were still a team. "Coach Williamson!" they shouted when I stepped out of the car, and coming from those girls it felt so good.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)