Then, as I turned on the radio and started for the broom to sweep my room, my host father (whose name is Jorge) called up to me (about 7:30 this morning): "Joshua (pronounced Ho-Sway)! Desayuno!" So I came downstairs and there on the table was a perfect little cylindrical brown cake with my name on it.... "Happy Birthday Joshua," in English. And a candle. So at 7:30 this morning I got hugs from Coco, my 22 year old host brother, Veronica, my 26 year old host sister, their parents, Jorge and Maria Luisa, and a big kiss from my host grandmother, who is 92 years old! Then they all sang happy birthday, in first in English and then Spanish, and we had coffee and cake for breakfast.
I know it must sound strange to hear "host father, host mother," etc. But these people have taken me into their home and given me a bedroom for 130 dollars a month. And they have given me so much more! A little 5" TV/Radio (color), Wifi, and.... LOVE. They always offer me food, hugs, kisses. Help. We speak a mix of English and Spanish. My host mother is fluent in english and her children are as well. With Jorge, my host father, and my grandmother, we speak Castellano, aka Spanish.
Today I sit in the Library of ICPNA, Instituto Cultural Peruano NorteAmericano. One of the finest institutions of my professional career. Very well organised and well-respected. Students spend 3 years hear as a night school and leave, almost without exception, fluent in English. Most of the teachers are Peruvian graduates. A little Microcosm of intellectualism in English. ICPNA was established by the States and Peru. The best educational professionals in the States continue to refine the techniques here... it feels a little like an educational laboratory, and I am entering the experiment in its refined stages. The curriculum is honed to a T. The students are supposed to talk most of the time. My main goal as teacher is: talk much less than the students. I am a guide through the idiomatic universe. And the tourists are the students, who will have everything I ask memorized by tomorrow. They all call me "Teacher" and they wait at the door for me to allow them to enter. Perhaps a taste of Japan? I can get used to this reverence. Part of my duty, though, is to break them of this culture of pure obedience. I am asking them for more independence. An American cultural injection. This is my new school where I work 7 days a week until December 23, my last day here.
WHERE AM I? Cusco, Cuzco, Qusqo, Qosqo. They all work. This is the capital of the Incan empire. What happened to the Incas? This place was taken by force in the late 1530s by Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizarro and a small army of 168 Spanish troops with 27 horses. How did such a small force conquer a hugely powerful native population? Coercion and trickery. Also, Peru was in the midst of a civil war between two brothers vying for power. Pizarro was lucky.
Cusco is teeming with majestic Cathedrals and quiet monasteries, grand stone giants and nestled-in sanctuaries of prayer. I would call the latter "humble," but all of them are decorated in the highest European style (built by the Spanish to impress the indigenous people). When you enter them you feel as if you're in a spiritual palace. The stones absorb energy and give it back to equally. The ceiling looms above you. Christ and his colleagues peer at you from the walls and from within 400 year old elaborate carvings and spirals, glittering with gold. The Man and his disciples are carved of wood and Christ wears real hair. All around are the finest examples of wood carving and gilding. And then there are the paintings and candles.
I took my first communion at La Catedral, started in 1560 and finished 100 years later. I felt drawn to the priest and followed the masses down the aisle to take my cracker. On the way out of mass (La Mistra) I was hit by holy water the priest lofted into the crowd from a bouquet of tiny flowers. This and the incense took me higher. And into the streets...
Outside in the plaza you can see the work of the Spanish all around. They dominated the center of the city with their architecture. This is beauty in our European sense. Order. It was here I met my first Shaman, who was consulting my Italian friend, about to engage in an Ayawasca trip in the hills. The shaman invited me to come along but I declined. I had work to do at school. My job, he said, could be to watch with him and learn. The Italian told me the Shaman sits and smokes cigarettes, keeps you together, talks you through your journey. Many people puke for hours their first time and never feel anything. But then you try again. How I wanted to walk with the medicine men and learn their craft. But I have faith in fate. That day my journey was to teach. Perhaps another day I will meet the medicine man sent to me. Something about this journey he invited me on felt flawed. Why? There was money exchanged. His shamanism was a business. Perhaps it has to be. How does the church survive? We need to feed the priests, pay for the books, the artifacts.
Then you can leave the center, a river of gringos. Follow the stream into the narrow roads a thousand years old. You hear calling from the corners and shadowlands: Cocaine? Marijuana? Charlie? Masajes Senor? No gracias no gracias. Bongiorno, Bonjour, they try to guess your language and call out to you to buy... choo chine? says a little grimy boy of 7 or 8, carrying all the necessary tools to make your boots sparkle in the sun.
Let's go another way. Everywhere outside the city center are the remnants of the Incas. Massive dark stones form the walls and foundations of enormous buildings. The stones are cut to fit perfectly together with no mortar. You can't get a piece of paper between them. No mortar involved. How did they do it? These gargantuan structures have survived earthquakes. The Spanish put their buildings and palaces right on top of the old Incan work. And they tried to outdo the Inca in the process.
Helen is living here too. Did I mention that? Almost every day we met at 6 AM at the Cathedral and walk to the market for breakfast as the city rises out of the stones. Where is she now? In the Selva, the jungle. The Amazon.
Before she left we would go to the market, el mercado, and visit the breakfast booths. There's a long row of stalls, all affronted by a continuous white counter. You sit on a bench of your choosing. The women will call at you to sit at their station "PASA PASA!" And when you find the food, or the woman, you like (the food is more or less the same) you take a seat and order up. I like cafe con leche, hot, fresh-squeezed creamy milk with a touch of dulce and infiltrated by espresso. Then pan con queso y pan con huevo. Little buns with fried egg and cheese, all fresh from the cows and chickens in the hills. Helen and I early on chose a favorite, a large older woman who looks like Mother Earth. She is a real native (as in Native American) with a big apron and long black braids. She serves up the biggest queso. And she always gives me the "pansito papa?" I'm looking for ;) All the women, I should say, are delightful. Every one of them helps you smile. They want you back every morning. That's half the business.
One morning after breakfast Helen and I walked by a booth full of steaming vats, of plastic and metal. This booth had many locals so we decided to try it. It's a medicine booth! They can heal all your illnesses with hot concoctions. So we stepped up and the woman asked us our problem. All behind the counter are herbs, spices, fresh plants. And her sons are constantly leaving and returning with fresh vegetables and roots and herbs, etc. She asked what's wrong and we said "nada." So she examined us and started handing us drinks of different colors, mixed with other liquids or not, hot or not. The first was dark green and tasted mossy, verdant, earthy. Then you hand the cup back and we got another one without asking. This tasted like an animal. Like boiled hair. And while I was drinking the women were laughing and pegging us in Quechua. This is a fun joke that happens here. Even if you're from Spain or Argentina, bastions of the white Castellano, the chance you'll speak the ancient Quechua as a white man are slim to none. All I heard as I finished this mysterious hot beverage with the color and consistency of water after you boil corn and hotdogs in it, was "Chancho." This means pig. Helen had already started in on hers. I didn't know if she knew that word. After all, she's a vegetarian. She took the whole thing down and looked at me innocently. I think both of us felt a bit odd, or off. Yes, we drank some pig extract. Oh well, what next? The woman gave me the next drink, but not helen. It was also gray and thick and wet and dry and heavy and luke-warm. I finished it and there was a clay or or silt at the bottom of the plastic cup. Hmm. Then the older kid behind the counter said something to me. I was trying to figure out the feeling in my body and had no clue what he told me. Helen said (she often understands more than I do), "I wonder why you shouldn't eat breakfast for an hour."
This experience cost $1.65 for 5 drinks between the two of us and I feel pretty good three weeks later. I haven't been back. Maybe Helen is invincible against Amazon mosquitoes right now. It's that chancho she drank.
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