The valley was steeped in darkness. Clouds intercepted the light of the stars, scraping low across the andean grass that bristled through the frost. Upon this austere blanket was a smattering of improbable thatch huts, holding firm against the cruel elements; for the air was cold, the wind strong, the river high yet somehow, at this extremity of the world, in this forgotten crevice 13,000 feet high in the Peruvian Andes, the cluster of habitations called Racchi stood, a civilization older than the thermometer. I sat inside one such structure.
It was warm, and still, and smoke-filled. As I exhaled every few moments, and my breath condensed, it halted the advances of the smoke, but the fire was well fed and its residue pushed steadily into my eyes and lungs. I blinked tearfully, and later, when I went outside to pee, I smelled the smoke on my breath.
But the two owners of the hut did not blink at the smoke; nor did they seem concerned by the weather outside, nor anything else but that same focus shared by the fire–a large steaming pot. This they kneeled beside, sending hushed foreign words over, words that died on the smoky air and reached my ears as shushed consonants.
Soon the figures and the fire had completed their work and the pot was emptied and the smoke thinned. Before me, a bowl of steamed potatoes–the only edible plant that could take hold in the barren valley–overflowed onto the dried paja floor. One of the figures thrust an ancient, dirt encrusted hand into the steaming mound and withdrew one, peeling and eating it. I followed suit.
We ate in silence. Charlie and I sat in the corner upon sheepskin blankets, and as the fire died and the smoke cleared and our eyes moistened we began to take in the strangeness and beauty of the scene before us.
Inches above our heads hung pots, blankets, and cups, all suspended from a few bare wooden cross beams that had, during the hut’s construction, been carried from below the tree line–a three hour walk down the valley. The cross beams held up the a-frame paja roof and rested on walls of skull-sized stones and chunky gray mortar. Cut away from one wall was a miniature door I had bent double to scrape through, and across from it was the cooking area–a wooden frame that supported a pile of firewood, and below which a crude stove smoldered lava orange. This, paired with a weak electric lamp dangling from a rafter, cast a Caravaggesque glow over the scene.
The entire structure was no wider than 8′ x 15′, and no taller than 7 feet at its highest, though closer to 5 feet at the sides. It was only after one looked at its inhabitants, a diminutive pair who were themselves under 5 feet in stature, that the sensibility of the dimensions became apparent.
The man wore a loose black and red poncho, woven of geometric patterns that covered his sinewy legs as he knelt. On his head he wore an ornate chullo. His feet were gnarled and cracked and wedged into a pair of black leather sandals that were nearly indistinguishable from his grimy feet. The woman also wore sandals, and her legs were similarly grimy and wiry, yet her hips were wide and her body adorned with thick llama-wool blouses and skirts. When she stood her silhouette became a stout christmas tree.
Both of them had thick, sun-worn skin that folded over itself in distinctive black lines. One of the man’s eyes–the one closest to me–was an opaque white, and though it was clearly blind, it seemed to make him tougher. His dripping nose went untended to, as did the potato skins accumulating under his black fingernails. His body was strong, his movements sure and unsentimental. Whenever Charlie and I appeared to slow on the eating, he urged us on, pointing at the potatoes.
Their four-year old granddaughter was plump and smooth-faced and remarkably calm. She did not cry or ask questions or play; rather, she knelt on her miniature aguayo, in her bulging sweater and felt hat, with a hand clutching the arm of her grandfather’s poncho and her head arched over her shoulder to stare at me. Her eyes were dark and deep and unflinching. Just as the fire poured light across the scene, her eyes seemed to pour their darkness over her body to the shadows.
As the bowl of potatoes dwindled, I began to feel drowsy. My vision swam, and my other senses softened and melted together and became more approachable. The stream washed darkly outside and the air smelled warm. The glow of the fire seemed to pulse softly. The man and woman began their hushed conversation again. I became increasingly aware of the cold outside and the warm within. From no one sense in particular but through all of them combined I began to feel a hidden thread, a humming rhythm that blotted out the world beyond the valley. It was easy to imagine this dinner scene unfolding exactly the same way, thousands of nights in a row, bridging this age of computers with the age of Columbus.
In the U.S., we associate age with breadth of experience; the old are wise because they have seen many different things. Age must mean something quite different here, where life changes little beyond the season and weather; where potatoes invariably serve as lunch, breakfast, and dinner; where tradition reigns. I could only wonder at the brand of knowledge and wisdom that the pair sitting before me must have possessed. Yet I also knew that their type of wisdom would soon die; for there was the electric light dangling above the stove; there were the rare, almost unnoticeable bits of plastic trash along the trail we had come by; and there was the very fact that I was here, and the little girl before me would not soon forget the white giant who spoke strangely and carried magical tools. The irrevocable tide of globalization was lapping at the shores of ancient Nación Q’eros, and I was at its forefront
Ben Weissenbach
South America Semester: Andes & Amazon
