For the past two weeks, Meghan and I have settled into life in Ollantaytambo, Peru, a small town of 2,000 inhabitants located midway between Cusco and Machu Pichu. I'll divide this post into three parts:
1. Awamaki's Social Enterprise
2. Homestay Life in Ollanta
3. Weaving Immersion Weekend
Part One: Awamaki's Social Enterprise
We were introduced and brought to Ollanta by an organization called Awamaki. Awamaki is a local non-profit weaving cooperative that brings together the craft and skill of five communities near Ollanta to produce and sell textiles at fair trade prices. The weavers are exclusively women in order to empower women financially, allowing mothers the opportunity to rise in status and invest in their children's health and education. In a region where tourists find thousands of machine-made alpaca textiles for cheap prices, Awamaki provides a platform for the art of traditional weaving to succeed in a modern market, with prices reflecting true value.
The name originates in this region's oldest, pre-colonial language, Quechua: "Awa" means "textiles" and "Maki" means "by hand."
Over the course of 10 years the NGO has grown to include sustainable tourism opportunities such as tours of villages, homestays and classes on Spanish, cooking, and weaving immersion. An emphasis is made to equip communities to self-organize and manage; Awamaki teaches financial literacy and facilitated the creation of the homestay union, for example. Awamaki applies a social enterprise model meaning a majority of their earnings, 85%, is returned to participating communities and projects (15% pays a small group of staff, several of whom are from Ollanta). Awamaki has established itself as an effective bridge between culture and economy: facilitating and empowering communities in the sacred valley to rise to modern markets while maintaining cultural identity and sovereignty.
It's been a pleasure to work alongside and absorb the information and passion of this organization. After volunteering in their store for just a short time, I know I've gained more from this experience than I've given.
As volunteers with Awamaki we had the opportunity to stay with a homestay family and take part in a weaving immersion weekend. Volunteers that stay for a longer period, like Meghan, get to also partake in cooking classes, an introduction course to culture in Ollantaytambo, and visits to local villages.
Part Two: Homestay Life in Ollanta
Our homestay experience was fascinating, humorous, uncomfortable, and wonderful. We lived every day in the home of a family who's roots in Ollantaytambo are over 30 years old. Meet our host parents, Pancho and Balbina - they were teenagers when this portrait was painted.
During our first meal together Pancho instructed us that if anyone tried to harass us on the street to boldly exclaim, "Vivo con Pancho!" (I live with Pancho). You don't want to mess with Pancho.
Ofcourse, due to Ollanta's peaceful, small-town nature where the people are kind and everyone knows everything as soon as it happens, we were never able to put the vague, bold threat into action.
Pancho and Balbina generously catered to the vegetarian diets of their two Seattle guests. Our meals were economic and bland, always with a majority of rice, potatoes, or corn. The heavily starched diet in combination with new populations of gut bacteria caused dramatic bowel movement phases of stopping and going. As we ate we spoke in Spanish exclusively which allowed for the uncomfortable challenge of stumbling through the language, ultimately making us more proficient. As we grew familiar with our family's habits, we also came to know a television show known as COMBATE!
Combate appears to have taken a generous sampling of American tv shows and slammed them together into a widely popular, totally epic Peruvian program that runs new shows nightly. We spent every evening dinner with epic sounds of Combate in the background; for this blog post I'll give you just a taste.
Combate features two teams, Rojo and Verde, each comprised of very handsome men and women wearing fitted spandex. About half of the show is racing the teams through obstacle courses. The other half includes red vs. green arguing over the outcome of the last challenge, romance between players, dance competitions, and a weekly rose ceremony. What you find is a combination of Iron Man, The Bachelor, So You Think You Can Dance, and Survivor. My host family fervently rooted for the red team because of their earnest conduct and "Los verdes son tramposos!"
I'm not sure how to transition from Combate so let's move on.
Time moves slowly here. To walk across town takes all of 15 minutes. To access wifi is a task of identifying the cafes that supply it, due to a rise of tourism, and hoping that by the time you've finished a coffee you've successfully loaded the pages you need. Mornings begin between 6 to 6:30 am with the blaring sounds of pan flute and dance rhythms shared by the neighbors over a stereo system. Dinner is at seven and then it's lights out; we averaged around 10 hours of sleep per night. Meghan and I found it a difficult transition from the every day action we'd easily find in Cusco and even sleepy Puerto Natales.
Although we were feeling a little stir crazy by the end of the first week, Ollanta's tranquil nature began to settled into us. We found our favorite cafe, befriended local dogs, and hiked to Incan ruins and farm terraces surrounding the town. Here are some miscellaneous phots from life in Ollanta:
And here are a few photos from my solo trip to Machu Picchu:
Weaving Immersion Weekend
On the morning of January 31st a group of volunteers from Awamaki jumped in a large van and made our way through a valley up winding switchbacks. We arrived at 3,800 meters in altitude at a small community named Patacancha where we began our three day Weaving Immersion. The women wore bright red sweaters, handwoven shawls and skirts of all colors, ornate, inverted sombreros, and smiles on their faces.
After being paired with a master weaving teacher, we selected colors for our first simple projects: bracelets. My teacher pounded giant nails into the ground with a boulder. With familiar hands she wove a figure eight of threads inbetween the nails, knowing from memory the order of colors to produce the pattern her student requested. She spoke Quechua exclusively and so we communicated through smiles and hand gestures. By the end of the weekend and 9 total hours of weaving, our efforts successfully produced three bracelets and an awkwardly sized dog collar.
Meghan and I shared a second Peruvian homestay together in Patacancha where our family included husband, wife, and three young children. Once again the primary language spoken was Quechua and as we ate meals we'd exclaim the basic, approving phrase "Que rico!" On our second night we discovered that the boy and girl, ages 10 and 8, were fluent in Spanish numbers. We spent the evening practicing multiplication tables with laughter and shelling beans with smiles.
On Sunday we embarked on a hike to see the land of Alpacas and reach highlands at 4,300 meters. Alpaca habitat begins at around 3,800 meters where they are most commonly reared. Through 10 miles of walking through mud, rain, vague footpaths, and much slipping and falling, we successfully found alpacas and enjoyed the unique, high-altitude mountain landscape home to the Andes.
Our travels and experiences in the sacred valley were fascinating and unexpected. I've never more tangibly felt my privilege in this world than when I lived with families whose annual incomes were comparable to the cost of my plane ticket. I learned about a model non-profit that successfully and sustainably aligned its actions with its mission statement. And among many other lessons, I also learned how intense altitude sickness feels in a remote village at nearly 4,000 meters.
After traveling together for six fantastic weeks, I said goodbye to Meghan who had internship work in Ollantaytambo for two more months. My next and final destination: Colombia!
