(Lago Titicaca + Bolivia in the distance)
I´ve got a picture of me and you. You wrote ¨rimaykullayki¨ I wrote ¨me too¨.
A man with chiclet teeth turned his teethy grin towards me. He wanted to teach me Quechua (an idigenous language of Peru). As the bus to Puno rolled along he had me pernouncing its words. A simple ´hello´ is a mouthful. He would sit back and produce hearty laughs.
In Puno, we set off onto Lake Titicaca. In Quechua, Titicaca means puma and stone. They seem to produce animals out of all geological formations.
We arrived at the island where we would stay the night. We would stay with an idigenous family.
We lined up along the dock as the families approached. Which one would be ours? I felt like some sort of animal being selected. What are the desired attributes? Pick me!
Seher pointed out a woman who kept licking her fingers. Yup, that was going to be the one. She approached and greeted us. We followed her the hill towards her house like ducklings. She didn´t speak much Spanish (or she chose not to).
We arrived at our new home and were brought to the kitchen for lunch. Mother, father, two daughters? and two sons were there. This would be our rental family.
We gifted them a bag of rice and snacks. Sitting down, I attempted to converse with them in Spanish and then Quechua. There was much silence in the room. The father rolled out a cloth full of green beans he had grown for an appetizer. We dined on strange-delicious potatoes, soup and fried cheese. Delicious!
(dinner?)In the afternoon we met at the local soccer arena for a match. It was the internationals versus the Peruvians. It was a close and hard fought match ending in 5-4. In the end, the Peruvians prevailed with their altitude advantage.
Then it was off to the dance hall. Our rental mothers and daughters dressed us up in traditional clothing and escorted us. We danced for hours. The most popular, and only dance move, was a move where you stepped forward and back. This move would be repeated during all of the 10 minute Peruvian pan flute songs during the night. My rental sister seemed completely uninterested in dancing. Why? She would avoid eye contact and maintain a straight face. It made me think that they probably got tired of foreigners pouring in and out every week. This seemed to make sense because earlier my rental brother chose not to acknowledge my existence. I tried to speak to him in the greatest South American language, kicking a soccer ball around, but he couldn´t be bothered.
I was getting tired from dancing to all the 10 minute Peruvian flute songs but I kept being selected to dance. I would half heartedly say,
¨Estoy cansado¨ (im tired) but didn´t want to offend.
I eventually danced myself towards a good sleep that night.
When it was time to leave the next day all the rental mothers saw their children off on the dock. We turned to look but our mother wasn´t there. Rejected!
Before returning to Puno, we stopped at another island. Here we learned about the local dating ritual. Besides clothing indicating status, the dating scene involves rock throwing. If a man is interested in a girl he would toss a rock at the girls back. If she turned around and smiled it would be good news. If she wasn´t interested in him, she would turn around and try and hit him with another rock.
I don´t think this would go down well in Canada. Maybe I better stick with being Canadian.
(Cat Jacket!)
Perhaps challenge the locals to a game of hockey instead of soccer? They may not know what hockey is, so you can make up any game you like and call it hockey. Hop on one leg while balancing a pineapple on your head, jump on a Llama, go for a ride and throw the pineapple into a hat. Goal! Hockey at its finest. It is so sad when rental families turn their back on their rental offspring. Rental mothers in particular! One feels so abandoned and helpless. Sad.
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