Yesterday morning Silvia knocked on my door around 9 AM and said "Molly, quieres ayudar con una cosecha?" which I understood to mean that we were going to harvest something. I'm not quite clear on the seasons here, though I did sort of know it was spring and thus not harvest time. Still, I thought, it's a different climate, there must be something to harvest. I did ask "what are we harvesting?" and Silvia answered, something like "Oh, it'll be easy for you to learn, it's a beautiful spot." I'm still a bit anxious about her liking me so I didn't ask any more questions.
So we crammed into the (fairly small) car with her daughter Lucia (Nancy's description: moody, complicated, can't really deal with having a famous mother, but so far I've found her very cool and funny and lovely and tough in a good way); Lucia's very sweet and agriculturally adept husband; their incredibly adorable and well-behaved one year-old, Pauco, whom they call "el conejo"; Lucia's friend Jovi, who is part of a feminist theater collective and another collective that is developing a new feminist hermeneutic of the bible (not the project I would choose if I had a feminist collective, but okay); Jovi's 8 year-old son, a very cool kid whose name I also forget; and Silvia, driving. We drove waaay out into the country, with the 8 year-old talking the entire time, mostly listing off animal facts--he's very passionate about protecting endangered species--and Silvia periodically yelling at him to be quiet. Lucia was like, "Mami, this is exactly what you sound like with your students" and Silvia was like, "they pay me to talk" and then the 8 year-old got really interested and kept saying "how much? How much do they pay you?" Silvia is an extremely aggressive driver and was passing everyone, on every side, beeping the horn around curves.
We drove for a long time up this very rocky, remote mountain road, then parked and walked about 1/2 mile (carrying heavy farm implements and lunch, all in metal pots) to this remote, completely untilled field. It was one of the most beautiful spots I've ever seen, with cliffs all around and the snow-capped Illimani mountain right in front of us. I stupidly didn't take pictures but I tried to approximate above--it looked about like that, only there was a bit less snow on the mountain, no grass where we were (I guess that picture is from a rainier season), and cows and mules wandering around in addition to the sheep being herded.
So we finally arrived, Silvia got out her book and began reading, they plopped El Conejo next to her, and we begin tilling the field--turns out there is no harvest, but they want to grow potatoes. So we break up the soil, which is not sod like you might be used to if you live in the Northeastern United States. No. This is soil at 14,000 feet, which is dry, and full of rocks, some of which are relatively soft in which case you can actually break them with the scythe/pickaxe thing, and many more of which you just have to dig around or throw off to the side. The four of us worked for 9 hours, stopping to chew coca leaves, eat lunch, and drink iced mate which was really excellent, but mostly just hacking at this extremely solid ground until something looking like dirt appeared. Lucia and her husband were very skillful, but I would flail around with the scythe/pickaxe for about 10 minutes, at which point my arms would start shaking violently and I would have to wait until they calmed down a little.
There was something amazing about working so hard with this incredible legendary mountain so close, and I was trying, when I could actually think coherently, to take the correct attitude toward the whole thing. I happen to be explaining in my dissertation right now about the scene in On The Road where Sal picks cotton one day for the experience, romanticizes the day-laborers to the point of slavery-nostalgia, and then starts cursing god because he's not strong enough to do the work. All these stances (tourism, fetishization, whining) are equally inexcusable, so I decided to focus on perfecting my swing as much as possible just in case the revolution actually comes to Norteamerica. (Then at least I'll be prepared for a re-education camp, though of course a ministry-of-culture position would be my first choice.) So I began to really swing the pickaxe with my whole body, and improved my productivity somewhat, though the arm-shaking was still happening. We hacked at the ground until it got dark, probably creating a 30 by 30 foot space on which they will attempt to grow potatoes.
Jovi's son was very concerned with protecting the few plants that existed there--he would stand around them and cry when we got near, until finally he attempted to transplant some of them. On the way back home he continued to explain about yellow elephants, polar bears, komodo dragons, tortoises, sharks, and whales, listing off gloomy facts and then asking the whole car, "what do you think of that?" He is a very sensitive and driven kid, and I very much hope to see him on a Greenpeace boat or that Whale Wars reality show one day.
Today was difficult. My arms are a little less sore than I thought they'd be, but my back and legs feel extremely strange--twitchy, even. I went out to the bourgeois internet cafe where I secretly go every so often when our connection is down (I feel totally guilty: there's an armed guard at the door and elite lunching Bolivians who are probably anti-Evo mixed with sloppy gringo tourists; Silvia would probably kick me out if she knew I was there, but it's the only place that allows laptops, and I almost felt okay about it after my unsolicited day of manual labor), and I could barely walk in a straight line. I will try to go to the archives tomorrow, assuming my muscles have returned to their proper lengths and places.
No comments:
Post a Comment