¡Mis primeros turistas!

Reportaje número 4, 13-15 de Octubre

I began my most recent trip to Amantaní in a completely ordinary fashion. I got up at 6:30, packed up, had breakfast, went to the port at 7:45, got on the Huayracusi (In Quechua huayra=wind and Cusi is the name of a travel agency with which All Ways Travel coordinates voyages to the islands), and made my way to the port of Pueblo. Pueblo is the capital of the Amantaní and situated about a 15 minute walk down the hill from the community where I’m working, Santa Rosa. This week I stayed with a younger woman, Martina, and her family. The accommodations, as always, were simple but clean. What made Martina´s house particularly interesting, though, was its connection to the electrical grid. This was the first home that I’ve stayed in with electricity and all of its attendant comforts. There was a light in the kitchen and a small one in my room, a radio, and last, but certainly not least, a television. Now, we’re talking maybe 6x6 inches, black and white, local stations only. It was, however, a TV. It stayed in the parents’ room and was only really watched at night, but the father of the family did watch it during the day. I guess much of his work took place early early in the morning. Most days, people in Santa Rosa wake up at about 5:00am.

Once on the island, I ate lunch and headed to library where I was greeted with a great surprise: 5 tourists had arrived as part of the Cultural Exchange Tour to help out in the library. The group consisted of 3 Americans and two Canadians. When the kids arrived that day they were so excited to see newcomers! Together, the tourists and I taught some of the main body parts in English. Really, the teaching was a lead up to the main event: “Head, shoulders, knees and toes!” The children were ecstatic! For those not familiar with this North American children’s song, it is involves saying and touching the aforementioned body parts while repeating the lyrics progressively faster until it becomes a sort of tongue-twister/aerobics fusion. After the singing (and exercising), we all went inside to act out “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” while the children read the story. With 20 minutes remaining until the tourists had to leave to hike to the top of Pachatata, we enjoyed some free time. The children and some of their parents either talked about Snow White, read out loud, or practiced their English with some of our tourists who could not speak Spanish. Overall, an excellent day!!

The second day of my stay, Tuesday, brought me another group of tourists! This time 6 French tourists--one of whom could speak near-fluent Quechua (no easy feat, mind you!)—came to the library at about 3 o’clock. After school let out, the children barreled over to library, just as excited as the day before. We went over our body parts again and then received a special treat: the tourists sang to us in French! The kids, in return, played everyone a few songs on their zampoñas. The zampoña, also called the siku because of its Quechua name, is a small pan-pipe like instrument extremely common to all of the Andean Altiplano (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zampo%C3%B1a). Following our mini-concert, we played a version of Pictionary in which the children, split into two teams, had to draw an object well enough so that their team could guess it before their 1 minute time-limit ran out. The words were chosen by our visitors and ranged from “condor” to “sunset.” Let me tell you, the village of Santa Rosa boasts many very talented young artists! We finished out our time practicing reading in small groups.

This week’s trip was a blessing. I understand much better the roles of the various actors in the project. Tourists, villagers, travel agencies and volunteers together really can make a difference in the lives of the children of Amantaní.