Lake Titicaca Islands, part 2: Amantani

La Paz, Bolivia

We arrived in the 'City of Peace' yesterday evening and will start to explore it today. The impressions from Lake Titicaca are still strong in my mind, and now I will talk about Amantani, the next island we visisted.

Lake Titicaca Islands, part 2: Amantaní

From the Uros islands it took about an hour to reach Amantaní. This is a Q'echua island, inhabited by Inca descendants who are living their traditional lifestyle like the Uros people, just in a different way. Here, we were going to experience firsthand what this means: we were going to be spend the rest of this day and the night with a local family.

This has become a way for the island population to boost their income a little, and the ten communities spread out over Amantaní take turns doing this. There is a well-thought out system of rotation: every family of a community must have taken in twelve visitors before the next community gets its turn. We were divided into small groups, according to the lodging possibilities of each family and our own grouping, and when our boat moored at the dock a group of local women were awaiting us. One by one the women were introduced, and two or three or four of our names were called out for each one who then walked uphill with her small entourage.

Our hostess was Ana-Maria, a short, rotund woman of uncertain age, dressed in traditional garb holding a little girl by the hand who, I assumed, was her granddaughter. Ana-Maria beckoned us to follow her up the steep stone-paved path from the port, and very slowly walked ahead. Communication would be slow and a bit difficult: she spoke only Spanish and Q'etchua, of course, while my Spanish still covers only the most basic things necessary for survival while travelling. It didn't matter: while it would have been nice to gain more insight into the personality of these hard-working, modest people we would get along. There is a universal language that connects us at a deeper level. I stretched out my hand, and little Luz Maria grabbed it and grinned impishly at me from under her hat.

 

After about a ten minute walk we turned into a narrow path leading through a couple of potato fields into a very small garden and arrived in Ana-Maria's yard, enclosed by various small adobe buildings. Our room, a few steps up from the yard, was more spacious than we had expected, with two beds covered by the beautiful woven blankets of the Andean highland people, a table and a rickety wooden bench. Some more woven and embroidered pieces decorated the walls, and there was an electric light bulb. Ana-Maria told us that she would have dinner ready in fifteen minutes, and that we were to meet her in the cocina, the kitchen, pointing out one of the small buildings. The baño (bathroom) was one of the others, and she pointed out a pail of water beside its door which we were to use to flush the toilet.

Ana-Maria greeted us at the door to the cocina and waved us inside. Just like in our room we had to stoop low to enter: the door was no higher than 1.5 or 1.6 m, though the rooms themselves were high enough for Johann to stand up straight. We entered a space dimly lit by a small window, maybe two by three metres big, the rear part partitioned off by a wall. A table with room for five people was set with two napkins and cutlery, for Johann and me only; everybody else had long since had their dinner. It was three pm, after all. A smiling young woman was sitting on a stool leaning against the wall: Janine, Luz Maria's mother and Ana-Maria's daughter-in-law. She was quite outgoing, unlike another young woman who gazed shyly at us from the far end of the room: Amalia, Ana-Maria's daughter. They all lived in the same complex together: Ana-Maria and her husband, her old parents, her daughter and son-in-law with two children of school age, her son and daughter-in-law with little Luz. Where did they all find room in these cramped living quarters?

Not at all sure what to expect from this dinner I had only hoped the dish wouldn't contain meat, while Johann's worry was it might be fish. It turned out that neither of us had reason for concern: Ana-Maria brought us two big bowls of delicious quinoa soup with potatoes and vegetables, followed by two plates of rice and vegetables with a slice of something fried that, at first sight, could have been fish but turned out to be 'Queso Andino', the local soft, salty cheese, and some slices of tomato and cucumber. It was a simple but very tasty meal she brought us from the tiny space behind the wall I assumed must be the cooking space.

We lay down for a nap, and at four Ana-Maria discretely cleared her throat outside our door: she was going to take us to the town plaza to meet up with Pepe and the rest of our group. Pepe wanted to take us up the hill to one of the two Inca temples on the island. Pachatata and Pachamama were built to honour the 'Earth Father' and 'Earth Mother'.

For about an hour we walked steadily uphill through fields with newly sprouted potatoes, beans, quinoa and barley, from time to time when we turned a corner passing through beautiful arches crafted by the local men who are famous for their stone masonry. Many of them work in the quarry somewhere uphill from the village. Pepe told us that we would go to the temple of Pachatata, rectangular and a bit smaller than the octangular temple of Pachamama, visible a fair distance away on the next hill. Pachamama was considered to be the more important deity, responsible for fertility of crops, animals and the people themselves. A feature both temples share is a space in the centre - square in Pachatata, round in Pachamama -consisting of three steps, one dug into the ground, one at ground level, and one raised: another example of the Inca symbol for the underworld, the physical world, and the spiritual world. This space is believed to have been used for sacrifices, likely animals.

Nowadays, on the 17^th of January every year, a big gathering takes place at these two temples to celebrate the beginning of a new year, a new growing season. The whole community slowly makes its way uphill, 'going in peace', as Pepe explained it. People are expected to consciously let go of all bad feelings and think only good thoughts. They split up into two groups, one walking to the temple of Pachatata, one of Pachamama. When they are there, they are to make peace not only with themselves, but with everybody they had disagreements with in the past year. They will shake hands and let go of whatever it was that had come between them. Thus, everyone starts the new year with a clean slate: all the old is wiped away, and one can start over again. Once that has happened it is time to walk counter-clockwise around the temple three times and make a wish for every time.

This was what Pepe recommended us to do, too: to walk up with a calm heart, in peace, and then walk around the temple three times, making a wish for each round. We arrived at the top of the hill shortly before sunset, Lake Titicaca glowing far below, its islands dark in the golden water. Slowly, I walked the prescribed three rounds around the temple, adding a fourth one a bit later to take a few pictures. I sat down on the west side of the temple wall, the stones still keeping the day's heat even though the air was starting to become quite chilly, and watched the sun slip lower and lower. Someone was slowly beating a drum, its sound reverberating in my body, and peace was indeed present among us and inside me. 

 

We made our way down in the gathering darkness and once again were picked up at the plaza by someone from our host families: it was time for supper. Again Ana-Maria had set the table for only Johann and me, again we were served a bowl of soup – the same soup we had had for dinner, with a few vegetables and some broth added - and Ana-Maria took a few more bowls of soup upstairs to the rest of her family who, I'm quite sure, would usually have eaten where we were sitting. We could entice her to at least sit down with her own bowl of soup at the table with us instead of squatting on a low stool in the far part of the kitchen area. Again we got a second plate of food, heaped with rice and mixed vegetables.

This was not to be the end of our exposure to island life, however: there was going to be a 'fiesta' for the evening, and we were all invited. I suspect that this event had been organized for the visitors only. At supper, I had found out that Ana-Maria, like everybody else, gets up at four every morning to make breakfast, then goes out to the fields, later works at her handicrafts, and that her usual bedtime was eight pm. Knowing this I felt really bad that she now had to go to this fiesta just because we were there and suggested we could go to the plaza by ourselves. She said she had to be there anyway, however, since she is the president of the community association. Still ... When would we be leaving, I asked. To our immense surprise she pulled a cellphone from her blouse and glanced at the time. This was the last thing I would have expected here, and, really, seemed to be the only concession to modern life in her whole household. 

 

Again announcing her presence with that discrete cough she picked us up shortly before eight. Before we could leave, however, we needed to be dressed like the locals. Johann got a poncho and knitted hat, while Ana-Maria pulled a beautifully embroidered long white blouse over my head, regardless of the fact that I was wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt and fleece jacket already. Next, I was urged to step into the heavy pleated red felt skirt, and she tightly wrapped the strings three times around my waist before tying them. The wide woven belt was the next item, pulled as tightly as if she was putting me in a corset: by now I could hardly breathe. The last piece of clothing was the wide, heavy black scarf island women wear over their heads or shoulders, depending on how cold it is. It, too, is beautifully embroidered, and Ana-Maria told me this is done by the 'hombres', the men. Quarries and embroidery – what a strange juxtaposition. Or maybe not: hard work and beauty complementing each other, both necessary for a full life.

Our path illuminated by Ana-Maria's flash light (no street lamps on this island, of course) we entered the town hall, still empty except for a few local men. Chairs were lined up along the walls, and slowly the hall filled with locals and dressed-up visitors alike. The band showed up: a drummer, two men playing Andean flutes, a guitarist and one playing a small guitar, and soon the hall was ringing with the sounds of an Andean fiesta, people were holding hands, laughing and dancing. Almost suffocating in my heavy, tightly-wrapped garb I felt I had even less oxygen to breathe than I had already at this altitude, and, like others, gave up the dancing after a short while, breathing heavily. The old local women, however, were light on their feet and didn't seem affected at all. It was fun to watch, but I was relieved when Ana-Maria came to pick us up shortly before 9:30: while we wouldn't have our breakfast until 6:30 she still had to be up at four.

I slept like a log from about ten to five on the hard bed with its reed-covered frame. After I woke up I lay for a while contemplating my surroundings: the simple furniture, the corrugated tin-covered roof hidden from view with a ceiling made of plastic rice and grain bags nailed to boards, the bare electric bulb precariously hanging from a thin wire, the beautiful blankets, the faded calendars depicting scenes from local craft markets. Birds twittered outside the small window, a donkey brayed – no cars, no motorbikes disturbed this rural peaceful setting. Ana-Maria had been up for more than an hour already, and so had her family, except, maybe, her old parents, and likely the younger women had walked up to the fields to do some hoeing and weeding, while their husbands had left for the quarry. 'A hundred years ago it wouldn't have been so different in a village in Germany', Johann said.

We packed our bags and went down to the kitchen for breakfast at 6:30. We met the grandmother on the stairs; otherwise Ana-Maria was the only one around. She had made us a pancake for breakfast and brought out some strawberry jam and buns. Again, like for the other meals, a little plateful of muña leaves (a kind of mint growing in the highlands, valued for its medicinal qualities) and a thermos of hot water were available for us to make tea.

I surveyed the dining/working area where we had our meals: the aforementioned table and five chairs, a shelf made up of scrap lumber, with cardboard nailed to the sides to close it in, containing dishes and utensils, a low table with vegetables to be cleaned and more utensils, a few sawed-off pieces of eucalyptus trunk for low stools, a stack of egg-carton flats tied together with string as one more seat, a plastic bowl of (likely cold) water where she washed the dishes as soon as they were cleared – that was the extent of Ana-Maria's kitchen. 

 

But where did she cook? The stove must be behind the wall partitioning off the rear part of the room. I peeked in there, too, and, aghast, found a very dark space no more than eighty centimetres wide, a low fire burning under a clay oven with three holes providing space for clay pots. Beside it was another piece of trunk where Ana-Maria crouched when she cooked, the oven much too low to make it possible to cook in an upright position. A candle on a shelf above the oven would provide light when the daylight coming in through the small window wasn't enough to see by anymore; unlike the bigger part of the room this area had no electric light. This is where Ana-Maria prepared food for all these people, where she had prepared our tasty meals as well. Ashamed, I thought of my own newly renovated kitchen at home. Ana-Maria wouldn't believe that a kitchen like that was possible if she saw it.

She pulled a notebook and pen from a space on the shelf: her guest book for the people she welcomed into her home from all over the world, people like us who came here for a day to be taught firsthand what it means to live with very little to spare, yet live in harmony and provide for their family with a smile on one's face.

Shortly after, Ana-Maria took us back to the port, joining other women with their following of foreigners. Someone took a photo of the three of us, her short, firm, round reassuring mother-figure between us like Pachamama herself.

We boarded the boat, and soon the wharf with its group of dark-clad women got smaller and smaller until it disappeared entirely. We said good-bye to Amantaní and were now headed for Taquile, another one of Lake Titicaca's islands.