R
South America



In a small but significant way, a dedicated student volunteer brings cooking improvements to help indigenous Quechuan communities in Peru in their centuries-old struggle to persevere

By Julie Koppel

Imagine it is early morning. The Quechuan housewives of a remote community in a hillside village of Peru's Sacred Valley have gathered together outside an adobe farmhouse. Three clean-burning stoves provided by ProPeru will be raffled off. This is an important event for women who must prepare meals for their families over a smoky fire fueled by scraps of scarce wood. Folded bits of paper, one for each woman in attendance, are placed inside a hat. Only three of the papers have been marked with an "X" by a woman elected by the village to organize this raffle. Housewives reach into the hat, one at a time, and one by one, three faces light up with delight. Those three ladies who draw the "X" papers will be the first to have cleaner burning stoves installed in their kitchens.

Carved by the Urubamba River from the mountainous terrain of central Peru, El Valle Sagrado, the Sacred Valley of the Incas, begins about fifteen kilometers northwest of Cuzco and stretches across the mountainous landscape of central Peru. Volunteering with ProPeru Service Corps, a small non-governmental organization which serves the needs of local indigenous and impoverished people of the area, I arrived in the city of Urubamba, the hub of the Sacred Valley. With a population of 17,000 people the city offers luxuries such as Internet cafes, Laundromats, nightclubs and comfortable tourism inns for the minority that can afford them.



At first glance, this was not what I had expected to find. From mountain trails that look down on modern Urubamba, it is easy to forget that this was home to the Incas, the most advanced and sophisticated culture in South America before the Spanish conquest. However, as I looked across the valley at houses and cultivated strips clinging to the mountainsides, it was clear that not only was there a strong indigenous culture here before the Spanish arrival, but that Quechuan culture is alive as ever and thriving today.




For the more fortunate families of Urubamba there are many of the comforts to be found in a small modern city. On the other hand, electricity and running cold water are only available part of the day. Many families must resort to walking to a stream at the top of the town and spending the afternoon washing their clothes in cold mountain water.

One measure of wealth in Urubamba is whether or not a family has refrigeration. Only the wealthiest families have a small refrigerator. Some of the wealthier families also have microwaves and gas-burning stoves, while the less fortunate families still rely on adobe and mud stoves. There is one large communal oven near the central plaza, which anyone from the community can use, most especially if it is to mark a special occasion, and they have cuy (guinea pig) to prepare. If it is a big festival day, the housewife with cuy to bake must be sure to get in line early.

Stoves for the Villages:

My assignment was not with the people in the township of Urubamba, but rather to bring a small measure of improvement to the lives of the people in surrounding mountain villages by helping them to install specially designed stoves that would provide ventilation and cut down on the amount of wood needed for fuel, improving people's health and easing the increasing problem of deforestation. The stoves are built out of adobe brick and a mixture of mud and water, with an attached chimney made from ceramic tiles and held together by wire and mud.

On the first day, I and four other volunteers met Javier, an Urubamba native fluent in Spanish and Quechuan. We all piled into his old beat-up Volkswagen beetle, taking the winding road out of Urubamba and into the mountains. I was transported back to a time when life was much simpler and slower-paced. However, it was not to the past I was headed but to the present life of these people.



Arriving at the Quechuan communities today, I found that people have managed to merge their indigenous lifestyle with modern times. In an average home made of adobe bricks, it was not unusual to find a ceramic cup hanging on the wall next to an advertisement for jeans or an empty bottle of Inca Kola in a pile of maize.




Entering a typical Quechuan homestead, I would be greeted either by some pigs, cows, goats or horses, and always by at least several dogs. There might be some stumps or makeshift chairs draped in vibrant-colored woven cloths to sit on. The dirt floor would be punctuated by sudden darting movement. Cuy (guinea pigs) scurry about under foot. These plump rodents are part pet and part dinner for the Quechua, and they have the run of the house. Tramping through the animal feces and scattered hay, I would get to the kitchen through a small doorway, the only opening to the room, where I could inspect the primitive cooking facilities.

Because all of the cooking is done over an adobe and mud stove built on the ground and generally without a chimney or any sort of ventilation, I cut my kitchen stays to the minimum. After visiting many kitchens, my lungs began to feel the way the walls and roof looked - covered in black soot. Sometimes there would be a small bed in the kitchen, but in most homes living quarters are separate from the kitchen. In the villages, there is typically a communal water source which everyone uses, or if a family is lucky, it might have its own water tap to use for cooking and bathing. As for sanitation facilities, well, that's what the great outdoors are there for!

What comes out of those primitive kitchens? Quechua families sustain themselves with a diet that consists mostly of a mixture of maize (corn) and a type of lima bean, potatoes, yucca, quinoa, cuy (on special occasions), and chicha. Chicha is a fermented corn drink that people drink throughout the day and some families sell to earn an extra income. If the members of a family decide to sell chicha, they simply place a stick coming out of the entrance of their house with a colored (usually orange or red) flag at the end to indicate to passers-by that this popular beverage is offered for sale.

Daily Life Among the Quechua:



All members of the family have days filled with long and hard work. While the men spend their days farming maize and potatoes, the women stay at home cooking, collecting firewood, sifting through the maize, spinning wool into yarn, weaving beautiful tapestries and clothing, and all the while toting around babies wrapped in woven cloths on their backs. And of course there are the other children to care for.



Some of the children attend school where, once they are six, they begin to learn Spanish for the first time. The luckiest ones may continue past primary school, but most are finished with school by the time they are twelve. Many children never go to school and instead work with their parents during the day. These children will most likely never speak Spanish but will maintain their indigenous language, Quechuan. Most marry and start having children at a young age. If an eighteen-year-old Quechuan woman is still single, she might be considered an old maid!

Two of the biggest health concerns facing Quechuans today are asthma and anemia. Because of the lack of ventilation in the kitchen and the amount of smoke circulating in a closed space, many women and children suffer from asthma. However, cleaner burning stoves are now being built in some homes, which have a chimney so the smoke leaves the area and burn less wood, so it also helps conserve the depleted forests. Due to the lack of protein in their diet, many people also suffer from anemia.



Despite all the hard labor being done during the day, these people still have the same need for entertainment and take every opportunity to celebrate, have a fiesta, or simply gather together. It is not uncommon that you will happen across a group gathered together around a transistor radio, singing along. At night, after families have assisted each other with their agriculture, they will gather together, chew tobacco leaves, play quenas and zamponas (traditional Peruvian wind instruments), drums made from hollowed-out tree trunks and stretched goatskin, and charangos (ten-stringed guitar), and laugh the night away. Quechuans are a joyful people, and they don't need an excuse to have a fiesta!

The most widely used plant is coca, whose leaves are chewed for medicinal purposes, energy, and camaraderie. This last reason, comradeship, is one of the greatest factors holding a Quechuan community together. When a family needs a home, the entire community will gather together to build adobe bricks and make the home. The men help each other with their crops and farming and the women weave and visit with each other while their children play.




I witnessed this sense of community firsthand during the lottery for the cleaner-burning stoves. Once it was determined who would receive the new stoves, work began at one of the houses, with myself and the other volunteers leading the efforts of mixing together the mud and water, placing the adobe bricks into place and filling in with the mud mixture, stringing the ceramic tiles together with wire, and placing them around a metal rod coming out of the stove and leading up out of the roof, to create a chimney.



Even then, the communal effort did not end. Many members of the community gathered around to watch how the stove was built so they could perhaps help build them for each other and learn how to maintain them so they could sustain themselves without outside forces. They also discussed with Javier possibilities of other communities receiving stoves, and even though it would have no impact on them, they went around, with each person having an equal say in what they thought might work in getting the stoves out there to other people.



Despite all of the hardships and struggles that Quechuans have faced in the past and continue to face today, they continue to persevere and maintain their way of life. Their trademark communalism can only be matched by their sense of kindness. A well known feature of the Quechuan culture is that it places great emphasis on community and mutual help (ayni). The social system is based on reciprocity. The people may be impoverished and have nothing but the cloth on their back and the maize in their bowl, but they will share what they have with a guest or with a needy neighbor and do so with the warmest smile. They showed me that despite their poverty, they have the richest spirit in the world.


Photo Credits: Julie Koppel, Romar Traveler, Wikipedia (Coca leaf photo)

About the Author:
Julie Koppel is originally from Westlake Village, California. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a B.A. in Psychology, and has completed the AmeriCorps NCCC in Charleston, South Carolina. Her future plans include pursuing a Master's Degree in anthropology and continuing her travels. You can contact Julie at: bryceexplorations@hotmail.com


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