October 8, 2009
Location: Cusco, Peru
The past week has been an exploration of the cultural museums and experiences that Cusco has to offer. Some, of course, have been better than others, but the ones that aren´t so great are still entertaining...
Take for instance, the Qarikancha Sitio Museo, which claims to have many old artifacts predating the Incan times. Upon arriving to the museum, you find yourself in a dark room without any lights, and you have to squint to see what is within the glass cases. There are all sorts of crazy items in the display, yet none of them explain what in the world the items are! I found this extremely entertaining, and without labels or explanations, you can allow yourself to use your imagination to depict the reason the artifact was originally created. In many of the cases, the item was labeled, but the label would read something like ¨This is not real, it is a recreation of the artifact...¨
Another highly entertaining part of the museum was this little flow chart....if you can zoom in, I recommend that you do. The flow chart goes something like this: ¨Inkas Metalurgic-Formas-Women Idols- Nobels Men Idols- Celebreties-Twin Persons- Physical Defect Persons- Fauna- Flora.¨ Now, how these are related I may never know. Other parts of the museum were interesting as well, like these mummies and the ¨cabezas largas¨, which are seen above. It was a custom that the skull would be bound so that the forehead would be huge- I am not sure how this custom affected the brain of the person, or how exactly they did this, but the people with the bound skulls would be those in higher classes.
These kids I met in one of the markets in Cusco. Kids here are lovely, and they wanted to pose for pictures. They love looking at the picture in the display box of the camera after it is taken, and they asked me to take more, so here is a series of 3 in succession, and in each picture a new friend would come along and want to be in the picture.
Another cool cultural experience was a display of typical Andean dances and songs. The women and men wore these amazing colorful customes and sang as they danced with the men. The picture below was taken at the performance.
This is the Qarikancha church lit up at night. So beautiful...
My hard-earned breakfast....complete after 40 minutes!I am really excited for the coming week. The mom of the children I met in the San Blas Plaza (Dayana, Rodrigo, Fabriana) last week and I have become friends. I told her about wanted to go into schools and so next week I´ll be going to school with Rodrigo, my 8 year old buddy. I may also get the chance to go to Ollyntaytambo, which is in the Sacred Valley, about 3 hours away from Cusco. This village is small and mountainous, and kids must walk up to 5!!!! hours to get to school. Many kids here skip school to stay at home and help out the family or to sell things in the market to make money, but since there is less tourism in Ollyntaytambo, more kids go to school, even with the crazy walk. One man has started a soup kitchen in the town so that the kids will be able to get food before they begin their descent home after school. This soup kitchen is a work in progress, and it is still unknown how much this food affects the children´s nutrition and ability to walk 10 hours a day for school. I am hoping to visit this location on Monday, both the school and the soup kitchen, and get a glimpse on how it all is working.
In addition to these 2 trips, I will also be going with an organization called BrucePeru, for a day or two to observe the schools. BrucePeru is an NGO that tries to give kids in Peru who have dropped out a second chance. The students stay in these special schools and get lessons on hygiene as well as education in the major subjects and after a few years they try to pass out so they can move on to the regular schools. Thus far, I am not sure about how the students are recruited or how the schools work exactly, but I am excited to visit them. Those are the plans for the following week and hopefully my Spanish will be good enough to really get a glimpse of some of the educational facilities here.
