photo by Barbara Drake
photo by Barbara DrakeTime for an Andean reality check. Too much Paris Hilton bikini nonsense.
I met this woman last month while trekking around Mount Ausangate, in southern Peru. Her name is Vicentina Chuchicari Mamani, and like most people in the area, she spins her wool and makes her own clothes. People have been crafting their textiles in this way for more than a thousand years. Vicentina is 48 years old. She has spent every day of her life sitting in the lap of Ausangate, spinning wool from her herd of llamas and alpacas. She likes to be busy, she says. When I tried to take a photo of her at rest, she made a face at the camera. It's not honorable to be photographed doing nothing, she explained. It's good to work. Traditional Andean woman like to sit on or near the ground to be close to Pachamama, the Earth Mother. It's good to sit like that, I was told.
3 responses so far ↓
1 el kibitzer // Oct 27, 2008 at 8:35 pm
barb,
i just read your earlier blogs about the area,
this is breathtaking, i have been to machu picchu, never gone trekking, i have driven up, i think about 5,000 meters, somewhere around Yanganuco??? not far from lima near huaraz, my wish is to go back some day. i ran into this blog, you may find it interesting: http://community.myfoxkc.com/blogs/SusanHiland/2007/11/07/Trekking_thru_the_Andes
keep up the good work!
chau for now,
el kibitzer
ps. in your picture, i can see the glaciers in the background, they look full of snow, how is the climate there these days?
2 Barb // Oct 27, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Hi, EK, yes, the scenery around Ausangate is stunning, albeit a bit barren. I’ve never been to Huaraz (El Fotografo has), however, which has magnificent peaks.
Sadly, all the snowcaps in Peru are melting at prodigious rates. Ausangate is more than 20,000 feet high, so it has a bit more snow than other mountains, but it too is losing its “white poncho,” as the locals say. Water from glacier meltoff is half what it was in the 70s. There isn’t enough water to sustain all the crops and people, so there’s fierce competition for water resources.
Susan Hiland’s blog post is interesting. It’s so good when American reporters take time off to see other parts of the world. Her remark about not realizing that 5,000 meters = 15,000 feet was kind of hilarious. I doubt she’s the first gringa to suffer from fuzzy math up there!
I hope you will be able to trek in Peru in the future. Trekking can be a good way to support local economies; better that the local people earn money from selling things to tourists than by going down in the mines.
3 Ward Welvaert // Nov 2, 2008 at 6:13 pm
That is a great picture. I noticed most women were carrying that same spinning tool around when I was in Accha (a very traditional Peruvian town) last week.