Bragging Moment

I just got to brag that a year ago I released my all violin cover of Taylor Swift's song "22," and it's had over 50,000 hits in the past year! Confidence as a violinist is something that took a long time coming. This is an exciting milestone for me.

To hear any of the music I made last year go to soundcloud.com/gilbridemusic.

Hits in Peru: El Taxi, Pitbull

From what I know this song hasn't made it big yet in the US, but it's HUGE here. 

Túpac Amaru and Religion

When I studied in Lima, my favorite class was 'The History of the Church in Latin America and Peru.' It was taught by Fr. Jeffrey Klaiber, S.J. Among the many topics covered were Messianic Movements, and we looked at Túpac Amaru's rebellion in that context. It would be a disservice to my late professor's memory to neglect the religious aspect of Túpac Amaru II's rebellion when discussing him here.

You may have been wondering (but probably weren't) how it was that a man claiming to be the Inca lead an army right through Andahuaylillas and yet there is still a overwhelmingly ornate church here. It's because Túpac expressly forbid the killing of priests and the destruction of churches. This was despite the fact that the official church opposed him. Yet many priests sympathized with his cause of protecting indigenous people from the crown's abuses.

For his part, Túpac Amaru never publicly condoned or repudiated the Catholic Church. But he did use Christrian as well as Andean symbols in his movement. Professor Klaiber taught that it was most likely that Túpac Amaru used Incan and Christian symbols in his campaign primarily to attract followers to his cause. The Spanish, and in particular the Jesuits, had been around long enough to attract many of the indigenous people to Christian beliefs.

In class we ended up defining the Great Rebellion as a “quasi-messianic” movement. Túpac Amaru comes from the same tradition as leaders like Moses, David, and Solomon, who used religious reasons to justify their movements on behalf of their people. Túpac Amaru mixed Christian and Incan religious elements to justify his rebellion.

As a final note from our study of Túpac Amaru with Professor Klaiber, anyone seriously studying Túpac Amaru has to be very careful about their sources. Just like with the Incas, most of our knowledge about Túpac Amaru comes from Spanish writers. Since they were the people who killed him and then quartered his body, they tend to have a bit of a bias. You always have to read between the lines when reading accounts of conquest and colonization.

Prominent Peruvians: Túpac Amaru II and th Great Rebellion

Do you really need a caption to tell you
this is Túpac Amaru II?
Source

May 18 was the anniversary of the death of Túpac Amaru II. He's a big deal in Peruvian history; and he's an especially big deal in Cusqueñan history. Who was he? Why's he so important? And why does he have the same name as the rapper? Fear not, dear reader, all your questions will be answered.

Túpac Amaru II was born in Surimana. His birth name was José Gabriel Condorcanqui. Before he found his calling as a revolutionary hero, he was a muleteer/trader. That meant he did a lot of travelling around the Southern Andes and had built up a network of connections which helped him in his role as a revolutionary. He was the cacique (chief) of the Tungasuca area. In 1760 he was married to Micaela Bastides Puyucahua. They had some kids, and a fairly normal life. Then he declared himself Inca and began a campaign to kick the Spanish out of Cusco. It's this last part of his life that makes him such a big historical figure.

(Slight) Address Change

Dear family, family, acquaintances, and strangers,

Our mailing address has changed ever so slightly. The number of the apartado is now 896. Please address all mail to:

Benjamin Hill

c/o P. Carlos Silva SJ

Triunfo 339, Apartado 896

Cusco Peru

You are all always welcome to send letters and packages (weighing under 3 pounds) whenever the fancy strikes you. You can always find my mailing address on the Contact page of this blog. 

Chau,

Ben

Belleza por Todos Lados: The back of La Compañía

Belleza por Todos Lados: Paddy's Pub Porch

Belleza por Todos Lados: Statues in the Andahuaylillas Plaza

Belleza por Todos Lados: Kinda tacky, but rose candles

Belleza por Todos Lados: Incan wall

There's no mortar holding these stones together. They're all cut perfectly to fit with each other and be held together by gravity. This technique protected buildings during earthquakes.

The City's Sentence

The older brother spoke.

“Let us go to the city

And write a sentence on the streets

Let us write, with blood,

a death sentence.”

“Yes,” agreed the younger.

“Let us write with such force that they will never forget us.”

So they packed their bags.

They joined the crowds.

They set the charges and slipped away

Before their words burst from their hate

through limbs and lungs

and wrote death on top of the living word
FINISH

Two years later,

the city faced a choice.

A drop of ink spilled from the pen that hovered above the paper

The ink filled the newspapers, bled onto the internet, covered the scripts of the evening news.

Waiting.

What sentence would the city write?

There was room for only one sentence.

A life sentence.

A death sentence.

Change one word

Change the world.

Who is the sentence for?
Whose life?

Whose death hangs in the balance?

The answer,

the city's soul.

Guilt was never the issue,

Humanity was.

What kind of sentence was the new motto now seen onto blue t shirts at every sporting event meant for?

A decision made,

pen to page,

ink firmly drawn across the white paper.

Lean in,

Read,

What does it say?

What have we written?

Ignoring it's citizen's life sentence

“No more hurting people.

Peace.”

The city wrote a death sentence.

But who is the subject of this death sentence?
The murderer is the object.

But we are the subject

The death, the sin, is the ours.

Two years ago a city declared itself strong.

It still is.
A week ago a federal government wrote a death sentence
and declare itself week.

Belleza por Todos Lados: Manzanas

JV Life: Weekly Schedule

This is what a “normal” week looks like for me. I've yet to have a normal week at school, and something is always changing with other commitments whether it's someone being sick, someone being busy, or meetings. But this is general how the week goes.

Monday	School 8:00-1:00 Violin Lesson 4:30-5:30
Tuesday	Community Breakfast 7:00-8:00 School 10:30-2:30 Catechism in Secsencaya (rural community) 5-8
Wednesday	Spirituality Morning 7:00-8:00 School 8:00-2:30 Violin Lesson 4:30-5:30
Thursday	School 10:30-2:30 Choir Practice 5-6 Volunteer Mass/Dinner 7-10
Friday	School 8:00-2:30 I cook dinner 5-6 First Communion Planning Meeting 6:30-8
Saturday	First Communion Class 8:00-10:00 Mass 6:30-7:30
Sunday	Community Night 6:30-8:00 Family Skype 8:00-10:00

Belleza por Todos Lados: Eyes in the back of the statue

Mountain Sicknesses

Chronic Mountain Sickness was mentioned a number of times as the source of a patients problems. I was very curious about it, so I asked a few of the doctors for more details.

Acute Mountain Sickness, more commonly known as altitude sickness, is what happens to people from sea level when the move to a high altitude. They lose some appetite, have to sleep more, and can sometimes faint from lack of oxygen. Even athletes will feel short of breath if they climb a hill quickly. All this is because there's less oxygen in the air, so the body has to work a lot harder to maintain itself even when resting.

Chronic Mountain Sickness is what happens to people who live their whole lives at high altitudes. My original understanding of the local people here is that they basically had a superpower. Their lungs are bigger and their blood has a high red blood cell count.* If they were to move to sea level, they would be able to run farther and faster without much trouble. It's an advantage I'm hoping to to capitalize on as a runner when I go back to Boston after 2 years in the mountains.

But it turns out it isn't as straightforward as I thought things were. Even though these people are adapted to living with less oxygen, it isn't enough. Here's what wikipedia's got to say on Chronic Mountain Sickness:

CMS is characterised by polycythemia (with subsequent increased hematocrit) and hypoxemia which both improve on descent from altitude. CMS is believed to arise because of an excessive production of red blood cells, which increases the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood ^[2] but may cause increased blood viscosity and uneven blood flow through the lungs (V/Q mismatch). However, CMS is also considered an adaptation of pulmonary and heart disease to life under chronic hypoxia at altitude.

Human beings didn't evolve at 3000 feet, so even with useful adaptations, the bodies of people living at high altitudes are working harder every moment to stay alive than the bodies of people at sea level. Their bodies aren't getting enough oxygen, even with their higher red blood cell count. One army medic compared it to having more soldiers on the field, but having each soldier be less effective (soldiers = red blood cells). The effects are similar to that of smoking (except they don't have black lungs and an increased lung cancer risk). Breathing gets more difficult as time goes on. It can lead to all sorts of secondary problems as different organs fail to function at their full potential.

An interesting aspect of Chronic Mountain Sickness is that it isn't just an altitude based problem. It's also a geography based problem. Again, wikipedia: 

Although CMS generally affects people native to altitudes higher than 3000m, it does not affect populations around the world equally. A recent study by Sahota and Panwar (2013)^[2] reviewed CMS prevalence rates around the world and found the highest rates were found in Andean countries of South America

It doesn't seem to be clear why it affects residents of the Andes (around 16%) more than residents of the Himalayas (around 5%). I guess this is what JVC means when they say "sit with the questions."

Chronic Mountain Sickness has basically one good treatment: moving to a lower altitude. Unfortunately for most people here moving to a lower altitude just isn't a viable option. Their families are here, their lives are here, not to mention most people don't have the savings to pull off a move, especially late in their lives. 

The takeaway isn't that everyone who lives at altitude is doomed to a shorter life. The takeaway is that this is a harsh place to live.

*red blood cells are what carry oxygen around to all the cells of the body.

Doctors in Andahuaylillas

On Monday (May 11), a group of 35 doctors/medical students arrived. They will be providing free clinics and medicine in Andahuaylillas and the neighboring towns and communities until this Wednesday (May 20). This is a regular trip that they have made for four years now. Our main role with the doctors, as bilingual people, is to act as translators during patient consultations. We give them our free hours. They brought a few translators with them, and a few of the doctors are bilingual, but I found that generally they needed me whenever I was around. This is part of that idea of apostolic availability – we're available to do other work besides our assigned worksites.

Here are my diary entries regarding working with the doctors over the past week.

Belleza por Todos Lados: Rooftop of la Compañía

Belleza por Todos Lados: Umbrella ceiling

Noted Without Translation: Don't Horse Riding

Belleza por Todos Lados: Evening falling outside my window

Concert at School

Juan José Chuquisengo, internationally renowned Peruvian pianist, spent the past week in Quispicanchi. He did a concert at the Compañía in Cusco to benefit the parish programs run by the Jesuits in Quispicanchi. He also gave a number of free concerts throughout the week at various towns and communities in the area. We were lucky enough to get a private concert at Padre Calilo's house on Monday night.

On Wednesday, he came to Fe y Alegría. There's no auditorium, so the kids brought chairs from their classrooms onto the cancha (soccer court). He played pieces by Bach, Beethoven, and others. He did a good job of keeping the attention of the kids, though of course he lost them at points. At one point he even had 8 kids up helping him play. (That part took a long time to organize. I think he learned from that because he only brought up 6 kids in the concert he did at the high school later that afternoon).

Belleza por Todos Lados: The Sun playing Hide-and-Seek

JV Life: Grocery Shopping

Everyone who doesn't grow their own food has to shop for groceries. That includes the residents of the Mountain House. The only meal we really cook is dinner, and each of us is assigned one night a week. So we request the items we need for our planned meal and the people assigned to go shopping go pick everything up at the Sunday market in the Urcos town plaza.

Belleza por Todos Lados: Above the Cusco Valley

Picnic in Cusco

May 1^st is labor day in much of the world LINK. So last weekend was a three day weekend. Victoria, Lucia, and Jacqueline all travelled. Theresa, Erin and I stayed home. But on Friday we went into Cusco with Luciana, one of the psychology students from la Católica who is staying until August. It's nice to have other people in town who are our age and we can hang out with. A lot of our social life is with people much older than us.

We had a picnic in the afternoon. Theresa took us to a site called Q'enko, which sits at the lip of the Cusco valley, so that the city is spread out beneath you. We brought bread, advocado, cheese, tomatoes, and wine with us. To drink the wine we had to ask some folks at a restaurant to open the bottles for us and we also had to buy plastic glasses at Plaza Vea, a megastore in Cusco. We spent the whole afternoon at Q'enko, and only climbed down to Cusco when it started to get dark.

Cristo Blanco, which stands above Cusco and is lit up at night.

In the city, we stopped at an ice cream shop. Ice cream is expensive on our budget, so it was a rare treat. The funnest part of the ice cream shop was the sign above the toilet in the bathroom:

If you say so.

After ice cream we went to the Museo de Pisco, which despite meaning “the Pisco Museum” is actually a bar. We spent awhile there and then took a taxi home. All in all, a nice outing.

At Museo de Pisco

Plaza de Armas at night

Belleza por Todos Lados: Silhouettes at Dusk

Victoria's Birthday

Victoria turned 24 on April 29th. We celebrated with two cakes (one at the parish and one at home), lasagna, and chilcanos de pisco (popular Peruvian drink made with pisco, ginger ale, and line juice). Remember when I talked about the tradition on getting cake on the birthday person's face? That's what's going on in the second picture.

Belleza Por Todos Lados: Cloud over Cusco

Noted Without Translation: Things I learned from my grandmother

Noted Without Translation: Spanish Puns

JV Life: Tour of the Mountain House

Shelter is in the first level of Maslov's Hierarchy of Needs. We all need somewhere to sleep, somewhere to get away from the elements, and ideally, somewhere we can hang out. For lots of the world, that somewhere is called a house (casa in Spanish, wasi in Quechua).

I know I used this picture on a different post a few months ago.
Deal with it.

Follow the jump to take a small virtual tour of the Mountain House.

JV Life: Sunday Night Skype

Skype is one of the coolest things to happen in communication. Not only is it easy video calling, it's free video calling. There's not even advertisements that interrupt your call! Skype enables my family to stay connected despite the fact that between the five of us, we live in 3 different places.

Here's how skyping works for the Mountain House. 

Food Week: Saturday - Eating Well in Cusco

Saturday I was in Cusco all day. Before we left, I had a hasty breakfast with apple oatmeal and peach tea. It's sitting on my cluttered desk in the picture (Mom, the desk is much cleaner now, I clean my room on Sunday afternoons)

Theresa, Erin, Lucia, and I went to The Bagel Café, which is very near the plaza. It was an exciting trip because bagel season has just begun. That's right, I said bagel season. The shop is run by Israelis who spend half the year in Peru and half the year in Israel. It's only open when they're in town. I expect we'll be making many more trips while bagel season lasts.

Trisha took Nora and I out for lunch. We got hamburgers at Papacho's. I also had a Cusqueña negra which is a sweet beer that tastes kind of like chocolate. After lunch we got cappuchinos. They came in mugs the size of soup cups. It was the more coffee than I've had in the past 5 months combined.

Dinner on Saturdays is an unorganized event. No one is assigned to cook so we just whip up whatever we feel like based on what we have. We each had some bread with cream cheese and sauco (elderberry) jam (both rare treats). A few of us also had some leftover pasta, but there's no photo for proof.

Food Week: Friday - Soup Day

I had a banana in my oatmeal on Friday. I arrived at the school at 8:30, in time to have some of the refrigerio (midmorning snack) that they serve only on Fridays. It's always a hot drink and a packet of galletas. Since I don't have a mug, they served me in my bowl. The drink is ponche de habas which is made with milk, sugar, and powdered habas. It kind of reminds of hot chocolate in the way it makes you feel inside, but the taste is different. I can't think what to compare it to.

Lunch at the school on Friday is one of my least favorite things. It's always arroz con leche (rice with milk) and galletas soda (saltines). It's lots of grains and no veggies. The señoras filled my bowl to the brim saying "this is delicious, have a lot!" I smiled and agreed and thanked them. Then I ate about a half-inch worth of arroz con leche before I couldn't do anymore. I slipped back to the house and dropped the remaining bit into the chancho bucket. Next Friday I'll just bring something to eat so that they don't serve me. 

Friday lunch at the parish is always soup. It seems to be made out of whatever's lying around. The soups are generally satisfying, but they definitely aren't my favorite dish the parish señoras cook. By the way, you might have come to the same conclusion as I have - Friday meals are simpler because there's less resources. It seems like most of the food budget is used up by Thursday afternoon at both the parish and the school. I could be wrong. It could be a cultural thing, but since restaurants in Andahuaylillas serve their standard menus on Fridays I think the financial explanation is more likely.

Friday is my night to cook. I made a rice pilaf with beans, tomatoes, and scallions (called cebello china which means chinese onion). You might have noticed that pretty much everything is eaten with a bowl and spoon. If you didn't, go back and look through the pictures. A bowl and spoon are the standard place settings here. Students bring a small tupperware (called a taper) and spoon for lunch at school. At the parish bowls and spoons are provided. I've gotten used to using a spoon for everything (with the occasional help from my fingers) and it feels perfectly normal now.