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| What a weekend! well, being here in the office of the KOala Tours has been getting pretty boring although my spanish is improving no end and I am meeting wicked people every day...however come the weekends I need to get out of the city... so last weekend there happened to be a festival going on in the nearby village of Tinguipaya, it was a potato festival...here there are festivals almost every day of the week for whatever reason...lets party today, it`s thursday! Well, this festical was a bigger one with a potato queen and everything and so I went along with one of my bosses, his Irish girlfriend and one of the tour guides who works here too and who got me the job here. I took the day off work without asking literally just went and all the way was worried about it until we had gotten well into our journey...We descended through a canyon, once again with huge panoramic scenery and sat crushed up on the little bus amongst all the local peoples with their animals, babies slung on backs with brightly coloured cloths and immense bags of potatoes! Once we arrived amidst the heaps of other `tribes' from other villages all their to dispay their potatoes and dance the night away we immediately found accomodation and went straight back to see the displays that were already occuring. The whole town was crowded around the central plaza, campesinos (indigenous farmers) coated the steps of the church all dressed in their traditional clothing, black trousers with white turnups and black jackets with yellow and red markings on them for the men, the girls with similar colourings on their many layers of skirts and many with bnrightly decorated blankets covering their shoulders. The men all wore brightly coloured patterned hats with ear flaps and white top hats sitting precariously atop, the women wore only the top hats and often had dangling bits of hair or something akin in their faces. Layers and rows of potatoes were laid out for people to buy or admire, over 100 different types! and surprisingly all looked different! During the presentation a group of campesinos would run into the centre of the gathering and stand in a circle stomping their feet (a relationship to Pachamama...mother earth) and blowing into crudely made pan pipes...has to be said, the blowing was pretty crude too! The tune didnt very much and they would kind of waddle from side to side, fascinating to watch, almost funny but everyone else was taking it really seriously so I held back the giggles and just stood with a huge grin on my face. This went on for a while and so we went and wandered around the village which was awesome in a real old adobe middle ages type way. narrow streets, cobbled, no traffic at all, tiny little cottages with open doors and villagers beckoning in all who would party with them. Later we returned fed and watered and ready to dance! The only thing I can think of to compare this tyoe of dancing to is morris dancing...and even that is a little far fetched! The campesinos, again in their groups, some large, others much smaller, would run to a certain spot and dance in a circle, more like running than dancing the would circle a main man who was strumming his tiny little guitar called a charrango and running in the opposite direction. The women would sing in high pitched voices a repetative tune in Quechua that even Pedro, the guide couldnt understand the words to. After a while they would stop and all face the centre and stomp their feet heartily for a while and then the whole process would begin again with the group running in the opposite direction to before. All the campesinos were drinking this 96% pure alcohol stuff that seriously I would use to get paint out of clothes or something but when pushed to try a little, naturally, it would have been rude to say no! There was chicha, an alcoholic drink made of fermented corn which made even the stomachs of Wilbur and Pedro jitter a little, being hardcore I was fine! Hahahaha. Usually at these types of festivals there are loads of fights with the campesinos wanting to show their virility and the fight for land and thus status being very important. Here however at Tinguipaya it was a lot more tranquil and everyone just wanted to dance. After a walk and a few shots of paint stripper Pedro dragged me by the hand into the circle to join one particular group of dancers, I was encouraged to sing but just could not reach those notes! It took a few minutes to get over feeling silly and self conscious and soon enough I was stomping around with the best of them being complemented on my first attempts at this dance. I was having a blinding time! This went on all night all over the village and meanwhile there was a stage show going on with cumbia, salsa and more modern music (modern in a Bolivian sense, don稚 think for a minute dance, funk or trip hop ever stood a chance) and once again I was dragged to the central plaza where Pedro and I danced, whirling around in circles, salsa dancing, whatever it was we were doing it felt and apparently looked great! We went back and forth between the two types of dancing until we really couldn`t dance any more. At one point there was a famous singer, Gregoria Mamani on stage, one of Pedro`s favourite singers who it turned out was staying in our very room! We saw him again the next day passed out on a bench having gone all night. Obviously not as hardcore as the campesinos who after drinking pure alcohol all night were still going the next day and well into Saturday night. Granted the running was more of a crawl by this point and the singing a little more drawled but still they kept at it! We missed all the buses home the next day and so had to wait around another day but this was no problem as there was plenty of things to do in the area, walking climbing, gorgeous rocks, mountain walks, rivers and streams everywhere. The following morning Pedro and I were going to reserve places on the bus that morning and as we passed a house there were a load of campesinos still going in one of their back gardens, they beckoned us in, `pasa, pasa no mas・ come in, relax・ So in we went and had another little dance which in the cold hard light of day with people who had been drinking for 2 days solid was pretty surreal. Pedro went off to buy them some more alcohol and gifts and I stayed and danced and chatted with them as best I could. When he returned he pulled out his camera and suddenly everyone wanted photos of them with their trinkets, one guy had a huge stuffed Condor in his backpack which as well as being illegal (most of them don稚 realise this) is bad luck for farmers as when one condor dies the others in the area will look for it and often take revenge in the form of sheep or goat theft, very unfortunate for the farmers. Anyway, came time to go and they really didn稚 want us to go, once Pedro had managed to get out the gate they pulled me back and shut it after him making me dance with them more! It took a lot of persuasion and false promises of return to let them let me go and later in the village when they came running through Pedro and I had to hide! The sight of 20 campesinos running purposely at or through you was a bizzarly frightening sight anyway let alone knowing that they wanted you back in their group! Anyway, I`m at work and have to look like I`m doing something. Catch ya all later Ciao ciao love you all Emita Aka・holicumbiera, pachamama, cholita con pantalones, cachawawita (my new nicknames!) _________________________________________________________________ Join the world痴 largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com/ |
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