Life In Ruins

On a little hike from the small town of Ollantaytambo, in the heart of the Sacred Valley (best known for being the gateway to Macchu Picchu), we came upon one of the dime a dozen ruins that are found here, but this one was inhabited.

There were two ancient looking buildings, partially crumbled, overlooking the Urubamba River with a view of the Ollantaytambo architectural site on the other bank. Next to the two ancient buildings was a lean-to with a corrugated tin roof. The first sign of occupancy was a full clothesline of colorful clothes flapping in the misty breeze. Then a baby’s cry. Then a chicken scampering through the grass.
We didn’t continue to walk much closer in order to respect their privacy (and protect ourselves from any trespasser-trained dogs), but we continued up the trail overlooking their home. We saw that they had planted beautiful, neat rows of flowers (hydrangeas and geraniums, maybe), they had a garden and a corn field recently burned and ready for replanting. We saw a woman and a child, but assumed there must be more family members based on the quantity of clothes on the line. Perhaps the father and son we later ran into on the trail were on their way home.
I thought about them for the rest of the hike, living an hour’s walk up a mountain outside the nearest town, with no other means of access. What do they do all day? Do they get bored? What gives meaning to their lives?
I’m ashamed to say that my initial reaction was to doubt the quality of their existence there, and to pity them the circumstances that brought them to live where they did.
But, I’m probably wrong. The woman who I saw, with the baby, probably lives a great life. She probably wakes up each day to the sun’s rays or the rooster crowing, whichever wins the battle that day. She gets up, feels the weather and decides whether or not to make a fire so the hut is warm when her family wakes up. She checks on the baby warm in her blankets and prays for just a few more minutes of quiet. She grabs a few freshly laid chicken eggs and cooks them with corn and potatoes from their land plot, smiling as the train whistles by below on it’s way from Ollantaytambo.
When her kids wake up, the baby and the school-aged boy, she feeds them breakfast and fusses over their hair, finger combing it like only a mother would. She dips a rag in a bucket of clean rain water to wipe up after them, starting with their faces, as they wriggle away from her to go outside and play. As she piles dishes in the basin, she watches as the boy gently helps the girl pet one of the new baby chickens, proud of how gentle he is with his baby sister. Her husband sits in the shade, watching too but paying closer attention to his whittling. The baby’s first birthday is coming up and he’s carving her a snake, her favorite of the three most spiritual animals in Andean culture (and the easiest to carve). Maybe she’ll get a Puma for her second birthday, a Condor for her third.
If it’s harvest day, the woman will go to town, her son carrying the baby and her carrying the load of corn or potatoes that she’ll lay out on a blanket to exchange for soles or spices or medicine. If it’s her mother in law’s day to visit, she will both look forward to it and dread it all at once: excited to hear the latest gossip about her sisters-in-law, who live in the big city of Cusco, but also nervous about making the chicha tea, choclo con queso and chuno just the way she likes it, otherwise she will hear about it for the next three visits.

In the afternoon she draws more water from the rain bucket, transfers it to a kettle to heat it, then pours it in the metal basin. She bathes her son first - he will barely stand still long enough to scrub his armpits. He’s so scrawny now - starting to become a man even though he’s still just a boy, she thinks. She bathes next, using her special lavender soap that she uses on no one else. She stores it with the medicines from town so that no one will find it. Finally she bathes the baby now that the water has cooled a bit and her own body has warmed and dried enough to keep the baby warm while she dries too. She puts her warmest fuzzy pajamas on and slings her onto her back with her striped blanket, tucking her bootied feet in for extra security.

She deftly chops off a chicken’s head, but only after thanking her for the endless hours of amusement she has provided for the kids. She quickly de-feathers her, setting the feathers aside for use in the clay dolls she likes to make for her nieces in Cusco. She breaks down the chicken and sets the meat aside for dinner, placing the bones in a pot with water, onions and a few sprigs of coca. She sets it to simmer for the evening’s stock.
Meanwhile, she practices whittling for a bit - her husband is trying to teach her but she doesn’t quite have the patience he does. Instead she moves to the woven wall hanging she’s been working on for awhile, with a motif of llamas and bulls, like the ones out to pasture just down the walking path.

While she  weaves, she thinks absentmindedly about the weather, about how much more rain is needed to keep the animals and children fed, the crops alive and happy. She reads a bit, first in phonetic Quechua, a children’s book to the baby while her son plays and pretends not to listen. When the baby naps, she reads her own novels in Spanish. Her husband thinks it’s silly she reads in the new language, but she likes the practice.
When the sun comes out from behind the low, misty clouds, she allows herself to sit, to shift the baby to her lap and lean back against the adobe wall, to feel the sun on her face, her neck, her chest. For a fleeting moment she thinks about her Incan predecessors who worked this land before her, who bestowed it to her husband’s family. She is thankful and happy and content.
She is awoken from her reverie by the crunching of footsteps on the path and the excited squawks of the chickens upon the arrival of a visitor. She sees two gringos. Women, she thinks, though it’s hard to tell. They are bundled in bright colored plastic-looking clothing, breathing hard, and prodding the ground with sticks as they walk. She watches them with equal parts amusement and confusion as they plod uphill. She has seen their kind a few times up here, but mostly she sees them in town, coming and going from the bus station, water bottles in hand, always walking fast. Sometimes they smile at her and she’s not sure why or what to do.

She looks at them. They stop to look at her. She wonders: what do they do all day? Do they get bored? What gives meaning to their lives?