La Wayllunk'a

This week I learned what a Wayllunka is. As usual, I got up Monday Morning not knowing if I would be going to Aramasí or not. At nine thirty I got a call from José, telling me to meet him in 15 minutes at an office 20 minutes away. We met-up and went directly to Vinto, where we bought tons and tons of food. Then I learned that we were going to do a health workshop for women the next day and would provide food for all the people that showed up, maybe over 100. I bought a guitar last week only to discover that I play more naturally left-handed and the guitar I bought has a nice cut-out for right-handed players, but for lefties, the design does not work. I thought the guitar should be donated to Aramasí for anyone to play when they wanted to. My job at the market in Vinto was to sit on the truck bed and guard all the purchases. So I sat there with the guitar and learned a song (right handed). It was quite enjoyable, sitting peacefully in the middle of a busy market morning, picking at a guitar with everyone rushing around me. None of the stuff was stolen, either; a job well done, I thought.
That evening we unloaded and sorted all the stuff and prepared for the health workshop. Early the next morning women started showing up from all over, colorful brightly dressed women trickled in from every direction, in there best going-out garb. The themes of the workshop were: nutrition, domestic violence, community organization, human rights, sanitation, disease and illness prevention, first aide procedures, and governmental health system services and access. There was a really funny video where the roles of men and women were switched and the women acted like men stereotypically do and the men as women do. Then the man woke up at the end and realized it was all a dream and that he should treat his wife better. All in Quechua. I got to participate in a demonstration.














After the health workshop they set-up two 40 foot poles with a loose rope hanging down between them. And about 25 feet away, another couple of poles with a cross beam decorated with aguayos and flowers and buckets hanging across it. The rope hanging from the high poles was the swing and it had two smaller ropes tied to either side for pulling the swinger. So the swinger was virtually catapulted by two people toward the cross beam until he/she could grab a bucket with his/her feet. And then, if you were young, they would continue swinging you higher and higher until you begged them to stop, or you had enough fun and they got bored. It was more exciting when girls were swinging and started laughing, then screaming to stop. Once you caught a bucket, you were given a tutuma of chicha, your bucket full of goodies and a handful of confetti on your head (hopefully the picture will illustrate any questions).













We did a Wayllunka in Aramasí after the workshop, and the next day, went to Huayk'ampara to do another for the kids. The one for the kids was a lot of fun. Kids are just fun in general. Adults are more reserved and careful and care more about self-image and not looking silly. Kids love silly. These are mostly pics from Huayk'ampara.
That's all for now. Hopefully I'll come back and edit this. Surely the format will mess everything up when I post.