The Owl of Minerva: February 2013

Sometimes the most mundane of events can become surreal happenings through the course of the day. Just such a day was the day before yesterday.

I often sit in on the community meetings of whatever community I happen to be in at the time (I`m not just doing my reserch in one community, as would probably be easier, but over several communities), and am almost always bored stiff. This is partly because the meetings tend go on and on, with no topic exhausted until everyone who wants to have their say has done so, and partly because the language of the meeting is almost always predominantly in Aymara or Quechua (depending on the language of the particular community in question), neither of which I am particular fluent in (though my Quechua is a lot more developed than my Aymara). For a few days I`d been staying in the house of the mallku of one particular community, and had told him that I would like to attend the community meeting, as the topics he told me he was going to raise sounded pertinent to my area of research. The mallku´s (8-year old) son incidentally makes for an interesting conversation partner because he pronounces the consonant of every word as the sound "n", so for example the question "what`s your name?"becomes "non no nane". But I digress.

Anyway, we arrived at the meeting at around 11, I shook everyone's hand as I went in, and was prompted by my friend, the mallku, the introduce myself. Although I probably could have adequately introduced myself in Quechua, my mind went blank, and I spoke in Spanish; I panicked a little bit and as usual on these wanted to say far more than I needed to. I could see the various members of the community were looking at the floor, and in any direction rather at me and I got the hint that I should probably just shut up and sit down. I sat down on the floor, where I had had to sit when I came in because there were no available seats. I felt a bit odd sitting on the floor, and was aware that I may have been thought odd for doing so, as all of the men were sitting on chairs and as was customary, only the women were sitting on the floor. The morning part of the meeting didn't last for too long though, and at 12.30 we went back to the mallku's house for lunch. He acted as interpreter, while his son spoke to me in what to all intents and purposes was complete gobbledygook.

After lunch I was surprised to find that the meeting had resumed outside, rather than in the village hall. I was surprised chiefly because for a good portion of the morning it had rained, and I suspected that in the afternoon it might very well do the same. My suspicions bore fruit within the hour. However, I was surprised to find that despite the rain, the authorities, who were conducting the meeting sat at a table in the field lying in the middle of the community, continued despite getting increasingly wet, one of the curling up almost into a ball in a futile effort to protect himself. As the rain showed no sign of abating, more and more or the community members, and eventually the authorities as well, took refuge by standing on a ledge under the overhang of a roof. Before too long every one of the members of the community was standing underneath the roof, with the backs to the wall, facing the rain. This was how the meeting was conducted from then on. One person would speak, as if addressing the rain, then another to his left or right would reply, again as if giving a discourse towards the weather conditions. I thought it seemed like something from a Monty Python sketch. When the meeting was eventually over (after about two or three hours of soggy debate), I asked the mallku why they hadn't just gone inside the hall. "The authorities wanted to take advantage of the rain in order to finish early" I was told.

The alpaca farmers that I am doing my research with would like to sell you stuff. To be more precise, they would like to sell you some of their alpaca clothing. Below I will put some pictures of the clothing; if you like the look of any of it and want to pay me the requisite amount when I return to the UK (if that is indeed where you live), then I can bring something back for you. It´s very good quality, and because it´s direct from the suppliers it´s a pretty good price (I´ve added a little on to make it worth my while, but not much - I think it would still be cheaper than you´d find even in shops in La Paz).