Morenadas

It's Morenada season now in Huancayo. This is one of the round of dances that happen every year. This one is my favourite. As far as I can make out it remembers the time when the Spanish brought black slaves from Africa to Peru and made them slave drivers of the local population. The men (and at least one woman) dress up in black face masks, jackets and big leather boots and dance around the streets being menacing with whips.

Here is Michael practising his whipping skills



and here I am getting ready to take part. What me miss out on spending time with drunk men and their whips? No way !



Did you notice Rocio and Michael lurking at the edge?

Here I am with cousin Jose a local policeman




Here I am with my mask on and the requisite bottle of Peruvian beer.




So after a day of disorganisation and much beer drinking by all except me and Michael. I finally got something like the right costume together. That's Leather boots, jodhpurs, shirt and tie, Blazer, formal hat with feathers in, Headscarf to cover the hat and all important large whip and black mask. First order of the day was of course formal beer drinking and then marching/dancing/menacing our way into the main fiesta area. This is when I found out the disadvantages of wearing a thick leather mask with a very small mouth hole and trying to dance and menace at high altitude. It was hot, sweaty and very hard to breath but you do what you can.
In the fiesta was a band of trumpeters and drums to play for us as we danced and whipped the ground. I really love this music about all other Peruvian traditional music. It is wild and fierce and suits the slave drivers perfectly. Push the play button to hear a small extract.




I really would love to be playing the music next time. Then we had more beer and the whipping contests started. I'm not sure when I agreed to take part in this bit but a colleague in a mask grabbed me as partner and we lined up with the rest to take our turns fighting with the whips accompanied by the trumpet band. I must say it was exciting and painful and even though we were only playing (some of the other really went for it and had to be separated) I was glad when it was over.I got out of the way as quickly as I could and went over to the band to remove my mask and try to breathe, to be received with a special round of applause when they noticed that I'm a gringo!
Then, after more beer and menacing the crowd we danced back,uphill, to almost outside our house for the climbing contest, and more beer.
The men had put up a huge pole in the street with fruit and beer at the very top. This was much taller than the two story houses around and quite thin. There was much noise and beer and trumpeting and a few men tried to climb the pole for the beer. It was getting quite dark and raining by this time but one man did get to the top, threw fruit down onto the crowd and dropped a beer crate onto the head of a woman below who was not paying attention. I have asked several people since how the woman is but no-one knows, she must be alright I guess. More formal drinking and informal drinking and dancing and whipping and general chaos after this but I snuck off to sit inside away from the rain.

Here are Bob and Danny inside with whips and beer. Bob hopes to take his whip back to Europe with him, also his machete. Good luck Bob.



I believe there is a video of my whipping contest somewhere but I don't have a copy yet.

Muddy Boy

Michael is an unstoppable crawler now. He always wants to be on the floor wherever we are to go off investigating. Here he is getting into a mess in the garden whilst hitting the herbs with a juice bottle. Fun!



He is also tireless when walking holding my hands and quite fast. He has taken his first step unaided and occasionally stands unaided for long seconds, wobbling around and grinning like I don't know what. He is obviously very pleased with himself.

His other great joy is water. In the jungle he could sit in his bath in the sunshine and play for ages, or until wrinkly. Here in Huancayo it's too cold to be sitting out for very long, despite the sunshine being very strong. So he doesn't get too long playing in the bath. So when he gets a chance he loves to get very wet playing in a big bowl of water.

Party Mentushari

We went to Mentushari again. This is in the Peruvian jungle and it’s where the family grow coffee. This time it was for the annual village party, which Bob has been looking forward to for a while. All work in the village stops and they hire a huge sound system and a band and an impressive amount of beer is consumed over two to three days of constant partying. Thoughtfully they also bought in this year a trampoline for the children which was very popular.





Here is Mike with his cousin Yandheri





The animals of the village don’t really stop their business for the party. Bob found this out as one particular chicken has got very used to laying its daily egg on the bed he was sleeping in. He was warned that this might happen but perhaps the morning after the night before was not the best time for him to be dealing with poultry. I felt sorry for him but not so sorry that I didn’t take videos of course.

Bob with chicken on bed 1


Bob with chicken on bed 2







We made a quick trip out to the next village in the morning to buy more beer. Which Michael was very keen on looking after in the taxi



One of the highlights of the second day of the party was “Corta Monte” a tree cutting ceremony. Some dunk men go out early in the morning and cut down 10 or so small trees and bring them back to the village where a merry group of locals have a few more beers and set them up around the village square, their branches filled with presents like plastic trays, blankets and toys.








Then as it is getting dark the band plays and more beer is drunk and the people dance around the tree taking turns to have at it with a large axe. As the tree finally falls, the children of the village and Bob compete to be right under it as it falls and fight over the presents. Then a bit more beer is drunk and on to the next tree to do it again. It took Bob a few goes before he got a present but he is now the proud owner of a small plastic in-tray and slight concussion.



Here are Boy and me being the only ones sober in the early moring




and here he is inspecting the damage to the fallen tree.

Dancing in the street

Here is Michael looking pleased with life.




Once again there is music on the streets in our part of Huancayo. I’m not sure what the party was for this time, perhaps it was one of the regular celebrations or perhaps one of the money making ones where a family throw a party and sell lots of beer and fried trout to make a profit. Still I love to see the people dancing in the street and I really love all the bands. Here are a group of people dancing their way to the party and a couple of trumpeters proving the accompaniment. I guess the rest of the band is having a rest. More than likely they will play all day and all night and perhaps the next day too, they must pace themselves and take a lot of liquid refreshment.



and here are Michael and I looking pleased with ourselves.

Life in Lima

I think Michael enjoys life in Peru. I also guess he can’t remember life in England. There are always lots of friends and family around to play with him and often someone, me, Rocio, Aunty Sonia or Granny Noemi, to take him out somewhere with them. He happily goes off into the city on Granny Noemi’s back for instance if she is going to buy hat making supplies.
He also sees a lot of his cousin Kerly and they play very well together.






We had to do another of our dreaded trips to Lima recently. Everything in Peru is so centralised in Lima that we end up having to go there a lot for different legal stuff. This means an overnight bus trip, getting there around 6 in the morning and then spending all day hurrying from office to office, being messed about by the incredibly arrogant and confused staff. Going from one side of Lima to the other in taxis and often making no real advances on our jobs, then paying for a hotel so we can try again the next day. It is proving very hard for me to get my “Carnet de extranjeria” my foreigner’s card that gives me residency and the right to work. At every stage they invent a new problem for us to solve. Currently I am officially a tourist in Peru with a 90 day visa. Each 90 days I must renew my visa. By far the easiest way to do this is by leaving Peru, perhaps by going to Chile for one minute, and then returning to get a new 90 day visa on re-entering Peru. Last time Bob and I went via Lake Titicaca into Bolivia, spent a day in La Paz and returned to Peru, no problem. Except according to the computer records held in Lima there is a problem. I never left Peru! I did in fact return but I never left. It seems someone on the border didn’t enter my details in the computer system as I left Peru and even though my passport looks fine and has all the stamps their computer records must be mended before I can progress with my residency application. This will take a month or so and cost me money. Of course we can’t stay in Lima for a month so it involves another stupid waste of time and money returning to Lima later.

Well here is Michael looking a little sweaty after another night sleeping on the bus.

Washing Basket

Michael is learning and growing very quickly. Every day he has a new trick to show us and every day he seems cheekier than the last. He often looks across at me now to see if I’m watching him before he does some silliness he has invented




He loves climbing around on the bed and throwing himself down in the most dramatic ways he can invent. He loves grabbing me by the ears and squealing into my face. He loves our new version of the baby bowling where I set up a dozen or so empty pop bottles and he runs at them in his walker and knows them all over. He also loves sword-football with his new plastic sword. Every day he gets better at standing up on his own and he is becoming an excellent crawler too. He has great stamina for walking in the street holding my or Rocio’s hands.
He is very interested in whatever we are doing and always wants his hands involved, often his mouth too. We bought a new dirty washing basket the other day and of course Michael wanted to know all about it. At first he was a little wary of it but soon came around and in the end it was difficult to remove him from it.

Pachamanca Earth Oven

We had Pachmanca the other day. This is a Peruvian traditional meal, cooked under the ground, in this case in the garden. First you heat up lots of rocks over a wood fire then you bury all the food with the hot rocks all together and leave it to cook before digging it up.
There is usually meat, potatoes, humitas (Sweet or salty made from ground corn) and some other veggies that I forget. It is all an elaborate process to do and makes a big family event a bit like a barbecue.
Here is Michael overseeing Rocio as she prepares the food




No shots of the fire I’m afraid but here’s everyone digging up and separating the food from the rocks.






And Michael eating a sweet humita. He is getting very good at feeding himself these days. He loves to sit with a banana or humita or to gnaw away at a peeled apple. He is very content and determined to eat it all.