Thursday, November 3, 2016

Holiday Shows 2016

Please join us at our holiday art shows, selling textiles that we fairly traded for solar gear with our family and community of Taquile Island, Lake Titicaca. 

  Our home show in December:
Paonia Holiday Art Fair
Friday, December 2, 3-8pm
Saturday, December 3, 9am -5pm
Blue Sage Center for the Arts
228 Grand Avenue - Paonia, Colorado
We'll be showing TEXTILES plus our own Handmade Pottery



Did I tell you that the Taquile Island community has been deemed a 
UNESCO Cultural Heritage Site? 


~ ~ ~
November 5, 8am and 3pm
Holy Family School
786 26 1/2 Rd, 
just north of interstate 70 in Grand Junction, CO

Our booth will be located between the two buildings, outside. Weather promises to be partly cloudy and cold -- just the right weather to try on the exquisite knitted wool hats! 
We will bring a small sampling of our pottery to this show.


Sam all dressed up at the Holy Family School Holiday Show

~ ~ ~

April 9-11--Lima, Peru

Our last days in Peru were with our goddaughter and family in Lima.

We took the kids to the zoo.


And we babysat while Noemi and Alejandro voted in the big national election.




Saturday, April 16, 2016

Going Away Party

Ultima Dia en Taquile
Our last day of our 30th Anniversary visit to Taquile

Ivan had raised two ducks with the expressed goal of eating them for his 16th birthday party, April 6, which corresponded with our last night on Taquile.

We butchered the ducks the day before, and Ruperta marinated them overnight. Then, we made a Patcha Manca, which is a stone oven for roasting meat and vegetables.
It had rained the night before (our first real rain in a month! too late for most of the crops) so the rocks were wet ad it took quite a bit of fire over several hours to heat them to roasting temperature. Eufrasia kept the fire going with mostly eucalyptus branches and leaves.

 When the rocks were hot enough, Silvano rearranged them so a large flat rock formed a floor. Ruperta then placed the duck meat on the rock. She had marinated it overnight, then wrapped it in paper sacking.
Hot rocks were place on top of the meat, then potatoes and corn, fava beans and sweet potatoes were added. More hot rocks and the whole thing buried under sacking to keep it clean and then dirt for insulation. We feasted on this food for a late lunch.

Going away Party in the evening
The party started from the Patcha Manca plus watermelon for the earliest guests, then volleyball. Dinner was a big soup. Music was live traditional and we danced until midnight. 
guitars and mandolins and a charango
sampoñas (pan flutes)
The sun came out in time to bake moist banana cake in the solar cookers.
Ivan's birthday cake--Solar baked!
With a coca estallia we made our prayers into a despacho for everyone's well-being, especially for our safe travels and success to be able to return. Speeches about our 30 years of memories.
imbue the leaves with our prayers
Lionnel arrived just in time to connect with us on our last few days.
Edith dances with her godfather, Lionnel.
 Ruperta smiled throughout the whole party--this gal loves to dance!
Ruperta and Silvano dance together
I dressed in extra colorful clothing, Red and magenta.
colorful Tara with smiling Ruperta
The live musicians kept it going until midnight and then the recorded music took over with Delfin as DJ, more beer and coca. We danced until after two a.m.



Thursday, March 31, 2016

Easter, 2016

Community Unity

Easter preparations start a week or more ahead of time with singing rehearsals. Six or seven groups get together to practice harmonies and accompaniment, usually an electric piano and various stringed instruments. Ruperta and Ivan started late with only a couple of rehearsals with the Huayllano group, but they have participated every year and know the music. Ivan plays a beautiful mandolin. Performances are vigils in the churches Thursday through Saturday nights.

Thursday we went to the Adventist Church in Huayrapata, rather close to our house. Armando is an excellent music teacher and musician of many instruments, from keyboards to stringed instruments and even the accordian. He coached the chorus, probably 30 people of all ages, including many of our family members. He accompanied on the electric piano.

One song which they know in Spanish, Cant Aleluya al Señor, I taught him several years ago the English, Sing Halleluia to the Lord, and the Hebrew, Shir Alleluya a Donai. He taught the three languages to the chorus and I joined them in front of the room for the song. I was most welcome. Happily, the Adventists don't stay up all night and we got a good night's sleep.

That is not the case with the rest of the community. Good Friday, six groups sang in the big Catholic church in the plaza beginning at 8pm and singing until 2am! Sam and I crowded into the back of the room behind a group of men and listened until the Huayllano group sang and then gave up our seats to the singers and found fresh air and company outside the church. We definitely did not keep the vigil until 2am with the singers.
Six different groups sang in rotation at the main church.
Saturday was the sweetest evening for me. Huayllano is the furthest to the south, nearly an hour hike from our house. They have their own smaller Catholic Church, newly painted a couple of weeks ago. We went early with Ruperta and Ivan, and ate soup with the chorus. Huge pots of soup were served; we brought our own bowls and spoons. Afterward everyone came into the community room, had a sort of meeting. Singers are committed to attend every rehearsal on time or they are fined! The meeting listed the fines. I think this is how they pay for the beer, of which we drank until time to sing.
from the balcony
 I sat behind and within a group of men, one of whom had large print, large paper words of the songs. Mostly in Quechua with a few recognizable words for me. I was able to totally sing along. I was also welcomed to join the men in singin, even thought the women sit on the floor and have counterpoint and harmony.
Words to songs I could read!
This elegant man sat at the end of my pew.
At one point, during a break in the singing, all the men in the pews in front and behind me, probably 15 or so, began actively trading the coca leaves--they totally included me, Sam too. Arms reached around and under other arms with hands full of coca, everyone smiling and sharing in this traditional gesture of relationship. I was enthralled.

We stayed until midnight and walked home in moonlight, the waves of the lake and the wind in the trees whispering their songs. Magic night.

Easter Sunday
Easter is the annual ceremony to pay the Patcha Mama, the Mother Earth, for the whole year. Families individually create their own despatchos and bring them to the shamen or pacos at the ceremony. A despatcho is a dispatch or a sending of prayer, of intention. Traditionally a large cloth, especially woven for the purpose, is filled with coca leaves and opened with respect. Each family member chooses well-shaped leaves in groups of three, called a k'intu. Each k'intu holds the prayers and intentions of the person who chooses the leaves. These physical prayers are placed on a large piece of paper, topped with flower petals, sweets and wine, maybe medicine, sometimes drawings or other symbols of the intentions. Then the paper is folded closed and carried to the top of the mountain.
family despatcho after breakfast

Our family had many prayers for the healing of Luz Nati (see Bus Accident Story for details), many for the safe travels and success and return of Sam and I, for healthy crops, for gratitude of all our blessings. Sam and I carried this, and also the despatcho from Gonzalo's family, up to Mulcina, the ceremonial site at the high point of Taquile.

We got to the plaza in time to join the procession to Mulcina with the village officers.
Autoridades emerge from mass at the church
We followed the wives of the Autoridades to the highest point on Taquile. The many-colored skirts make a flowers as they climb the hill.
The procession was lead by a band playing a syncopated rhythm. They intermittently played during the activities up on Mulcina.

Many many estallias full of coca leaves are shared, k'intus chosen and offered. This long ceremony of gratitude to the Earth lasts until dusk.
 estallias full of coca leaves
Sam receives coca leaves

Women share with women; men with men
The gender sharing (not strict) includes the beer. This older woman and I shared beer and coca:


At the end of the day, we followed the procession down the hill to an evening of food and, later, beer. We slipped out after soup, full with the magic of the ritual and celebration.

Estufas Mejoradas

Clean burning wood cookstoves

We love solar cooking and promote it whenever we can, but the truth is that wood and twigs and dung  fuel will continue to be the primary means of cooking on Taquile. Lung irritation is common. I have sat in smoky kitchens where I had to hunch down to a meter above the floor level to breathe under the layer of smoke that filled the room. The answer is simple: Chimneys

Three meters of flexible galvanized metal will make two chimneys 2.5 meters high with a generous Chinese cap:


Yarn and a nail make an effective compass.
Fredy had a riveting tool that made assembling the chimney quick and, well, someone easy.
Silvano, Sam and Fredy with 2 chimneys and the ceramic base.
We purchased two of these ceramic foundations. It was difficult to find them with the chimney hole designed in.
lovely terra cotta

The stove is then finished with an air and ash metal floor.
We made the holes too small, darn.
First stove was installed in Grandma Josefa's kitchen where both Edith and Juana Luz are staying, going to school on Taquile while their parents build boats in Puno. This stove replaced the previous smoky stove where the walls and ceiling of the cooking alcove were covered with soot.
a very dirty smokey job

Second installation was for Asunta. Instead of installing it in the old sooty kitchen, they decided to make a new kitchen in a room that was already constructed. Asunta's father, Felipe, has taken a course in estufas mejoradas or better stoves and knows lots of details that we missed on Josefas's stove. In addition, building it in a new clean space was a pleasure.

Chimney installed; Felipe lays out the ceramic foundation
The mud layer closest to the fire is mixed with sifted dung for insulation.
finished with adobe
Final coat is smooth adobe. Armado finished the job with pride of ownership.

Tested when it was wet, small changes, and waited only one day to actually cook.






Saturday, March 19, 2016

Harvest time on Taquile

Early Potato Harvest
We helped digging and carrying new potatoes.
Digging potatoes
 After harvest we  pour out the sacks so we don't carry the dirt home.

Small mid-morning harvest
Sam carries potatoes; all I have to carry are the hoes

Silvano repairs the Chakitaklya, the Andean Foot Plow,
for early sod-busting in preparation for next year's planting. He has made the curved parts from manzanita wood, carefully pruned and chosen for the right shape.
Brand new chakitaklya

assembled with rawhide
 After wrapping tightly with rawhide, Silvano drives sticks under the hide to make it even tighter. When it dries it will be a strong tool, ready to take busting sod to an art form.
make it really tight
Harvest time is also Back-to-School time
Here are some pictures from opening day celebrations:
Elementary school kids get balloons

Secondary gets confetti in their hair
Secondary School also had a bit stonger pomp and circumstance:
Seated in the upper right are the officers of Taquile

I am told that less than a quarter of the students show up for the first week. However, education on Taquile is getting more strict. They doubled the number of teachers in the High School this year, and most of the elementary grades have two rooms per grade. I hope this means more attention and smaller classes.







More Solar on Taquile

Students get lights 

We have a reputation for bringing the first solar electric energy to Taquile in 1988, starting a movement that now has upwards of 90% of the households on Taquile with Photovoltaic power.  ¿How could we come home to Colorado and say, "Everyone has solar except our own family." Therefore we bought and installed solar in two households serving 5 school students.

The Asunta/Armando branch of the family, who usually live in Lachon on the Capachica Penninsula where grid power is available, will be in school on Taquile this year. Their house had no power, so we bought the panels and battery and installed lights to cook and study by.
we prepare for a coca leaf blessing on the new equipment
This installation will provide study lighting for three students: Kusi, Sarita and Yhoel.
Kusi is delighted with nearly-installed panel and lights

For the Valeria/Lino branch of the family, they have been living in Puno building boats, so their house was also not wired. Happily, Fredy had a panel and charge controller, so all we had to supply was the battery and lights.Juana Luz and Edith are now happy to be able to study in the evenings at home. Grandma Josefa is pretty happy, too.
Juana and Edith are happy to get school supplies as well
Natalia shows Josefa some photos

Natalia and Josefa