9/15/2018 0 Comments I see dead peopleDuring our time in Matucana, Janina's job was to investigate and make official recordings of traditions in the small towns of the province of Huarochiri, in the department of Lima. This often involved visiting pueblos during their traditional festivals, interviewing participants taking part in their age-old customs, and taking recordings of the event organizers explaining the meanings and histories of the events. Since the transportation, lodging and board were paid by her office, it was like Janina got paid to go to parties and interact with revelers. It was undeniably a tough job to beat. And so when I had the time, I accompanied Janina on these trips. The one that sticks out the most today is our trip to Collana, a small town with no electricity or public transportation located on a mountainside not far geographically from Matucana. The festival organizers set up transportation from Matucana to Collana, which was a short mini-bus filled to the brim with people. The bus left Matucana, crossed the highway, and started up a dirt road that I had never noticed before and which steadily became less noticeable as we continued. About forty minutes after leaving Matucana, our seemingly overmatched bus made it to the end of the supposed road and we entered a pueblo of about a dozen adobe buildings with a mix of straw and tin roofs. Below was a valley that included a river and the central highway, which connected Lima to large cities in the middle of the country and might as well have been light years away. I had lived in and known plenty of small villages in Yauyos, but Collana was perhaps smaller than all of those. Normally there was someone there to meet Janina and show her where to stay and eat and to present her to town authorities and leaders. But in Collana, nobody met us, and there were no stores or restaurants. Supposedly a woman had offered for us to use her home as lodging, but she wasn't present. Regarding food, we would eat during the festival, and that would be enough. Yet that didn't start until six, and it was just past lunchtime. So having nothing to do after taking the time to walk around Collana, we took an hour hike to a beautiful waterfall, which shared the name of the village. The trail was not well-marked and resembled a walking path through the grass, bending around the hillside. We talked with locals that we passed to confirm that this indeed was the correct path, and were told to leave an offering to the spirit of the falls upon arrival to ensure our safety. Throughout Peru, particularly in the Andes, villagers respect individual mountains and waterfalls as powerful beings who demand respect and homage. The path took us down to a wide, squat-like falls no more than fifty feet tall. The people of Collana claim you can see a face if you peer into the falls, and that this is the water's spirit. I wasn't sure that I noticed the facial features, but Janina said she did. We were the only people there, which along with the tales of the fall's spiritual power gave an eerie sensation. We left our offering- a piece of chocolate. After that short excursion, our time was spent waiting for the festival to start. Activities in rural Peru are rarely punctual, and Collana stuck to that "tradition" in the extreme. Six o'clock, the official start time of the party, came and went, and with it the sun. At that moment I realized how much higher in altitude Collana was than Matucana; we could already see our breaths. Janina stood shivering and wondering out loud why her puffy white coat and colorful scarf weren't keeping her warm. Her coat was unzipped, the scarf was laying untied on top of her shoulders, and her wool hat wasn't pulled down to cover her ears. When I asked her why she didn't adjust her clothes to be warmer, she, the girl who grew up in Lima and was from the upper jungle city of Oxapampa, replied that it wouldn't look as fashionable if she was bundled up. Seven o'clock came and went, along with it many claims that the party was about to start. At around eight a procession began and led us to the town's candle-lit chapel. After a few short words were said, everyone walked outside to join revelers who had started passing around liquor and lighting cigarettes along with the occasional firework. Janina tried to interview a variety of people to get a good perspective on Collana's festival; older women with colorful blankets on their backs, men half-drunken passing around the warm liquors, adults who now lived in the city but visited for special events, and the brave souls who wore an apparatus named toro loco (crazy bull), bamboo structures held on one's shoulders that were fitted with fireworks and sparklers which shot in every and each direction, as the wearer chased down partiers in a surreal and strangely thrilling adaptation of the running of the bulls. I balanced my time by accompanying Janina, taking part in the festivities, and trying not to drink too much before we finally received food, which was to be served at seven but actually was ready around ten. It was a warm beef soup cooked in gigantic pots over woodfire and served with large wooden ladles. The dozens of us sat at wooden tables and used candles, flashlights, and headlamps to see. Weary from the combination of a long day, lack of food, and alcohol, Janina and I ate the soup silently. Until that moment, we had only been worried about when we'd get our next meal. But we still had not met up with the woman who was supposed to give us lodging in her home for the night. Janina asked around for the lady but word-of-mouth said she was still helping the party organizers. With what, I had no idea. After dinner the festival's character changed. It had been transformed to about a dozen stragglers, some barely standing, passing around beer and conversing in such slurred speech that it was indecipherable. A woman was looking over the fire as the next day's food was already being prepared. We opted to hang out next to the fire to stay warm. At some point between sunset and that moment, Janina's coat had become fully zipped, her scarf tied around her neck, and her hat pulled down past the ears. She still looked cold. The woman finally picked us up around midnight, when she told us she'd walk us to her house. She was a squat, square-faced woman who wore a colorful manta on her back and a baseball cap on her head, and her main form of communication was by short bursts of sentences, told, loudly, in Janina's direction. She spoke as if someone had pointed a remote control at her, turned the volume up four notches, then threw the remote off the mountain. This squat woman told us her house was a quarter mile up the mountain, away from all the others, and since there was no path leading up to it, we would have to walk through farms and at one point through a dry stone drainage ditch to arrive. Along with the dark, the cold enveloped us and threatened to sap the warmth that our clothes had obtained from the fire. Making the experience even more miserable, my headlamp had died, and the moonlight was barely strong enough for us to see our own breaths and feet. The squat woman did not talk to me at all, despite my attempts to engage her. She did address Janina though, and I quickly learned to follow her heavy voice and Janina's flashlight to prevent getting lost in the dark as we plodded up the mountain. Finally, after what seemed like a cold, dark eternity, we stopped, bodies weary and eyelids half-open. Although there was not enough visibility to confirm this, there was a feeling that not one soul or building was within a fifteen minute walk from us, and that might as well have been a million light years' distance in Collana. The woman explained that her house had one room with five beds, one of which Janina and I would use. I figured that for one night, it wouldn't be too bad. We took off our backpacks, emptied our pockets and put their contents in our bags, and immediately jumped into bed and covered ourselves with five heavy blankets. Our eyes closed and well-deserved sleep started to finally come to us. We were comfortable, warm, and ready for a good night's sleep. Deep sleep came quickly. Our slumber was soon interrupted by a noise outside the door. Who could be there, so far away from the city and the party? What would have followed us through the dark? The intruder knocked again, this time louder. One of the people in the other beds started to murmur something. Another responded, sounding slightly perturbed but maybe also fearful. Another knock, more powerful this time, slammed the wooden door and with a loud BAM!. The sound of feet shuffling came from the doorway, but as no person was visible I sat up, peering over the bed towards the entrance. Still, no one was there. The person must have been on his knees, or crawling, I thought, for us to not see him. Then he spoke. The moo was low and long. Then, upon the realization she opened the door, the cow barged through, mooing in every direction. Her owner, the squat woman, jumped out of bed and tried to shoo the cow away, but this just drew the cow's attention to the owner's bed, the end result being the cow turned away from our bed and promptly started hitting my face with her tail, much like a housecleaner uses a duster on a dusty bookshelf. But this duster smelled of mud and grass, and at the other end of it was a large white-and-black ass. To get the cow to leave and secure the doorway, the woman and her family turned on their flashlights. Janina woke up and reached over to turn hers on as well. I asked to borrow her light to use the bathroom outside. After being woken up, there was no way I was going back to sleep with the drinks and soup I had drank and eaten, unless I put my jacket and glasses back on to brave the empty cold to use the bathroom. Upon re-entering, I was sleepy and in the drowsy state of near-sleep, and I gave one last look around our part of the room before taking off my glasses for bed. Janina was already softly breathing under the mountain of blankets. On the dusty wooden floor next to her was her backpack. Further up the wall was the wooden mantle on top of the bed, right above our pillows. Then, there it was, no- there they were. Sitting above my bed. On top of the dusty, wooden mantle. Human skulls. Both staring at me through their blank dark eye sockets, which were surrounded by white and yellow-stained craniums, their jaws closed shut as they stared at me with a few holes in their toothy smiles. I instantly woke, completely and totally alert. It was like a shot of adrenaline instantly applied to my senses. Here I was, far from home, far from cell phone service, far from any other living person outside of this home, far from anyone who even knew me, in the house of an obviously strange woman, perhaps a maniac, either way a woman who didn't even acknowledge my existence when I talked to her. The terror hit my eyes, and at that point Janina started to wake as the flashlight stayed fixated like a laser beam on the mantle above her. I told her I had to show her something outside, then managed to walk, not run, out of the house. Once outside together, I froze. Janina said something but it went in one ear and out the other. I tried to explain there were two skulls above the bed (in fact, I didn't know the word for skull*, so what I said translated to "head bones"). She calmed me down a bit, explaining people use the skulls of dead relatives, specifically, grandparents and great-grandparents, so the spirits will look over their homes. Apparently it is a well-known practice, although not common in all parts of Peru. That made me feel better, until we re-entered. I looked at the mantle again, trying to reason with this new intercultural challenge and appreciate the ancestors' looking over us. If the squat woman was indeed a maniac, perhaps these spirits would protect me. But something was off about these skulls. They didn't seem to line up with the dimensions of adults. I realized, terrified, they were not normal skulls. These were the skulls of children. This freaked me out. All night I tossed and turned, wondering why someone would have children's remains in her home. In her home, far away from all the other houses. A lady who refused to acknowledge me all night. The most comforting thought that came to my head was, they were her children who died, and she kept their heads. That was the most comforting thought that came to me all night. Needless to say, it was a sleepless night. It was also a peaceful night, for those who were not sleeping next to skulls with their imaginations running wild. Nothing happened. No spirits, no crazy lady doing anything after she thought we were asleep, nothing. The next day the woman finally did talk to me, as if some curse had been lifted overnight and she could finally talk to the gringo, and we learned the skulls were from a site of ruins near town. The woman found two skeletons and decided to bring their skulls to her home. What she did with the rest of the remains, no one cared to ask. The rest of the day was a blurry, exhausting walk back to Matucana. The transportation was only provided for the first and last days of the festival, and we were not staying another night. We walked down the mountain to the highway, from where we took a bus to Matucana. The hike probably lasted about four hours, and if not for the adrenaline of fear still lingering in my body, it would have been even more tiresome. The promise of my own bed, in a familiar and so-not-creepy room, served as a great motivator. For the record, I have since spoken to various Peruvians on the subject, even those who use the skulls of great-grandparents to protect their homes, and they confirmed grave-robbing children's remains to decorate your house is not normal. Who would've thought? Happy Halloween *it's "calavera" Note: This is from a post dated 6/25/12 in my old Peace Corps blog, but edited up a bit. It seemed timely given Halloween is approaching. In the actual story, the cow enters the room after my realization is made. Photo taken from public domain
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AuthorBrad Goodman Archives
April 2019
CategoriesAll Andes Beaches Ghosts Halloween Lima Mancora Peace Corps Peru Rural Tourism Yauyos |