My Experience in the Cusco Inka Culture Seminar
So this week I attended a seminar with Centro Wanamey. The people in charge were friendly, but the rest of the class canceled at the last minute. They managed to scrounge up some students from the local university to attend at a discounted rate and it all turned out lovely. I came out better than I would have been in a class full of tourists by being in a class full of local guide students. They had a very good foundational knowledge of the material and asked great questions that I wouldn´t have thought of. The first day, the teacher was the director of the seminars and he gave a very nice presentation, the four hours of class flew by. That evening, we went to the temple of Coricancha. This was the famous temple of the sun in Cusco, and was covered after the Conquest by a Dominican Church. Many of the walls are still intact and the museum there offers a great mix of Spanish paintings and architecture, Inca architecture, and art relating the Inca religious and cultural practices, both modern and otherwise. It was really worth seeing and it was nice to have my teacher by side to point things out and answer my questions. He did a great job of relating everything back to the course material. Then we went to the Museo Inka. It was also very interesting and had lots of great artifacts. Again, Donaldo, my teacher did a great job of pulling class material together. Talk about using the primary resources available in order to reinforce a concept to a student. It was great and really helped me put pieces of ceramics and other cultural aspects of pre-Inca societies together with their names. I do have to admit that some parts of the museum were a little hoakey. Still worth the visit. The Inca pottery alone is worth the visit.
He also must have spent a mountain of time photocopying because the package of materials he gave me weighs about ten pounds. I have already started devouring the hundreds of pages that he included. He even went so far as to highlight chapters and important information in the tables of contents for me. The materials are in both Spanish and English and are provided at a variety of reading levels for my high school students. I can´t wait to finish devouring it, I have already learned so much. On day two of the seminar, we studied Inca Religion and we had a new professor, Carlitos. Carlitos was an older gentleman (compared to the mid-thirties teacher I had on day one), who wore a sport coat, scarf, glasses and graying moustache. Talk about stereotypes. He talked about Inca Religion at a fairly basic level and it was more of a review of the development of religion in any agricultural indigenous society. Still beneficial though, I learned some new vocabulary words and got some clarification on this Andean Cross that everyone wears and talks about here. It´s also on every ruin site that I have seen. In the afternoon, we went to Saqsaywaman (I´m guessing at the spelling, but it´s pronounced like sexy-woman). It is an APU or Inca offering site. We did not go to the ruins as I expected, but instead went to a home where in the backyard, there was a series of concentric circles with a fire pit in the center and outside of the circles there was a wooden bench. It was there that we made our offering to the Pachamama (Earth Mother). It was an amazing process and took a couple of hours. We offered everything from cocoa leaves to Inka Cola (the local fast food drink of choice). It was a fascinating and beautiful ceremony.
As we were leaving, the moon rose over us and was so bright and full I could have confused it for the sun. It was an incredible view, looking out over the city of Cusco, you could see where the rivers that are now two of the main avenues come together to make the city look like the head of a puma. Rumor has it that the ancient rivers still flow beneath the city streets. I will have to do some research in order to confirm or deny. The lights were beaming below and there was a great bird´s eye view of the main plaza and all of the colonial churches. An absolute must see at night.
Wednesday, the topic of class was Inca medicine. It was incredibly interesting and I would love to get my hands on the books that the professor was using and recommended to us. That evening, we went to the central market which in and of itself is an interesting field trip.
We found a lady in the medicinal area who was kind enough to show me each of the plants that we discussed in class that day and talk about its use. It amazed me the number of people that interrupted to purchase one thing or another. It proves to what extent the people here still live in the traditional way (or how the lousy public health care system has failed them). We also went to a Chicheria, which sells the fermented corn concoction that is used in both medicinal ways and in offerings to Pachamama. It was cool, but I didn´t taste the product because of a fear of some kind of interaction with the medicine they gave me for the case of amoebic dysentery that I am still getting over. After that, we went to the office of my professor; he keeps a tiny office in what used to be a bedroom in the top floor of a very dusty and sketchy apartment building. In his office, he read my cocoa leaves. It was an incredible experience and I sensed myself on the verge of tears the whole time because of the ceremonial feeling of it all.
Overall, I would say that the seminar was very worthwhile; the last two days are a tour of the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu. I thought that the price tag was a little excessive, but the people in charge really took great care of me and it did include some experiences that went way above and beyond the average tourist experience. I look forward to the trip to Machu Picchu and will be blogging again soon!
