In 1988 I was living in a tiny community in Bolivia, doing community service. That’s another story in itself – if not a whole book – but not for now. This story concerns itself with learning valuable cultural lessons, dancing on the roof of the world, and the reason I will never have a second helping of potatoes ever again as long as I live.
During the second week of my community service, I was invited to the inaugural blessing of a new tree nursery in a tiny hamlet about four hours drive into the mountains called Inka Katurapi. With foreign aid, the village of about fifty people was experimenting with planting trees to prevent harmful erosion of the topsoil.
I didn’t think they were going to feed me when I got there so before I left my fieldwork site, I had a hearty Andean breakfast, consisting of potatoes. Now, potatoes in Europe and in the U.S. come in three basic types: new, medium and baking. Potatoes in Bolivia however come in about 39 variations, with different colors and sizes and even tastes. Yes, amazingly, all potatoes do not taste the same. Anyway, beans (or even potatoes). I scoffed about a pound of potatoes before I left the village because I figured that would last me until the next meal (whenever that was going to be).
Driving over the Andes towards the village took about a couple of hours (there was impressive scenery, there were llamas & alpacas). When I got to the village, nestled high in Los Valles, the party was about to kick off. This was not a fiesta, the other typical kind of Andean celebration, which involves drinking so much chicha (maize beer) that you go blind, limbs aching from dancing the cueca, which is basically the Bolivian equivalent of Morris dancing and involves a lot of hanky-waving. This celebration was to be a rather more staid affair. There was to be a visit to the alpaca herd, a look at the nursery, a feast and then some speeches, they told me as soon as I arrived. Woah, hang on a minute, did someone say feast? Even though I’d eaten a few hours ago, appetite in the Andes is a funny thing and a little goes a long way, so my breakfast of potatoes was still weighing heavily on my stomach. A feast sounded like something I wasn’t prepared for, in an appetite kind of way.
So off we went to look at the alpacas and then at the nursery (yawn) and then there was the feast. In the middle of a muddy field on a steep slope, the entire village of about 45 people gathered around, bringing ingredients for the picnic. One person from each family brought an aguayu (a woven cloth used as a sort of backpack, if you tie it right (ask me to demonstrate sometime)) wrapped neatly around their contribution to the feast. Laying them down in the middle of the circle, one by one, they were unfolded to display the yummy contents within.
Quick caveat: I swear I am not making this up. Everything here actually happened, and I still have the scars (mental, physical and emotional) to prove it. Oh, and the photos!!
Every single person brought potatoes. Every single one. Okay, a few people had also thoughtfully brought some llahua which is a spicy tomato and chilli sauce and tastes like burning. But aside from that, potatoes and lots of them. About twenty blankets worth. That, in case you hadn't figured it out, is a lot of potatoes.
As the village guest, I got the village chair while everyone else sat on the ground. When I moved to sit with them, the head of the village, a man who wore a symbolic whip tied diagonally over his shoulder, shouted at me and gave me a guirnalda (a stiff floral garland that fits around the neck and over the shoulders and makes it impossible to move your arms from elbows up). So I sat on the village chair, higher than everyone and feeling uncomfortable. One of the women gave me an empty tin plate and indicated that I should help myself from the blanket. I quickly cottoned on that no-one was going to start on the food before I’d at least made a token effort so I headed over to the blanket, grabbed a few smallish spuds and a bit of red-spit sauce and plonked myself back down on the chair. My plate was immediately whisked away and the next time I saw it, mere seconds later, it was piled high with potatoes of every shape and hue.
There is one kind of potato in the Andes which deserves special mention here. Its name is the ch’uño and it is pure evil. It’s basically a freeze-dried potato which starts life sort of medium-sized and juicy and via a lengthy process of freezing and thawing in the open air, becomes a small black nugget which keeps for up to three years, usually in a sack in the animal shed. It’s the kind of food that could only make sense in a region where shortages are common and something that is cheap, filling and easily-reconstituted is a valuable commodity. My plate was piled high with ch’uño, of course, and I valiantly picked my way around them. Like the "polite girl" that I am, I struggled but eventually managed to finish everything on my plate though I felt dangerously heavy. Bear in mind that there was also nothing to drink: no liquid to wash down the massive quantities of starch that were currently coagulating like a large boulder inside me.
They say that it only takes a pound of potatoes to kill a baby but I reckon you’d have to throw them very accurately indeed. Feeling full to bursting, I wondered what the equivalent starch tolerance level was for an adult female. I felt I was rapidly approaching that level. In fact, I FELT LIKE I HAD ROSEMARY’S POTATO BABY GESTATING INSIDE ME. Gah.
I turned to the head honcho with a strained but satisfied look on my face (I always was a good actress) and said, “Que rica! – most delicious” When I turned back, there was a woman standing in front of me holding a plate of potatoes dotted with ch’uno and red sauce. Hang on a minute. Is this Groundhog Day? Whatthefuck? I took the plate with a smile and a bilious lurch and started to eat. Again.
I did the best I could. All I can say in my defence was that as a well brought up young lady, the german nuns taught me to eat whatever I was given. And so I did, even though I thought the effort would kill me, if the starch didn’t cripple me first. Once you’ve eaten a pound of potatoes, you feel full. Once you’ve eaten two pounds of potatoes, you begin to think you’ll never move again. By the middle of the third pound, you’re starting to wonder whether it would be easier to try and swallow one whole and choke yourself to death.
I handed the clean plate to the honcho, said “Thank you, but if I eat any more, I’m going to explode.” He laughed, took the plate and said words which I struggled to translate, but which I was sure involved the words “next course”. Sure enough, there was a second course … another traditional Andean dish – potato and pasta soup, which is basically another way of saying boiled potatoes and boiled pasta with the water left in the pan. They handed me a shallow bowl. I took one bite and blanched (no fun intended). I put the plate down on the ground, unsteadily and apologising profusely to everyone around. I’m sorry. I cannot eat another thing. I’m so sorry.
The relief on the faces of the villagers was obvious. I was confused, then suddenly, it clicked. In the USA and much of the western world, it’s considered polite to finish everything on your plate. In rural Bolivia however, if you lick your plate clean it implies that you’re still hungry, and so out of courtesy they will keep feeding you until you stop asking for more. The head honcho nodded at my apology, said sagely “You must have been very hungry indeed,” and then proceeded to give a lengthy speech in Quechua about the new nursery and all the benefits it would bring. I was extremely glad that the political tradition of long speeches was upheld equally in the Andes because it gave me a chance to digest.
My speech was not quite so lengthy and relied almost entirely on the artful use of sign language, stilted Quechua and a smattering of burps. No-one in the audience spoke Spanish, which made orating problematic – though I think I came up with a crowd-pleaser when I rubbed my heaving stomach and declared “Mmmm … potatoes yummy”. Everyone smiled. On reflection, perhaps they were just relieved that I'd finally stopped eating. More speeches were made and then the honcho summoned for the band to start to play.
Have you ever heard an Andean band play? No, not those guys with the bright ponchos and the pan-pipes playing “El Condor Pasa” in Harvard Square or Times Square … the real thing. Paul Simon wouldn’t recognise it, I can assure you. The village band consisted of five men with flute-like objects (quinos), one bloke with an enormous bass drum and a small child with a snare drum and a bad sense of rhythm. They played breathless synchopated tooting to a pounding rhythm. Everyone listened.
Then suddenly the head honcho stood up and said something in Quechua, waving in my direction. I fought my way through the layers of starch that had invaded my brain to translate it. Now…our visitor….to dance…future gerund…reflexive first person plural….
No wait, that can’t be right. I must have got that reflexive bit the wrong way around. Bloody grammar. He must have said, “Now we will dance for our visitor”. Surely. Surely. Oh god. Please. No.
He gestured again and indicated that I should stand up. Ah. Apparently my translation was right the first time: “Now our guest will dance for us”. And so, on wobbly legs and full of potato, I did the universal embarrassed uncle/Nelson Mandela dance, aided by the tight garland around my upper arms, making it impossible to move too much, and accompanied by sharp tooting and an urgent drum.
Thankfully, once the laughter had subsided, the women of the village got up to dance too, dragging me with them.
The dance consisted of holding hands in a circle and running round in a clockwise direction, then suddenly changing direction and running the other way for a bit. Meanwhile, two women would get into the middle of the circle and spin each other around. I was breathless, being 12,000 feet above sea level; full, having eaten three pounds of potatoes; thirsty, having not drunken anything since breakfast; and most of all clumsy, although that may have had something to do with the fact that we were dancing on a 45 degree ploughed field. The dance continued this way for a good ten minutes. Suddenly, I was grabbed by a short, fierce-looking woman in a bowler hat.
Now, many Bolivian women wear felt bowler hats, and some are fierce looking. But almost all of them are beneath five feet tall. I am not. I’m 5’5” and I towered over this woman as she grabbed my hands and we started to spin each other, one arm over the head. Because she was so short, spinning her presented no problem, and her wide colourful skirts spread out into a bell shape and brushed my legs as she span. But every time she tried to spin me, I ended up being smacked in the face by my own forearm. Repeatedly, with every turn. Not very graceful. And all to the sound of complex, breathy music, which after a while, sort of made sense. So picture the scene. I was 12,000 feet up in the Andes, full to bursting, vowing never to eat another potato as long as I live, being smacked repeatedly in the head and tripping over my own muddy boots in a field full of people I could barely communicate with. I was breathless, dizzy and dancing on the roof of the world. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.
