Tuesday, June 23, 2009

We discovered yesterday while waiting in Peguche center for Stuckart that the bus comes much closer to our homes (less walking). We tried it today, and it went well.
Olga is my informant today. She’s easier to understand, as her pronunciation of words (accent, I suppose) is more what I’m used to. I think she tries to enunciate when she’s talking to me. She also talks slower than Matilda.

Matilda and Olga went to Guayaquil on Saturday in order to sing Christian songs. It takes 9 hours in a car to get to Guayaquil, which they didn’t consider very far. I disagree. People here say everything is close, though (“muy cerca”). They also said it is very hot there. I found out it was their first time in Guayaquil.
There are 7 people in their group: 6 girls and only 1 male. On Sundays, they sing in churches around the area: Agato, Calpaqui, Morocho, Caravuela, Otavalo, etc. Olga and Matilda have been singing in a group since 1994.

Olga said they don’t observe Inti Raymi because they don’t like the celebration. She also said it’s a Catholic celebration and they’re Evangelical. Jason’s family also told him that it is a Catholic celebration. It’s interesting, since all of the literature we read in preparation told us that it was pre-Incan, influenced by the Incas (Inti Raymi; also celebrated in Peru), and then changed again by the Catholic Spaniards (San Juan).
Olga showed me more pictures today, so I could see them singing in various places.

They asked if I wanted choclo to eat, and there was much giggling when I said I didn’t know what it was. They explained that it was food; I asked what kind. They brought out a bowl full of peas, 5 different kinds of beans (one was mijoco), and corn on the cob. Oh, so this is choclo (corn on the cob).

We cleaned ponchos with palos de maderas (pinecone brushes). You fold the poncho in half over a pole that is about 5.5 feet off the ground and parallel to the floor. You brush with both hands at the same time, in theory at the same rate (on opposite sides of the poncho). Then, you move it askew a bit and brush the middle. When one side is done, you flip it and repeat the process. It’s harder than it looks – like everything else I’ve tried. I can’t brush at the same pace with both of my hands, so the poncho kept falling off. Problem-solver Matilda brilliantly took a huge needle and pinned the poncho to itself right underneath the pole so it couldn’t fall off. I decided that it’s a good way to take out aggression because you have to be rough to do a good job. I found out that my left arm is weaker than my right (or something) because I had to do the left side more every time. Like every other job I’ve tried so far, this one is somewhat tedious.
Matilda showed me that the wool pulled off a poncho when cleaning can be spun back into thread and reused to weave again. I’m fascinated by their knowledge and how they’ve found a way to use and reuse everything. They have to clean all of the ponchos with these brushes to get off any imperfections they missed by hand and to make the cloth much softer by making some fibers stand out.

The Terán family makes shirts and ponchos. Matilda told me that they can make 10 complete ponchos – each consisting of a front and back piece – during a 12 hour time span. They usually weave from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
Matilda works with Carmen, weaving, but she can embroider, too. She made a brown flowered strip that is for indigenous women’s shirt sleeves. It took her 3 weeks to embroider the strip by hand! She said it took the same amount of time to embroider by hand the big red flowers on the cloth that will become the main body of a shirt the Otavalo indigenous women wear.


I learned from Matilda that her dad left when she was a little girl. She has one older brother who lives with him somewhere other than Peguche or Otavalo. Her dad has another wife now, and they have 3 girls and 4 boys. She doesn’t see him. There are no men in their life, as her mom never remarried and she and Olga don’t have boyfriends or husbands.

Matilda asked if I wanted to learn how to weave. Of course; why not? So, she set up the treadle loom. She had to roll the cloth so it was at the right spot. Then, she tightened it, but it was too short to stay, so she had to tie the pole down. Then, she demonstrated how to weave. I did my best to document the process for our research purposes, while trying to follow along, but I couldn’t figure out the feet. While showing me how to weave, Matilda ran out of string on the shuttle, so she had to spin more so that I could try to weave. I took a video of her changing the shuttle and weaving.
Then – all too soon – it was my turn to weave. As I had predicted, the footwork proved to be my nemesis. The hands do the easy work: pass the shuttle through the channel of strings and smoosh it with the bar when the shuttle is on the other side. The feet are important because they determine which channel of strings will be open. By the time I figured out the pattern (left center, right center, outside right, outside left – I think), my hands were now messing up. Haha. So much for Crook’s Farm being my pre-training…