We set off at 4am, which is when the “bus” leaves. It’s actually a normal car, but leaves at a scheduled time each day - and is the only one that goes to Llactabamba. There were 9 of us in it - 4 adults in the back, 2 passengers in the front with one tangled up in the gearstick, and 2 in the boot with all the luggage (the car also takes out supplies for the village shop which mostly seemed to consist of crates of coca cola - or was it beer?). At about 5.30 we stopped, still in the dark, to find there had been a landslide and the road was blocked.
These are quite a common event towards the end of the rainy season, so after it got a bit lighter we all got out and started clearing the soil with shovels and breaking up the huge boulder with picks. It took about an hour and a half to make it passable - and I was struck by how much a normal part of life it must be. There were lots of other places on the rest of the journey where I could see a slide had been cleared.
Llactabamba was pretty much as I remembered it, but muddier and with maize growing all over the place - last time I visited in July which is very dry. One bonus is that the maize makes the lack of toilets slightly easier to handle - without it finding a private spot can be tricky!
 |
| Public toilets! |
We visited the pastor and his wife, who gave us breakfast - corn on the cob (of course) and a soup with some unidentified but very strong flavoured meat in it. We chatted to them for a while about the village and their own history. Then we went on to visit another couple from the church who live next to the square, and on to visit and encourage other Christians. I found I could understand a bit of the conversational gist, enough to intersperse a remark in Spanish every now and again. And it was good for me to be in such a Quechua-speaking village - I used a lot of what I have learned but it still wasn’t much.
This again has brought home to me how much I’ve adjusted to Abancay which now feels like home. In contrast, I have a long way to go to learn about life in these small villages.
We had a bit of a rest in the afternoon, and a brief snooze on the hillside overlooking the canyon - down below is Pachachaka and the baths we walked to last week, and it was a stunning view. Lovely to lie in the sunshine as I had been cold all day from being shrouded in cloud.
In the evening I preached again in the church (I had been keen to go back as they had remembered me from before and asked me to come again). I talked about the imagery of bread throughout the Bible, and how having bread does us no good at all - unless we eat it we remain hungry. And we need to eat every day. It was an encouragement to read the Bible frequently and to spend time with Jesus rather than just knowing the truth. And afterwards they chose a song (in Quechua) about God’s word being like honey - it was such an encouragement that at least someone had got the point!
I stayed the night with a widowed lady from the church - sharing her double bed with her and the cat. I slept amazingly well but woke up with lots of flea bites - happily my sleeping bag liner protected most of me though.
As we were leaving, the pastor, who is also the head of the water committee, asked me to help with a water project. I had been asking lots of questions about the situation and how it had developed over the last 18 months, and had been surprised not to have been taken up on it. So I was pleased and will be looking to meet again with the whole village and see whether it looks like a good working relationship can form.
No comments:
Post a Comment