Costa, Sierra y Selva

The little girl does not run; she flutters like a fledgling parrot across the court. Ribbons dance behind her, and her cheeks flush with unspeakable delight as she kicks the ball. She and her playmates chatter and dance. At eight years old, the season of joy will soon come to an end. Childhood in Inkawasi is an Arctic summer, a blast of warmth gone so quickly that one dares not blink so as not to miss a second of it. When it is gone, it is gone forever.

¿Imataq shutinki? What is your name?

I can’t remember my name.

¿Imataq shutinki?

I lost it! The spirit of the mountain took it from me as I led my sheep by his shadow. Mama told me never to wait until dark, but I fell asleep beneath the quina bush. I will never find my name again.

Edilberto tries to explain, but he is a frustrated man, thwarted by life itself, and there is so much he wants to say. He has a kind face and behind his sad eyes lie stories left untold. A cajamarquino by birth, he has only partially adopted the local dress and wears a colorful woven poncho, synthetic workout pants and tennis shoes. For years he has worked with the women and children of Inkawasi, victims of domestic violence and abuse. The children are his hope: “We have to start with the children. Adults don’t change.” In Spanish, the word for despair is desesperar. It means to unhope. It is a common theme in Inkawasi.

¿Imapaqtaq waqayanki? Why are you crying?

I do not even know.

Rosa weaves with the rainbow for inspiration. In her hands, the colors reach out to each other in love, bringing communion to her shawls and sacrifice to her pullus. She is thirty three years old and has five children. As she walks, the smallest of them clings to her skirt. He does not speak, only stares with very large eyes. At night he has colorful dreams that astonish him, but he says nothing. One day the dreams will change and he will become like his father. His desires: to play with his bigger sisters, to be held in his mother’s arms, to eat, to sleep when he has eaten, to be smiled at.

Allip tuldyawlla syiluqa. The sky is cloudy. It has been this way for days. The potatoes will be ruined if it hails again.

José, a primary school teacher in Inkawasi, feels a rush of relief as he boards the bus to Chiclayo. Another week survived. Did I leave anything behind? The window is stuck. There. I´ll get there at two and have lunch with Carlota. I wonder what Carlota has been up to this week. Car-lo-ta. The sun is very bright today. Good thing I brought my sunglasses. I can’t wait to tell Carlota about my week, especially about that one kid. I’ll be so glad when it’s all over. Let’s see…March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October…that makes eight months. Two to go. That’s not so bad. I can put up with anything for two months. Why did I say yes? José, what were you thinking? Driver’s taking the turns fast today. Maybe we’ll get there a little early. I could run home and get cleaned up, that should only take a few minutes anyway. I wonder where the guys will want to go out tonight?

They lived in the house with the blue porch railing and the scripture painted on the side for fifteen years. They were there for fifteen sowings and fifteen harvests, fifteen birthdays and fifteen Christmases, fifteen wet seasons and fifteen dry seasons. They came from America to give the most precious gift they could give: the word of God, a New Testament in Lambayeque Quechua. It was the strangest thing, but all the townspeople knew it to be true: anyone walking by the house with the blue porch railing and the scripture painted on the side would smell something that reached into their souls and lifted their feet off the ground so that they could only drift of an exterior inertia. It was the aroma of sacrifice, an aroma that had not been smelled in Inkawasi for as long as the oldest matron could remember, and over the years, it would change everything. Little churches began to spring from the cool soil like the mushrooms of Marayhuaca. They are there now, small and struggling, but there. They have been planted, now they must be watered.