Cusco Week-end

The churches here seem to often get together for activities. I skipped out on the soccer get-together in favor of homework. Practicing volibol at the seminary with everyone was just too fun to pass up, and we got together twice to practice. On Saturday, we crammed 18 people into the car and went to Cusco for the tournament. The girls won their first game, but lost the other two – we were remarkably bad, but had fun. For the life of us, we cannot “matar” (kill – spike) the ball.

Lois Hutchinson is a widow missionary in Cusco. Her two grandkids, Jaycee and Lois, live with her while their parents are currently in the states. She earlier suggested that Kristie and I spend a week-end with her. After the tournament, Kristie, Raquel and I went to the church she works with and waited for her to pick us up. She is in the process of moving, so we helped load up a rented truck and unload it again at the house they are currently living in. Two seminary guys do extension at that church, so they helped as well. Most churches have “jovenes” – youth group – on Saturday night; Lois, the granddaughter of Lois Hutchinson, is in charge of it, and she asked us to do a special for it; Kristie played the guitar and sang “Fuente de la Vida Eterna” (Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing) with Raquel and I. One of the seminary guys who helps at the church has been smitten with Kristie for quite some time. I had too much fun catching him at manipulating the games so he ended up in line next to her, and Kristie intentionally making mistakes so she had to be moved back in line away from him.

At the morning service, we did a piano-violin-guitar-recorder quartet for special music; violins are few and far between in Peru, so it was fun to do that. For lunch we went to a McDonald’s-kind-of-restaurant that overlooked the Plaza De Armas. I love Cusco’s plaza. People-watching is so much fun. We make it a game to pick out the American tourists from the European tourists. It was also fun to watch Peruvians come to the restaurant; coming to a restaurant like McDonalds is a major event for upper class people only – common folk stick to the pollerias and chicharias. 

I did my first official sight-seeing after lunch. We walked through the old part of Cusco that caters to tourists. Everything looked ancient, clean, worn, and picturesque. Cathedrals rise high above every other building; an old Quechua Indian lady, well under five feet tall, sits alone on the vast steps in her traditional country skirt and knitted leggings, waiting for a tourist to take a picture of her and give her a sol. Stone arches frame narrow cobble streets where a young man is trying to sell paintings. Tourists are everywhere, taking pictures and ducking into the low doorways advertising art, ceramics, or alpaca fur sweaters. As I walk through the city, I feel like I’ve been transported somewhere else: maybe some European town, somewhere very foreign and unfamiliar – definitely not Peru. This is far removed from the Peru I know. 

For the evening service, we attended a different church in the city. On our way there, the police pulled us over. Aunt Lois showed them all her documents, which were correct and legal in every way. For fifteen minutes the two policemen stood outside her window and insisted that a certain document was not official or claimed that something was expired. Aunt Lois explained again and again that everything was correct and nothing was expired for another month yet. The men were clearly trying to drive her to bribe them to leave her alone. I sat in the back seat and prayed that they would be satisfied with her documents. Finally, they backed off and let us go, telling her to drive more slowly. We had not been speeding. They just like to razz on “rich gringas.”

I religiously check my bed for fleas before I go to sleep; to prevent them from even getting on my bed, I undress in a certain order and, preferably, in the bathroom away from my bed so that any I may have collected in my clothing during the day have no chance of finding me while I sleep. The flea-check that night turned up one little booger who jumped away when I tried to catch him – they can jump like nothing else. He refused to show himself, so Kristie and I had to sleep with him. He took some small vengeance on us both, each of us waking up with five or six bites on our hands. I think biological warfare is in order. DIE, VERMIN, DIE!!