The Heart of The Heart: A Solstice Celebration in the Andes

I woke up before 3am yesterday morning and hopped in a small micro bus with the other students to drive to the mountains. It was the Andean Solstice, celebrated for thousands and thousands of years by the Inca more or less as I observed it celebrated yeasterday. We drove in the dark up a frightening steep mountside, hugging the corners of the mountain, praying that the tires wouldn´t snag the edge and send us tumbling. The altitude played with our heads and the eeriness of the the night sky made this adventure one I can´t imagine will ever escape my mind. We wound our way in the dark in between bonfires, musicians, animals, policmen, bags of coca and circles of men smoking tobacco. It smelled of burning peet and chicha, the local alcohol. I climbed up a rock face and sat watching the night sky turn into day. As the sun began to rise, the crowds and crowds of people, many of whom had walked up the mountain 8 hours the night before to participate in this celebration, held their palms to the east to welcome the energy of the new year. Men and women cried out prayers and the crowds would reply with a Qechuan phrase equivalent to Amen. After the sun was all the way above the peaks of the Andes in the East, there was a sacrifice of three llamas, and incredible music-both ancient pipe songs and spanish guitar music that was brought here during colonial times. I passed through the crowds somewhat in disbelief of how ancient this country really is. They call Cochabamba ¨The Heart of The Heart¨because we are in the center of Bolivia which is smack dab in the middle of South America. The longer I m here and the more Spanish I understand the more I am beginning to realize what that phrase really means and how much of the world really began down here.
When I arrived home my family was still sleeping but I found Ligia, mi madre, in the kitchen in her usual state, high-heels and sweatpants, one large pink curler in her bangs and a long orange sweater. She greeted me in a panic trying to cook a cake, pancakes and breakfast and lunch all at once. We chatted about her family while I mixed batters and she heated the oven. I am not quite sure what to say about this woman other than that she is just as easy to love as she is to despise. Somehow I find myself adoring her most of the time. We cooked all morning until her relatives appeared and so we ate and talked and laughed all night.
The studies we are doing down here are rather rigorous and I am not only fully immersed in this culture and language but also discovering this new interest in documentary work. It is a pretty wild place to try to make a first film. The group of us, only four women from all over the states, have decided to work together on a piece about the concept of circles in Andean culture and how that is effecting the reclaiming of Bolivian indigenous identity through music. We´ll see where that leads.
I´ll try to put up some pictures this week if I can. I hope this update finds you all well!
Amor y besitos, Norita