So recently I´ve been wandering the countryside asking people to tell me their traditional tales in their own language (Spanish, while the official language of Peru, is not the indigenous language of the country; Quechua, the language of the Incas is the native language, and it is slowly disappearing.) I think the highlights of my wanderings have been a slightly drunk old man telling me 3 wonderfully vocally animated stories, a 13 year old girl insisting on singing traditional Quechua songs for me (I think she was slightly tone deaf), and receiving about 30 handwritten stories from the 5th and 6th graders of the Chinchero primary school (complete with scribbles, loads of white-out, and color-pencil drawings of flowers). So, while my findings/recordings may not be the most professional, I think they are extremely representative of the people here: flawed, quiet but bursting to express, drunk from the headiness of the Westernisation in their land (and the resulting displacement of their own culture), subtly intricate, and beautiful.

(the pic is of a girl I saw standing in the street as I was walking back to Ollantaytambo to get the bus to Cusco)

And now off to Bolivia (before I get deported)!!!