Participants Blog

Mi nombre es Sisa

Mi nombre es Sisa

I had my first vivid impressions of where I would be staying as we drove up to the communities and I got to take in the beautiful countryside. The mountains rose majestically out of the rustic corn fields and small cobble stoned towns and villages; I felt a strong sense of being very far away from home in a land of beauty and unknowns.

Right from the very first moment we met my host family was friendly, full of smiles, and continually joking and laughing about something or other. I could tell right away that they were a very humorous bunch, even though half the time I could not understand what they were saying as they mainly spoke Quitchua, their indigenous language.  We were able to communicate in Spanish however and after hearing my name and finding out that it meant flower in Nauwalt, another indigenous language, my host family decided to give me a Quithcua name for the duration of my stay. I was named Sisa; flower in Quitchua.

I had a heart and head full of excitement, enthusiasm, and positive attitude as I rolled up to get the first impression of the house and home for the next six weeks. It sat far up the volcano in a beautiful community called Morochos, a compilation of numerous small farms connected by winding gravel roads and held together at the center by the elementary school and ‘la casa communal,’ the communal building. I felt as if I was awake and in a peaceful daydream, but that this was a place my mind could never have imagined before. Everything seemed so calm- ‘tranquilo.’ Yet I could sense that these farms provided hard work, not increadibly fruitful labour, and not much extra wealth to go around. This seemed to be true for my family, whose Celeste coloured cement house was dark and basic inside. I remember my host mother, father, brother and a bunch of the kids all walking up the rickety stairs with me to show me the room they had proudly prepared for my stay, and I also remember feeling that my happy reaction was what they had been hoping and worrying about for a while.

I was ecstatic that night that my adventure was finally underway. I think that these feelings overpowered the slight fear I had deep down about what it would be like to live here for over a month… what it would be like to live in poverty for over a month. The house I was living in reminded me of the house my grandmother in Nicaragua lives in, close to the earth and un-luxurious. To be very honest, it is a place I have only visited shortly and I would be worried about staying in for longer than 5 or 6 days only because I must ashamedly admit that the standard of living is really uncomfortable for me. I remember laying in my bed that first night in Morochos and, amongst many amazing hopeful and excited thoughts, also thinking about facing this fear. About challenging my comfort level and pushing myself beyond the boundaries that I had created for myself growing up in one of the most privileged places in the world. I needed to get out of this need for comfort and to live humbly for the first time in my life.

The meals, and everything that they meant, also made some of the biggest impressions on me. There were many things that I noticed not only that first night but continually throughout my stay. All of my impressions of awe, of gratitude, and of thankfulness stemmed from the fact that the food that my family prepared and ate every day, three times a day, all came directly from the land. To realize how much work goes into one meal was almost overwhelming. Even just a simple supper of potatoes, corn and bean soup would have taken days of work considering all of the planting, tending the crops, harvesting the yields, and preparing the vegetables to get to my plate for me. Even a simple glass of juice is only enjoyed after hours of berry picking, sorting, and squeezing. The milk is only enjoyed if someone has woken up at 4 in the morning to milk the four cows before a full day of work ahead. This impression continued to grow every time I helped out with the tasks involved: every time I went to collect corn or potatoes, beans or berries; Every time I walked 45 minutes up the mountain with the children and the cows to their pasture; When my mother and father let me try to plough the field with an old fashioned wooden plough pulled by a cow and bull, and finding it an exhausting task to do just one row; When my father taught me to milk the cows as the world still slept, and finding it impossible to fill even half of a pail…