Ayni in Huama
Dressing me in their clothes is how they make people feel welcome.
‘Tis the season to give back!
Actually, I think that it’s always the season to give back, which is perfectly exemplified in the Quechua concept of ayni (pronounced eye-knee). Ayni can be translated as “today for you, tomorrow for me,” or vice versa.
Ayni is “paying it forward” in just one word.
This is a philosophy I see all the time in the Cusco region and around Peru. It’s not very different from how rural life used to be in North America. Everybody helped with a barn raising and family and neighbors helped with planting, harvesting and annual livestock tasks like branding.
Planting takes a minimum of four people working together with their traditional Andean tools.
How can you experience ayni in Peru?
I recently stayed at Explora Valle Sagrado, which has an impressive menu of 48 activities their guests can choose from. One of the options I picked from the list was simply called ayni and it turned out to be amazing. Explora works with La Base Lamay to bring their guests to small villages in the mountains above the town of Lamay, which is in the Sacred Valley. The guests’ activity depends on what the community is doing that day. If they are planting potatoes, the guests plant potatoes. If the village is harvesting corn, the guests harvest corn. It’s a beautiful way to experience life in the Peruvian Andes, and to learn from a rural community.
On the day I went to La Base Lamay with my Explora guide Daniel Alejandro, we picked up a local guide, named Percy, who accompanied us to the village of Huama. In Huama, I was greeted by four villagers, all with freshly picked roses in their hats. They gave me a necklace of cantu flowers, the hummingbird’s favorite flower and one of the most sacred flowers for the Inca and today’s modern Quechua culture. One man played a drum, one a flute, and a woman insisted on putting a traditional skirt and shawl on me, to welcome me as part of the community.
We sat down to eat potatoes with a spicy sauce, and a salad of tarwi together. Tarwi are the seeds of a domesticated variety of lupine. Wild lupine seeds are toxic but highly nutritious, so Andeans have domesticated a variety that is simply nutritious. It’s a superfood that hasn’t yet become as big of a worldwide success as quinoa. They also shared chicha with me, a lightly fermented corn drink, which is an acquired taste, but I like it. Chicha is an important part of sharing a meal here, part of breaking bread together.
Next, we hiked up a promontory that their ancestors have used for centuries for ceremonies and rituals. On the way up, they showed me ancient tombs, called chullpa, which unfortunately were looted long ago. Though thieves took all the objects meant to accompany the person to the next life, they left the skeletons, which I could see clearly when I looked inside the chullpa. The people of Huama do their best to protect these sites, now that they understand the danger posed by looters. The chullpa I looked in had piles of flowers left as offerings next to a skull.
We each picked three coca leaves for our kintu and then offered them to the mountains, called apus.
Up at the top, the men spread coca leaves on a blanket, and one by one we all chose three coca leaves and thanked the apus. In Peru, sacred mountains are called apus in Quechua, and I was taught the names of the apus we could see from this spot. One way to honor an apu is to offer a set of three coca leaves, called kintu. As I turned in a circle, holding my coca leaves up to the mountains, one of the men said the name of each apu, which I repeated. Then, I tucked my kintu under a rock and we headed down to the fields.
Even the brightest and most fluorescent colors can be made naturally in Peru.
On our way to the field that they were working on, we passed several plants that are used to make natural dyes for their fabrics and clothes. They showed me plants that make yellow dye, as well as insects called cochineal that make a variety of red and purple dyes, and leaves used for green dye. We also passed a small building full of guinea pig hutches. Guinea pigs are called cuy in Quechua, and they’re still an important source of protein for people who live in the Andes.
This day, they were turning the fields to prepare them for planting. First, they showed me a tool called barbicho they use to dig into the earth for both planting and harvesting. I got a lesson in the names of each part of the barbicho and they let me try it for a bit. This isn’t volunteer tourism. I wasn’t there to contribute as much as I was there to learn and experience village life.
Before we arrived in Huama, Daniel Alejandro did warn me that I was unlikely to see any young people. He said that every time he visits these far flung villages, he finds that the young people have left for the city. Rural villages in Peru rarely have school past the 4th grade and when young people leave to study, they rarely come back.
I had the most wonderful day in Huama and am so thankful for the community’s kindness and hospitality.
Visiting rural villages like Huama makes them a tourist destination, which brings in money.
If rural tourism becomes more viable in Peru, more young people could return home after they finish school. For now, these communities rely on ayni because it’s how they’ve always worked together, and because there are very few young people around to help their elders.
