Juana and the Contents of My Backpack--a Day on la Isla de Amantani, Peru

Arequipa, Peru
26 de abril de 2009

Her name is Juana. Maybe she 40. I don´t know; it´s hard to tell. She´s my "host mother" for the nights that I´m staying on Isla Amantani on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca. She leads me up and away from the port to her house, 200 meters above the lake. She shows me to my room which I have to duck to get into. It´s got two beds, a table with a candle on it and a chair. Before tourists came to Lake Titicaca this was probably a place to bed down animals. It´s just got that feel about. I´ve stayed in places like this before--on Greek islands a long time ago before tourism went amok. Indeed, right next to my room is the pen with the family´s eight sheep. I like the place immediately.

I settle in. She returns thirty minutes later with lunch--a bowl of quinoa soup loaded with potatoes and fresh vegetables grown on the island.

I am in her house. I am in Peru. I am on Lake Titicaca. The shoreline is 12,000 feet above sea level. The sky is a brilliant blue--the kind of blue that only comes at very high altitudes. I am very much in the present. Where I am and what I am doing is not lost on me. I have traveled a lot in my life and I have seen many places. Lake Titicaca is my idea of travel paradise.
It´s a simple meal, and because breakfast was out of memory, I eat it quickly, along with some crackers that I´ve brought to supplement what I know will be meager meals.

It´s mid day. The door is open to let in sunlight, but Juana knocks just the same. She´s here to pick up the plates.

"¿Hablas Español?" she says. "Si," I tell her. Not all tourists speak Spanish. She sits down on the bed with all my luggage. "Se murio mi esposo, hace seis meses.¨" My husband died six months ago. "Tengo cinco niños sin un padre.¨" I have five children without a father.

I´m a bit thrown off balance. This is one of the times I wish I didn´t speak Spanish, "Lo siento,¨" I say. I´m sorry. She asks for nothing. I think she just needs to tell the story one more time to another person. It´s OK. For some I reason I´m alright with death and dying. I just listen.

"Cancer," she said. "Tenia 45 años." He was 45. Now the children have no father. She rents this room to tourists two or three times a month. The agency gives her $8.00 to house and feed these people.

She just talks and I listen. Quechua is her first language, Spanish her second. That´s always good for me because her Spanish vocabulary isn´t as well developed as her native tongue.

As abruptly as she started, she stands up, takes the dishes and leaves.

It´s OK. For some other unknown reason this hasn´t unsettled me. I just wonder, though, how many more times she needs to tell the story before she finds some balance in her life.

I´m on the island for three nights. On a previous visit I´d done the "two day, one night" standard tour, but felt as if I was being wrenched from this island. I always said I´d stay longer the next time I visited. I´ve bonded well with others on the tour. At 4:00 pm we all meet in the town plaza to hike up to Pachatata, at 13,000 feet, to watch the sunset and later for a dance where Juana dresses me up in island clothing. The next morning I go to the port to bid them all goodbye. Secretly I´m glad they´re gone. Now I have the island to myself until the next batch of tourists arrives at 1:30.

I spend two delicious days trekking the island. Up and down, zigzagging my way across this marvelous place. On my second day, I pack lunch: an apple, a brick of crackers, a bag of peanuts, cookies. I´ve taken all morning to hike to the other side of the island. It´s autumn and the first harvest is underway--potatoes and oka, a tuberous vegetable resembling something between a carrot and a vegetable.

At midday I sit down in a rather conspicuous spot, so people coming down the path won´t be startled when they see me. The average tourist doesn´t stay for more than a night and is always on the same track. My presence isn´t an every day occurance. There´s a buzz all around me. People are descending the mountain above me carrying cloth packs full of produce or the remains of the plants which they´ll feed to their sheep. Before they see me I speak out: Hola! Buenos tardes.¨ Hi. Good afternoon. ¨Te gustaria una galleta?¨ Would you like a cracker? No one says no. Some people shake my hand. All of them seem grateful. Some of them have a small conversation with me, but what do we have in common? It´s all small talk, but very friendly. One man wants to know how the global ecomic crisis has affecting me.

For some reason my day pack has exploded and the contents surround me. When I see all the stuff I have, and I´m not really carrying all that much, I´m a bit startled.. I´m just curious how much I´m really carrying. I take inventory:

1 Nikon camera with lens--------------------------------- $1,200.00
2 sets of Rx glasses--regular and sunglasses------- 900.00
1 iPod------------------------------------------------------------------ 250.00
1 pair ¨Columbia¨ hiking boots------------------------------ 100.00
1 tripod------------------------------------------------------------------ 50.00
1 ¨Columbia¨hiking shirt, on sale----------------------------- 40.00
1 Rx nose spray----------------------------------------------------- 40.00
1 Rx inhaler------------------------------------------------------------ 40.00
1 backpack------------------------------------------------------------- 30.00
1 camera bag---------------------------------------------------------- 25.00
1 book: Eat. Love. Pray ------------------------------------------ 12.00
1 bottle eyedrops----------------------------------------------------- 8.00
1 pair gloves------------------------------------------------------------ 5.00
1 hat------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5.00
1 thermometer/whistle---------------------------------------------- 5.00
1 New Testament----------------------------------------------------- 5.00
1 lip balm----------------------------------------------------------------- 1 .00

Well, I´m shocked. All of this is essential. I can´t imagine being on the loose without most of this stuff. I use the calculator on the iPod: I´m carrying $2,616.00 worth of stuff. And this is just a day hike.
Then I think about the average Peruvian yearly salary: $2,000.00. But then I think even more deeply: what does an isleno make? There´s no industry on this island. Their ¨job¨ is to harvest enough food to feed themselves, maybe sell some of it to buy other stuff. No one has an iPod. No one has a $1,200.00 camera. Probably no one even owns a camera. I probably have more medical stuff in my day pack then they have in their homes.

By the time I´m done with this task, I´ve given all my crackers and peanuts away. Each person got one. I didn´t eat a whole lot, but it´s been a great lunch. A lot of people got a cracker. The mountain is rather quiet, most everyone´s gone home to their own lunch. I pack up my ¨stuff,¨ and move on.

I round the island, ask directions and find that the only way back to the village in which I´m living is up and over Pachamama, the island´s highest peak, at 13,500 feet. It´s a very slow process. I´ve learned not to move quickly. Step by step I get get to the summit--and it´s mine, all mine. No one is there yet. Today´s batch of tourists are just beginning to congregate at the plaza. I stay until I see the first signs of them beginning the slow ascent, then I begin to walk down.

It´s just before sunset when I arrive at Juana´s . No one is home. I´d love to take a shower, but there´s none to be had. I should have run a bucketful of water that morning when the house had water access from 6:00 to 8:00 am.

Dusk turns to dark quickly. I´m not too far from the equator and there´s very little twilight. I light the candle in my room, choose a piece of music from the iPod and collapse on the bed. I have no idea how long I´ve been in this self imposed twilight. I´m tired.

There´s a knock on the door. It´s Juana. She tells me that she´s been waiting for me at the plaza. She was worried. I am deeply touched. A few minutes later she brings me dinner--all fresh vegetables, an egg and a cup of tea.

It´s quite dark when she returns to gather up the dishes. This time she sits on the bed. "I miss my my husband," she tells me. "The children have no father." She begins to cry. I reach out and take her hand. There is nothing else to do. There is a deep silence between us. It´s OK. She needs to do this. It´s then that I realize we were met to meet, Juana and I. More and more I think less and less of this type of encounter as coincidence. Time passes. She tells me there is no money. No jobs. That it costs $50.00 a month to send her son to high school. Could I help her? And then, just as before, this ends as abrubtly as it started.

It´s very dark, but not too late, but I´m exhausted. I slip into bed on this cold autumnal altiplano night and drift off to sleep. I´m up at first light. I have all sort of plans for the morning: fill the water receptacles, bring the sheep down to the pasture below the house where I saw them feeding yesterday. But Juana comes in early with breakfast and tells me we have to leave at 7:00. "Another day," she says. ¨Another port.¨ I hustle to get ready. I eat quickly then together we scramble down the hill and walk along the beach to the boat. They´re waiting for me. Juana and I say goodbye. I board and we take off. It´s only minutes, but when I look up to wave goodbye to Juana she´s gone. I scan the shore and paths above it but don´t see her. We've separated. Each of us has returned to the world we know--her to the island the she´s never left and me to my great passion--seeing the world.

But the memory of her lives on. Days have passed and I still think of her. She is, in a sense, the universal poor "everywoman." There are millions of her on the planet. Women who´ve been abandoned or widowed or who had children but no husband. In a sense, though, Juana is luckier than most. She has her home. She has her children. She has a community who´s known her all her life. She has a garden on the mountain that feeds her family. She´s got chickens that lay eggs. She's got a herd of sheep. She's got a view of Lake Titicaca and a sunset that a million dollars couldn´t buy back home.

What she doesn´t have is the contents of my backpack, nor the means to ever acquire even a small portion of it. But I wonder. Who´s got the most? In the end it´s a toss. We´re both pretty well off. But in different ways.

Someday I´ll get back to Juana´s. I´ll carry "stuff¨" she needs and in return she´ll give me "stuff" I´d never find at sea level. I feel as if I made a friend up there and that all of this was met to be.

But who knows.