Nov. 10, 2019 - The Ancient and the New
I suffered an afternoon of existential despair on Thursday. This happens to me occasionally. I feel tiny, insignificant, powerless, and alone. I feel like curling up in a ball and never unfurling. If I had had internet access I would have watched Netflix to take my mind off of it, but my host didn't have Wifi. I remembered two summers ago, in Ireland, I wrote a poem about the same feeling. Reading it made me feel a little better. If you ever feel similarly here's the poem. Maybe it will help you too.
New Friends
I tried Couchsurfing for the first time and it went great! My host Luis lives just outside central Trujillo. He recently finished his dentistry schooling and is trying to figure out what to do next. One theme amongst the people I met is that they want to get out of Trujillo and live somewhere new. We toured two markets and cooked dinner together.
On the bus to Trujillo, I met a girl named Matilde. She invited me to the restaurant where she works for breakfast. She rides a scooter, is way cooler than me, taught me all sorts of slang, and convinced me to get a haircut. She also works at an LGBT friendly, underground punk bar named “Abril” with dark, grungy art that I really like.
Chan Chan - Ruins of the Chimor Empire
Chan Chan was the capital of the Chimor empire that spanned from Lima to Ecuador from ~850AD until the Incan's conquered them in 1470AD. The city was home to 40-60k people and is massive. I didn't realize until later that all the piles of sand I saw were walls of the ancient city.
I toured the ancient city of Chan Chan with my guide Jose. Jose is a combo Archeologist/Tour Guide/Artist and has worked at the site for 40 years. After the tour, I visited his workshop where he makes woodblock prints of ancient artwork. Below you can see how he took artwork on this piece of pottery and carved it in wood for the print.
I found the artwork fascinating. If you do too and would like one, here's his contact information.
Ancient Morality
He told me some interesting things about the Incan moral code: "Do not steal, do not lie, do not be lazy".
This moral code was enforced by a concentric hierarchy of community:
If there is a thief in the family, the family must kill him
If they don't, the community must kill the entire family
If they don't, the army kills the entire community
This is morbid but makes sense to me. The responsibility for maintaining social cohesion is shared. It is everyone's responsibility to maintain that cohesion at their level of influence. I worry that in American society of individualism, we outsource this responsibility to top-down organizations (eg. government & business) and don't invest enough in the bottom-up cohesion of our communities.
Spanish
Two personal wins this week!
When I arrived at Luis' apartment I managed a 15-minute conversation in fluid Spanish which felt really good!
I managed to have a conversation in Spanish at a loud club which has never happened before. At clubs, I can barely understand people in English!
The people on the coast definitely speak more clearly than the people in the mountains. Unfortunately, I very quickly ran out of topics I knew how to talk about. I'd like to do a targeted study of vocabulary in areas of interest (movies, music, politics).
It was difficult for me to invest fully in MIA this week without access to Wifi so I spent the week listening to the media already on my phone - mostly Harry Potter. I thought it would be useful to listen to something I knew but I was wrong. I can follow the story without listening to the Spanish. I've now downloaded hundreds of hours of Spanish podcasts and will focus on those in the next week.
Politics
Good-ish news on the Bolivia front. Over the past two weeks, the Organization of American States (OAS) has investigated the results of the October 20th election and released a preliminary report showing clear election fraud including widespread data manipulation. In response, the President has agreed to a new round of elections. This may quell the protests in the short term but I will be continuing to monitor the situation to determine if it's safe to travel. 2019-11-11 update: The president has resigned after loss of military support!
That’s all folks. Thanks for reading and have a great week!