Chiclayo.
I’m not in El Salvador anymore; now I’m in Peru.
How did that happen? Actually, that was always more or less
the plan. The job with Peace Corps in El Salvador was supposed to last eight or
nine months. I made it last for ten months by requesting a brief extension.
Meanwhile, I asked Peace Corps Peru if they had any positions for volunteers in
Lambayeque, where I worked from 2010–2013. They didn’t; however, we
collaborated in the creation of a position in Inkawasi (sometimes spelled “Incahuasi”),
at 10,000 feet in the Andes, about four hours from Callanca, the community where
I volunteered previously.
So how did things end in Perquín? Very well. I helped write
a job description for a replacement volunteer, a volunteer with a specialty in
archaeology; that person should be arriving sometime between yesterday and
January and will continue the work in which I was involved in Perquín. He or
she will work with the group of young people which we were training to be tour
guides. He or she will accompany the Salvadoran archaeologist who has been
investigating Lenca sites in the Perquín area. He or she will work on a
documentary film about the project which was in the works when I left and on
the website which we were also beginning to design and implement. He or she will help equip the new sala
in the Museum of the Revolution which will house Lenca artifacts. With luck
some or all of this will actually happen. I’ll let you know how lucky we are.
As frequently happens when one is about to leave a place,
two days before I left Perquín great things happened that made me wish I could
stay. Specifically, we found this:
It’s an obsidian arrowhead. This is absolute ironclad proof
that a preColumbian civilization existed in Perquín. The Spanish, who had steel
and iron with which to slaughter people, had no use for obsidian weaponry and,
even if they had had a use for such weaponry, never used arrows. Previous to
the discovery of this arrowhead, we’d found only chunks of obsidian, which led
us to believe that there should be arrowheads and spearheads as well; however,
this arrowhead was the first that we personally discovered.
So I left beautiful and green Morazán to come to dry and
dusty Lambayeque. The work here surely will be as fun and as exciting as was
the work in Perquín. I’m going to be helping to market the artesanía
(“handicrafts” would be the clumsy translation of that word) of an association
of weavers from the aforementioned Inkawasi. I’m living in Chiclayo, the
capital of the deparment of Lambayeque, but will be traveling frequently to
Inkawasi. My main job will be to find stores in Peru willing to sell the
artesanía of the Inkawasinas and to look for opportunities to export their
weavings.
Some of you might remember that I wrote about the
Inkawasinas when I was living in Callanca. Here’s that entry from my Callanca
blog:
I’ll be starting another blog about Inkawasi or perhaps I’ll
create a Facebook page. It depends upon what kind of internet access I can
scrounge here in Chiclayo. Manuel is supposed to come by tomorrow and run a
wire from a neighbor’s house to my house which will allow me to share the
neighbor’s internet. In exchange I’ll pay part of the neighbor’s montly bill. I’ll
send everybody a link to the blog or the Facebook page when one becomes
available. Or maybe I’ll have Manuel run a wire from my computer to yours. If I
can get enough of you on board with that idea we could split the monthly charge
150 ways and it would only cost us thirty cents each.
Over and out.
A friend from Perquín.
