On to Kakinte

Saturday afternoon I arrived in Cuzco from Iquitos via Lima, in a trip that proved the luck one can have in Peru, despite its intensely unreliable airlines. Upon my return to Iquitos Thursday, August 25th, I found out that Peruvian Airlines, the second-tier airline on which I had tickets to Lima & Cuzco booked for that Saturday, had been shut down by the national government due to engine problems in some planes that had taken off from Lima's Jorge Chávez International the week before (I found out this scoop from local nuns in Santa Rita de Castilla – many had heard it was because of an earthquake north of Pucallpa, which did in fact occur). The next day, Friday, I went to Peruvian Airlines Iquitos office on Calle Próspero, only to find out that, in fact, flights would resume Saturday, the exact day when I was to fly out! Both of my Saturday flights were confirmed by the ticket agent at Peruvian. I spent the rest of the day finishing an array of errands, visiting my New York-born Puerto-Rican launderer friend at Lavandería Raymondi, as well as the office of the Vicariato Apostólico de Iquitos to locate baptismal records for some of the rumored Omurano speakers I had learned about in the previous week (many thanks to secretary Rocío Rodríguez). Repeated packing has become an extremely unwelcomed activity, particularly as I am just able to carry the amount of stuff I have amassed in the last three months between my hiking backpack (which must fit in an annoyingly undersized rain cover/duffle overlay), my watertight equipment case and my normal carry-on-sized backpack.

Iquitos bade me a fond farewell with an unexpected summer rain on my way to the airport at 6AM Saturday morning. Much to my chagrin, in asking for my bags to be transferred to my afternoon flight (so I wouldn't have to leave security), I found out that my afternoon Lima-Cuzco flight was in fact not confirmed, and may in fact not happen at all! I would not know until my arrival in Lima. Furthermore, as expected, my flight was over an hour and a half late, and to boot, was not even confirmed until around 9:30AM (from an original expected departure of 8:30AM)! However, that gave me time to enjoy some much-needed coffee and a stuffed potato, and meet a Canadian college student who had been traveling around Peru on her own for the last month and a half (always nice to know that there are other solo adventurers around).

Upon arrival in Lima, I hurriedly collected my bag from the concourse and nearly ran to the main Peruvian counter at the entrance to the airport (due to the delays in the flight I only had about 45 minutes between connections), only to find out that my flight was cancelled, but that luckily LAN (the far better, yet far more expensive airline) was operating additional flights, to which they would transfer me at no additional cost. Great! I got to go on the better airline for less than half the price. Fortunately that flight had a departure of an hour later, so I was able to enjoy my first espresso in nearly three months (really a sinful length of time) at the Starbucks in Jorge Chávez (I was so happy with it that I'm even contemplating buying an overpriced “Peru” Starbucks mug on my return pass through there on the eighteenth). Peruvian airports are more civilized than American ones in allowing you to even take a sip of your coffee as you pass through the metal detector (as well as carrying opened water bottles on).

I arrived in Cuzco around 3:30PM, and quickly paid the (to my Iquitos standards) absurd tarifa s/25 to get to my lodgings, the quiet and quaint Hospedaje el Artesano, in the hills of the San Blas neighborhood of Cuzco, with the enviable rate (with private bathroom) of s/35 (about $13 a night) – granted it didn't have heat and only marginally “warm” water.

Hospedaje el Artesano, San Blas, Cuzco

Despite the high position of San Blas from the rest of the city, and the required huffing and puffing it takes to reach it (Cuzco has an elevation of over 11,000 ft.), the views are spectacular. The neighborhood is in general the hippy/hipster/emo (basically anything non-mainstream) hangout of the city, with trendy quirky bars and interesting people – a real anomaly for Peru.



View from Hospedaje el Artesano

My time in Cuzco was devoted to two days of work, with 25-year-old Kakinte speaker Miguel Sergio  Salazar. My goal in working with him was to elicit data on reality status marking in Kakinte, in order to compare it to the equivalent grammatical phenomenon in other Kampan languages, including Nanti & Matsiguenka. (Reality status marking is basically that which indicates whether the event described by a given utterance [sentence] is actualized or non-actualized [“real or not real”] – thus things like past-tense sentences get 'realis' marking, while future ones do not, and commands receive 'irrealis' marking (because they haven't actually happened yet), while declarative sentences do not.)

Work with Kakinte speaker Miguel Sergio Salazar

My ultimate goal is to carry out a long-term fieldwork project on Kakinte as a graduate student, with the purpose of this incipient data being being able to say I know something about Kakinte grammar when I apply for a Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) from the National Science Foundation (NSF).  It is also a topic about which Lev has written for Nanti, giving me easy data to compare.  However, Kakinte is a complex language with fully fluent speakers, and jumping into a grammatically complex topic with nearly zero exposure to the language is difficult.  (The only previous work on Kakinte is a piece by SIL linguist Kenneth Swift, Morfología del caquinte).  Because of that, I spent a good deal of time eliciting lexical data, particularly nouns, to be able to construct (and interpret) some coherent examples with him.  Miguel is extremely kind, good-humored and excited to be working on Kakinte – in some ways it is now a family tradition, as his father, Juan Sergio (now deceased), was one of Kenneth Swift's consultants in the 1980's.  Miguel has also helped facilitate my upcoming trip through the Urubamba river valley in extremo (see below). 

The rest of my time in Cuzco was mainly devoted to writing up a brief grammatical description based on the small amount of data I collected on Omurano the previous week; looking for housing in the Berkeley for my return; and reviewing Kakinte material.  The morning before my departure I allowed myself one tourist outing (luckily I'd already seen Cuzco as a tourist last summer) to the Monasterio de Santa Catalina, one of the many Catholic-related tourist sites throughout Peru.  I left Cuzco Thursday morning on a bus run by Transporte Ampay, after avoiding a near disaster thinking I had lost my debit card.  (Turns out I had left it in the ATM the previous evening, and the next person who came to the ATM was kind enough to turn it in to the bank manager, who returned it to me on a hurried visit there on my way to Terminal Santiago, just after I had realized it was missing.)  It's scary how dependent one is on a few small cards in life. 

I am now writing to you from Quillabamba, a large-ish jungle town on the other side of the mountains from Cuzco (a 6-7 hour bus ride).  The journey here displayed some the most scenic views I have ever witnessed, as one has to cross the Abra Málaga (at 4,350 meters [over 13,000 feet]) to get here. 

 

Bus ride over Abra Málaga

From the valley floor at Ollantaytambo (a popular stop-over for those headed to Machu Picchu on the train), we literally drove up into a cloud and came down the other side, and lo and behold, I was in the Amazon! Vegetation changes dramatically from one side of the pass to the other, and the air becomes noticeably warmer as you descend into the valley. The ride to the valley floor from Cuzco (i.e., on the way to the city of Urubamba) is beautiful in itself, and one gets a chance to see more remote towns that differ sharply from the jungle architecture and living style I am used to – houses are often made of mud bricks and are part of large walled compounds that additionally house stables for a variety of animals. It's cold in this part of the country!



Between Cuzco and Urubamba



Quillabamba is charming in itself.  I am staying at Hostal Alto Urubamba, in a single room with shared bathroom (luckily the bathrooms are kept spotless) at s/20 a night (less than $8!).  The town has around 9,000 residents, and boasts a beautiful Plaza de Armas with flowerbeds and shrubs!  You'd think I'd never seen anything like it.  It has a remarkably more suburban feel than huge monstrosities like Iquitos – streets are wider; buildings seem newer and better kept up; people have cars.  Local transport is via what looks to me like a bastardized enclosed version of an iquiteño mototaxi.  The town itself is located in the midst of the Urubamba river valley, with steeply ascending mountains on all sides.  Lev and Chris spent several months living here in the spring working with speakers of Matsiguenka, and I can see how one would enjoy living in this town for an extended period of time, provided, as is the general rule with me and Peruvian jungle towns/villages, that one has some work to do. 

Plaza de Armas, Quillabamba

From here I head to Ivochote tomorrow, to catch a boat to Nuevo Mundo.  The last part of my trip is devoted to spending time in Kitepámpani, a Kakinte village up the Mipaya river, a tributary of the Urubamba (which is itself a tributary of the Ucayali, one of the dominant rivers in Loreto I have mentioned in the past).  From there I will leave through Nueva Luz, Sepahua, Atalaya, Puerto Ocopa, Satipo and on to Lima!  Miguel's younger brother Jónas will be my guide until Nueva Luz, and he will provide me food in Kitepámpani, while I am lodged in my tent at the local posta de salud (health post).  The purpose of this trip is to get to know the general region, given the possibility of my conducting future fieldwork here.  I expect lots of down time in these more rural areas, as I have no plans of doing any systematic linguistic work – this will be a strain on my patience as I am eager to get back to Lima, for which I have brought one long book, D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love (go read a summary about it and Lawrence before you laugh at the title) – I am a slow reader.

I should have internet in Satipo, where I plan to arrive on the 14th – if not, I will update again from Lima before I embark via Miami home to San Francisco!