Down to Earth, My Friend Juliana

A friend who is authentic, inspiring, kind, and loyal. Juliana has shown me more about independence and confidence than she will ever know. Our friendship has resulted in adventures that I would have never done alone. We have traveled to new places, found hidden rope swings, lime scootered down Congress, and laughed our way through many silly moments. It is through our adventures and late night conversations that I have witnessed her amazing perspective about life. She continuously brings me back down to earth when I need it. She reminds me that life is good and we must do our best to enjoy it. She has the ability to translate these lessons into such an eloquent writings, I just wanted to share one of her pieces:

The Weight Women Carry by Juliana Stanford:

The Quispicanchi Project is a grassroots nonprofit organization that accompanies indigenous families and organizations in the southern highlands of Peru through educational, health, and nutritional initiatives in the Quispicanchi province. I spent my summer working as a physical education teacher at a local elementary school, Fé y Alegria 44, in Andahuaylillas and now I serve as a public relations intern for the Project this fall. Andahuaylillas is a small municipality an hour south of Cusco city where the primary way people earn their living is by working their fields. The community is devoutly Catholic - but not in a way customary to many of us. Their faith includes elements of Andean and Incan culture and is practiced through elaborate festivals, dancing, offerings, and mountain rituals honoring the image of God in nature.

I chose to work with the Quispicanchi Project due to their holistic approach to service, they seek to listen rather than to direct. The joys of my experience within a mission-based project such as this nonprofit manifest in genuine relationships with the members of the community we work within.

There was no place I would rather have been teaching yoga, practicing common English phrases with students, or playing rock-paper-scissors around 20 times a day than in Peru, and there are no other people I would rather have spent that sacred time with than the people who make up the Quispicanchi Project. On the cold winter morning of June 15th, my companions and I made our way up to the remote community of Sullumayo. The hour and a half long dirt-road excursion placed us in the most beautiful, isolated, and mountainous terrain, deeply rooted in indegenous culture. During my time in Sullumayo, my group assisted with women’s health and hygiene classes for high school students, herded and later ate alpaca, constructed an earthen oven to cook locally grown produce - a cultural and agricultural practice known as a “huatiada”, and shopped at the Sullumayo Thursday “feria” (farmer’s market). To gather the produce for our huatia, a Quechua word for earthen oven, I was tasked with walking to the local “farmers” market. Getting there means you must walk along the mountainside cliff, balance on the dry rocks that poke out from the frigid stream, and climb up a hill overlooking Ausangate, one of the highest and most beautiful peaks in all of Peru. There are a few “stands”, each one operated by one or more women, lined up near a produce truck. The women sit in the dirt with their products splayed out in front of them, waiting for members of the community to stock up on groceries. Upon arrival, I also see some women selling traditional and hand-woven textiles. That day, I decided it was time to purchase an Unkuña. The vibrant colors, varying stripes of different patterns and widths, and the kind eyes of the woman selling her textiles pulled me in; certainly not my usual impulse buy back in the states. An Unkuña is a traditionally woven, sturdy cloth piece, usually measuring a meter in length and width. It is used by many indigenous women as a protection from the elements as well as a carrier worn on the back for items ranging from potatoes to babies. Directly after my purchase, I used my colorfully patterned Unkuña to carry the extra potatoes that we had been gifted by children making their own huatias, as well as lima beans, and oranges. Sullumayo is perched just over 15,000 feet, with limited access and where families go without the conveniences many of us are accustomed to. So, needless to say, seeing Americans traversing the mountain is incredibly uncommon. Even more so, seeing an American girl toting around a traditional textile on her back, full from a trip to the market, is less likely. This rarity sparked much conversation. A young mother stopped me to give a few tips on how to tie it up to hold more goods, and the school girls using the Unkuña as a backpack also stopped and either started conversation or smiled ear to ear. My encounters in Sullumayo as well as conversations back in the pueblo we call home, Andahuaylillas, led me to learn much about the Unkuña. I began to think of what women in these small indegenous communities are called to carry, and the selflessness which it requires. The symbolism of the Unkuña transcends the sum of the concrete items that Peruvian women carry. Rather its significance lies in the familial and cultural importance those items represent. They carry their children on their backs as they scale mountains to herd the family’s llamas. School girls carry their textbooks as they walk two hours, one-way, up and down the mountain in the perilous heat and freezing cold. They carry goods of importance from home to home such as coca leaves, both a widely used medicinal but also a sacred plant to Andean people, or potatoes, the most common crop in the region but one which is an ever present reminder of their connections to generations of indigenous ancestry. Women weave the Unkuña using a backstrap loom weaving method, but first they must hand spin the alpaca thread, and naturally dye it using herbs and plants gathered from the mountainside. These women use their talents and turn what was originally a heap of alpaca wool into an object of not only greater use, but one of beauty as well. Similarly, these women take what some may see at mundane, black and white practices of their community and live them out in vibrant colors for their children, families, neighbors, and their pueblos. The women of Sullumayo take what they have been given and through hard work they weave beauty into daily life and provide a deeper symbolism to all they do. Now that I am back in the states, I use my Unkuña to transport laundry across my apartment, among other daily tasks. Every time I see the bright patterned square of fabric, I am reminded of women like Ines. Ines is one of the many women we work with in Peru. She carries the weight of working full time at a parish meal program, working as a housekeeper for parish guests, running her own household, as well as caring for her special needs son. Ines truly carries a significant weight on her shoulders, and she does this so selflessly and most often with a smile. The Unkuña is much more than an “indegenous backpack.” The vibrant and symbolic cloth supports the backbones of small towns such as Sullumayo - the backbones of entrepreneurs, teachers, farmers, homemakers, mothers, and daughters. The women in these communities work selflessly, not for fleeting satisfaction, but for survival, for fulfillment, and the common good. The Unkuña symbolically drapes the women of Sullumayo and other nearby pueblos with admirable character, allowing them to carry the weight of their communities on their backs to propel them forward.