Las raíces

I walk behind a woman up the stone steps of the Choquechaka street. On her head she has the typical thick, wide-brimmed brown hat. Below the hat, two long braids come far down on her back and have been tied together at the end. She's wearing a thick jumper, an apron, a wide skirt – I'm assuming it's many skirts over on another – tights and a pair of simple shoes. In the mornings it can be very cold and the attire seems reasonable, but now, in the scorching late-afternoon air, I can't help being puzzled at the long sleeves and thick layers.

Over her body she's tied a large, square cloth. It's an aguayo, or a q'ipirina, and has a very colourful pattern. It's tied at the front with just a simple double knot, and inside it, on her back, she's carrying something sizeable and heavy. It could be fruit to sell, it could be vegetables to take home, it could be a baby; I can't see inside. Then I see the bundle wiggle a little. It must be a baby, tucked diagonally sideways into the warm safety of the cloth.

Or another woman, somewhat older: wearing jeans and a worn denim cap, but carrying her two-year-old in the same colourful q'ipirina, tied the same way with a knot at the front. The toddler's not hidden though, but sitting up, and is being stroked by the woman's older daughter who's walking at her side. One day, when the girl has her first child, she won't think twice about slipping her newborn inside the cloth and going on about her day.

Like it has been done here for thousands of years.

Walking always higher up on the narrow streets and slowly leaving the hustle of the city behind, I feel oddly rootless. I can understand how the people here have a stronger sense of identity, much like the Sami people in my own country. Here, history of the forefathers seems to be whispering its tales of various times from all sides.

The buildings in their entirety are some hundreds of years old at the longest, but their foundations have existed quite a lot longer. The large stones that form the first layer of the walls are ancient. I look at a white wall and try to see through it: what kind of a family sat here having breakfast a a hundred generations ago? What were their fears, their wishes, their songs? What kind of things did they keep secret from others?

Besides rootless, I feel oddly responsible for the Spanish Conquest over four hundred years ago. What would stand here now, had we Europeans been less greedy and selfish? Yet, it's staggering to see how much of the old customs, language and culture are still alive in the everyday life of the Andean people, despite the fact that they have begun to receive any governmental support only in the last decades. In the Cusco region, more than half of the people learn Quechua as their mother tongue. The religions of Christianity and Pachamama live side by side and overlap. Where else in the world has a subjugated culture been able to stick to their roots even that much?

I pass the last houses, walk through a small forest and across a field and arrive at what are nowadays called the Temple of the Monkey and the Temple of the Moon. No one can say for sure what they were originally called, for these places stem from times even before the Incas. There is not too much left of them; only a disorderly-looking collection of vast stones, and some caves that have been closed from the public. Still, it's possible to discern some things, such as the figures of important animals that have been carved into the crude stones. The sun is setting when I climb to the top of the Temple of the Moon and kneel down next to a specially shaped stone. It's carved on both sides into the shape of two steps, and it's what was used to tell the time a very long time ago.

I lay my hand on the stone and reach out to those people hundreds or thousands of years before this moment. Someone has touched the stone then just like I am now. Someone has been where I am, and has seen the last rays of sun disappear behind the mountains just like now.

So short is human life; so few sunrises and sunsets behind the mountains; so much we forget, so much is lost.

And the stone stands.