Cultural Experiences

Parades (‘Desfiles’)

Parades are an important feature of life in Cusco. A few marches we have seen are people demonstrating about something, but on the whole we see a lot of parades marking anniversaries. Every institution has an anniversary or special day and that involves a parade in the main plaza, and sometimes down one of the main roads as well.

Most of the parades are on Sundays, when they close the main plaza to traffic. All the institutions that have an anniversary that week march on the Sunday (apparently otherwise they would have to close the plaza every day for a different march!) Last Sunday we saw a huge parade for the anniversary of Wanchaq, one of the districts of Cusco. There were hundreds of people in traditional costumes and various bands. We have also seen a military parade and parades of various schools.

Thursday was, roughly translated, ‘Day of Initial Education’, when lots of kindergartens marched! There were literally hundreds of three year olds parading round the main plaza with balloons, some in uniform and some in costumes.

The most unusual march I’ve seen though was probably a refuse collectors demonstration when a group of refuse collectors in blue overalls with wheelie bins marched in formation through the main plaza.

Who comes to our door?

The bin men come past ringing a loud bell at 6.25am on Mondays , Wednesdays and Fridays. We have to run out with our rubbish bags.

The security man for our street comes once a month to collect his money.

Jehovah’s Witnesses.

An elderly Quechua lady who collects plastic bottles – I presume she gets money for taking them to a recycling place – she doesn’t speak much Spanish so I don’t understand much of what she says.

A lady with a baby on her back selling fish from a polystyrene box.

A boy selling dictionaries.

The most interesting so far has been a lady with a man in a white coat offering tetanus vaccinations!

A trip to the doctors

As Benjamin is now a year old I decided I had better sort out his vaccinations as he would have been receiving a couple more in Britain around this time. Rachel offered to take me to their doctor, an American man, who works in a clinic serving the poor on the outskirts of Cusco.

It took us about 20 minutes in a taxi to get to the clinic from home. It is situated in a poor area in an attractively situated location. The clinic buildings look fairly new and are built round a grass courtyard. I think a family live on site, as watchmen, which is very common for public buildings here (both the park and church is our road have families living on site). They have maize growing in the ‘garden’ behind the clinic, plus a big cage of chickens.

I have to say that sitting outside on the grass in the sun with a view of the mountains to wait beats sitting in a crowded waiting room full of people with flu, etc! Sammy enjoyed playing with his ball and with the daughters of the doctor who happened to be there that morning.

There seemed to be two nurses and an assistant who took our details and then weighed and measured Sammy and Benjamin. Sammy was really good considering all his trips to the doctors in recent memory have involved jabs! I was a little surprised to realise that Sammy’s last check seems to have been when he was about 18 months, but he’s had no problems and is following his growth line so all is fine. Benjamin has not really been weighed and measured as much as he should have, due to all our moving about in the last 6 months. He continues to be a bit on the small side, particularly with his weight, so the nurse was a little concerned, but I think it’s partly because he is so active. He was only on the fifth percentile with his weight at birth and is on the fifth percentile again now, having been a little higher at 3 and 6 months. The altitude can make children grow a little slower so we need to try and feed him up a bit! The doctor says we can call him on visit if we have any concerns to that is very reassuring. Although our Spanish is OK, it is nice to have an English speaking doctor – come to think of it, I saw very few first-language English doctors in England when I was pregnant!