'Tambo: Life in an Andean VillagePerhaps the best way to sharpen one's power's of observation is to be a stranger in a strange land. Julia Meyerson was one such stranger during a year in the village of 'Tambo, Peru, where her husband was conducting anthropological fieldwork. Though sometimes overwhelmed by the differences between Quechua and North American culture, she still sought eagerly to understand the lifeways of 'Tambo and to find her place in the village. Her vivid observations, recorded in this field journal, admirably follow Henry James's advice: "Try to be one of the people upon whom nothing is lost." With an artist's eye, Meyerson records the daily life of 'Tambo—the cycles of planting and harvest, the round of religious and cultural festivals, her tentative beginnings of friendship and understanding with the Tambinos. The journal charts her progress from tolerated outsider to accepted friend as she and her husband learn and earn, the roles of daughter and son in their adopted family. With its wealth of ethnographic detail, especially concerning the lives of Andean women, 'Tambo will have great value for students of Latin American anthropology. In addition, scholars preparing to do fieldwork anywhere will find it a realistic account of both the hardships and the rewards of such study. |
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... bottle - a bottle of trago here costs the equivalent of about seventy cents . Trago is potent and vile and as essential , or more so , as chicha in the ceremonial and rit- ual life of the Quechua . Unlike chicha , people do not drink ...
... bottle of trago with the unexpected bonus . He offered us new potatoes to eat , and Gary offered , seriously , to buy a bottle of trago ; this was , after all , a homecoming , however uncertain we were of welcome . The young man sent ...
... bottle of trago , the three of us , Hugo and Sebastiana pru- dently refusing to drink any , and another half bottle which Baltazar bought and watched through the door the group of women - most of the men had disappeared - now serving ...