'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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... corn which has sprouted ; boiling and fermentation purify the water from which it is made : although a rudimentary water system has been installed in ' Tambo , the local result of a government program to provide potable water to ...
... corn in- stead of from dried corn ) —like t'impu , another sort of celebration of sea- son , the season of new corn . The fresh corn is ground and seasoned with salt , folded into corn husks with a bit of fresh white cheese tucked ...
Life in an Andean Village Julia Meyerson. Families usually build tiny shelters of corn stalks supported by branches when they harvest corn , and Hugo and Sebastiana did build one , one night , but the horses , tethered too close , ate it ...