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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... chicha. The music, the taste of the chicha, and the heft of the enormous glass it was served in; the feel of the thin, crystalline air cooling in the late afternoon of a winter day in the Andes; the vista of Cusco below us, narrow ...
... chicha for us, like the glasses they serve chicha in in the city. We thanked her profusely, 1 6 NATIVIDAD.
Life in an Andean Village Julia Meyerson. serve chicha in in the city. We thanked her profusely, as is customary in Quechua, and the thanks were mostly sincere since we had had nothing to drink except a single, dreadfully sweet soft drink ...
... served us chicha and Baltazar trago, and it gradually grew dark and Baltazar lit a small, homemade kerosene lamp which cast a smoky, yellow light into the room. The five-hour truck ride and the long wait and the anticipation and the sun ...
... chicha the woman served him in generous quantity, and then built a fire of eucalyptus wood in the oven. When the dough had risen, Daniel took sections of it, kneaded it, and on a table made of boards supported by eucalyptus stumps ...