'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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... gathered in our house , the children drifting in one by one . There was a feeling of family : it was the first time we had all at once been gathered in our house , and it felt natural and seemed truly to bless the house , to draw it ...
... gathered around him to help wipe some of it off . There were green smudges on the skin of his drum . Finally , everyone headed off toward the plaza , the women after the men , except Teresa and me . We filled two small jars with chicha ...
... gathered the rest together into little . heaps and danced on them , a performance called ch'uño saruy ( saruy means " to step on " ) . It looked ridiculous , all of us spread across the hill- top , dancing on little heaps of shriveled ...