Finding Home and Raising Kids in a Life Abroad Chapter 1 Puno Part 3
- Deborah Llewellyn
- Aug 8
- 13 min read
“I’m tired of this Puno, Peru”, three-year-old Bronwyn announced on a Saturday morning, three months after our arrival. What she really meant was, “Let’s go exploring.” In response, Charles suggested that we visit the Uros Islands. We gathered our daypacks and took a 30-minute boat ride out to visit the vestiges of an ancient Andean culture that chose to live on masses of aquatic totora reeds. The Uros are believed to be the first inhabitants of Lake Titicaca, even before the Tiahuanaco culture (1400 BC).
While folks from Lima warned us that there was nothing to do in Puno, we discovered that we were living in a rich region for Inca and pre-Inca history. In the days before Google Search Engines, we learned about interesting historical sites from locals, foreigners, and the occasional anthropologist or archeologist who passed through town and usually ended up at our dinner table. We were always ready to trade a meal for a good story. Bronwyn was all ears!
We enjoyed driving to nearby villages for market day and many times came upon festivals and parades. If we felt like staying at home, we simply looked out our front window. Something totally amazing would surely pass by.
A boat ride to the Uros Islands was an easy and fun outing. In ancient times, the Uros were forced to build their floating islands and houses in the middle of Titicaca lake when the Inca Empire expanded their lands and threatened them. A pacifist culture, they retreated to the lake rather than fight. If threats arose they simply moved their floating islands, pulling and pushing from their totora reed boats. After a devastating storm in 1968, they moved 60-70 small islands closer to Puno. This location provided them with an escape hatch from storms and placed them in in a good position to become a tourist attraction, which is currently their primary source of livelihood.
When we gingerly climbed from the boat to the reed island, Children came running to sell miniature totora reed boats or drawings they had made. While I was admiring the children’s art, Charles and Bronwyn wandered off to find someone to give us a ride in a traditional totora boat.
Imagine walking across a layer of hay on a waterbed. Just when I got the hang of the up and down rhythm, I hit a weak spot and was ankle deep in water. The islanders must remain vigilant in rebuilding top layers when the under-layer begins to rot from water. To do so, they pull up totora reeds that grow in the shallows of the lake, dry them, and then spread over the surface in a thick top layer, a continuous float or swim effort.
While waiting for Charles to return, I discovered villagers hard at work, tending animals, cooking, and repairing straw huts. I noted that the islanders built a small, attached island to use as a village latrine, a good sanitation practice. I saw a man cutting his completely naked child’s hair with huge gardening shears. When I aimed my camera he shooed away the child. I was learning that some of the most picturesque scenes must be forged in memory, not a camera.
Years later, I met Angela Fisher and Carol Beckwith, an anthropologist and photo journalist team who documented remote tribes in Africa. They told me that the rule they made for themselves was no photo until they had learned 30 words in the tribal language. Their efforts to learn ignited laughter and sister-hood with the indigenous people and a belief that Angela and Carol appreciated and respected them as a dignified culture and as friends. Their approach signified that they were not there to extract, but to learn, appreciate, and help them document their story before it was lost. In our years living abroad in developing nations, we found creative approaches by Peace Corps, anthropologists and the people themselves, on how to survive in the modern world without losing what is special about them.
The Taquile and Amantani islands in Lake Titicaca were good examples. These islands were formed from the tip of underwater mountains that jutted above the water. Taquile has UNESCO world heritage recognition for its textile handicraft traditions. Amantani islanders weave fine baskets from the totora reeds. We still use our placemats and baskets purchased in 1984.
Both islands have interesting history, traditions and dress, but what fascinated us the most was Taquile’s colorful weavings on black backgrounds, made by women and the intricately knitted hats made by the men, as well as a homestay system they set up. When we had guests from Liima or the U.S., a Taquile overnight was always on our itinerary.
The people in Taquile run their society based on community collectivism and on the Inca moral code ama sua, ama llulla, ama qhilla, (do not steal, do not lie, do not be lazy). The island is divided into six sectors or suyus for crop rotation purposes. The Taquile economy is based on fishing and terraced potato cultivation, wild fowl including eggs from the ibis, and tourist-generated income.
No cars or hotels are on the island. Since machines are not allowed on the island, all agriculture is done by hand. A few shops sell basic goods, and a health clinic and several elementary schools. Most families used candles or flashlights powered by batteries or hand cranks. More recently, electricity is produced by solar panels on the roofs of homes.
Islanders came up with a system for sharing tourist revenue. Each family built an extra room on their houses for overnight stays on a rotating basis. Each conformed to standards set by the tourist board. After climbing the steep mountain from dock to village, the villagers elected for that rotation, greeted the arrivals and lead them to their home. Tourists are encouraged to bring food staples and school supplies as part of their contribution to the homestay. An evening meal is provided for the guests as well as traditional dance and music.
One of our hour-long boat trips to Taquile stands out in our memory. Passengers included a female German tourist sitting next to a Taquile man, who was dressed in his traditional clothes. Both were laser-focused on their knitting. The German woman knitted a scarf using typical weaving needles and thick yarn. The Taquile man, sitting beside her, knitted fine woolen threads with bicycle spokes fashioned into knitting needles. We have long since wished we had a photo of this, but surely a scene that remains embedded in our memory.
After our overnight, we headed back to Puno but the boat engine died. As the sun collapsed on the lake and the stars lit up the cloudless sky, we wondered if we would starve before rescue. As the situation grew more hopeless, an adolescent girl on the boat, heading to Puno for the school week, reached into the water and pulled up totora reeds that surrounded our boat. She lay them across her lap and began to peel back the outer parts of the stalk to reveal a soft white tubular flesh that has served as a source of nutrition for the islanders for ions. After releasing the juicy interior, she passed one around to each of us, and thus we were sustained until our rescue three hours later.
Again, in the days before cell phones, a rescue was an act of fortune. You just learned to wait and be grateful if accompanied by an ingenious young girl who knew how to survive on the water.
A two-hour drive along the lake took us to the old Spanish town of Copacabana, placed just on-shore from the Isle of the Sun, where the Inca rose from the waters of Lake Titicaca. Plenty of ruins to scratch around in on the island and many fiestas in the towns along the way..
From Puno to Copacabana the road was dotted with Inca ruins and relics of old cathedrals, where we took picnic hikes.
Bronwyn, always complained that she needed to be carried or pushed in a stroller even when she turned four, unless there was a ruin in the distance and her dad said we would only go if she walked. One day she took off without a complaint but on the way back to the car, she complained that her legs hurt. We looked into her bulging pockets filled with Inca pottery shards and knew why.
Charles had a unique experience searching for archeological relics in the waters off the Isle of the Sun. We had become friends with a famous free-lance high-altitude underwater archeologist, Johann Reinhard, who specialized in sacred sites of the Andes and Himalayas. We came to know him during our years in Puno, Bolivia and then later when we moved to Nepal. Although National Geographic paid Johan for photos and articles of his discoveries, he lived on a shoestring. We learned early on from friends who passed him to us, that for hot meals and a bed, Johann will happily share his stories, and, sometimes, take you along for the ride.
Later, when we lived in Bolivia, he did just that, taking Charles back to the Isle of the Sun in Lake Titicaca for an underwater dive where Charles, not the archeologists, found a gold statue.
Our friendship circles overseas were always essential on many fronts but the small group of foreigners in Puno stand out as our most important during more than 25 years abroad. As we embarked on this career path, we imagined making lifelong friends from each host country, which we did.
While we had occasional dinners or parties at their house or ours, their primary social focus was on their extended families, especially on weekends. In looking back, I came to realize why our friendship with other foreigners was different from friendships with the locals. Other expatriates in our close circle became our invented families because we only had each other to depend on. Our relatives were far away in our countries of origin.
In Puno, our friendships were tighter than in other countries because the town was so small and remote. We saw each other nearly every day. Our closest friends were a Danish couple, Anne Mette and Per Hartmann with their two children Anders and Sophia; A Finnish/Brazilian couple, Carita and Julio Paupitz, and their two daughters Saga and Johanna; a Dutch couple, Jaap and Elig Meijer with two-year-old Marieke and baby born in Puno, Gert Jan. These three families arrived the same year as we did and planned to stay two years, so we were heartened to begin and end our stay together.
We were at each other’s house daily and shared dinner several nights a week. If anyone had an emergency and had to leave town the others stood in as parental guardians. When together, all the adults spoke in English. The children ranging in age from 18 months to nine years were fluent in their native tongue and had picked up a wishy-washy English and Spanish mix.
Saga, the same age as Bronwyn, had the most trouble learning to talk. Her father was Brazilian and spoke Portugese, her mother Finnish, the maid spoke Aymara, townspeople spoke Spanish and our friendship circle spoke English. Saga at three, understood five languages but struggled to utter a word until the Christmas trip to Finland.
Julio, the dad, arrived back in Puno after the Finnish holiday, before his wife and daughters. He told us we wouldn’t believe that Saga had unleashed a flood of Finnish after she discovered that her mother wasn’t the only person in the world who spoke that language.
Upon return, she also started speaking Portuguese, English and Spanish. In each country I was fascinated by children’s language learning. I discovered that Children learn two languages effortlessly if parents speak to them in their native tongue, the language of love. Confronted with three, an obstacle seems to occur in the brain, probably trying to decide which word to use. Eventually they are able to straighten it all out and speak multiple languages. Somehow our children played together gleefully without much language at all.
When Bronwyn met a rare American child in the Andes, she was deliriously happy because with them she could talk up a storm, and play the imaginative games she relished. We discovered one American family living near Puno when Jimmy Carter came to town. We heard he was coming but didn’t know why and rumor mill in town said he would come to the soccer stadium. We went by the stadium but clearly they were not preparing for a former American president.
The morning of his arrival, a helicopter swooped down over Lake Titicaca, most likely the only one Puno had ever seen. We jumped into our car and followed the helicopter up a mountain road and to our surprise came to the first Habitat for Humanity project in South America. Charles flashed his USAID badge and heralded us through the secret service and Bolivian military to a crowd of campesino homeowners who, according to the Habitat model, built their own homes, under the guidance of volunteers who brought in materials and guided the process.
In this case the volunteer couple, the Van Dykes, was American. They had a three-year-old girl, Daniela and four-year-old boy, Ross. Bronwyn was disappointed that her new playmates returned to America a couple months later, the work being completed.
Equally exciting to making new friends who spoke English, Bronwyn was all geared up to meet Rosalyn and ask her, “How is your little girl?” Rosalyn laughed and said she’s big now, 17, and away at school. Then Jimmy Carter hoisted Bronwyn up and gave her a kiss on the cheek just after I ran out of film. In typical Carter style, he then turned to the campesinos and said, in Spanish “There are lots of dignitaries here today but the most important guests are you. It is you that I came here to meet and honor.”
I so admired President Jimmy Carter for his integrity and compassion. Ten years later we paid 25 cents extra to stay in the room of a trail-side tea house where Jimmy and Rosalyn had slept on their Nepali trek to the Tengboche Monastery.
One day we met another American couple who had come to town to buy provisions in the market. They lived about a 1.5-hour drive on the road toward Bolivia. They invited us out to their house by Lake Titicaca on a specified date. This was our first experience seeing how American missionaries live abroad. Although in remote areas of the world, they manage to ship their American culture along with them. We’ve seen this in the jungle of Ecuador and the mountains of Uganda.
Our hosts that day served fried chicken McNuggets, hamburgers with a replica of McDonald’s “secret sauce”, baked beans, homemade potato chips and an array of American style desserts including devil food cakes filled with marshmallow cream, a version of Moon Pies, and a good imitation of Krispy Kreme donuts. They showed me the cookbook that all American Baptist missionaries carried in their bags. It provided recipes for making American junk food.
I was aghast at our meal, but Bronwyn loved it! My own taste buds were expanding to relish the spicy Peruvian foods and the international cuisine of our friends. To this day we can almost smell our Friday night lamb roasts up at the forestry station (beef was more expensive) which we served with papas A La Huancaina, a native dish I still make today. When we returned for summers in the U.S. Bronwyn asked for roasted lamb dinners, but I explained that it was a delicacy in America and too expensive.
Potatoes a la Huancaina (boiled potatoes with peanut sauce)
1 large or 2 small cooked potatoes per person
3 chili peppers finely chopped and ground
1 teaspoon chopped Huacatay (pronounced wah-kah-tie), also known as Peruvian black mint, is an essential Andean herb native to South America. Belonging to the marigold family, it delivers a highly pungent, aromatic flavor often described as a blend of sweet basil, tarragon, mint, and lime.
1 cup milk
1 pound peanuts roasted and ground
2 tablespoons of oil
Instructions: Fry ground chili in oil. Add the milk, peanuts and the huakataya. Simmer until the sauce thickens about 15 minutes. To serve, put the potatoes on lettuce leaves and cover generously with the sauce. Garnish with sliced, hardboiled eggs, black olives, tomato slices and cubes of feta (substituting for local kollana cheese made from slightly aged cow’s or goat milk). Serves 6. Often served as a light lunch or dinner first course.
Food availability in Puno was restricted due in part to a terrible drought, with no rain for the first year. Puno’s population doubled in that time due to starving subsistence farmer families moving to town. Fresh vegetables were scarce, and expensive in the local market.
I accompanied Charles on one of his first monthly visits to Lima, to stock up. While there, we were invited to the US Ambassador’s Residence for a reception, I forget for what or whom. After some boring speeches, we were invited into a hall with a lavishly prepared table. I made a bee line to some prosciutto wrapped asparagus. Heaven after Puno! There was a large, elder, distinguished gentleman in my way, whom Charles declared that I unceremoniously pushed out of my way to get to the asparagus. Turned out to be the former President of Peru. Still today, I can’t eat asparagus without turning red and if I do forget, Charles will remind me of one of his favorite food stories.
Not only had our food appreciation expanded, but the décor of our home also began to reflect the talented indigenous craftsmen and women we met. There was a story and a face behind each painting, carving, pottery dish, and weaving. Plants in big clay urns and baskets from Amantani became hiding places for the children who played in our house. We came to Puno with so little but now realized our blessings, the bounty of friendships and beautiful functional items that enriched our daily life.
About six months after our arrival, Charles, Bronwyn and I were sitting at the carved table, eating our favorite Saturday lunch on woven totora placemats. Leftover lamb from last night’s grill was chopped with salad, and stuffed into fresh flat bread rolls from the corner shop. All topped with Tzatziki sauce made from my homemade yogurt, fresh mint and cucumbers. Sunlight bathed the table and our hearts.
Suddenly, Bronwyn tore off a piece of her sandwich and threw it under the table.
“What are you doing?” I shrieked.
“It’s for Spot”, she replied in a matter-of-fact tone.
Spot the imaginary dog had magically left Durham, NC, and arrived in Puno, Peru because it finally felt like home.
Oh, Deborah, your story telling and photographs are transporting! Please tell us more!