Aucapata Word Picture 3

I´m wondering how people live their lives in this remote mountain village. The women work hard cooking on small woodfires, scrubbing clothes in streams, tending animals and crops. Everything is labour intensive. Sometimes, the children walk hours to school but race and play on their way up or down the mountian. Even when it is dark, kids are playing. Often a tiny girl, maybe aged six, has a baby sister or brother tied to her back. She heaves the bundle around, changes the baby in the street, and is a mother. Often that baby is a big baby and can already walk. Even when it is dark, kids are playing outside. They use two litre pop bottles as tobaggans or skate boards and take turns hauling each other down the hill. Faster and faster until the puller tires or the pulled crashes. They build mud dams in the street to make puddles big enough to lie beside. Their skipping ropes are hand made or woven grass.

At four pm, or five pm or 8 pm there is honking on the mountain top. The bus is arriving. Everyone drifts towards the square. The bus doesn´t leave again until 2 am or 4 am but some of the passengers are ready and waiting. The bus roof is piled high with bags and boxes and sometimes passenengers. The cold metal interior of the bus is filled with wool wrapped people waiting to be jossled and tossed on the rough winding mountain road.

The first truck reached this village in 1974. Now all the able bodied men and boys return home in 4x4s from the mines on Saturday. One night a week to drink and procreate before retuning underground.