I’m rarely out and about after dark. There isn’t much to do in Carhuamayo at night. While it’s a safe town, that’s likely when something bad would happen to a gringa walking around alone. There are some drug abuse problems here and alcoholism. Though, I’ve seen just as many drunks on Sunday morning and noon on Wednesday. My house is out of town a bit, without streetlights (no streets), and Peruvians don’t illuminate their properties like Americans, so it’s a special quality of dark. I can be seventy feet from my house, but feel like I might as well be camping.
The other day, I was leaving the city of Junin after dallying too long picking up birthday packages and chatting with gringos in a patch of grass. I went to find a collectivo and was the only one in the car for over an hour. Collectivo catching is tricky business. Sometimes you’re the only one for quite some time, and it can be tempting to get out of the car and wander down the road hoping for a bus to go by. Peruvians only seem to come in swarms. There have been several times that I’ve jumped out of a collectivo to flag down a bus that didn’t stop, only to turn around to find the car I was alone in suddenly full of Peruvians and pulling away.
Anyway, I was reading a book in the car, a little anxious about the falling dusk, for quite some time. Then a pack of Peruvians appeared with bags of potatoes and oatmeal shoots and piled in. There was no seatbelt, but I think the sheer pressure of our clown car organization molding me against the door would have kept me in place. We finally took off into the twilight.
Places look different at night. The spaces between towns are pretty empty, but they seemed even more so. The darkness blurred out the potato fields in the hills and the small earth-colored houses, even after I wiped the condensation of a dozen breathing bodies in a station wagon off the window with my mitten. It was beautiful and let me imagine a wild open landscape. I suppose it still is in some ways, even though the hand of people has been on it for thousands of years.
It was fully dark by the time we got home to Carhuamayo with a 20 minute walk out of town facing me before reaching my house. I wasn’t worried, but I was conscious that I had my camera and cell phone and was obviously carrying packages. I got home without incident. It turns out not many other folks are out after dark, either.
On a clear night, the stars in Carhuamayo are incredible. It’s so cold on cloudless nights and the stars are like thousands of ice crystals coming out of an abyss. Somehow the cold makes them sharper. My house is out in a field and up a hill from the highway where I was walking. It’s a tricky hill because it used to be raised beds of potato fields, so there are waves in it like the ocean far from the shore. They are awkwardly spaced and I stumble up and down even in daylight. It’s well into the rainy season, so the paths my family has walked into the waves are canals of muddy water. Because of all the obstacles between me and arriving to my house without a muddy ass, I walked with my headlamp. Halfway up the hill, I took a break to turn off the lamp and look around. There were open patches in the clouds where the stars and moon peeked through and it was incredible to let the darkness fall around me like a curtain. I didn’t stay long, but it was lovely to experience my town in a new lack of light. I was happy to get to the top of the hill to dry clothes and barley soup.
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