rumichaca

On a request from a Peruvian group called ‘The White Brotherhood’
we traveled from Lima on the long stretch to Jauja. Up and up by slow train,
passed close to 5000 m. at the highest where some of us fainted due to lack of oxygen
so the train man had to come with his goatskin filled with real air from Lima
and pump it up our noses, until the train, hardly moving because of
lack of oxygen as well, speeded up again down to Jauja at blessed 3352m. only.
In Jauja the brotherhood were building a dome for meditation.
As the construction had basic errors long before we arrived,
the dome soon collapsed at some point, and we left.

And so, subsequently, off to 'La Valle Sagrada de Urubamba’ where
once lived a king called Uru, which means spider, because he was so very hairy.
Bamba simply means pampa or plain. It was his domain.
Renting there a run-down place fallen into disuse and called Rumi Chaka,
meaning round aker, seated along the ancient Inca Trail,
where a strain of the gigantic watering system that criss-crosses the high Andes
passed through our place, with a trickle that is.
We found out soon that the Indians first washed their donkeys in this already.
Somewhere higher up.
In this place where our planets had brought us there was found a big tarpaulin,
its use obvious as there were poles in the ground. We organized this.
Word went around about us, los doctores blancos, and within a few days
we woke up finding fifty Indians sleeping in the grounds.
From then on they came with trucks, from far. Or walked. For days.
Knowing the ropes, we demanded from them some token for the treatments.
An egg, a handful of rice, a banana.
Soon one of the outhouses spilled over and we could dole out food
to those that had walked far and distant. From the great Monastery
Santa Catalina in Cuzco came nuns even, by camionetas that did the roads.
The nuns, never touched by a man, they now were having treatments hands on.