13 September 2011

Ode to the Agrarian

¨How is it possible to feel nostalgia for a world I never knew?¨  ---Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries

I spent my Saturday in the company of cows, llamas, and alpacas. The visit didn´t involve travel to Cusco or the northern highlands, but rather a one-hour combi ride to La Molina, an affluent and somewhat suburban-feeling district of Lima that happens to be home to the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina (National Agrarian University—La Molina).  The trip was made possible by our good friend Enrique, who studied at the university and wanted to share it with us.

While some of us marveled at seeing farm animals up close and personal for the first time, others felt not as if they were experiencing something new and exotic, but old and familiar.  I belonged to the latter group.  Corn stalks and cows grazing are the typical scenery of a Sunday drive to my grandparents´ house, who used to operate a dairy farm in the quiet countryside of west central Pennsylvania.
Right at home, abroad--Universidad Nacional Agraria

Even though the instances of farm living are becoming rarer and rarer in my hometown, the agrarian tradition of our ancestors is still apparent in many rituals: county fairs, pumpkin carvings, hay rides through corn stalks, senior photos posed in front of props like tractors and wicker chairs. I´ve never milked a cow myself, but as I petted cow MRN 1067, I reflected on how my grandpa used to milk them every day, on how my mom used to say we skim-milk drinkers didn´t know what real milk tasted like, on how she said it was a special treat to ride along with my grandpa on Christmas mornings to make deliveries.  I thought about how my grandpa´s thick fingers and strong, wrinkled hands are the markers of years of dedication to hard physical labor.  Some jobs can be left in an office; others become a way of life.

¨I wouldn´t give you a nickel to travel,¨ my grandpa might say, dismissing my entire move to Peru with one decisive head shake. Likewise he´d probably make the city of Lima pay him before he would move into the thick cloud of smog and cacophonous soundtrack of car horns.

I´ve spent three years trying to piece together the connection I feel to Peru—why I´m fascinated by the lush green terraces and massive stone structures of an empire to which I share no common genealogy, culture, language, or history.  I´ve fumbled for logical explanations, reached for words I did not have.  Why would I spend six months halfway across the world at the expense of separating myself from everything and everyone I knew? 

I´m still not quite sure I can pinpoint the reason, but it seems to me it has something to do with a connection to seed and soil.  With the potato that stubbornly budges its way from the Andean earth against all odds, and the quiet resilience of a farmer, whose stubbornness brings even bigger surprises, defies even greater odds.

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