I'm having a lazy Saturday! After last month's constant busyness it is strange to have days like today. I changed things around on here a bit the other day. How do you like it? I took that picture in the background. Yeah, the sacred valley is pretty marvelous.
Yesterday (Friday) I went to the Museo de antropología, arqueología e historia. I was supposed to meet a friend there but he ended up coming later than expected and I forgot my phone across town. So I went in by myself. The museum is located in what used to be Simon Bolivar's home. You know, the liberator of Colombia and Peru. It has two gardens with rooms surrounding them. That's the basic layout of the house. It's beautiful, or I'm sure it was when it was actually a house. Now there are display cases everywhere instead of furniture and a bit of construction that makes the whole place smell like paint. But I enjoyed it nonetheless.
The museum basically starts as far back as it can, with the evolution of humans in Africa. They have some (replica?) australopithecus, H. habilius and H. erectus skulls and then they have a little model of humans interacting with megafauna. It was small and simple. Then we got into the actual cultures in Peru. There are a lot and they all had their own pottery styles. So a good majority of the rest of the pre-Incan culture area was ceramics. They had some pipes like what we find from indigenous populations in the US, only in the shapes of things like cuy, llamas, and owls. It was cool.
In the Incan section they had a giant model of Machu Picchu. I had been following some groups of students from local elementary schools all morning, but somehow I ended up in this room alone. So I saw everything that I saw a few weeks ago on a smaller scale. It seems smaller when you are there. Like, when we walked from one side of the complex to the other, I didn't feel like we were going terribly far. But the model made it seem huge. So that brought a different appreciation to the experience.
After the Incan section began the Spanish conquest and on section. You go through a room about the Amazons and then Francisco Pizzaro is staring at you. I was mad that my camera died at this point. How often do you get to see a portrait of the guy who changed everything for South America? So the rest of the museum from this point on is mostly portraits of important people and small artifacts. They did have shackles in the same section as crosses which bothered me. Not because they chose to place them there, but because it made sense to place them there. For the tens of portraits of Europeans there were about 5 portraits of Incan leaders which was pretty cool. Atahualpa had his portrait there. He was the last king of the Incas.
Eventually the museum moved into more modern history, up until the 1960s. By this point my brain was fairly saturated and I couldn't take much else in. But I managed the learn a little about economics and the revolution against Spain. That was good of me, since next weekend is independence day. How festive.
So I was getting close to the exit and the kids were all about gone when one last room caught my eye. Tuberculosis through prehistory. Interesante! I can still remember the first time I learned about tuberculosis. I don't know why, but it was in 4th grade when we learned about Ellis Island. So anyway, I was excited about this one.
When a person is suffering from tuberculosis, they often develop a hunchback. There is a buildup of fluids on the spine so that there is a visible ridge behind the shoulders. In these two rooms, there were all kinds of ceramic and lithic figures with this ridge behind their shoulders. Some of them were from 1100 BC. CRAZY! Also, people here in Peru still die from tuberculosis. Also crazy.
But the craziest part of this tuberculosis display was the mummy. When I came in, the guy told me there was a mummy, but I thought it was supposed to be with the Inca stuff. I didn't see it so I thought they were probably restoring it or something. But no! I found it. So I was looking at the little statues and the guard says, "mumifera?" and I was like oh yeah! and he opened a little door and let me into this room with like 3 humidifiers, 3 informational signs on the wall, and a mummy in a glass case and then shut the door behind me. It was just me and the mummy. I think we all deserve a little one on one time with a mummy. It makes you remember your humanity a little. The guard kept peeking at me through a window to let me out when I was done. Weird, but cool.
After I got back we had pizza for lunch because it was my host mom's birthday and we decided she shouldn't have to cook. Then I went to my friend Becca's apartment. We each bought 2 desserts (8 in total) and ordered more pizza and drank pop. We had a little dinner/movie party and laughed for a few hours straight about giant crickets (I told them about Scratchy), guinea pigs, and just felt like Americans again for a bit. We watched Enchanted on Netflix and shared our desserts. It was great. I think I would be able to manage living here longer if I had more nights like that.
Also, they found out that I'm funny. Now the pressure is on.
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