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I was about to go out the front door, catch a bus and begin
my rounds of appointments, when I saw Dora, the maid, standing
in the entryway near a table with the telephone. "Excuse
me, does the telephone work in Aymara?" she called to Phil,
who was in the next room ... It was only as I walked down the
hill that I recalled her question and began to reflect on it.
It struck me as funny. How could anyone think that the telephone
would not work in Aymara? (p. 63)
As lines on the land along which people walk, paths have a
material existence. Their physicality and their unbreakable
association with movement and travel allow them to stand for
other, less tangible lines and movement. One can think of metaphorical
paths as lines through time rather than space: paths as sequences,
not as places, or more precisely, not only of places, but of
the events and phases that mark an individual's life. (p. 210).
More than 150 villages line the shores of Lake Titicaca. No
two have identical landscapes. (p. 173).
In geological terms, lakes are ephemeral. It is not much of
an exaggeration to compare them to puddles that disappear soon
after they form ... The age that is required for a lake to be
termed "ancient" is only a few hundred thousand years -- an
age at which a river would still be in its youth and a mountain
range in its infancy. (p. 41)
It seemed to me that the workshop had contained many moments
that demeaned the fishermen. We had been treating them as if
they were uneducated boors, strangers in the world of government
agencies, printed forms and standard measures. In the gratitude
with which the fishermen accepted a few sandwiches, in their
hesitation to ask questions, I sensed an acceptance of this
assumed inferiority. And yet the fishermen were also in some
sense being honored by their inclusion in the project. As I
write now, I view all the documentation -- the notebooks and
forms, the registration of the survey fishermen, the diplomas
that would be granted -- more broadly. It represents not merely
a chance for the fishermen to earn some money, but also an opportunity
to garner recognition for themselves, for their villages, for
their entire way of life. In the patience with which the fishermen
waited to be registered, I see an element of their commitment
not to be forgotten, a step in the fight against oblivion. (pp.
83-84) |
