Descent

A 6 am wake-up taxi and 5 hour bus ride out of Arequipa, I headed into the Cañon del Colca. It's the second deepest canyon in Perú, in the town of Cabanaconde. The people of the town are either Cabanan or Conden, not sure I spelled that correctly, and the women distinguish their cultures with different hats. If you're Cabana, you're hat flips up in the back. If you're Conden, it's bent in the front. In the past, you couldn't inter-marry between the two, Montagues and Capulets. Now it's common and accepted. The pampa, the land just before the descent into the canyon, isn't owned by anyone. It's public property, so the people of the town let their animals roam free. Goats, sheep, vicuñas, llamas, alpaca. In the pampa too, bees live in the ground. They enter and exit the earth through tiny holes covered in dust. Every step, I worried I was going to crush one.

The descent into the canyon took 5 hours--my knees almost buckling every step of the last hour. I felt old. Our group was five, me, 2 French, an Israeli and a Brit. I practically assaulted Rinat with all my questions. She is Israeli & Jewish by birth but doesn't believe in God. We talked at length about the climate in Israel. The country is apparently divided according to background or heritage, whether Eurpoean or Arabian. If the family came from Europe, there are apparently advantages. People of non-European descent even changed their names up until recently in order to have a better lot in life. Rinat mentioned that there are jokes about everyone, at least the cultures and countries that are well-represented, Polish or Morrocans, for example. For her, of all places, Israel should be a place where any can live free of ridicule. A country designated as a safe haven, for Jews in specific, to live without persecution, I think she finds it sad that racism exists there. I made the comment that it exists everywhere. Sad, but maybe it's human nature.

Traveling and the discussions had while doing so are helping me to see how much different life is compared to the impressions we get in the news. Israel doesn't have a single ally on any border. They have peace with Egypt and Jordan, but were there trouble with another country, those two might choose not to side with Israel. She said that they do live in insecurity, the US their closest ally. But at the same time, in such an environment, you still have to live, work, love, enjoy life. And while Israel seems at greater and more frequent risk, it made me think about New York. The increases and changes in levels of security, the tension that exists in the threat of terrorism, but you still hop on the subway and go to work, just the same. And to think that in the UK police walk around with billy clubs instead of assault rifles.