IN THE MARKETPLACE
by Asa Huggett

I stood for a moment looking at the small stone in my hand. I noticed it had a tiny hole in it. I smiled, nodded to the Indio woman who had just handed it to me and said "Muchas gracias." Something important had just happened, but I couldn't quite grasp it. My western mind was still entangled in it's old ways. I had been wandering through the Indio market which fills the plazas and squares of Cusco in the evenings. Everywhere you looked there was another plaza filled with Peruvians, blankets spread, shop doors open, tables and carts piled high with their goods. The mall of the Andes. It was wonderful. I was in the market that night searching for a particular type of stone, a meteorite, a stone from the stars. Earlier in the day our expedition guide, Gato, had taken us to a shop where he knew they might be available and, indeed the proprietor had several, but Gato said the price of 120 soles (about $40) was outrageous and would not let us purchase them. Gato advised us to go to the marketplace that evening and search out our meteorites there.

So, I wandered the marketplace that night with two friends, taking in the sights and sounds, buying gifts for family and friends. This was our first and last opportunity to shop as most of our time had been spent high up in the mountains and sacred ruins. We were here with our teacher Alberto Villoldo, to meet with his teachers and friends, the elders and medicine people of the Q'ero nation. The Q'ero are said to be the descendents of the Inka who have lived in isolated villages at 16,000 - 18,000 feet in the heights of the Andes. This was where they had fled 500 years ago when their lands were engulfed by the Conquistadors and where they had kept their prophesies and traditions clear and alive. Then in the 1950's they were discovered and their lives were opened to the modern world that had passed them by.

The Inka prophesies had foretold the coming together of the eagle of North America and the condor of South America, that the two would some day fly together again. So, when Alberto Villoldo, a North American anthropologist came to the Q’ero over twenty years ago, he was taken into their world, and trained as a master shaman in the traditions of not only the Q'ero, but absorbed the teachings of the coastal and jungle shamans as well. He became a piece of the bridge between the worlds. Now he, along with Cusco born shaman Jose Luis Herrera, bring their students to the mountains, to visit sacred sites, to do ceremony with the elders and undergo their rites of passage with the medicine people.

It was an intense trip. One of the gifts of this journey was to have the opportunity to observe and engage with the cosmology or operating priciple through which the indigenous people live their lives. The primary force of their Universe is based in reciprocity, or ayni (eye-nee) which honors the interconnectedness and interdependency of all things - or in "New Age" language, what goes around comes around. But to these people this is not something to be talked about or put on a bumper sticker, it is a belief to be lived, and they live it every day. Their world is alive, animated, all things have spirit, have energy that must be acknowledged and honored. They have a profound relationship with the natural world, still living in the Garden that we as Judeo-Christians were expelled from long ago. Our Mother Earth, Pachamama, still holds them sweetly and they are very aware of all that she and her elements provide. They honor this gift of life on earth through ceremony and by gifting back to the earth symbolic offerings in a ceremony called a despacho.

There are many forms of despacho ceremony, but we were particularly honored to participate in an ayni (reciprocity) despacho ceremony with Don Manuel Quispe in the sacred ruins of Machu Picchu. This offering of gratitude to Pachamama, Mother Earth, takes the form of a beautiful mandala created with natural ingredients of coca leaves, flower petals, nuts, grains, shells, wine, candies and many, many prayers. Watching Don Manuel create the despacho, filling it with beauty and sweetness was like wrapping my own heart around it, filling it to overflowing with love and gratitude for life on this earth path. It was an incredibly sweet and humbling experience, one that brought me to a place of ayni, a place of commitment to service, balance and harmony, the shaman's path.

It wasn't until the long night flight from Lima to Miami that I again thought of the woman in the marketplace. What had happened there? As I dozed, uncomfortable from long hours in the plane, it came to me. When I had asked her the price of the meteorite she had replied 30 soles, or the equivalent of about $10. I was thrilled. I had found just what I had been looking for and at a great price. I had said "Ah, bueno" and immediately dug 30 soles out of my money pouch and handed it to her. She had taken the bills and then paused. I wonder now how she had considered my gringo ignorance. Did she look at me with sorrow or only with mild amusement? I had not bartered with her over the price of the meteorite.

She had named a price and I had immediately agreed. I was supposed to bargain with her, to go back and forth so that we might come into agreement about the value of this stone. I had blown it, had apparently paid more than she felt it was worth, and in doing so had thrown both of us out of balance, out of ayni with the Universe. We were now both in disharmony. And so she, with her ancient knowledge and gracious wisdom, had handed me another stone with a tiny hole, saying, "Senorita, for you" and in doing so, she had gently shifted the energies of the Universe, once again bringing the two of us back into universal balance, into ayni. Muchas gracias, Senora.

Copyright Asa Huggett 1999