The sky above Sajama thunders but does not bite, as a black wall from the volcano approaches the village’s colonial bell tower. The snow-capped peak does not move a millimetre; it looks much more placid than when we were up there at almost six thousand metres, with spitting wind in our faces at fifty kilometres per hour. Outside the houses, pieces of meat and llama skins dry, while Mrs Benigna sits in the square spinning alpaca wool. The same with which she weaves the jumpers that sit on a couple of shelves inside the room that serves as dining room, grocery shop and living room, and which her kitchen overlooks. She has long braids with a crocheted fabric necklace hanging from them, a very heavy skirt, and a shawl fastened around her shoulders with a pin, like all Bolivian ladies.
Otherwise, the house is a handful of rooms built around a kind of courtyard: a single concrete casting, metal doors, straw mattresses and woollen blankets probably made on a loom by the lady herself. Yesterday, we knocked on her door after the storm forced us into the tent for half an hour, and she was happy to open it and feed us a dinner of rice and eggs. She said she had been to the top of Parinacota three times: the volcano is a day’s walk from the village, twenty-five kilometres, which for us meant doing things the way Benigna did them 15 years ago, although now you can get to the base camp by car. Then the lady explained how to wash clothes without running water, coming and going of basins of dirty water to be emptied into the furrow that years and years of basins have dug in the street.
Benigna was born here, and she speaks Aymara with her husband, the native language that dates back to before the conquest of the Incas. She explains how to prepare chuño, the frozen, dehydrated potato never missing from Bolivian dishes. It is buried in the frozen ground in winter, covered with straw, and trodden on to expel all the liquids so that it can stay for a long time. This morning before breakfast, the lady told us that the funeral of Mrs Maria Maldonado, an 82-year-old widow, would be held in Sajama today. Eight days after her death, friends and family gather on the house’s patio for an hour-long veil: everyone sits in a circle, drinking beer and cinnamon liqueur from the same glass, which they turn from hand to hand. Each person spills some liquid on the ground before drinking, downs a drop and moves on to the next. The same goes for colourful woollen sachets containing coca leaves: they take a couple and add them to the bundle in their mouths, betrayed by the bulge on one cheek.
This goes on for quite a while, while two ladies adorn the lama who sits blindfolded in the centre of the circle with fuchsia wool threads, and other ladies in a room with a closed door cook and wash dishes. A little further on is a pile of clothes, dishes and various objects; these are all the deceased’s personal effects. At a certain point the situation unravels, and the guy who is presiding over the ceremony invites everyone to silence: he makes the sign of the cross, says something in Aymara and, in pairs, those present get up to pay their respects by pouring liquid from cups over and around the lama, and throwing sugar on him. When the couples are finished, they get the llama up and load bundles of Mrs Maria’s clothes on top of him. A brazier sprinkles the courtyard with incense, and they all set off towards the river. Most of those present stop before the bridge, throwing stones as a sign of farewell, and only eight people continue: they are the quemadores, charged with carrying out the funeral ceremony. It begins with the slaughter and skinning of the llama, whose flesh is divided among the remaining eight. A pyre is lit, where everything a dead man does not need is burnt: wool jumpers, heavy skirts, pots, teapots, cosmetic bottles and the sacrificed beast.
It all burns over a rubber tyre, with no qualms about dioxins, fuelled by alcohol and the plastic bottles containing it. A thick smoke rises, and bystanders drink and smoke cigarettes with the white wrappers. In the meantime, the most gruesome act of all takes place, skip a line for the faint-hearted: two men tie a rope around a dog’s neck, and pull away from each other, strangling it. The dog does not burn, it is left in the sun because, being an animal that knows how to move in water, it must accompany the deceased as she crosses the sea. Therefore, when all the objects have been thrown into the fire, the quemadores kneel toward the cordillera and the Chilean coast, and say a prayer. Then they wash their hands in the river and return to the deceased’s home.
Here (they) are waiting for all the others, sitting again in a circle in a room. We kneel for one last prayer and then, to our amazement, a couple of people start handing out plates of rice, meat and potatoes. They all eat while chatting, some of them giggling and teasing us in the indigenous language. Hardly anyone finishes their plate, but they pull a small bag out of their pocket and spill the leftovers, reserving the dish for the next day. Another round of liquor begins and the son of the deceased thanks everyone for accompanying his family on these eight days of vigil.
Someone lays two cases of beer on the floor and we realise that the ceremony is ending, at least the official one. We slip away with a few words of thanks, and run to our Benigna, who will be worried to see us coming back so late, and already having dinner. We asked her if we had done something wrong or should have brought something to the ceremony, but apparently, we had not. Before she changes her tune, I slip under the blankets so thick that they will probably bury me, and I wonder if I will dream of llamas and quartered dogs or ladies in bowler hats and gigantic coloured skirts, and if that fire is still burning, down there across the river.
