A Day In The Life: En la Chacra

Eyes slowly opening to the sound of a candle being lit near the foot of my bed. Did I even fall asleep last night? It’s still dark outside. “Catalina, ya son las 3:30” I guess I better get up. My feet fall to the cool, muddy floor. I look around in the candle light- I’m in a house, a room that is a house, made of straw. Their ceiling is sticks and tarps. The floor- the earth. This is how they live. I understand a little better now.

Eggs crackling over the fire. The calming sound of breakfast being prepared. I stumble my way out behind the hut through the dark and the rocks to find a lone spot to do my morning duty. There’s no such things as bathrooms here. I find my way back. By that time she is waiting for me, my friend Diana. She tells me I need to get dressed. She hands me a long sleeve shirt, a sweater, a large rag, and gloves. All this? But we’re in the desert! She explains the intensity of the heat out en las chacras, in the fields. So I layer-up.

“Vamos Cata ya es la hora!” Alright…. Vamos. We make our way walking to the other end of town where there’s about 50 people standing around waiting. I begin walking towards them with Diana and someone says “MIRA!” Everyone turns to look. They’re staring at me, every single one. They begin saying comments- Look at that white girl, she’s never going to last, I bet she goes home in an hour. It caught me by surprise. We walked over to a truck that was already filled with 20 women in the back… and we had to fit in too. I feel the burning of their eyes on my skin, their comments flood my ears.. I take a deep breath and attempt to squeeze my way in. The first thing I do upon entering the truck is I knock 3 people over. The second thing I do is step on 4 people’s feet. Great start, bigshot. I finally find a spot.

“What is this gringa doing here?” everyone is asking… I’m currently asking myself the same thing. Diana explained to them that I wanted to see what it’s like to work en la chacra, to understand the experience. Yeah, what she said! Around here in Peru, people are initially very stand-offish to outsiders, so I usually wait for my moment to slip in a good joke to try to get their respect. Eventually I made it, they laughed, and I was in. They still didn’t understand why a white girl was coming to the farm to do extremely intense manual labor with them, but at least she’s kinda funny.

We arrive to the farm as the sun is beginning to peak above the horizon. We eat our breakfast and get on to work. We all wear rags around our heads and necks, hats, long sleeves and jackets… and huge straw bags with a belt around our waist in the front to hold the seeds. Today we are planting cebolla… onions. We huddle around huge sacks of onion seeds, transferring as much as we can into our own personal bags, probably about 20lbs each (which we refill about every 20-30 minutes in the field). Then we head to the wide open, neatly plowed dirt/rocky field. Each woman lines up, each one to a line on the field, as if we are beginning a race of some sort. I look around me, nervous, anxious. Everyone kept telling me how difficult this job is, that I’m not going to be able to walk the next day or even sit down. Is what they say true? Well, I guess I will find out soon enough…

And we begin. Bending down, planting each seed one by one. Reach in the sack, plant the seeds, reach, plant, stretch, step, bend, repeat. 30 minutes in- “This isn’t half bad! It’s actually kind of fun.” Reach, plant, reach, plant, stretch, step, bend, repeat. 1 hour in- “Soooo when do we get a break? Heh…” “Oh, we don’t get breaks.” No breaks? Alright, I’m strong, I can do this…

The sun begins rising. The rays begin to strike like daggers on our backs. The heat rising from the ground stabs from below. Furthermore, I am tall. 5’8”. I am at LEAST one foot taller than every other single person there. Height in this game is NOT an advantage. I am bending, stretching, lunging… for hours on end. What keeps me going is the other women working alongside me. We plant side by side, talking of whatever interest crosses our minds. We keep each other going. 4 hours in, I stood up to look around and starting getting dizzy, actually wondering if I was going to be able to make it. 5 hours in, I can barely bend over anymore. My legs hurt so badly that I am now having to kneel to plant the seeds. I am falling behind, big time. The others keep an eye out for me and help me out. By this time, we are all begging for water. Some ladies are screaming, pleading to the owners to give us water. Today the owners forgot it, so we are left without.

6 hours in, my mind is mush, my legs are fire, my body is exhausted. We’re done. I find the nearest piece of shade and plop down. So THIS is working en la chacra. This is what the women do day in and day out in order to make the minimum to feed their kids. I was absolutely spend after 1 day of this, but to even think that these people do this back-breaking work 6 days a week, every week just absolutely astounds me. And then to think they go home, have to cook and clean and take care of their kids on top of that…

So it seems that I have accomplished my goal of understanding a bit more about their reality. I wanted to experience it, I wanted to go through it with them, so my body could understand too. So now, as I am working with them in their communities, I have a little bit better grasp on their situations.

Life is really hard for these people. And it’s all just chance that they have been born into these situations, and I have been born into mine. What if it was the other way around? For one minute, just imagine yourself in their shoes.

Do you feel the gratefulness now? As North Americans, we are so incredibly lucky to live how we are. I wish more people in the States could realize that…