Saving for a Rainless Day

Jallu stood in back of the small house, surveying the amkha tubers spread out on the bare dirt field. Brown, reddish brown, tan, brownish grey, orangish brown, almost-black brown, yellowish grey, russet, sandy brown, golden-brown...

She surveyed the potential feast with a tear in her eye. She knew she should be happy and proud of the farm that she and Llallaua had worked so hard, for so many years. And Pilpintu was coming to help, and with Chambi, and especially with Nayaraq, it would be like a party, even during the hard work. So why feel sad?

She knew why. She was sad because it had not rained, not this season and hardly at all the one before that and almost none the one before that. In her 49 years, she had not seen such a rainless period, but what could be done about that? Might as well feel sad that night was coming or that stones fell over cliffs.

Until now, neither she nor her husband had experienced the need to prepare for extraordinary drought, but they were doing so as though they had been trained. In effect they had, for they were both familiar with drought’s causes, effects and management from stories of the ancestors. The oldest curandera said that the Ollatambo homeland had been a desert in the distant past, but then became a temperate rainforest which extended up to the snowline, and yet again slowly transitioned to its current semiarid condition. Further drying to a truly arid state was clearly occurring. Their son, fiddling with his ancient radio, at times raised broadcasts of the New People featuring climatic “experts,” but they could not foresee any end to the drought and simply admitted that they could not look that far ahead. In this, they were much less impressive than the curanderas, who predicted that almost no rain would fall for decades.

Intimidating though this prediction was, panic was not to be found among the Ollatambo. Their stories were more than mere tales. Even the scientific culture that cautiously hedged its bets about predicting climate had come to consider what it formerly subtly derided as “folklore” as methods to transmit a continually adapting “cultural toolkit” down the generations. The calm of the Ollatambo stemmed from their confidence they could continue to hone the tools given to them by their ancestors and use them to adapt to ever more extreme climates.

Following the example of the great-great grandparents, who even at the height of prosperity were said to have had at least a three-year supply of staples on hand, and who started accumulating major additional stocks at the merest hint of lean times to come, Llallaua and Jallu were preparing to preserve their entire harvest of amkha. They would subsist until the next harvest on grains and the occasional fish. With the aid of their daughter and son, the couple had spread out the earth-colored tubers to cover the entirety of their largest field, so that they dried in the still-strong orange sun, and then froze in the high-altitude nighttime cold. The edible roots had been undergoing this ordeal for five days, and now it was time for the coup de grâce, the activity for which Jallu had invited her sister’s family- a hearty communal trampling to squeeze out the scant water they still contained. The result would be the chuno, an emergency and travel food that was treasured by the cultures of the High Sierra, each with its own recipes and rituals surrounding it. Developed for hard times, this staple was nevertheless so appealing to the Ollatambo palate that if not guarded carefully, significant inroads to the supply would be made, even in normal times, by those prone to temptation.

Jallu was suddenly aware of her husband standing next to her. “I know it's sad that we have to do this,” he said in a rumbling murmur. She turned and looked up at Llallaua, and they embraced. After a large number of moments, they were comforted enough to physically separate.

A few milliseconds later, a small whirlwind passed between them, causing the couple to burst into delighted laughter. Nayaraq suddenly stood next to them and then leaped into the arms of her aunt, as her blindingly white pet looked on. Squirming away, the medium-sized girl hugged her uncle, then ran off towards the house. With raised eyebrows, Llallaua said to his wife, “I know what she's after!” The pair walked briskly after their niece, intent on making sure her expectations of a welcome for both her and her sweet tooth would not be disappointed.