Wanderings

Amantani Island sits like a precarious half-bubble on Lake Titicaca. In the hazy chill of first light, yellow rays are splayed and shot above the earth’s curve, lighting the icy jagged peaks of the Cordilleras.
The light wakes the donkeys, setting one off then the other, screeching and honking in syncopated rhythm.
I wake at first light, having blown out the candle by eight in the evening. On an island with no electricity the moon is a dictator, imposing and lifting curfews by way of its shifting shape. I pull on my hiking boots to begin exploring the island by foot.
We call ourselves Voluntarios. It means volunteers in English, but somehow this takes the shine off the word. It often produces a change of countenance in the locals, used to the visitor with no time for lingering in one place.
The worn stones of the pathways beckon me further round the next corner, round the next bay.
I see an elderly woman in a tall pink hat and wide turquoise skirt bent over in a field. I am interrupting her work and she looks potentially menacing with the sickle in one hand dangling at her side.
“Is there a way across the fields to the peninsula?” I ask in my stunted Spanish.
She waves dismissively.
With a blank look she asks me where I am from. I tell her I am a voluntario staying on the island to build the schoolroom at Inti Wawacuna School and teaching. She sets her face with a broad smile and, because I know about her home, we talk. The sharp instrument at her side transforms into a teaching aid – the sharp end telling me which way I should head to find my way through the maze of walls and fields to the peninsula.
As I continue my walk I wonder whether we are really helping here. Probably not, is the answer I invariably arrive at. After all, the history of well-meaning helpers in foreign lands is not encouraging. Don’t they look back and marvel at what peace they destroyed? Yes, perhaps this is a place for learning, not teaching.