Before I took the new students to the Inti Raymi faire I went alone through Jesus MarÃa to get to the Metro for some groceries. Along the way, I passed by the local church and there was a lot going on. A church faire!
The fact that faires now get me really excited is no secret. I immediately changed course and headed right into it. It was a small event, but it did have a stage with amps. On the stage was a guy in a cheap clown suit (no makeup!) and a guy dressed up like Spider-Man. There were several row of tables of people selling freshly cooked food. Looking at the signs, I thought they represented local churches and different denomination. I had a plate of tallarÃn con salsa de carne, which is spaghetti with meat sauce.
For the first time in Peru I felt like someone who was part of the community and not some Chinese weirdo walking through town. Here’s what happened: the church let out and many tens of people suddenly spilled out into the faire area. As they walked by me they saw me standing there like a weirdo eating a plate of spaghetti. Some people walked up to me, but instead of commenting on me, they asked me if the spaghetti was good and how much it was. They valued my opinion!
There were also some faire games set up. One was a simple cointoss onto a platform. Another was jail which I considered joining but I was concerned that no one would pay to let me out. As I was looking around a woman came up to me with some numbered tickets. She asked me to pick one for one sol. I chose 4 for no reason in particular and then I saw the setup she was attending to. It was a ring of boxes surrounding a box in the center. On each box on the outside was some cheap item: stickers, condensed milk, things like that. I had no idea what was going on:
{I paid 1 sol before I knew how this game worked.}
When she sold off all of the tickets she called a guy over who reached into a box and picked up a cuy (guinea pig)! I got it: the guinea pig was going to be placed in the box in the center and when it’s uncovered, it would scaredly run into a box. The person who had the ticket for that box wins! That was exactly what happened as seen in this video:
The video was actually the second cuy run I saw. On the first one, the cuy ran into box 4. I won! My incredible prize was a pack of rigatoni pasta with a bottle of white glue and a green marker taped to it.
{Now my party can really get started.}
At another event, someone was selling rolled up tickets. When I paid a sol and picked one, I unrolled it to reveal a number. Then another person working there would get some cheap item that corresponded with that number. Simple enough, right? Except that Peruvians are rather pushy at times and the people running that booth were kind of slow. I waited patiently to buy my ticket and have it exchanged for my item. One of the guys came up to me and handed me a tiny orange plastic flute. His expression said “Pfft, here you go dude” while mine was more “Uh, thanks, I think.” I later gave the flute away to the daughter of anthropologist Rick Sutter, who happened to stop by with his family to visit Bob. There’s a chance that he absolutely despises me now.