Making lunch

June 4th 2010

Once or twice a week Marie and I go out to the ¨campo¨, which means country, and help either Gordons or other friends with digging potatoes. Purple, pink, yellow, and other colors of potatoes too. A day of digging means eating huatia (wä´ teea) for lunch. About 11:00 someone starts building an oven right in the field. First you dig a hole about 6 inches deep and maybe 2 feet across. Then you gather clumps of dirt from around you and build an oven over the hole. Then a hot fire gets built inside, and when it´s down to almost ashes, we throw lots of potatoes in. Yes, they´re still dirty. Next, we hit the oven with our picks to smash it all down to little pieces. When it looks like just a pile of dirt, we leave it to cook, and we go dig potatoes for about 40 minutes more. Then the owner of the field calls everyone to ¨Come eat huatia!¨ and the cook digs some of the tators out and puts ´em on a sack. We all sit in a circle around the sack and eat. Someone always passes out wedges of cheese, which is sorta like the cheese my family makes. There´s no water around. We´re far from any sinks, spigots, or even streams. We´ve gotten used to eating with dirt-encrusted fingers, just like everyone here does when they eat huatia.