Volleyball In The Sacred Valley

When I started my volunteer job in Cusco, Peru I was a bit tentative around the office. My Spanish was fairly good and I had the daily greetings down, but it wasn’t good enough to walk up to someone and “shoot the breeze” for any length of time. In other words, in Spanish I could say “Good morning,” “How are you?” and “How was your weekend?” but if the conversation got beyond that, I ran into trouble. As a result, I tended to keep my head down and do my work and only talk to someone when they talked to me. Over time this improved greatly but early on, it was a challenge. The biggest help in the first couple weeks was an office outing to play volleyball.

At the Centro de Textiles Traditionales de Cusco (CTTC), my role was basically as a pro bono consultant and I worked on projects with the three senior-most people in the office. There were about 20 people in the office, most of them one-person departments working on things like answering the phone (really!), researching natural dyes, accounting, computer technology, shipping & receiving and repairing textiles with the 1950's-era Singer sewing machine.

We combined our teambuilding/volleyball outing with a visit to the El Senor de Huanca shrine to bless the center’s new SUV and an office picnic. The twenty of us, including my daughter, rolled out of Cusco in two minivans and towards the Sacred Valley. After the blessing ceremony and the picnic, we went to Laguna Huacarpay and drove around looking for a flat spot to set up the volleyball net. We drove by indigenous farmers threshing grain on the newly paved road. They didn’t seem to mind us driving right over the grain and perhaps we were unwitting participants in the process.

We found a nice flat spot next to Laguna Huacarpay, with a flat meadow bordered by reeds from the lake. The Andes loomed large behind us, just like the bleachers at a sporting event. In the lake, fisherman in ancient reed boats competed with pintails, coots, gulls and blackbirds for fish. A herd of sheep and goats grazed near our makeshift court.

While we played a half-dozen games in that beautiful setting, the personalities of my office mates began to emerge. The self-assured office manager was a complete klutz, the two men who worked in shipping & receiving wore soccer jerseys and were good athletes and very competitive. The taciturn accountant -- once she was outside the office -- was talkative, positive (“good shot”) and smiled a lot while playing. The camaraderie was fun and “high-fives” were exchanged after every shot.

On Monday in the office, I lingered about the workspace of the soccer players, asking them if they still play soccer and whether they were good enough to make the local professional team. I complimented the accountant on her game, joking that her vocal support on the court warranted MVP consideration. I teased the office manager that she was clearly the worst volleyball player I had ever seen. From then on, I began to know my office mates a little better and could always drop a volleyball anecdote into our conversation when my Spanish faltered.