Don Donato Palomino loves to tell stories. His brown face crinkles when he talks, a roadmap to what he is saying. With a gnarled knuckle, he rubs the sparse grey stubble on his chin, reminiscing about a French woman and her husband who were robbed at gunpoint in Haraz. She was four-months pregnant. He found out about it, Don Palomino, and paid for them to visit his home in Lima where he teaches bible school--telling stories. There, he and his wife fed the couple and took them to the airport to catch the sad, defeated flight home.
People, says Don Palomino, sometimes come upon hard times, which force them into horrible behavior. No excuses, but instead motivation to work toward a better future.
He pulls a pocketwatch from his fleece sweatpants and shuffles into the house to check on something. Inside is cool and quiet, like a cave. On a careworn table, a map sprawls, held in place by a rock on each corner. Spidery handwriting indicates places and suggestions and riddles for travelers. Earthenware jars full of candies and tea and coffee and sugar line the walls next to dried coca leaves to help travelers with altitude. A National Geographic sits on a shelf near three books and a bible. A straw hat hangs over the heavy blue door. Potatoes dry in the corners on cheesecloth on the concrete floor.
This first house, he says, he and his wife built before they knew how. Chickenwire holds plaster in place over the skeletal 2x4 structure. Here and there, birds nest in the holes where plaster succumbed to the elements. The other house was built properly with stones and concrete.
Vacation homes. Oases for hikers and cash-drained travelers to pitch a tent for free on the front lawn at the foot of the mountains. Lima is six hours to the east. Here is the gateway to Huascarán National Park. Here is a piece of heaven.
A chest-high stone wall protects the garden from roving cattle, behind which Señora Palomino collects eucalyptus for firewood. The houses are set in the hillside facing north. A brook flows across the yard, giggling at all hours.
Years ago, Don Palomino and his wife went to Jerusalem to visit. After that they returned to the Quechua land of their ancestors and set up this haven which they visit on school holidays. Señora Palomino knows where Michigan is: she has a friend living there who comes to visit every couple years.
Don Palomino likes to talk about poetry, about Walt Whitman and Ruyard Kipling. The latter name he barely struggles over. Hojas de Yerba, he mentions with a chuckle. And El Viejo y el Mar--Hemmingway.
He shoos away an inquisitive dog, and stares off toward the peaks. The world is a tough place for some people. Always the good with the bad. Thieves and Saints. He chuckles again. Una pelicula, he says; Lo Bueno, Lo Malo, y Lo Feo.
While here in Pitec, Don Palomino works on his lesson plan and catches up on his reading, far from the chaos of Lima, in this garden of peace and tranquil solitude--interrupted occasionally by passing hikers all with their own stories to tell.
Don Palomino loves to chat.
His eyes squint when he ponders a riddle, corners folding into lines of poetry. Hands in his pockets, he kicks a stone off the stoop.
Asi es el mundo, he agrees, shouldering a knit bag and slowly walking down the valley toward the sunset. That´s the world.