Roberto Ugas | LEISA Magazine
Isidora starts her working day walking along a dusty trail that leads to the lettuce field. Her task is to handweed from eight o’clock in the morning till noon together with Maria and a group of some five to six people, mostly women. The lettuce field is part of the 20 ha experimental farm of the University Vegetable Crops Research Programme.
Isidora almost disappears into the fog that covers this area which used to be outside Lima, but has now been engulfed by the megalopolis. Along the way she picks up some flowers of ‘capuli cimarron’ (Nicandra physaloides). The dew that accumulates in its flowers during night time is very good to relieve her eyes from the redness which has been annoying her for some days, she says.
Always carrying a kind of bag on her back – in the same way as she has carried all her children – she picks up some fennel leaves (Foeniculum vulgare) from plants growing close to an irrigation ditch. She will prepare an infusion to treat the stomach ache of Cirilo, her husband. Later in the morning, Maria takes some coca leaves (Erythroxylon coca) and ash from her bag, gives some of it to Isidora and starts chewing them like generations of highland people have been doing for centuries. The coca plant does not grow well along the coast so she gets it from the market.
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