Things are done by hand in Chugchilán. In the market today, Clara had little bags of fresh peas for sale. I know she hulled those peas herself, I saw her yesterday, her and her husband sitting down with a sack full of peas in the pod, slowly filling a bucket, pea by pea.
We bought some choclo (maize) from the market, 5 cobs for a $1, or I small bag of kernels, about the size of a cob, for 50c. Sitting down behind the stall I saw an old man pulling the kernels off the cob, kernel by kernel.
Probably the most skillful display of manual labor, I saw today, was the chip lady. She could peal a potato and cut it into chips all while surveying the market or talking to friends. She would pick up the potato, hold it in one hand, then draw the knife towards her palm, deftly peeling the potato and then slicing nice long chips with only the slightest glance down between conversations.
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