Purchases

The market in Arequipa isn't for tourists. They sell the things that local people need there. I bought myself a broad rimmed black felt hat to keep the sun off my face and to make myself feel a little better.
That same afternoon we went to an entirely different kind of market, high-end shops selling expensive goods for tourists - sweaters woven of fine alpaca wool, scarves, and jackets - set in a series of renovated cloisters. While the others were shopping, I listened to a couple of indigenous musicians, who were playing pan pipes and various Andean flutes. I talked to them a little and eventually bought a disk from them.
The next day we did shopping of an entirely different kind. We had decided to give about $3,000 of the money we raised in Asher's honor to the schools in the village of Cabanaconde attended by the children of Diego, the man who found Asher's body. We had given Diego the promised reward of $1,500 last January, and we thought that if his good deed was also seen by the people of the village as benefitting them, he would arouse less envy. We also thought such a gift would be an appropriate gesture of gratitude for the people's concern.
Through Robert, Ofer had asked the principals of the kindergarten and the elementary school to prepare lists of materials and equipment they needed, but we weren't sure whether they had really done that.
At nine-thirty in the morning, a striking group assembled in the lobby of our hotel, not the type of visitors tourists customarily entertain. Robert came with a few of his men, uniformed policemen packing revolvers, and that rather took the desk clerk aback. He also brought the two school principals and the teen-age daughter of one of them, who was studying tourism in Arequipa. Norma Maquesilva, the principal of the kindergarten, which serves about seventy children aged two through five, is a short, sturdy woman of about forty, dark-skinned and indigenous looking. Mario Maque Castelo, the principal of the elementary school, with about 170 pupils from first to eighth grade, is a taller man, also dark-skinned, perhaps a few years older than Norma. Both of them had an air of quiet dignity and seriousness. We immediately saw they had done their homework diligently. They had long and clear lists of everything they wanted to buy for their schools and the children, including two computers.
Boaz and I went shopping with them, while Judith and Hannah tried to find someone to frame the certificates of gratitude we had prepared for all the policemen who helpedus, and Ofer went with Robert and his men to do some more shopping for equipment.
Robert and his driver took us in the police vehicle, a rather old white Nissan pickup truck, to a large school supply store at the outside corner of the market building. Boaz and I tagged along with the two principals, with whom we could hardly talk, since our Spanish is rudimentary, and their English even more rudimentary. But it was a treat to see them in action.
Before buying anything, they priced every item, trying to plan things so they would have enough left over to buy the computers. They stood at the counter, consulted with the salesgirls, and made lists and calculations, working slowly and with infinite patience, betraying no emotion.