Kamayoq of Keros

I almost walked past her because she was so quiet.

She knelt beside a stream on a woven textile, several keros arranged carefully in front of her. Water moved steadily over the rocks beside us while she poured from a larger vessel into one kero, then another. Her movements followed the rhythm of the stream: fill, set down, reach for another, pour.

When she noticed me, she smiled and lifted one of the filled keros toward me. I hesitated for a moment before accepting it. She nodded toward the water, then toward the place beside her on the textile. There was no explanation and none seemed necessary. I sat.

She handed me an empty kero and, for a while, we worked together without speaking. She filled one vessel and I filled the next, following her movements as carefully as I could. Whenever I became uncertain, I looked toward her. Sometimes she nodded. Once she quietly reached over and adjusted the way I was holding the vessel, then returned to her own work.

There was something intimate about being invited into a task I had known nothing about only moments before. I was a stranger walking along the road, yet she had made room for me beside her as naturally as she had made room for another kero on the textile.

When the last vessel was filled, she arranged them together and sat quietly for a moment. I looked at the row of keros between us and thought about how often I had seen them raised, offered, passed, and shared. Until then, I had thought the relationship began when one person extended the vessel toward another.

Perhaps it begins earlier. Perhaps it begins when someone moves over and makes a place beside them.