Pachamama

She's small and black, carved in a round smooth shape that makes her eminently pleasant to hold. She has three heads and a big heart. One hand holds a snake, another a turtle, and on her back a little frog sits with a face above it. She is one of the gifts brought back from Bolivia for me by the ever generous colonel_maxim and I find her very intriguing.

He mentioned her as a mother goddess of the Aymara? Incas? I'm not sure. I learned all this at the barbecue amd can only blame ellefurtle's Pimms powers plus motorpickle's tropical cocktails for my lack of memory.

Wiccans would find the little statuette's three heads very familiar in concept, though I cannot say the faces have any sense of maiden+mother+crone. Looking at the beasties she's surrounded by, I would expect her to be a bringer of rain, but if she is mother goddess, her bolivian monicker appears to be Pachamama. I like it.

The homecoming of the colonel has not been my only recent connection to the South Americas. My brother just returned from Costa Rica and Nicaragua. My brother is not a natural traveller; for him to have taken a trip at all was a wonder, never mind leaving the comforts of Europe. Costa Rica enchanted him, and Nicaragua was his first introduction to the concept of absolute poverty. Never have I heard him talk about a place with such passion.

He brought back volcanic rocks and masks, tiny ardvark shaped ocaroons, macadamia nuts and colourful money that can't buy anything. The colonel brought back enchanted ancient pottery and of course, Pachamama. Here I am surrounded by fragments from far away lands to the west, while I struggle away in the little box of my head and the words don't come.