The indigenous people tell us,
“Your dead seem to travel far beyond the stars and never give another thought to those left behind. Our grandfathers never stray far from the valleys and streams and families they love.”
As the feast of All Souls (Dia de Defunctos) approached, women in town were buying large bags of flour and baking breads. Men walked to the cemetery with machetes and shovels to clear the five foot high vegetation.
This man with his hearing-aid over his shoulder is fixing the grave of his wife, Francesca.
In their homes, they built altars with photos of deceased family members. Jean and I made this one for our families.
Students built one for school friends who have died. There are seven names on this list
Then on the night of November 1st, all will wait. The deceased come to spend the night with the family and check that everyone is OK in the house, that they are eating well. Favorite meals and drinks are set on the altar with flowers and party streamers. Always there is a bread ladder to pass between heaven and earth, a dough burro, and bread T’anta-wawas (old babies) with laughing plaster faces. There are pastries like biscochulos with Singani (grape whiskey) in them. All this food is distributed to visitors who come to the house to pray with the family.
The dead will stay in the home until the next afternoon when the family will accompany them to the cemetery. There they all gather with drums and flutes.
Many of the plot sites have little houses built over the graves on which families stack up breads to be given away, bananas and drinks like a tree-bark whiskey called Chuchu-wasi. 
In late afternoon they leave the cemetery. They move down the hill to sit on the grass under the shade trees and drink and chew coca leaves and talk – together in a timeless ritual, the toothless old ones, the women in derby hats, the men sharing cigarettes, the children chasing the dogs and chickens.
