A few days ago, we hosted our first BINGO night! We welcomed guests with any relationship to the Quechua languages at our event, which we held in Jackson Heights, Queens. We partnered with Pachamama Peruvian Arts, a non-profit that offers free traditional Peruvian dance and music instruction for youth in Queens. While they held their classes, we hosted BINGO!
To help those unfamiliar with the language, we passed out sheets that listed the numbers in Quechua. Our bingo caller was Gladys Camacho Rios, a Bolivian author and linguist who is visiting NYU for the semester. Although she called the entire game in Quechua, some of us held up the numbers as a visual aid. Players were awarded prizes from scholarly books on the Andes to woven coin purses—we even had a couple of bottles of pisco, thanks to the Peruvian Trade Commission!
Thanks to everyone who came and made this special Quechua Night a success. Given how much fun the night was, we definitely plan on throwing another Quechua BINGO night in the near future. Tupananchiskama!
