And so we come to the end

Our last few weeks in Peru went really quickly. We finished our artisan stories and photos, sent them to the appropriate clients, and saved them in a place we hoped Yannina and Christina would remember to access when looking for stories. We finalized our last few “how to do this specific computer task” documents and sent them a massive email about where to find all of the items we’d worked on, all now in one folder on Christina’s computer. 

The staff of Manos Amigas took us out for a goodbye lunch at everyone’s favorite place - La Pollera, where else?! - which was really kind and unexpected. 

From left: us, Mamita (Yannina & Roberto's mom), Yannina, Maria Esther (one of the quality control/packers), Mario, Giuseppe, Roberto, Christina, and Sheila (the other quality control/packer). The only person missing is Dieuwe.

On the whole, as positive of an experience as we had, as helpful and non-difficult as we tried to be, and as much as Yannina appreciated our work and Manos Amigas liked us as a family, I don’t think we changed their minds about volunteers and how difficult they can be to work with. Not all organizations are equipped to handle volunteers, of course, nor do they have to be, but I wish we had been so fabulous and essential to them to have changed their outlook on volunteers.

We tried to be pretty deliberate about fitting in some of our favorite things before we left, but of course, you never end up doing everything you mean to do. Time just runs out. And so, after 18 flights, 2 overnight bus trips, approximately one million city bus rides within Lima, 40 artisan visits, one earthquake actually felt (among the dozens that happened), countless cheap, delicious and intensely strong El Pan de la Chola cappucinos, and 25 different places where we ranked pisco sours on our extremely scientific rating system, our time in South America came to an end.

In some ways, it’s nice to be home. For as busy and frantic a street as we lived on in Lima, we practically live in the country by comparison here. A car drives by and all of us neighbors look out our respective windows to see who it could possibly be. I like hearing the owls hoot overnight. As I type this, I can see a gorgeous pileated woodpecker peck away at the redbud tree just outside our window. I really like being able to go to the library and check out books! We are so fortunate to have wonderful friends here. I’m glad that we all now can wear functioning seatbelts when we are in a car, I don’t have to dig toilet paper out of my backpack when we are using a bathroom not at our apartment, and that we don’t have to pay to use public bathrooms. Drinking water straight from the tap is pretty fabulous, and so are water fountains, one of Simon’s new fascinations.

But otherwise... coming home has been hard. Starting with the bluster and belligerence and swagger of the US airport employees didn’t help. It was harder than I expected to leave behind the things I loved about Lima (like living in Spanish, walking one block to our local mercado every day for fresh fruits and vegetables, riding the bus anywhere and everywhere, having some time every day that I could work) and adjust to needing to get in the car for absolutely everything and becoming Simon’s primary caregiver again. While our time in Peru wasn’t all fun and relaxation, we have both commented on how hard it is here to not to get really tense and rushed while driving, always late for something. I much preferred just being on a bus or in Gustavo’s taxi.

I suppose part of my adjustment in returning stems from my uncertainty about what my future looks like. For about ten years, we’d discussed our dream of living abroad. And so much of the last few years was filled with our plans for the sabbatical, making it happen, living the experience. Now it’s over. Sam knew exactly what he was returning to - running Global Gifts - and is really excited about that. I knew that I would spend several weeks or months starting to find my way around an Indianapolis I don’t know well, the Latino Indianapolis, trying to figure out what the organizations are that serve the Latino population here and, at the same time, trying to figure out what sort of role I could carve out for myself within that community. I want to keep improving my Spanish, and I want Simon to keep his. But what does that look like? Hopefully I’ll have some answers in several months.

I feel like I’m in a speeding car, staring in the rearview mirror, panicking as I watch Lima quickly recede into the distance. I’m not ready to be done with it, I’m not ready to move on from it. I know my thoughts about our year there will morph as time passes. But this is where I am, now.

However, I’m happy to say that I am the only one with transition issues. Sam is pumped to be back and really excited to return to Global Gifts, full of energy and new ideas. He officially goes back to work full-time tomorrow, although he’s been happily going to meetings, working part-time, and generally getting back into the swing of things for several weeks now. Simon has started preschool one morning a week at a co-op close to our house, and he loves it. He still talks about Dieuwe and Giuseppe often, and the kids even Skyped one afternoon, a funny five minutes of making faces to each other on the computer.

Simon has also spent a lot of time catching up with old loves (like his bike helmet. Not the bike, mind you, just the helmet.) and started up new affairs (like “driving”). He heard me say “Hallelujah!” in response to a friend saying she was coming over, and that has quickly become a favorite word of his. He likes to exclaim it in the funniest and most random of situations, like when I get him second helpings, when he’s allowed to help grind the coffee, when he realizes he gets to go to Sunday school or preschool. “Hallelujah!”

The bike helmet is always a great fashion accessory.

The helmet adds flair to a harmonica/giant ball bounce session. 

Just in case Simon falls off of Sam's lap, we know don't have to worry about his head!

Behind the wheel, obsessed with the hazard lights

Simon has easily solved the problem of not being able to see out the window while "driving".

A perfect example of the difference in our living situations - in Lima, in never rained and if it did, we wouldn't have anywhere to go puddle jumping. Plus, the ick factor of the black pollution in the puddles would have given us pause. Here, it poured one morning. Simon pulled on his new boots from Lucy and spent a ton of time getting thoroughly soaked!

Such concentration!

We hope to return again to Peru, this time just as visitors, of course. We’ve even tossed around the idea of leading a tour to Peru in a couple of years. It would probably be a mix of visiting different parts of Lima and artisan workshops, then probably going to Cuzco for a coffee tour through one of Equal Exchange’s suppliers and then on to Machu Picchu. Let me know via email if you are interested; we can decide if it’s a viable idea based on the response.

And so the year of magical traveling has come to its end. While I’m sure our year would have been amazing no matter where we had ended up, I feel so fortunate to have spent it in Peru. It has truly been a magical year! I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to do it, from the Global Gifts board and staff giving Sam the time to do it, to Manos Amigas opening their doors and families to us.

Thank you for being part of this year, too! It has been such fun to write this blog and share random experiences with everyone. Thanks especially for sticking with me through the long and longer posts - I genuinely meant to keep them short but somehow I always found there was so much to say.

I ran out of time to tell various stories that stayed in my head, wanting to be recorded but other stories took precedence. So I’ll leave you with a medley of images instead.

In Piura, we were staying at a crappy and slightly sketchy hotel with a shared bathroom for the four rooms on our floor. In the middle of the night, someone stole the lone light bulb in the bathroom.

In Lima, our trash was picked up not once every night but TWICE! If you missed the 10 pm-ish pick up, you could put it out again for another pickup around 3 or 4 a.m. But if you put it out too early - before 7 pm or after the second pickup - you were subject to a fine.

Our Santa Cruz neighbors were pretty invisible and unknown to us until they - random people, I thought - started commenting on Simon as we would pass on the street or at the mercado. “I work in that building over there. I see him pass by every day. He’s getting so big!” Little kids I thought I had never seen before (and vice versa) would stop me on the malecón and say, “Is that Simon?” Surprised, I’d say yes, how did you know? “I see him all the time!”

The cobradores, the guys (occasionally a woman) who collected bus fares, helped direct traffic via hand signals out the window, and generally acted as the bus driver’s assistant, are on their feet for 12 hours a day. They hustle back and forth on packed buses, making change, remembering who has gotten on the bus through both the front and back doors in the last 10 minutes and who still needs to pay. And for all that, they make just 30 soles per day, the rough equivalent of $12 or $13. That is what a 30 minute taxi ride to the Lima airport costs!

In northern Peru, the Conga mine protests have forced delays in an extremely controversial mining project since December. The project has finally been put on indefinite hold. I resented reading in the Wall Street Journal that the protesters were characterized as radical and extremist but I suppose that is to be expected in a newspaper focused on business interests. I don’t think any Peruvian wants or expects the mining industry to completely cease in Peru, but this specific project has so much local and indigenous opposition that I am glad for them that it is on hold.

We were always so out of place that we were therefore not able to use that as a reason to not go to an event or do an activity. For example, we trekked to Lima centro to attend an event billed as an urban street arts festival. There was lots of skateboarding, hip hop, beatboxing, breakdancing, spray paint/graffitti art, etc. It was a lot of fun and we were glad we went. While I would like to think I would go to the same event in Indy, I know my uneasiness at being too obviously out of place would tend to keep me away.

As we walked on a busy street near the square in Arequipa, we passed a group of three young men standing on a corner. I glanced at them briefly as we walked by, saw that the man in the middle was wearing a hospital mask and was being supported by his friends, and then read the sign hanging from his neck. “I have leukemia. Please help me pay for my treatments.” My heart leapt into my throat. That could have been my brother. How could he have stood outside, even held up by friends, in this cold? I shuddered, remembering how much pain Jared was in and couldn't fathom how truly awful it would have been for him had he needed to stand and beg on a corner. The three were a portrait of misery. Was the beggar really a cancer patient or was he simply playing to our sympathy to earn money? I decided I didn’t care and that I’d prefer to err on the side of giving money to someone who didn’t need it than to ignore someone who so desperately did. We turned around and walked back to the corner. They were gone. We walked around for a bit, trying to see if we could spot them on a new corner, but we never saw them again. I assume they were chased off for begging in a popular tourist area.

There were so many stories there, there was so much to learn about and describe. We’ve just scratched the surface during our year there. Now we start the next adventure, this one formed by our life here, finding stories and enjoying exploring Indianapolis with new eyes.

¡Vaya con Dios!

Cooking "school"

My love of food is well-documented, full of exclamations of just how delicious a given meal was or recommendations to other people about where to go get scrumptious something-or-other.

And as you might have noticed on this blog, I love the food in Peru. It’s delicious. And while I have had some success trying to replicate certain dishes or meals in our apartment (even while I miss certain comforts from our kitchen at home, such as having more than one knife, a mixing bowl instead of using a pot, and only a toaster oven), it has been more fun to create my own custom cooking school, with classes taught by experts.

My lessons began in February with an unexpected and not-very-Peruvian course on Indian food, when my friend Vandna’s parents were in Lima for a couple of months. Chanda taught me how to make chicken curry, an incredible mango salad, and my favorite: eggplant, baingain bartha. Simon wasn’t so excited about the cooking lesson and kept bringing me my shoes as a hint to leave. Finally, he dragged in my backpack too, in case I hadn’t fully understood him yet. But he ate more chicken at that meal than I have ever seen him eat, before or since.

Can we go yet?

Simon was more enthusiastic about my next cooking adventure, since it involved his favorite drink, chicha morada. It is made from purple corn and is the same delightful, rich color. Dieuwe’s grandmother, known to everyone as Mamita, is extremely proud of how much Simon likes it and apparently brags about his love for chicha morada to her friends, so I asked her to show me how to make it. 

First we went to the market to buy ingredients. It was fun to watch Mamita handle and reject a load of ingredients before telling me to hand over the money.

Looking over the purple corn

Choosing spices

Quiz: which one of the following four ingredients is not used in chicha morada?
A. quince
B. pineapple peel
C. orange zest
D. cloves

Answer: orange zest. Chicha morada is such a weird concoction of ingredients. It seems to me that someone was playing MadLibs while they came up with the recipe, but it certainly tastes good at the end. You take a kilo of purple corn cobs, remove the kernels from the cob, put the naked cobs and all the kernels into a giant pot, and fill with water. Add half of a very ripe quince, the peel of half a pineapple (but not the fruit!), six cloves, three pieces of cinnamon bark, bring to a boil and wait. After about an hour or so, the purple corn kernels will have burst slightly. Remove all the liquid and save it as chicha morada concentrate. Fill the pot again and boil for another hour or so to get an undiluted batch of chicha morada. Chill. Add lime juice and sugar to taste just before serving. 

Washing the corn

Simon enjoyed helping rinse the cobs and trying to take the kernels off

Add lots of water...

The MadLibs ingredients

After about an hour of boiling, this is what the concoction looked like. Mamita frequently took out ladles of corn kernels to see if they had burst yet.

After we made our two batches, we put the concentrate into the freezer to enjoy later. There must have been a slight leak in the bag, however, because the next morning frozen chicha morada covered the freezer, which was not the most fun to clean up. Assuming we can find purple corn at Saraga, I will be excited to surprise Simon with chicha morada on special occasions and serve it at our ice cream socials.

Of course we needed to toast before trying our batch of chicha morada!

Chicha mustaches = a satisfied Simon

My next cooking adventure was sushi, of all things. Sizable populations of Chinese and Japanese people in Peru means that markets selling Asian food are plentiful and so having a sushi class at Spanish school isn’t too far out of Peruvian bounds.

Our instructor gave us a brief introduction to sushi and explained how the end result was beautifully shaped: a perfect circle, the symmetry of ingredients, a clean look.

Symmetry is important...

There were five of us in the class, four women (one was Japanese, and she was clearly an expert already... I’m not sure why she was taking the class!), and an Australian named Ralph. As the “h” is silent in Spanish, everyone called him Ralp, which I found hilarious.

Our instructor carefully demonstrated each step and I was proud of my beautiful roll of sushi, until I cut it and realized how warped it was. This explained why my Japanese neighbor had been slightly horrified at my roll the whole time. As I assembled my roll, she would giggle and point, which eventually made me start to laugh too at the weirdness of the situation. “Too much rice! Too much ingredient!” I tried to hide it but, no luck. We all were to show each other our plates before moving on to the next dish. Ralp decided to examine everyone’s sushi, complemented everyone one by one, tasted a couple, and then got to mine. He winced. “What happened over there, Alison?” The good news was that he didn’t even try to taste mine; more for me!

Gee, can you guess which plate has my sushi on it?

Our class, with Ralp hiding in plain sight

I brought my sushi home, Simon tasted a tiny bit, but had a better time repeating his new word, tushi. Now, when I pull out paper and a pen to jot down what we need to get at the market, Simon tells me to add, “agua, tushi,” until he sees me write them down.

My final cooking experience was amazing. I took a lesson from a Peruvian-born, German-trained chef named Yurac who operates cooking classes from his rooftop kitchen. I signed up for the meal featuring special Andean ingredients and ensured it would all be gluten-free. Every course of our four-course meal was incredible. And the emphasis on presentation was huge; every time I thought our dish was done, ready to be served, Yurac had us add one or two or three more things to make it even more beautiful. 

This is an example of the emphasis on presentation. For ocopa, a spicy sauce made of peanuts, yellow peppers called ají amarillo, an oft-used Peruvian herb called huacatay, and queso fresco, we start with beautiful peeled potatoes. Peruvian cuisine boasts a wide variety of potatoes. At one point there were over 3,000 varieties in use.

I chose a representative sampling for my plate. 

We've blended the sauce and Yurak tells us to carefully spoon enough on our plates to completely cover the papas. I assume we are done and ready to eat.

Not so fast! We add the ubiquitous condiments of hard-boiled eggs and black olives. Ok, now we're done.

Except we need to add a little fan of carefully sliced ají amarillo to the dish. Now we are really finished.

Chupe de camarones y pescado. So delicious! 

Alpaca steak, asparagus, and quinoa salad. The quinoa salad has been pressed into a mold and then upended onto the plate. Peruvians are really big into molds, especially for rice. I've come around and purchased molds of my own by now - it is much more fun to eat foods in pyramids and domes. Peru grows a lot of asparagus but, Yurak told us, almost all of it is for export. Few Peruvians eat it. It was always at the mercado near our apartment, for pennies - a regular -sized bunch cost the equivalent of $1. Therefore, we ate a LOT of asparagus. The mercado vendors were shocked to hear that Simon could put away the entire bunch of asparagus by himself.

Ah, lúcuma. A more delicious fruit has not been found. We are starting to make lúcuma mousse here.

Here we go on presentation again. We each drizzled algarrobina syrup on our plates, then spooned lúcuma mousse on top. Done?

Of course not! By now I shouldn't have been surprised. Yurak showed us how to take aguaymanto, these cute little berries, each of them in their own little delicate paper-like package...

... and then flare them each into aguaymanto flowers.

While my spoonfuls of lúcuma mousse aren't exactly artful, check out the rest of the plate: the aguaymanto flowers, a twisted slice of orange, a fan of apple, and aguaymanto jam next to the mousse. What are we waiting for? Let's eat!

Yurak, me, and my classmate Michael, overlooking Miraflores from Yurak's rooftop kitchen

I wanted have one more “class” before we left for home: I wanted to learn how to make the salsas at La Pollera, our favorite pollería down the street. When I asked if I could hang out in the kitchen while they made their salsas, they told me that they would “check and get back with me.” I knew that meant “no”. However, our waiter (I say “our” waiter since he was ours nearly every time we went) knew that I wanted to learn how to make the chimichurri in particular. One night he quietly slipped me a list of the ingredients for the chimichurri that he’d sneakily scribbled in the kitchen. Yes! So I suppose I have one more cooking class, in my own kitchen in Indy, to figure out their ratios and replicate their stellar results. I even have the little wooden spoons to help create the overall effect, so it must taste the same, right?

Still, I have my eye on a very beautiful Peruvian cookbook for my Christmas present. Did you hear that, Sam? Now I'll just have to cross my fingers that I can find Peruvian ingredients stateside.

Brushes with the surreal

In Arequipa, as the garbage trucks move through the streets each night, they play instrumental music at high volume from a speaker mounted on the truck roof. It’s not exactly the type of music you would expect from a garbage truck, if you would expect music at all. We were serenaded late one night with classical music. The next night featured a jazzy Caribbean version of Under the Sea from the Little Mermaid, followed by El Condor Pasa (Simon & Garfunkel’s song that starts out “I’d rather be a hammer than a nail...” The melody that they sing to is El Condor Pasa, a traditional Quechuan song). The music is a good reminder to get your trash outside if you haven’t done it yet, I suppose.

During our tour of the gorgeous Santa Catalina Monastery in Arequipa, we learned that the nuns chopped off their often-very-long-hair upon taking their vows. Their hair was then used to adorn religious statues big and small. I think those statues are pretty creepy to begin with, but seeing them with various shades of brown and black hair, curly or wavy, braided or straight, gave it a whole new level of creepiness.

Even the public bathrooms in Arequipa were interesting, featuring art and old skylights.

Our time in Colca Canyon inadvertently coincided with the biggest local celebration of the year, that of their patron saint, the Virgen del Carmen. While my nerves were a little shot since firecrackers were omnipresent and Simon was pretty scared every time they went off, it was also really cool to stumble upon various scenes amidst this celebration. In Yanque, we saw a small group of people getting their statue ready to be paraded around the tiny square, after affixing flowers and offerings of food to her sides. Later we saw around 20 people singing and dancing as the Virgen was held aloft and carried through town. 

Carrying a giant handmade candle to the church in Yanque to put alongside the statue of the Virgen

Getting the statue ready inside the church

Parading the Virgen around the square

In Cabanaconde, the brass band started marching around the square at 6 a.m., this after only stopping the music several hours before! It was definitely wild to see all the festively dressed women, especially drinking beers.

As previously mentioned, Simon was scared during these celebrations because of the loud and constant fireworks. Luckily, while we were walking around a local museum, he found a friend, Miski, who was also a little scared. They took their own tour while staying very close to each other, which was sweet to witness.

As the sun set in the middle of nowhere in Colca Canyon, we left the hot springs where Simon and Sam had enjoyed the warm water while I shivered on the side in the 40 degree temperature. We walked the 30-40 minutes back to our hotel, quickly winded by the high altitude. I had thought we were making good time until we were passed by slowly moving cows, burros, dogs, and the cowboys bringing them in for the night.

That wasn’t the only place where we were left in the dust. While we walked up a long hill in Cochas Chico, outside of Huancayo, I struggled to maintain a conversation with Sam while holding Simon and walking at the same time. I was panting in between words, such was the altitude effect. Then an older woman, maybe 60 years old, wearing a large load on her back, ran by us, uphill, pausing briefly to say hi. I was so tired just thinking about her running uphill that I had to stop to rest.

Once Simon and I stopped by Wong to buy coffee and were surprised by a parade of three beautiful Chinese dragons, complete with a gong section, dancing through the deli area. Later they blocked the exit, so we continued watching. It was apparently a promotion for a Fiestas Patrias parade, sponsored by Wong, through Miraflores the next day.

We went and it was pretty interesting. Thousands of people lined the streets, enormous screens were set up to broadcast parts of the show, the crowd began to get belligerent, and several times I got crowd-phobia before we retreated off the main drag. 

Having a huge supermarket chain sponsor the biggest non-military Fiestas Patrias parade made for some interesting sightings. Such as: a dozen Chinese dragons kicked off the parade, honoring Wong’s Chinese roots, Miss Wong waved, beauty-pageant style, to the crowd. The prepared foods section sponsored a float of mostly naked women dancing on a giant Inca head, flanked by a pastel butterfly. But my favorite was a giant puffy sugar bowl, pulled by a horse drawn carriage. 

I have learned to expect the unexpected in Peru, but it still doesn’t take away my fascination or surprise.

Mountains of Spanish

I have been writing this post in my head all year long, at parks, in class, while visiting artisans, at work, everywhere. And it is not finished now and never will be finished, so I finally decided just to write it as it was in my head and post it. Punto.

My goal in life is to be fluent in Spanish. I find it absolutely exciting and thrilling to speak Spanish. I also find myself capable of utter depression when I cannot seem to make words exit my mouth correctly. More than once I’ve been struck completely mute because I’m not sure how to say something really simple. After nearly a year of living in Peru, my default for how to say “what?” is still Mexican Spanish: “¿mande?” Say that here, and people look at you strangely since you have essentially just said to them, “send?”

People always say, “You speak Spanish really well!” after we’ve been conversing for 45 seconds and have covered the really easy stuff – what is your name, where are you from, how long are you here for, where do you live. And then you get into how you make a recipe or politics or phrases that involve the subjunctive and I am a little lost.

Sometimes I’ve been lucky enough to listen, distractedly, to something and later I’ve wondered whether it was in Spanish or English. I know I’ve come so, so far with Spanish this year. But how far yet do I need to go to have a job where I need to speak Spanish? That is another goal, to have to speak Spanish every day for a meaningful job or volunteer position, not just the same four sentences repeatedly, but interesting, complicated conversations in Spanish.

I used to think fluency was something you attained. It was a destination. It was the top of the mountain and I was climbing up. But the more I flirt around with Spanish, the more I study and get better and then leave off and forget it and then pick it up again several years later, the more I learn nuances and still struggle with basics, fluency looks more like a giant mountain range.

You are close to the top of the mountain now and while you realize that now you can get by with everyday interactions just fine - on the bus, at the mercado, traveling - you have so much more to learn. You still need to figure out verb tenses and subjunctive and not think so much about pronouns. You still need to be able to understand people the first time they say something, not the 3rd or 4th or never. You get to the summit and before you can congratulate yourself on how far you’ve come, you see the mountain range stretching out, infinitely, in front of you. You are exhausted and overwhelmed. There are mountains beyond mountains that you still need to climb and descend and climb again before you are fluent. Really, truly fluent.

What is fluency, really? There are so many layers and levels. I often think about other people who are speaking a foreign language fluently on one level (i.e. they get their point across just fine) but not on another (i.e. they use awkward wording or word order). Think David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day. I am at the awkward-wording and awkward-word-order stage and I wonder if I’ll ever be as fluent as I want to be, which is native-speaker-fluent, which means probably never.

Simon is another story completely. He has been fascinating to observe and talk with as he has picked up Spanish so quickly. He understands most of what anyone says to him in Spanish, and usually answers appropriately. He has been slower to use words and phrases than what I understand most toddlers do, but of the words he uses, the most important ones are in Spanish: sí and agua. He is a Spanish sponge. He breathes Spanish in like air. He has just started to say his own name, and he says it in Spanish: Simón. That has made many a Peruvian proud, let me tell you. I wonder how long he will refer to himself with Spanish pronunciation. I hope he keeps it up for a good long while.

A quote that has been omnipresent in my mind this year is something I read in college: “You who read me, are you sure you understand my language?” Jorge Luis Borges rocked my world with that one. Here I am, thinking I am communicating just fine with someone and then sometimes I realize that they haven’t understood a word I said. I think I’m saying something like, “the sky is blue” and they hear something like, “a stamp costs too much.” And we smile at each other, nod, agree, and go our separate ways. How many times do I have this conversation and think it’s gone well, only to wonder later whether we understood what the other one meant to say at all?

As much as I want to be fluent, and fluent NOW, I’m finally starting to accept that Spanish is my life-long quest, instead of something I get to cross off of my list and say that I've accomplished. So I’m trying to tackle smaller mountains and enjoy a little more of the climb. I have been reading more books and novels in Spanish, knowing that reading in English has been invaluable for building my vocabulary, understanding nuances, etc. I celebrate when I can only come up with the Spanish words for something.

I love Spanish. We are past the flirting stage and are in a long-term relationship. There is no danger of me breaking up with Spanish, like my childhood friend Jessica so hilariously and eloquently tried to do. Hopefully Spanish won’t break up with me!

Follow that fish!

One of my favorite things about living in Lima is that I have no clue what I’ll see when we are out and about.


Perhaps we’ll see parrots flying around the park. Or at the running track in Barranco. Or in apartment windows. Or at artisans’ workshops.


I know we will see dressed-up dogs. To what extent they are dressed up - and for what purpose (a doggie birthday party? doggie expo? out for a walk?) - are the surprise elements. Once I saw a woman on the bus reading the paper, and the important news about how to “protect him from the cold” caught my eye.

We will most likely see women or groups of girls posing for what we call "glamour shots" against any type of background: the ocean, gym equipment, the wall in the pool's changing room.


Perhaps we will see a giant blood drop, dancing and doing tai chi with a group of women in the park, to promote a blood drive. Or wheelchairs converted into motorized tricycles to ride along the bike lane on the malecón. Toddlers "driving" their own giant battery-operated cars through the park with the car radio going full blast. 


Maybe the guy who makes keys in his tiny kiosk on the sidewalk will pause to play chess with the car repair guy next door. Or surfers will ride by on bikes with special racks above their heads for their boards. Maybe we’ll be squeezed in, on the bus, next to a surfer with his board.


Stopping at the skate park on the malecón is a normal part of a walk. Once we got to see an adorable little kid getting a lesson while wearing a Batman cape. A cape for Simon was in the back of my mind beforehand and seeing that little kid fly around moved it front and center.


Another bonus of the skate park is when there are little kids who can’t climb out of the skate bowl on their own and need help to get out. These three boys were posted at the side of the bowl to pull everyone out during a lesson.

Skateboards in traffic isn’t necessarily strange anymore, it’s now just another mode of transport. And then I saw a 30-ish dad pushing his daughter’s stroller while on his skateboard (on the sidewalk, thankfully). Nice!


That was later topped by a 20-ish guy riding down the sidewalk in his adult-sized, custom-made Big Wheel. At least he didn't have his 6-month-old child balanced on a little "seat" on the handlebars as many other adults do.

Maybe we’ll see marathon runners sprinting through the middle of an all-night open air art exhibition.

Or ceramic body parts coming out of walls as we walk down a side street.

Doors that don’t lead anywhere.

Mannequins dressed, or undressed, in interesting garb.

People using the bicycle carts to transport incredibly large loads down busy streets...

… and small trucks with incredibly large loads driving off of the sidewalk.

Sunday mornings seem to be the day for competitive runs down our street or down the malecón just behind us. So seeing large groups of people dressed in running attire, accompanied by chanting and drumming, isn’t exactly strange anymore. But one Saturday afternoon as we walked back from the malecón, we saw a large group of people, a seemingly endless flow, walking slowly down our street. As we got closer we realized they were zombies. We stopped and watched and eventually figured out that they were walking to the stadium several blocks past our apartment. A guy walked by, taking pictures. “Why is everyone dressed like zombies?” I asked him. “Why not?” he smiled. Good answer.


When we travel to the eastern edge of town, we see a fake soldier “guarding” a sand dune. Apparently this is a holdover from the Sendero Luminoso terrorist violence in the 80s-90s; once they poisoned Lima’s water supply and so now there is a very fake guard posted near the water station to deter any subsequent actions.

When we visited Huancayo, we noticed that the traditional dress for the indigenous mountain people we see sporadically in Lima (and saw more frequently in and around Cuzco) was still in full force there. Women wear their hair in two long braids and covered with a top hat, a full skirt, and warm leggings when cold. The bus stops in Huancayo celebrate this in their design: the roof is a top hat, the sides are two giant braids connected to the ground.

We went to the zoo and saw tigers, lions, zebras, giraffes, owls, monkeys, and many parrots. We saw people FEEDING AND PETTING (!!!!) animals. And we saw a ferocious kitty hanging out in someone else’s habitat.

At Parque Kennedy, it is a given that we will see dozens of cats. Sometimes they are in trees. Once we saw a kitty rescue operation, complete with a tall ladder, security guards, dozens of people gathered, calling out to the cat, and one brave soul who stood on his tiptoes on the top of the ladder and finally grabbed the cat around its neck. He brought the cat down, onlookers cheered, some people petted the cat. They finally let the cat go. It darted away from the crowd.... and promptly ran up another tree.


Mototaxis can fit three people, squeezed into the backseat.  I’ve also seen two mototaxis completely laden with mattresses on the top and on the back, with the backseat filled to the brim with pillows. Or they can transport gigantic loads of lumber, complete with protruding nails.

Vendors sell unsurprising things while walking in between cars and buses at stoplights: soda pops, snacks, newspapers. But they also sell car decals and Q-tips. Who knows when you’ll need an emergency ear cleaning?


And finally, my favorite so far... We were taking a taxi to the airport verrrrry early one morning. Ahead of us was something large that appeared to be falling out of the back of a taxi. We craned our heads to look. It was a fish. A fish!

I thought I must be too sleepy yet, since this seemed a little improbable – a fish being dragged along the highway – but our taxi driver knew what we were exclaiming at and quickly darted through traffic, positioning ourselves right behind the car so we could see it up close. Someone's ceviche special for the day? Yum... I think.