A window into another world

Our final artisan visits were in Ventanilla, far on the northern side of Lima. Ventanilla is a relatively young district, formed in 1969 initially to relieve overpopulated areas in downtown Lima and nearby Callao. Apparently Ventanilla was attractive a couple hundred years ago to pirates off of the coast of Lima who could see that there were a number of caves and grottoes in various rock formations nearby, and they thought those would be good places to hide their treasures. The concentration of rock “windows” from their ocean viewpoint led them to name the district after “little windows” = ventanilla. Later, people were attracted by the lore accompanying the buried treasure, wondering if they could find anything. In summertime it is said to be a popular place to go to the beach, handling up to 40,000 people at once.

Many of Ventanilla’s current residents either arrived as part of land invasions (a group of homeless families squat on an undeveloped or undesirable piece of land, hoping that eventually the government will include them in city planning with services such as water, sewers, and electricity) or were moved here by the government to relieve crowding in other districts. (And, in fact, a week after we visited, I read in the news about a violent confrontation between squatters and police in yet another undeveloped place in Ventanilla - land invasions are not just a part of “old” history but very much part of the present.)

By this point in our artisan visits, Simon had clearly communicated to us that two hours on a bus flying and screeching and bumping through traffic, followed by a long-ish artisan visit, plus two more hours for the return, was unacceptable. The fact that he was also getting carsick with some frequency on the buses made us rethink our strategy. We realized that we just weren’t going to be able to visit all of the artisans we’d intended to interview due to the distances involved, and decided to hire a taxi for our last few days of visits. Gustavo, a friend of Manos Amigas, had quickly become our go-to taxi driver when we needed airport drop-offs or pick-ups. He readily agreed to transport us around the outskirts of Lima for an hourly rate. 

One of the reasons we liked Gustavo over any other driver was that he drove pretty slowly and cautiously, given crazy Peruvian traffic. Everyone else we’ve driven with tended to ride the accelerator, then slam on the brakes, over and over and over. (See Simon, carsick, above.) Add free-for-all turn “lanes” (if you don’t want to wait in the line to turn left, then just dart out in traffic and create your own lane), mix in buses, combis, and cars careening between lanes at will and you have a recipe for stressful driving. Except it all seemed to work just fine; I saw the results of just one accident during our year in Lima. But Gustavo did all of the above much more slowly and cautiously, and Simon did well as a result.

I was really thankful that we drove with Gustavo to Ventanilla, since the traffic, impossibly, was crazier than we had ever experienced. After we passed the airport, mayhem broke loose. Apparently the highway was being ripped out and redone without traffic being stopped or redirected in any way. So this meant that six lanes of traffic flowed in various directions, not always on a surface intended for driving and not always flowing in a direction you’d expect. We narrowly missed encounters with semis and dump trucks. Two brave souls were driving on their motorized bicycle cart, their cart stacked with fresh vegetables, weaving between semis, buses, and cars like ours. Drivers created shoulders where I didn’t realize there was space. Sam said, “This is Lima traffic on steroids!” It took us over two hours to maneuver through this mayhem and get to Ventanilla. How long would it have taken us on a bus? I’m not sure we ever would have made it!

While Gustavo is a cautious driver by comparison, he definitely drives Lima-style. Here we are nonchalantly cutting in front of a semi. 

We drove parallel to the ocean, passing mile after mile of giant container yards, with thousands of containers ready to be loaded onto ships. Later we passed the funky rock formations that drew the pirates’ attention. Eventually we arrived in Ventanilla, which at that point looked like many other districts, which is to say, crowded, paved, full of businesses and mototaxis. It didn’t appear impoverished at first glance. Gustavo asked around for directions to our artisans’ neighborhood, and we drove still further north, but much closer to the ocean now. We drove up, up, up the giant sand dune, seeing the ocean on one side and the increasing poverty on the other.

Our first visit was to Mario Nolasco. I’d actually interviewed Mario months before, in the Manos Amigas office, before we’d embarked on artisan visits. He’d come to the office to deliver a muestra, a product sample, and Yannina asked me to interview him before he left. Since I had my interview notes, we just needed photographs of his workshop to complete his materials. While I’m glad we visited him, in hindsight that was a long way to travel just for a few dozen photographs! Mario was proud to have us visit, though. He told us that we were just his third set of visitors in five years: Yannina had checked out his space when she was doing her due diligence before they started working together; another Manos Amigas volunteer had come to interview him 3 years ago, and now us.

I was really impressed with Mario’s workshop. He is young, just 24 years old, and has an immaculately kept workshop that he’s built by himself. Compare some pictures from 2009, with ours from 2012; the changes he’s effected since then are striking.

2009: interior of Mario's workshop

2009: sign on his door with his address & advertising that he does ceramics in the style of Ayacucho, his hometown

2009: exterior of his workshop/home

2012: interior of workshop

2012: entrance to workshop. I love the artful iron lettering of his workshop name, Moya Wasi, which is Quechua for House of Seeds. I also love that he has a tree! His place is nicer and more carefully tended to than some places in our neighborhood.

If you look closely, you can see that the arrow points to "Moya Wasi" spelled out with pebbles. This is the entrance to the workshop.

Mario with some of his products

The second oldest of eight children, Mario comes from a line of artisans. His parents couldn’t afford to buy him toys, but there was always ample clay around. Mario would create his toys out of clay and his father would later fire them in the kiln along with his items for sale.

His opportunity to come to Lima came when an artisan asked his older brother if he’d help him out at his workshop for several months. Mario’s brother wasn’t interested, but 18-year-old Mario was. He had never been to Lima before. “I’m from the jungle. I only knew places with lots of plants and animals. I had heard lots of stories of the big city, the ocean, the cars, and the buildings.”

June is wintertime in Lima, and Mario wasn’t used to the cold. “I didn’t like the weather at all and didn’t plan to stay.” But after his month of work was over with and Mario was making plans to return to Ayacucho, another artisan asked him if he would work with him until December. Mario agreed. Once December rolled around, Mario had slowly gotten accustomed to Lima. The artisan offered to pay for Mario to return to Ayacucho and spend Christmas and the New Year with his family, if Mario would agree to work with him for the next year.

By that point, Mario decided that if he was going to spend this much time in Lima, he might as well open up his own workshop too. He had friends who knew of available land in Ventanilla for his future workshop. “But it was just sand; there wasn’t an existing structure to build onto.” Mario spent 2007 working at two workshops, his friend’s and laying the groundwork for his own. He’d work for one week for his friend, followed by a week working on his own workshop.

Since his land was just sand, his weeks in his workshop were spent sinking posts in the ground and building walls with thin wood. He used woven mats for his roof. As Lima is a desert, it rarely rains, so woven reed mats were sufficient as well as typical of his neighbors’ homes as well. But they are not very strong or permanent. “I lived in the workshop too, of course. You have to guard your stuff. People would say, ‘finish your floor; how can you work with a sand floor?’ But, if your pottery piece falls off of the table and onto the sand, it doesn’t break. If you have a floor, it does. And if you are painting it and it falls into the sand, even though the sand sticks to the paint as if it were glue, you can just rinse it off and start again.”

He strengthened his workshop in 2010. Mario now has a cement floor, reinforced and painted walls, a stronger roof. His home is now in back.

This hallway runs from the back of Mario's workshop, past his living quarters, and out to the bathroom.

The door to Mario's bathroom

As we found out on our way there, the time involved in getting to and from Ventanilla is significant. I asked him how long it takes him to get to Manos Amigas. “I spend three hours in a bus to get to Manos Amigas on time. If I have to bring a big order in, I take a taxi, which would normally take less time, but right now there is construction on both roads in and out of Ventanilla, so it’s about the same amount of time.”

Due to the distances involved, he always makes sure that he has scheduled different days for merchandise to be due and transported to his clients, so that he doesn’t have to trek to more than one place in one day. On the day we visited, for example, Mario’s brother left Ventanilla at 4 a.m. to take an order to a client in Lurín, far on the southern edge of Lima. He arrived at 7 a.m. Because of the normally heavy and insane traffic which is Lima, I can only imagine how long it would have taken him to get to Lurín if he had waited to leave at a more normal hour of 8 or 10 a.m.

Mario’s main plans for the future are to keep growing his business, of course, and to obtain the title of his land. “The government has the title. I am working on getting the title, but it will take time. You have to keep asking for it.” Getting the title to the land is tricky in areas where land invasions have been frequent and the government has relocated people. Back in the office, I asked Christina about Mario’s quest for the title and whether he’d actually ever get it. She told me that it was possible, but that only the people who keep asking for it and are persistent - over years - are the ones who eventually are granted them. I hope Mario is one of the lucky ones.

Mario sticks in my mind. I’m not exactly sure why. Perhaps it’s because he was the first artisan I interviewed. Perhaps it’s because he is so young. Perhaps it’s because he is trying so earnestly to be successful in a tough market, doing something (and doing it well) that so many others do too. (Product plug: Global Gifts is currently selling one of his products, a tealight for $16.) Perhaps it is because he is doing the absolute best he can in a poor area, taking such care with the appearance and upkeep of his workshop in an area where few can or do pay attention to those details.

After talking with Mario, we walked down about 12 shacks until we arrived at Jacinto’s home/workshop. 

The building next to Mario's

The view of Ventanilla and the ocean from Mario's workshop

At first I was surprised by their proximity - Ventanilla is huge! - but later I found out that Mario introduced his neighbor to Yannina, thinking that perhaps he would be a good fit for Manos Amigas.

Jacinto is from Huancayo and produces mates burilados, carved gourds. He and his wife, Vasilia, both learned to make mates from their parents. Each has been working since they were 7 or 8 years old. This was a common story we heard from the mates artisans who are over 40 years old: they all were working, some of them full time, by age 8. 

Jacinto welcomes us to his workshop

Simon, as usual, finds friends to play in the dirt and sand with

Jacinto and Vasilia have five children ranging in age from 16 to 27. They moved to Lima in 1998 for better work opportunities and lived in Villa El Salvador, on Lima’s far south side. But in 2000, the Peruvian government moved him and 10,000 others from Villa El Salvador to Ventanilla.

When they arrived, there was nothing but sand. There were no existing structures, no services. “They moved us in giant trucks. We slept in the sand with plastic and cardboard boxes for protection. Not many people stuck it out. Life was rough. There was no water, no electricity, no access to transportation, no nothing.” While they have electricity now, 12 years later, they still do not have water. “They promised us that we would have water by 2008. But administrations change and don’t always fulfill previous promises.”

I can’t imagine living so far from the heart of Lima, without any access to transportation, let alone water and shelter. I suppose that is an example of how desperate they and others were for a home. While Jacinto and his family have obviously come far from the days when they slept in sand, they still have a hard life. They must bring in water for everything: washing clothes, dishes, drinking, cooking. Sand is everywhere. As we talked, a dusting of sand blew down on my notes from crevices in the roof.

Jacinto outside of their workshop/home. They have come a long way from sleeping in sand, covered by plastic.

After we finished our interviews, we thanked everyone and piled back into Gustavo’s car, bracing ourselves for the ride back home. Slowly our scenery changed from ocean and shacks to dusty construction and planes, to frantic streets with everyone jockeying for position, back to Miraflores where parapentes were sailing above the ocean and among the high rises. Parks, filled with greenery in this desert, are pretty much everywhere in Miraflores. During the week, many of those parks are filled with niñeras, nannies, and their charges. While not all of the niñeras are from places as far away as Ventanilla, few are from Miraflores.

What a contrast. On the ride back, I kept thinking about what people like Mario, Jacinto, and the niñeras think when they trek in from their neighborhoods and arrive in the relative luxury of Miraflores and see the wealth everywhere. The luck of having green parks and playgrounds patrolled by security officers, safe places to play outside, the ocean as a backdrop for daily activities: that felt luxurious after days on buses seeing the rest of Lima. As such, Miraflores can be such a contrast to the rest of Lima, and a lot of the expats who live there wouldn’t dare set foot in many of those areas. I remember being that afraid, so I can’t fault them, but I am also thankful I got past my fear.

Once, when we were driving with Yannina through a dusty district far past Lima’s downtown, she commented, “We [in Miraflores] have the ocean. What do they have here? Dust.” So many different worlds, all in the same city.

Sunday afternoons on the malecón

One of our standard Sunday afternoon activities is to walk along the malecón, the walk along the cliffside parks overlooking the ocean. It takes us about an hour to leisurely make our way south to where the parapentes take off and land.

We aren’t the only ones with this idea. I learned from a very cool photo exhibit called Lima Más Arriba that, on a typical Sunday afternoon in summer, there are half a million people along the six-mile-long malecón. While it’s never felt too crowded, it’s definitely been hopping.

The park on the malecón closest to our apartment, late afternoon on New Year's Day

People are always in the parks along the malecón, but it explodes on Sundays. Families bring picnics. Parents and kids ride their bicycles in the bike lane. The canchas are always in use with a fútbol game, with multigenerational teams playing all day long. The D’Onofrio ice cream bicycle vendors are stationed every 100 meters or so, just in case you changed your mind in the last few steps.

I’ve been taken with how participatory families are. Parents don’t just lounge around and watch their kids play (as I might want to do); they are active! Moms and aunts hit volleyballs with kids, dads and uncles chase and tackle the kids too. It’s so fun to see everyone so active and engaged.

Adults and kids alike roll down hills. There is apparently an art to it. Giuseppe tried to teach it to Simon one day when we “borrowed” Giuseppe for the afternoon. 

Rolling down hills, a favorite pastime

Giuseppe gives Simon a lesson in how to roll down a hill. You start at the top...

Simon tries to put Giuseppe's instructions into practice.

After all that effort, Giuseppe is exhausted. Simon's ready to try it again.

There is a dirtbike course right next to the skateboard park, so if there are little kids practicing or, super exciting, an actual race going on, we have to stop and watch that too. Once, when we watched a race, we laughed at the loudspeaker material. It had hundreds of nonexistent people cheering the bikers on, and later when the announcer read out the names of the winners, Queen’s “We are the champions” played over and over.

The skateboarders don’t just use the skate park; some of them take over the long sloping sidewalks to test out dramatic finishes, calling out “¡permiso!” to anyone that might be in their way before they start. Avid athletes, as well as women in skirts and heels, use the exercise equipment scattered everywhere. Dogs have birthday parties. Once we saw a flash mob of 100 people having a pillow fight.

If the wind is good, there is a long line for the parapentes. 

Kids run races through the bushes planted as mazes. Tightropes are strung between trees, at varying heights, for anyone to try inching across. Bubble vendors stop off at the more populated playgrounds and blow rounds of bubbles, to the delight of the kids playing. 

Bubbles never lose their appeal... and they have usually been good ways to start playing with other kids.

Couples make out pretty much anywhere and everywhere, but one particular park along the malecón, the aptly named Parque del Amor, is a good place to avoid if you don’t want to get in the middle of teenagers kissing. It’s anchored by a giant statue of - what else? - two people making out, hovering above the ocean. It also has a very long, very cool mosaic tiled bench with love quotes from literature spelled out with the broken tiles. I was wandering along it once, stopping every so often to read the quotes, when I realized I was inadvertently staring at a couple going at it. Moving on, then!

Capoeira groups stand in a circle, chanting as they practice their unique martial art/dance to their unique music. Hare Krishnas gather on a cliff overlooking the ocean, and more than once we’ve stopped on our way back to watch the sunset there, with their singing and drumming our auditory backdrop to the dramatic orange sun dropping into the haze just above the ocean.

Simon decided to try out some of the moves he saw the capoeira guys practicing.

This was one of the weirdest sunsets we saw: the sun first set into a cloud haze above the ocean, disappearing completely. Then we saw it slowly drop out of the cloud, reappearing before finally disappearing into the next cloud haze.

Not far from the malecón is Parque Kennedy, and the sunken circle there is usually filled with something fascinating to watch, if we can elbow in on the crowd and see in: older couples dancing slowly, cheek to cheek, younger couples salsa dancing, and my favorite so far, an afternoon of tango, with ever-changing partners and really amazing dancing from regular-looking people in the audience.

Last Tango in Peru

One of my goals upon our return to Indy is to start venturing out on Sunday afternoons to different parks in Latino neighborhoods. Perhaps that will be a good way to begin figuring out where and how we might get involved with Spanish-speaking communities. While we’ll have to swap the exciting parapentes for a kite, we’ll be well-equipped for the adventure with our bubbles, fútbol, picnic, and Spanish. Too bad there will be zero hills for Simon to practice his newly acquired skills on.

Signs

For whatever reason, I am slightly obsessed with signs here.

I have a fixation with the various versions of the “reserved seat” signs on buses/combis etc. They are all different. Of the four images (pregnant woman, mother holding child, elderly person, handicapped/injured person), the pregnant woman and the injured person tend to have their heads bowed. Are they ashamed? Are they tired? Whatever they are, they need a seat… but they’ll have to speak up to get one, since it’s not very frequently that people move voluntarily out of reserved seats on full buses. 

Portly person crosswalk!

In the mountains of Huancayo, about 8 hours from Lima, their crosswalk signs seem to be a little out of proportion, or then again, perhaps they have extraterrestrials. 

Children in Argentina apparently like to go to school; instead of sprinting across the street like Peruvian children are supposed to do, they skip.

Their moms wait with them at the bus stop. 

Their dads walk them to school. (This is the first time I’ve seen a sign like this that is clearly a man, not a woman or person-of-indeterminate-sex, walking the child to school.) 

Barranco’s signs announcing parks seem so happy and joyful (even if covered with black soot). 

Miraflores’ sign for playgrounds makes me snicker: while this essentially says, “kids’ playground”, my brain immediately translates this as, “place for infantile activities”. I can think of some other places that need that sign. 

I just like the sign that announces an official mototaxi stop. I don't know this for sure, but my guess is that Miraflores and San Isidro, two of the most affluent districts in Lima, have banned mototaxis. They are almost everywhere else in the city, and a super cheap ride when you need one. Miraflores & San Isidro's loss!

I love the signs for “pick up after your dog and put the poop in this receptacle”. I am not sure that anyone else has ever noticed them, though; we are on the constant lookout for dog poop on the sidewalks and on the grass. Simon is pretty good about finding it and pointing it out to us… and then getting really close to it to show us that he is not, indeed, touching it.

This is obviously a cattle crossing sign, which we’ve seen while traversing the Peruvian countryside… and here it is, in the heart of Miraflores, where there is zero chance of seeing a cow cross the street. It was put up one day out of the blue, which I noticed on my walk to Spanish class last September, and it’s been there for months now. I suppose it’s a joke, since it’s in front of a grilled steak restaurant. 

This one is a little annoying – it’s for a new ice cream treat from D’Onofrio, the Nestle division here. It shows two flavors for this cone: the strawberry one, “for her”; the chocolate one, “for him”. Give me a break; sexist ice cream flavors? Yet another knock against Nestle! 

Painted across the crosswalk at this busy intersection is a sign that says,  “4 out of 5 deaths that occur in traffic are pedestrians.” I actually stopped to read it while crossing the street, which was stupid move #1. But as horrifying as that statistic is, it’s not surprising, given how crazily limeños drive and how little regard is given to pedestrians.

I think this is supposed to be a woman pushing a stroller… but doesn’t it look like a vacuum cleaner? Who knew that vacuum cleaners got reserved parking spaces at McDonald’s? They should market that: “Take a break from cleaning and get a free Inca Kola!”