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.

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!”

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.

Warning: dangerous cuts ahead

Simon needed a haircut. My last few attempts to give him one had resulted in him crying and hating the whole process… not to mention a really lopsided cut. I decided to take him to one of the official little kid haircut salons, even though the cost was outrageous.

At 38 soles a cut (roughly $14, high for this market), I would expect a massage, a free gift, or something spectacular. Sam’s and my haircuts are only 11 soles at the neighborhood peluquería a couple of blocks away… but then again, we are pretty cheap. (Whether we are cheap enough to try out the one I saw yesterday for a rock-bottom five soles a cut is up in the air.)

My rationale for forking over soles galore was that they would know what they were doing. And they did! It was worth every sol. Simon was fascinated in his little car, looking at his cute self in the mirror, never once squirming, complaining, or being anything less than enthralled. 

Simon now spots the kiddie haircut cars at random spots, tries to climb into them, and mimics scissors cutting his hair. He actually asked to get his hair cut the other day. I am ready to swear allegiance to this kiddie salon. 

Sam isn’t, however. A couple of weeks ago, he found a peluquería with kiddie cars in Barranco for seven soles. “Let’s go there next time,” he suggested.

One of my favorite parts of Simon’s haircut involved a seatbelt. In nearly every taxi we have ever been in here, the seatbelts don’t exist, fit, or have the necessary other half. Maybe, as the bus driver illustrates below, the critical part is to just have it draped across your midriff.

Yet Simon's little car had a well-fitting seatbelt, and he was carefully strapped in before his cape was velcroed on.

Seatbelts for haircuts is such a brilliant idea. I hate getting my hair cut and tend to panic halfway through each one. But with a seatbelt (and maybe a pisco sour), perhaps the experience would be a calmer one.

We’ll check out the Barranco barber for Simon’s next cut… if there are seatbelts. Do you think they would notice if I brought my own flask with me? More importantly, do you think they would let me sit in the kiddie car?