Streets of Lima

Last week was a long one, marked for me by my first week of spanish class 4hrs per day. It's a great program, but getting to the other side of town by 9am is an endeavor unto itself. I am spending a lot of time on the roads of Lima, and there's a lot to see on the road.

My class is small, with a German kid, a Brazilian woman and a Texan guy. It is satisfying to finally discover some of the spanish grammar that has been swirling about me. Learning a small rule doesn't seem so small when it means I can suddenly comprehend something. Of course, on Wednesday, when the señora came running out of her house to yell at me because I had blocked her driveway for 4 hours, my spanish was clearly still so weak that she yelled at me in english. To be fair, it was totally bone-headed and I should have known better. People fit their cars into incredibly small spaces and, in this example, my gringo eyes just didn't even register that it was possible to put a car in her spot. When you get a ticket here, they put 3 giant stickers on your windows, so in addition to being fined you have to stand there in public humiliation for 5 minutes laboriously peeling the stickers off. Kind of an awesome penalty, actually...

 All over Lima, you find traffic police, most of them women who look remarkably alike. With their tight stretch riding pants, big black boots and sidearm, they perfectly fulfill someone’s kinky fetish. Not mine. When the intersection in front of us is unmoving for 10 minutes, we do dream of their arrival as they motorcycle around from traffic hot spot to hot spot. Police here are, in general, viewed through the lens of race and class. It's a potent combination, having power but being disrespected...so I choose to obey my local policia Limeño.

 Intersections have street-performers busquing for coins in 60sec intervals. Jugglers with pins or flame, break dancers, acrobats, musicians...all there. Last week, Jen and I saw a juggling clown pinned by a drunk seriously conversing with him. When a clown's expression translates as "Someone get this drunk out of my face!", it makes for a funny tableau. Completely unfunny are the apparently unattended children smaller than Carter who lean on car windows piteously. Or the Quechua-speaking grandmother, in her garb strait from the village, "selling" chiclets and pity. Younger mothers will beg with children strapped to their backs in a shawl, though when the child is 18mos it is old enough to hold the cup and press it toward you, some of their first words being those of begging. I need to start a deep, philosophy blog before I can truly explore the question as to why I have given coins to jugglers but never to beggars. It's only in true in the car, too, so who knows?

 One interesting thing in a poor country is that the streets are rife with the micro-economy. Wouldn't you like to have a woman on a 3-wheeled box-bike come along to sell you still-warm bread rolls? Or simply put some scrap on the sidewalk, and in a couple hours it is gone? Or park at the supermarket and have the guys pulling rolling barrels of water around wash your car by the time you get out?