Pearl of Paradise

It may have been another quiet week in Lake Wobegon, but in ciudad Lima, the days are filled with honking. To be fair, our hotel is on a major street and the hotel windows are none too soundproof, but still...

THE CULTURE OF HONKING is particular here. I am tempted to hang my laptop out the window to record.

The "here I come" safety short-honk 
--- just to let someone moving into your space know that, indeed, you are not stopping...honk

The "I'm the taxi you are looking for" double-tap
--- walking down the street, looking content? Maybe you want a taxi?...honk-honk

The, I kid you not, "shave and a haircut" honk for extra-humorous cabbies
--- hard to resist... honk----honk-a-honk-honk---honk-honk

The "you overstepped" 3-beat honk
--- been cut off in the typical way? Lay on the horn a bit longer... hooonk

The "taxi is stopped to negotiate a fare and blocking a lane" 6-beat honk
--- it's not like the cabbie is going to care that someone is honking, but what the heck? hoooooonk

The "traffic is at a stop and I can't see what is holding things up" honk
--- just lay on the horn for however long it takes for you to feel better. hooooooooooooooooooonk

Add to this symphony the yells of the combi barkers yelling their destinations, the circa 1991 car alarms, the sirens of all urban center, and suddenly 4am can seem blissfully quiet. How do I know? Well, a design project for Johnson & Johnson was due today and it just took most of the night.

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Chicha: not to be confused with its namesake, the sweet purple-corn drink, but a music style that I am introducing myself to. Endemic to Lima and the coast here, it is an amalgamation of:
> cumbia: an old Colombian-Panamanian style
> huayña: Andean music
> surf-rock of the 1960's

So imagine a kind of village rhythm with a Dick Dale guitar, sometimes with hints of ska. Here is a link to the album I am listening to. It is probably not a coincidence that it also sounds vaguely like the Dominican bachata music that I like, but I'm no musical philologist.
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Carter has joined a Taekwan-do school here in the local gym. This is his first real thing in which he is totally enveloped in Spanish.  There are some other kids from his school and the program clearly caters to that kind of clientele. There are several well-dressed moms waiting around, but also empleadas (I saw one empleada with an 8yr old boy, after class she took out wipes and cleaned his feet  and then baby-powdered them, while the boy sat there quietly).

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 PEACE CORPS: Jennifer forwarded me an email with an account of a cool story. A volunteer is part of a program that has created a store that sells locally sourced Peruvian products like cheese, honey, nuts, etc. The store is an outlet for several remote community micro-banks. The micro-banks loan money in their community, individuals pay back the loans with interest and sell their products to via the store and elsewhere. The volunteer is closely involved with one of these community banks, a cheese producing community of about 20 families. To get there, the volunteer takes a bus for an hour AND then walks for an hour and a half. This community, Vaqueria (which Google translates as "Cowshed") has a successful micro-bank they call "Asociacion Perla del Paraiso". In addition to what the loans have enabled, the bank has built up a surplus of almost $700. Instead of dividing it up among community members, they have decided to put the funds towards a piece of communal equipment.

Barranco

   

 Thursday was Carter's first day at school. He is at the American school, Roosevelt, where classes are all taught in English. His teachers are Ms. Giuli & Ms. Jaqui (July and Jackie). They wear uniforms of sweatpants with polo shirts. Carter gets on a little bus to come home, and I wait for him out in front of the hotel. He and I both were ready for school to start...he finally has kid-time everyday and I am happy to be busy with work (though I do want to start a 4hr/day Spanish class and am not sure how to fit that around work).

Saturday went out to explore a bit of the Barranco neighborhood. It is along the cliffs, south of Miraflores. It is the bohemian quarter of Lima...with plenty of bars tucked along narrow streets. Each block seems to have at least a couple of colonial era buildings, some restored and impressive, but most sliding slowly to earth, losing masonry and plaster. Many are fenced off and uninhabited. The colonial buildings are a mix of stonework ornamented with wood trim, railings and finials. The central plaza of Barranco is picturesque, with a nice colonial church and civic building (the 'Biblioteca'). The area is not high-end artsy, buildings have graffiti and the people on the street are a mix of types.

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A walkway cuts down from the center of Barranco, through the palisades, and goes down to the beach. Over the walkway is a very old wooden bridge, the Bridge of Sighs (named for a colonial story of thwarted love). Carter took a picture of Jen and I there. We were pretty hungry and happy to come upon a funky railcar from the elegant era, converted into a café. Sided in wood, with stained glass windows and sconces, a musty smell and staffed by dudes who looked as if they owned skateboards. One played piano the whole time. I had my first Peruvian "causa"...an upper and lower layer of seasoned mashed potatoes, stuffed in between with savory items, often seafood. This one was more like a salad, stuffed with beets, avacado and asparagus. Accompanied by a Chilcano, a pisco drink with ginger-ale and lime, the meal hit the spot.


Afterwards, we ambled about a bit more, stumbled upon a store of Peruvian merchandise (I would call it souvenirs, except that it was really high quality stuff, as the busload of Japanese tourists would have agreed). We bought what is probably not our last piece of Peruvian weaving. The colors surprise me...it's not a set of colors I would think myself enjoying, but Jen and I were both really taken with it. Perhaps the fact that it is clearly hand tinted, designed and woven is what does it. I don't know.

Intersections

My Spanish: I need to get much better. Picture me going in to the cel carrier store to try and get myself a cel phone. They don't speak English, and my stuttering search for words like "synchronize" or "data limits" would be funny except that I want a phone. I can muddle through and make myself understood, they are patient, and in the end I understand that they are telling me I can't get service until I have my Peruvian ID. At this point, in the States, I would push back on the bureaucracy by asking some creative questions. But I don't have the words for it. Buying carrots is easy.

Intersections: Since this is a well-to-do neighborhood, each of the major intersections usually has someone busking in the traffic during the red lights. The lights have timers, so the performers know exactly how long they have to do their mini show. They are usually teenage boys, but not always. Juggling while standing on a friend’s shoulders, juggling flaming torches, breakdancing, acrobatics...all things I've seen driving around. Sometimes they are really impressive. Yesterday, at a very minor intersection, we saw a 10yr old girl juggling only 2 balls. I suppose that's considered the minor leagues. Of course, seeing this kind of thing highlights the distressing chasm between rich and poor, but it also reflects ingenuity and persistence.