Feliz día del papá! (A little late now, I know). I cannot believe there’s only 2 more weeks of classes. The time flew by and I am unhappily facing the fact that I am going to have to say goodbye to Peru. The first week of June was busy for me because I was preparing for these really important class presentations. Unfortunately I still have a couple papers, a final exam and a final project to look forward to in the next two weeks. I just started taking dance classes at the YMCA down the street. Rubie and I do Afro-Peruvian dancing on MWF nights and I’m learning some great new moves from another morning class as well that provides a mix of different dances. But, surprise surprise, I still suck at salsa. Something about my gringa nature just doesn’t understand moving my feet to any type of complicated rhythm. Some good news: the catalogue I was working on for the museum is finally finished and I should be getting a copy!
My buddy Daniel from my Graphic Art class invited me to his friend’s birthday party last weekend which was great because I haven’t gone to many house parties here. It was really nicely decorated and hosted on their rooftop with food, drink, music, dancing, and, of course, a piñata! Who knew, it’s not just for Mexicans. It was great to meet so many Peruvians and everyone was so nice to me and they were trying to teach me how to dance salsa. Every Peruvian I’ve met gets a real kick out of the fact that I like cumbia, a type of Peruvian music that’s really popular in Lima right now. Cumbia had been around for years in Peru but elite Limeño society had always turned its nose down on it because it comes from the highlands and was associated with “Indianess”. However, Grupo Nectar, a Peruvian cumbia band tragically died in a car accident in Argentina under suspicious circumstances (it was thought a rival Argentinean band ran their car off the road) a few years back (maybe 5 years ago?). This tragedy pushed cumbia into the mainstream and now they play it absolutely everywhere, even in classy discotecas where they once shunned it. Speaking of music, on the 6th a huge group of us (exchange students and Peruvians) went to “Urban Dance” the Daddy Yankee/Sean Paul concert. We were in the cheapest section – General, so we were stationed like a mile from the stage and couldn’t really see or hear much. It was fun just being in the crowd though, dancing and feeling the excitement of all the Peruvians belting out Daddy Yankee lyrics.
This Thursday we had a get together at Paco’s apartment to hang out and eat pizza in celebration of his birthday the week before. Recently Rubie and I have met people that live in our neighborhood. One is this sweet old lady named Nila who asked me to help her translate directions for some vitamins her son had sent to her from the states. She kept insisting that I eat more cake and chatted me up for a good hour and a half. We also met a group of really nice guys our age who are all friends and live in our neighborhood. They invited us to go with them to Aura and gave us a ton of free passes to invite our friends so we headed to Aura after Paco’s to meet up for a night of dancing. The guys were there with a bunch of friends, guys and girls they knew from the university. The music at the discoteca was really good – they played a great mix of hip hop, cumbia, reggeton, and even threw in some electronica and old Madonna. Friday we went out to all you can eat sushi at Magma, which, yes, was as glorious as it sounds. Saturday night we went to Julia’s friend from swimming, Gonzalo’s house to hang out before going to Mochilero’s, which is this huge colonial mansion transformed into a bar that the Anthropology department at Catolica rented out for a charity event. There was a bunch of Peruvians and a ton of hippies there, not surprisingly (anthropology department, duh).
Saturday Abby, Melissa, Rubie and I (our entire Peruvian Social Reality class) met Professor Callirgos at the University and he took us to MegaPlaza, the largest mall in Peru, which is built right along the Pan-American highway in an area that used to be a pueblo joven, which is the name for the shanty towns created by migrants from the Andes who settle on the outskirts of Lima. The MegaPlaza has multiple stages for live performances and families will come to the mall during the weekend just to hang out even if they don’t have enough money to buy anything. The contrast between the huge bustling commercial center of the mall with the enormous rocky hills full of makeshift homes towering in the background was quite striking. Juan Carlos (our prof) talked to a couple fruit vendors who complained that business was dying because of supermarkets popping up nearby, since the small vendors just can’t compete with the prices of produce bought in such bulk. There was a lot of options of potatoes from different regions of the Andes and Juan Carlos purchased some small mandarin oranges that were delicious.
While we were there we also learned a little about how the pueblos jovenes function. They organize themselves to create schools, police, everything they need as a community. They build their own homes, soccer fields, and plumbing systems. The local women organize themselves to create popular cafeterias in which the poor can receive lunch for about one sol (30 cents). Over decades, however, the homes become more and more complete and the oldest pueblos jovenes now just look like lower middle class neighborhoods like the ones in the center of Lima. The market was really interesting – people were selling fruit, vegetables, live chickens and guinea pigs, and the women were dressed more indigenously than I have seen in the rest of Lima, seemingly signifying stronger connections to their Andean roots, having only recently migrated into the city. We also saw a soccer game taking place and were told that having an area designated for soccer is essential in the creation of these neighborhoods. All in all it was a fascinating Anthropological experience walking through the areas on their way to becoming established communities and imagining the way of life of these people and hardships the new immigrants must endure while trying to get on their feet.
After the pueblo joven, Rubie and I went with a couple Peruvian friends to Antigua Taberna Quierolo to buy wine and pisco as gifts for our host fathers. Even though it was still early, there was a bunch of people out and about, many of them drunk because Peru was playing Colombia in soccer and every restaurant/bar we passed was full of people with their eyes glued to the TV. Unfortunately, it’s a well-known fact here that Peru’s soccer team is terrible, so no one expected a victory. Instead it ended with an unsatisfying tie. After the Taberna, we got some desert at Todo Dulce, near Plaza Bolivar. Rubie had headed off to San Isidro in taxi to watch a movie with the girls and the Peruvian guys with us were so concerned with her welfare. We had to assure them that it was fine for her to go in taxi by herself. An old drunk woman on the street was even scolding them for apparently not escorting her to her destination, which was really funny. This brings up the fact that in terms of etiquette in relationships between guys and girls, I’ve noticed a marked difference between American and Peruvian culture. They raise them here to escort girls home and not let them take taxis by themselves, come to the house and wait with the parents downstairs to pick the girl up, pay for everything (even if you’re just friends, no dating necessary), and even walk on the side of the sidewalk closest to the road with the girl on the side farther away from the street (as if just in case a car veers crazily, they’ll be a shield in the way to protect the lady). It’s nice to know that there are still gentlemen out there in the world, it’s just that none of them go to UVA.
