La Cumbia Peruana, The High Sierra and Grilled Beef Hearts

Well, what a week it has been here in Lima. I want to start by giving love to my family here in Lima and also the one that I had in Buenos Aires...it is crazy to think about the difference in experience they have provided for me. In Argentina, Alba and Miguel were nothing but terrific in accomodating me. Here, Silvia and her amiga Pilar have undertook the mission of making sure that Matteo Del Norte misses nothing Peruano...quite an undertaking I must say, and we have been frantically bustling this way and that in search of this end.

On thursday we travelled around to a bunch of districts in Lima so that I could see what life was like for the people living there. Sparing the politics, lets just say that there is an incredible amount of poverty here, and that the gap between upper and lower classes is gigantic. The middle class is very small and indeed the country is wrought with problems related to this poverty. Lima is a massive city consisting of proper districts, and then also less official masses of humanity that are referred to as ciudades jovenes. This basically means townships that haven't been around for very long. They are shantytowns lacking life's basic services such as running water, sewage, electricity and waste disposal. It is not a very good situation. It fits in with a blog I wrote last spring on my myspace page about the tendency of the world's population to be moving towards cities. Here, most of the migration is from the mountainous area of the Peruvian Andes that is locally known as the Sierra. People leave their homes in the mountains to seek refuge from the terrorism that exists there, or to seek the fortune and prosperity they percieve the people already residing in Lima to have. Of course, when they get here, there is no prosperity to be found. Thus, Lima, like many other cities enduring similar circumstances, has a high crime rate and, due to the locale, a huge problem with drugs. Travelling around the city I got a good feel for these stratified areas.

Friday night, after my classes, I accompanied Silvia and the elder of the Ricardos (Silvia's husband and son are both named Ricardo, I call them los dos Ricardos) to the theater. As in 'acting' theater, as opposed to 'movie' theater. It was great! It was a play called El Matrimonio A La Peruano and it was a sort of comedic satire of the marraige situation here. I am told that upwards of 70% percent of the population are divorced or separated. Thus, it is something that a strong majority can identify with. It was really funny, even though the percentage of what I understood was about the same as their divorce rate.

After the play we took the scenic route along the ocean to a part of the city called Barranco. This is a very old part of the city and it has that colonial feel that people like so much. It is also known for it's raucous nightlife. We went down into this sort of maze of old streets and followed along until reaching an old restaurant made of wood and stone. We were there to eat anticuchos. This is a Peruvian specialty that the people here are very proud of. I was very excited to try them, as I always am with localities such as these, but I felt a bout of Travels With Anthony Bourdain coming on when Ricardo looked at me and winked and told me that I was going to love beef heart! Huh? Oi! They slice the heart into slices about 3/4 of an inch thick and skewer them on brochetes, and then grill them over a hot fire. They are served on top of boiled and seasoned potatoes and then topped with choclo, which is corn on the cob like what we have in the states, except the kernals here are giant. I ate them, and they tasted good, but I have to admit that I had a hard time getting over the idea of it being beef heart. We also drank a bunch of Pisco Sour which helped a good bit.

The next day was saturday, which is family day here in Peru. By noon the house was crawling with grandchildren and filled with laughter and the smells of the kitchen. Two of Silvia's five children live here in Lima and they were there with their kids. Ricardo Jr. is a journalist here and his sister Rafaela is the editor of a major periodical here called Somos. It was really neat to talk to them then and later that night because they know all about what is happening here, and have a good sense of global perspective. I did a lot of horsing around with children that spoke Castillano better than me and then we had a big meal and then everybody spread out to pass out for the much awaited Saturday Siesta.

Later that night I went with Ricardo Jr. and Rafaela to a bar in Barranco called La Noche. There was going to be a well known band playing there that night called La Sarita. La Sarita, evidentaly, is the saint to which prostitutes, thieves and all manner of other 'tipos oscuros' pray to. Let me just say, that this band rocked the house!! They played a mixture of rock, cumbia from Columbia, cumbia from the Selva of Peru, punk and traditional music from the Sierra. It was a rad mix like none other that I have ever heard. A few of them were dressed like the usual rockers, old t-shirts and long hair; but then they also had these older fellows dressed in traditional mountain garb, playing traditional instruments. They had a guy playing an old squeeky violin, a man with a huge harp that was made out of wood and sat on his shoulder, and then a panpipe player. The guitar player played a detuned and distorted electric that added a cool edge to the music. The singer had a punk voice and stomped all over and wow, they left a real impression. You should have seen the crowd getting down to it too...I think that cumbia could possibly be the grooviest music on the planet. (Also, as an aside, I confidently put forward that this could be said of the world: The fellas just want to be cool, and the ladies just want to shake their bodies. It is hilarious, just about wherever you go, there is a room full of girls dancing and a line of guys by the wall or sitting in chairs acting unaffected and cool. It is a strange modern trend to not allow the rythme of music to move you. It is 'cool' to be able to be indifferent to the rythme of music. It is clear that this phenomenon covers up all sorts of insecurities, but watching it happening on all the continents cracks me up! The chicas usually end up near each other, smiling and wiggling around and having a grand old time. Guys spend the night trying to appear 'cool' to each other and to the women in the place, and the women just get down! Sure this is a generalization and sure there are guys who dance too and sure there is more too it than just this, but it's true.)

Sunday morning I was awakened early by the barking of my little homie Pito, or as I now call him, El Comandante del Corredor. (The Commander of the Hallway, for this is his turf) We had a quick breakfast and then towed our sleepy eyes and bodies into a couple of cars and headed for the mountains. They weren't messing around when they made the Andes!! These are real mountains. In Vermont and New Hampshire and Massachusettes they claim to have mountains, but they have anthills and nothing more compared to this place. I have been known to boast of my own Rocky Mountains out and about in the world and here I hold my tongue. These are pretty damn formidable. Leaving Lima into these mountains is like leaving the city in exchange for another planet. Crazy, grainy sand dunes give way to giant rockslides and a landscape as vast and arrid as any other. Climbing in elevation from sea level everything changes. To me, it seemed as if we were going back in time. The pavement ended and soon we were stopping to allow flocks of sheep and goats to be shepharded across the trail. Before I knew it we were rumbling around coarse gravel corners, clinging to the edges of sheer cliffs. All was brown and gray and cactus, save for the bottom of the steep valleys which housed small rivers that provided for some greenery. We drove for two hours in this manner and eventually arrived in a small mountain village called Antiochia. This place is some kind of anomally. It is normal in most aspects, but for some reason it was recently painted in all sorts of pastel colors with images of birds and flowers and other local designs. It struck me as being the answer to the question: What would happen if we painted a mountain village like an easter egg? We walked around and MDN tasted ALL the local culinary delights. No joke, Pilar kept rushing up to me from different directions with spoonfulls of this and little parcels of that. The vilage grows Membrillos and apples and makes all sorts of jellies and candies out of them. They make juice and cider and vinegar and various alcohols. It is quite a thing.

After an nice lazy sunday in the village, we left to head back down to the city and had the inevitable case of car trouble. I swear to Dios that this has to happen frequently! Now when it does, I just say to myself, "Right. I was wondering when this would happen." This time it happened to be a water leak. I was riding in the afflicted car with Juan Jaime, the husband of Rafaela, and Rafaela herself. The heat guage would creep up to high and we would have to stop the car and put water into it. Soon we used all the bottled water that our small army had collected and had to coast down the cliff-clinging roads waiting to come to some small pueblo where we could ask for more water. To simplify a potentially long story, it was harrowing. The car would frequently just die and we would be rolling along downhill with limited steering and brake capacity. I was convinced that we were done for on three separate occasions as we would careen around corners and whistle past pedestrians and various farm animals. Somehow we made it to a town called Nieve Nieve and got yet another batch of water to keep us heading onward. The going was slow but eventually we made it back to pavement and then limped and panted into the city. No lack of adventure in the Sierra!

Today I was back to school which am enjoying quite a lot. I am learning more and more advanced stuff and my brain is getting pretty good at dealing with life in Spanish. Aside from a random few words to others and a decent bit of rambling to myself, I haven't spoken english in about two weeks. It is a strange and humbling experience to be buried up to the neck in a different langauge. "Lento, lento..." they all say, but in the heat of conversation you just wish you had the use of your normal vocabulary!!

A couple more bits of culture...Ricardo Sr. says that driving in Lima is like driving on Jupiter or Mars, and he is right. I have never seen such chaos. I know I keep talking about the traffic, but it's nuts. People use thier horns almost constantly for a plethora of different reasons and they don't stop for any reason accept the occasional traffic light. I have watched people literally take running leaps into microbuses. I have watched grandmas literally dive for the curbs. I have seen children playing soccer amongst it all as if there was nothing to it.

It is really interesting to see how much religion is a part of life here. It is hard to describe by our standards because in america, religion is, for the most part, aligned with right-wing/conservative politics. Here in South America, on the whole, it is a very left-wing, "of the people" place. They have no trouble organizing large scale protests or riots. (For example, the other morning a huge mass of people blocked the freeway near Pisco for seven hours to protest the lack of government aid since the earthquake that devestated the region in august.) And at the same time the rate of Christian belief here is upwards of 90%. A tough place to be gay or lesbian, and for that they claim to not have many gay people. Many women dying from abortions gone wrong because it is illegal and not easy to find a real doctor to perform the process. A lot of population growth problems because the Pope says it is wrong to use birth control. Thanks Pope. (Maybe the pope should go to South Africa and have sex with a woman who "might" have AIDS and then raise the kids himself and we'll see what he thinks of condom use then!!! Oh the blasphemy!!) But anyhow, here a large percentage of taxi-cabs have quotes from biblical scripture written on the back and sides of them. Proclaiming their faith for Jehova and Dios and the Baby Jesus. Lots of images of saints bobbing and bouncing from the rear-view-mirror. In that respect it is just like Thailand! (See, we aren't so different after all...) When you are stopped in the car at an intersection a group of people referred to as Cruceros descend on the cars. Most of these people are fresh out of jail and not able to find "clean" work to do, so they deal in any quick turnaround contraband. Not drugs but rather cheap goods from China; watches, sunglasses, cellphone holders etc. Last night as we sat at an intersection watching the river of autos pour by, a pretty young girl walked out in front of our car and commenced to swinging around two fiery poi balls in the style of the Maori in New Zealand. She was really good. You never know what you will see on the streets of this planet called Lima.

I have been befriended by a lady named Flor in a local Chifa which has been cool because she really hooks up the food for me now. I was in there the first few days I was here and it was slow and seeing as I am a bit of a cultural curiousity for these folks, I always have a conversation starter, so we chatted. Like I said, the people here are very proud of their food and love to talk about it. They take a lot of pride introducing new things to foreigners. I am learning a lot about the chinese/peruvian fusion at this resto.


Damn there is so much more, but I am out of time for now. I gotta do a better job editing this thing, and that takes a little time too. I have problems with the e and i of the word their. I always have for some reason. Just one more thing to work on...until next time, que te pases un buen dia o noche!