Lima has a heart: Really! But it's hard to see from the "outside"

My experiences in Lima are myopic at best, viewed from the outside by visits after coming down from the mountains for specific purposes: government documentation (visas, Education Ministry documents, driver's license, birthing of our children and, yes!, their subsequent documentation), as well as SIL's workshops and conferences. One of my SIL colleagues claimed that the greatest dangers in Peru exist going to and from Lima (there are many examples here but suffice it to say that negotiating traffic on two-lane roads at night can be horrendous in ANY country!). Actually what was amusing was my contact with Limenians as I arrived from the 'hinterland'. They expected a 'gringo' fresh from Miami or Frankfurt and instead they got a jacha-gringo (someone who 'looks' gringo on the outside, yet performance revealed a more "highlander infection" of a truer country-living like some 'weed' -- a gringo knock-off??). They were confused until I'd begin speaking in Quechua! They then laughed and the walls would come down-- Even in Lima all kinds of people continue connected in some way with some Quechua family member.

That is one 'lense of entry' to Lima through which I was privileged to peer in my many re-entries. The other is from the perspective of the SIL community residing in Lima itself, whose offices were located on Javier Prado in middle class Magdalena. "Lima House" and "Cudney Center" were temporary homes for us and our two boys, Grego and Tim. All homes in Lima's city center neighbourhoods are well embraced with wrought-iron 're-bar' spikes or broken glass atop two-metre concrete walls. SIL’s “Lima House” staff had adorned theirs with bouganvillea climbing hedges which flowered brillantly hiding the re-bar/barbed wire within it. The 'hussle and bustle' of Javier Prado Avenue gave life and meaning to any stroll to shops or restaurants. Despite the walls and 'enclave of English' inside, we could still be easily connected to this metropolis (8-12 million people, depending on how you count).

As I shared in a previous blog, we entered this culture at a crescendo of terror when a cochebomba (car bomb) blew out the glass from all Miraflores skyscrapers around Ave. Arequipa and Parque Kennedy (more on this park later). This was a city under stress and you could cut it with a knife. Our first 6 months in 1987 required us to remain in the city, so we worked for a while on the fourteenth floor of the Education Ministry office, downtown Lima. 

Educators and health workers were in continual re-negotiations and strikes. Our vantage point from this building provided incredible views of the Guardia Civil, army, and protesters heaving rocks with the stench-burning tires wafting upwards (I always wondered if somehow yanta = Quechua for kindling and llanta = Peruvian Spanish for tire, somehow got confused!). Both the educators and health workers wanted (deserved!) more pay. But it was the health workers who had the leverage on the streets, threatening authorities with (supposed) vials of suero de CIDA (live-Aids virus in solution). Batons were out and wielded, seeming endless rubber bullets and tear-gas fired, and the gusanos (water-cannon trucks) drove-up spraying high-pressured water in an attempt to disperse the crowds of thousands (rendering dozens unconscious). Welcome to Lima in the late 80s and 90s!