Lima

6/21/13

I am enchanted with Lima – it’s a certain kind of dark, sprawling poverty that is different than the stagnant, dirty poverty of rural Ollanta.  It’s precious, homely, beachy, comforting and uncomfortable.  Misty and glorified in the way typical of big capital cities, history peeking out in the faces of the unbecoming.  It’s something I will always miss, even when I’m in the middle of it.  It reminds me of a younger, idealistic me, discerning the right from wrong, falling in love and wanting to live in these places, taking a step back and realizing I already do.  It’s a dark, damp place that brings out a fighting spirit.  It’s a cultural divide, a racial divide, a lack of access that spurred my undergraduate delight.  It’s a thinking cap heaven, a sprawl, a sprawl unbeknownst to the human imagination until it’s there, and I’m grateful that throughout all my travels I still have never actually seen a place like this, although my heart feels at home.  Ollanta, cold and dirty, a poverty that is simple, a simple negativity, not a justified positive, just a rural way to not have any ends meet.  Lima, Lima, a big city so massive with its 68 districts, makes me feel like I’m riding a motorcycle through Togo, driving my car through LA traffic on a sunny day, and meeting to play backgammon with Puerto Viejo locals all at the same time.  It’s pertinent, sweaty, the first place where the cold and humidity meet and I play with it delicately while drinking beer and eating ceviche.  The colors make me want summer to happen. I want to sit in a window with Afro-centric music playing, drinking a sweaty drink, looking out at the colors and feeling incredibly busy and weighted at the thought of everyone else trying to get by.  I want to live here, love here, be here, forever warm and eclectic, searching and finding these social problems as they exist in the pounding hammers of the construction workers, in the broken down homes in the black neighborhoods, in the desolate, desolate frighteningly alone road to the south where people put up one room homes only to be blown away by the light wind that creates the sand dune highways.  Lima – wow!