Peru is delivered
into your life in a combo-pack. Swallowing the same includes the sweet topping
with glossy cherries as well as the bitter berries with their wormholes lying
beneath. To ignore, or try to get around them with the help of „dolares“, would
mean to bash the pie straight into the pastry cook’s face and to insult his
creation. Therefore I will try at least in part to pay my tribute to these
circumstances. The following texts are some smaller observations that I made as
time passed by.It’s October. During this month the woman of Peru use
to wear lilac cowls with white cords made of 100% polyester. Whereby age,
presents no reason not to wear it. Even two year old girls mutate into doll
like nuns. It is about the Peruvian custom of expressing their gratitude in
honor of the „Lord of wonders“(Señor de los Milagros). The custom developed when after an earthquake only that
part of a church still stood upright that hosted a picture of the crucified
Jesus. Since the picture was painted by a Peruvian-African slave, it became a
thorn in the Spaniards flesh and accordingly should be demolished. But nothing
less to be expected the undertaking turned out to be impossible. Every single
assigned craftsman’s knees macerated before they had even touched the picture.
Sweets selling kids twitch my cloths. I deny and they point their
finger on the cake display of my café and afterwards on their rotten teeth and smudgy
mouth. It’s the thousand fold coming true daily nightmare of lost childhood.
Election campaigns in this country start two years in advance. Every
single wall along the Panamericana conjures in bright colors another name of
corruption. At least the colors brighten the otherwise dull everyday life and
the choice between corrupt politicians shooting former generals and the one of
a rice giving away, land selling, from Den Haag persecuted and Japan protected
former presidents. Prospects are looking rosy and plenty of time to make the
wrong the decision.
Over the evening a small arena in the midst of a palm-fringed square
in Miraflores turns into a dance floor. On its stairs designated passers-by are
framing limp but dancing elderly pensioners in their forth spring. The melt
together, in a flush of salsa and merenge, into the embodied lust for life of Peru.
They bounce while hips slide through curves and knees are bend as if there was
no yesterday. A bespectacled doter’s eyes glow with the rhythm of his
curvaceous partner’s flanks while his feet are galloping into the passage.
Arthritic hands twist and wave into the stars. The pain vanishes with every
single covetous glance just as if they would be codeine and with an admixture
of ecstasy. With the help of a tango a pair teaches the surrounding young
people the modesty of true passion apart of modern body ideals and fitness
illusions. Sporadically laughter of exaltation and admiring cries flare up from
the ranks. They whirr around. Flutter like moths around their blazing heart.
Their feet are tap-dancing to the tact and blowing handkerchiefs are carrying
them upon the astonished amusement of their students. In them they can guess
their own aspiration after commercially freed spontaneity, the ability to mess
about themselves and the power to overcome their doubts. Finally resounding
applause releases them to their seats, exhausted but happily smiling. Thankful heads
are turning towards them, tapping their shoulders.
Peruvians cultivate a very social drinking custom. Instead of each
person drinking from his own glass, one glass is shared, whereby only a small
gulp is poured into the glass while the rest is emptied on the ground in wide drive
before it is handed to the next drinker. By doing so I was told, a constant
conversation would be sustained and the accidentally exclusion of a comrades
would be avoided. But of course before I should understand this custom it
needed a misunderstanding. A beery evening, with Tommy to be exact. We placed
ourselves in a bar, ordered two bottles of beer and got those with one glass
and a made mug of plastic. First I was astonished and thought the bar woman
somehow wanted to make a foul out of us. Upon my bewildered face Tommy
explained the custom and that the plastic mug was to avoid puddles of beer on
the floor and not to drink from it.
