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Announcing My New Book!
I am thrilled/over the moon/gobsmacked to announce that my adventures as a reporter and caregiver in Lima and the Andes will be published next year as Melted Away: A Memoir of Climate Change and Caregiving in Peru, by LSU Press. Longtime readers of this blog will remember that El Fotografo and I, along with El Hijo, moved to Lima in 2007 and lived there for seven years. I was busy documenting climate change and writing feature stories for U.S. outlets when, in 2011, my estranged father in Florida was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and all that activity ground to a half. We took my father into our house in Miraflores, and…
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Climate Change & Disappearing Glaciers, Festivals, Sacred Rituals, Religion, Peru's Andes Mountains, Traditions + Rituals, Water
Three-faced Ukuku, Guardian of the Glacier
In Andean culture, ukukus represent mythical bear-men who guard the glaciers at Qoyllur Rit'i pilgrimage and assist in other village rituals. Each year, young men volunteer to serve as their village's ukukus and bring health and prosperity to the community. Jorge photographed this ukuku at the June 2006 Qoyllur Rit'i pilgrimage. They wear masks to protect themselves from the cold, but this ukuku was sporting one with three faces. In his hand, he holds a whip, used to fight the condemned souls who haunt the glacier and to punish pilgrims who drink alcohol at the festival, which is forbidden.
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“Soy Andina” Now on YouTube
Back in 2008, I befriended a New York filmmaker who had made an intriguing documentary set in my newly adopted country. Mitch Teplitsky's "Soy Andina" traces the journeys of two New York women who travel to Peru to connect with their heritage through dance.
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Remembering Pachacamac
It was so long ago, Jorge was using actual film. He shot these three images in succession. It was 2008 or so, and Jorge, Sam and I went to the ruins of Pachacamac, on the coast of Peru, not far from Lima. It is an ancient fortress site that pre-dates the Incas, and as you can tell from these photos, it is very, very dusty. That’s Sam on the left, me in the middle, wearing my mother’s scarf. A Peruvian hairless dog was walking around in a yellow t-shirt. As you walk from one ruins to the next, you stumble on bits of broken preColombian pottery, but you cannot pick…
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El loco y el mar
El Fotógrafo took this photo in 1989. He was walking along the Malecon, in Miraflores, when he saw a man standing on the cliffs, waving a stick back and forth in front of the ocean, like a conductor. There were no violins or flutes or kettle drums — just the crashing of the waves on the rocks below. The stick rose in the air, sliced down, swept to the right, then rose again. He swayed back and forth, then lifted his finger to his lips: Shush. El Fotógrafo calls this diptych “Creador.” Creator.
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First Post in Four Years
Hi, everyone. This is my first post more than four years. I didn’t have time to blog for several reasons: (1) I was teaching full time at UPC, and (2) We had to care for my dad, who had Alzheimer’s. We moved him to Peru in March 2011 (not coincidentally, the last month I blogged). Those responsibilities made it difficult, if not impossible, for me to keep up with the weekly demands of writing a good blog, so I let An American in Lima just continue on autopilot, without adding anything new. El Fotógrafo, El Híjo and I moved back to the United States in 2014, so we are now…
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My Own Brush with a Violent Protest in Lima
After writing yesterday’s tongue-in-cheek post about the U.S. Embassy warning about foreigners getting swept up in political demonstrations in Peru, I realized that I had nearly been caught in a violent protest myself. (To my credit, I had no illusion that it was a folkloric event.) It was in May 2000, when Fujimori was storming his way to a third presidential term, and protesters all throughout Lima, as well as the rest of the country, were clashing with police. El Híjo, El Fotógrafo and I were at a leather store in downtown Lima, three blocks from the presidential palace, when people started yelling in the street. One minute it was a quiet, gray…
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U.S. Embassy to Tourists in Peru: Don’t Confuse Political Protests with Folk Dancing
Maybe it’s the mood I’m in lately, but I found this recent Warden Message (sent from the U.S. Embassy to U.S. expats in Peru, via email) rather hilarious. The U.S. embassy warns that gringos have been arrested in prior years for inadvertently participating in political demonstrations that they mistook for folkloric events.
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Expat Bloggers Agree: Don’t Drink Tap Water in Peru
Tony of HowToPeru has posted a useful survey piece on whether it’s safe to drink the tap water in Peru (Drinking Water in Peru: Safe or Unsound?). The opinions culled are those of expats (including me) currently living in the country, so while the piece does not cite scientific evidence, it is based on hard-earned personal experience from bloggers in Lima, Cusco, Iquitos, Pucallpa and Chiclayo. The concensus? With one exception, bloggers agree that the tap water in Peru is unsafe for drinking. Some of us boil the tap water and drink that; others of us only use bottled water. I’m in the latter group. I’m glad that Tony put together this piece, because there’s…
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Three-faced Ukuku, Guardian of the Glacier
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A Peruvian (non)Thanksgiving Epiphany
It’s Friday, November 26, the day after Thanksgiving in the United States but which, in Peru, is just November 26. We don’t celebrate Turkey Day or Black Friday in this Andean nation of 30 million people. No pilgrims landed here. Just conquistadors. The locals were eating cuy, not turkey, when Pizarro invaded the place and smashed the Inca Empire. The conquistadors weren’t big on saying Thanks. They just grabbed. I was feeling unexpectedly sad yesterday morning. It was my third Non-Thanksgiving Day in Peru, and you think I would have gotten over it, but I hadn’t. What made my disappointment a surprise is that I’ve never been big on the holiday. Back in the…
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Lima Day Trip: Birding at La Punta
First, a disclaimer: I know next to nothing about birds, let alone birds in Lima. I can identify cuculis — those fat, grey pigeons that constantly hump in the trees — and hummingbirds and seagulls, which you can spot in various parts of the capital, but other than that, I couldn’t begin to tell you who all those strange-looking birds are that flap around my backyard. All I know is that, like waves of tourists in Peru, some birds appear in the spring, others in the fall, and there are slews of them. Which is why I wasn’t surprised when a local birding expert informed me recently that Peru is a serious…
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Conversations in the Gym
Bicep curls, by Ron Burgundy. Yesterday I was chatted up by the manager of the gym where I (sometimes) work out. Cinco Pirouettas is a stout man in his forties who claims to have been a ballerino when he was young. He spends most of his time talking to girls at the machines. He also bosses around skinny young men who appear to have never lifted weights before. He sometimes talks to mothers. “Did you do ballet?” he asked me point blank one afternoon, about a month ago. I was stretching on the floor. Yes, I told him, a long, long time ago. He puffed up his chest. “I did ballet. How many pirouettes in a…
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The Hare Krishnas Cure My Allergies
Zowie! as Osgood says in Some Like It Hot. Just got back from Govinda’s vegetarian restaurant, in Miraflores, where after lunch El Fotografo and I had some hot ginger tea. It was real ginger, chunks of it, ground up with honey and lemon, emulsified in a cup of hot water. The menu calls it a tisane. They need to correct that to a spice exorcism. Holy Mother of Purging, I’m allergy/demon-free — for now. DATO Tisane kion (ginger tea): 2.50 soles Govinda Vegetarian Restauant Av. Shell 634, Miraflores 445-8487 http://www.restaurantevegetarianogovinda.com/
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Thoughts on Vargas Llosa’s Win
I first became aware of Margio Vargas Llosa and his work in the 1990s when I heard him speak at the Miami Book Fair International. He was always a hit with Cuban Miami (anyone who is an enemy of Fidel….), but political issues aside, what drew me (and many readers) to his work is the authenticity and power of his fiction. Today the Swedish Academy said that it is honoring Vargas Llosa for outlining the “structures of power” and for “his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.” The Academy’s permanent secretary, Peter Englund, called him “a divinely gifted storyteller” whose writing touches the reader. I agree on…
