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Day at the Spa
A perk to living in Lima is that you can have your hair cut and styled for ridiculously low prices. A salon down the street from us charges S/.20 to do a full blowout, for any length hair. That’s less than US$7 for something that stylists in the United States charge $50 and up. If they’ll do it at all. (I used to go to a salon in Florida whose owner refused to straighten my long, thick hair, claiming the effort aggravated her carpel tunnel syndrome.) Ditto prices for dog grooming. Lola went to the dog spa today. They bathed her, cut her nails and put a ribbon on her and then drove…
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Food Businesses Boom in Peru
BBC Online published an insightful overview yesterday of Peru’s booming food industries (“Food business taking off in Peru,” 9/25/09), to coincide with this weekend’s second annual gastronomic fair in Lima. Dan Collyns reports on the growth of gourmet restaurants, artisanal products and food exports, trends that are helping to prop up Peru’s economy in the face of a global economic downtown. (He also notes Peruvians’ preference for fresh, rather than processed, foods, an idea I’ve been harping on lately in this blog.) Peruvians’ love of good food cuts across class, racial and ethnic barriers, Collyns says, and reflects the country’s rich bio-diversity, from its ocean waters teeming with fish, to the…
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Finnish Designer Trees Bear Fruit in Andes
Last week I dropped in on a very cool Finnish design exhibit being hosted at Lima’s ICPNA center. “Northern Stars” showcases more than 100 years of innovative design from Finnish designers and design firms such as Marimekko, Arabia, Nokia and Metso. El Híjo and I were hoping to catch sight of some Moomintrolls, the eccentric woodland characters invented by Finnish children’s author Tove Jansson, but as it happened there weren’t any velvet-snouted trolls lolling about the art gallery. There were, however, some playful tree-shaped room dividers, rather like props from a children’s fantasy, that caught my eye. “The Tree,” as it’s called, is a piece of functional art created by the Finnish designer Eero Aarnio (creator…
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Soy Andina Film Premieres on New York PBS Tonight
Cynthia Paniagua (R) in Chincha (photo: Florencia Castello)Peruvian culture will get a major public-awareness boost tonight when New York PBS stations broadcast the awarding-winning documentary Soy Andina. (Sept. 10, 10 p.m.; check local listings. The film airs throughout the country starting Oct. 11.) Soy Andina is one of eight documentary films selected for the new season of Latin Public Broadcasting’s VOCES series on National Public Television, introduced by actor Edward James Olmos — and the first-ever film in the series about Peru. Soy Andina tells the intersecting stories of two New Yorkers – a modern/hip-hop dance dancer raised in Queens, and a folkloric dancer from the Andes – who embark on dance odysseys through Peru to search…
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French Fries vs. Choclo and Boiled Potatoes: Why Peruvians Aren’t Fat
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking this week about obesity in the United States vs. weight and nutrition in Peru. We’re currently exploring these topics in the conversation class I teach at UPC (see class blog, here), but really, they’ve been on my mind since I moved to Peru from Florida in July 2007. Why is it now normal to be fat in the United States? And why do you rarely see an obese person in Peru? After living here for two years, I know why: We Americans regularly eat fried, processed foods, many of them in huge qualities. In contrast, Peruvians’ regular diet tends to consist of fresh food and dishes made…
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Deadly Negligence: Peru’s Red Cross & Cold Deaths in Andes
At last count (mid August), 514 Peruvians had died of pneumonia brought on by extreme cold this year, most of them children under five. Most reasonable people would call that an emergency. Not Peru’s Red Cross, however. In a bulletin issued August 4, 2009, the Peruvian Red Cross (PRC) issued a general statement about the cold deaths in Puno, noting the low temperatures, the rise in pneumonia cases and the deaths of “113” children (a number much lower than that cited by other news sources in early August). After low-balling the number of deaths, the bulletin explained that the PRC “has been assisting the affected people with medicines, blankets and food items. Additionally, the…
