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In December of last year I took a long-awaited trip to Peru to see my friend from high school (and also to see Peru). I took a pit stop in Texas to visit my grandmother and then flew on direct to Lima. By the time I arrived, it was near midnight, and I was nervous. I hadn’t seen my friend in almost 8 years. What if we had nothing to talk about? What if it was awkward? What if my beginner Spanish wasn’t enough to get around? (It wasn’t. I survived, though).
My anxiousness and fears evaporated when I found my friend. He had brought two other friends to the airport to pick me up, and they both greeted me with unprecedented warmth and friendliness. “Are you hungry?” one asked. I wasn’t really, so I expressed indifference, which they took to mean yes. “You have to feed her, Seb!” she scolded.
While they debated where to eat in rapid-fire Spanish, I looked up and down the street that led us away from the airport. Everything looked a little dustier than in Canada. Despite the late hour there were plenty of people out and about and they didn’t look very tired. Loud music played from a boom box and a few people were dancing next to it.
All four of us piled into Sebastian’s car, a smaller vehicle than the ones we see in Canada, and Sebastian’s other friend put on dance music at a loud volume. No one seemed concerned about disrupting the peace and quiet of night and no one shot us any covert glances. On the contrary, other cars more often than not were also playing loud music into the night. The buildings were built right up to the streets, no green grass lawns, and hung over the sidewalk, supported by posts at the corners. Electrical wires swung low across the streets. Shadows cast ominous darkness around every corner. “This is the bad part of town,” Sebastian told me, gesturing across the highway. “Don’t go here alone.”
We stopped by a convenience store to buy snacks, as nothing was open. I tried a sweet biscuit-like cookie, a Peruvian special, they told me, and some lime-flavoured chips (not my favourite, but not bad). “What’s your favourite thing about Peru?” I asked his friend.
“The food, definitely,” she said.
We dropped off the two friends, but then Sebastian said he was still hungry. At midnight?! We went to a local sandwich shop, the only place open. All the buildings in this area were merged into one long, continuous wall of some sort of plaster, with a garage-like square opening in the front. This little sandwich shop had two tables and at least a hundred options on the menu. “The prices have gone up,” Sebastian said as he read the menu. They still looked pretty cheap to me and my Canadian standards – three to five dollars for a sandwich and drink option.
Finally, we made it to Sebastian’s house, which was really nice and at the top of a hill. You could see the whole section of the city from the driveway. And there was only one neighbour on the left – on the right, massive sand empty dunes rose up above the backyard. Two little dogs, Luke and Benito, sat outside the front door. They came up to inspect us with tails wagging. “Be careful around Benito,” Sebastian told me. “He’s blind. If you startle him, he might try to bite you.” But I didn’t startle him and he let me pet him. Inside the house, an orange cat Tomoy greeted us.
The next morning, Sebastian’s mother and sister fed me a breakfast of potatoes and eggs with lots of lard. Sebastian told me about a house party he was hosting in a few days. In the afternoon, his friend would come over to help clean and prepare for it.
Though still early morning I could already tell it was shaping up to be a hot and humid day. The air clung to my clothes and skin like a heated blanket. I followed Sebastian to the backyard on a house tour. The backyard had multiple levels, as it was built into a hill, and one held a beautiful patio with a roof and nice soft fairy lighting. “You guys must host a lot of parties,” I said.
“One time, when I was in Canada on exchange, I saw a post on Facebook about a really big crazy house party. Then I read the post and the party was at my house! My brother started it. That was a crazy party. My father found strangers on the roof in the morning.” He laughed at the memory. Strangers on the roof! I thought in disbelief.
Sebastian took me on a tour of his university, the best agricultural university in Peru. There were llamas, cows, and alpacas in the farm section. Sebastian told me the Spanish names of all the animals but added “ito” at the end, which he said was a cute way of referring to something in Spanish. It seemed like Sebastian knew every third person we saw. “That’s Potter, that’s not his real name, we just call him that because he looks like Harry Potter,” he told me. It seemed like everyone he knew also had a nickname that had nothing to do with their real name.
Only the library seemed to be more than three stories – a lot of buildings were small, sort of open-concept with hallways outside and only enclosed in the classrooms. Open areas held a few small carts packed to the brim with snacks, water, pop, chips, and more. We bought two waters for a dollar – never drink the tap water, only bottled water, Sebastian told me – and went to the library.
Countless eyes of dark-haired, darker-skinned Peruvian students followed my blonde head around the library. I was used to this from my time living in Taiwan, but the stares were different here, more covert. Less obvious. Perhaps it was social norms, or their age, or exposure to more foreigners.
Sebastian pointed out some workers clad head-to-toe in green, and called them ‘peas’ (derogatory), explaining that the students didn’t like them because they enforced loitering rules. He took me to the cafeteria, where the line was fifty people long and wrapped around the corner of the building. “The food is all free, lunch and dinner,” Sebastian said. “Last year, it cost maybe fifty cents or so. It was supposed to be free because this is a public university. Then there was a big protest, and we all camped out here. And we won! So now it’s free.”
“You guys all protested for free campus food? And before it was fifty cents?” My voice sounded incredulous even to me.
“Well, more than just that. But that was part of it.”
Each department or major – agricultural engineering, sciences, medical, humanities – had their own study room, and Sebastian showed me the room for his studies, though it was filled with mostly first and second year students he didn’t know. Even in the study room someone was blasting loud dance music, and no one seemed at all bothered by it.
Sebastian went to class while I hung out in the library, and then we met up with Reny to go and prepare for the party. First, though, we stopped by a wall – literally, a steel garage-door-esque wall flat in the side of a building. A white sheet of printer paper was taped against the wall. Why were we here?
Reny got out and rapped on the wall. A small square of metal suddenly protruded out from it, about shoulder height and ending at waist height. Behind the metal-flap-window, a grouchy-looking man stood. He and Reny exchanged terse words in Spanish and then, 3 little containers of ice cream made their way across the partition.
The one that made its way to me was delicious, creamy and flavorful chocolate ice cream with an unfamiliar warm sweetness, like a custard, that I assumed was due to the different non-Canadian milk (in my opinion, milk tastes different in every country. French milk is delectable). Sebastian informed me this hidden portal to free ice cream was a little-known campus gem, and that the cows used to make it were special research cows, part of a long-term project at the university.
Back at Sebastian’s house we moved furniture, swept, mopped, and ate dinner. Sebastian’s mom asked us to move a bunch of boxes and furniture around the house, so we did that as well.
That night, everything was set for the party by 10pm, though Sebastian informed me no one was going to show up until at least eleven. It wasn’t BYOD – Sebastian went and bought lots of alcohol – which surprised me because BYOD is the standard in Canada. I was also surprised that Sebastian’s very Catholic family were perfectly fine with him hosting a house party. Cultural differences. I was learning that in Peru, partying and dancing is an essential part of life and not something parents are supposed to reprove.
Around forty people showed up, mostly guys. A lot of them tried to talk to me but couldn’t because of language barriers. The women let me tag along with them. They and also struggled to talk to me but tried a little harder, and I managed to communicate with a mix of broken Spanish and broken English. Everyone was interested in dancing! Sebastian whirled and jived around the patio, clearly the dancing expert, but everyone had a natural affinity for dance. Near the end of the night (or morning), after at least five hours of continuous dancing, a jungle song came on. “Selva!” Remi said, his face alight. Earlier in the day he had told me he was from the jungle. He started dancing a traditional jungle dance, jumping back and forth so high into the air that it looked like he had springs on his feet. After hours and hours of dancing, this was even more impressive.
I mentioned Reny’s dancing abilities to Sebastian later, and he told me that Reny had represented their class in a university-wide dance competition last semester. He showed me the videos from it. Students were gathered on the grass, and in the middle, pairs of students danced. Every minute or so, the music changed, and the pairs had to switch up their dance as well. “Take off your clothes, Reny! Too many clothes!!” people yelled from the sidelines as they danced. One duo of two guys very enthusiastically stripped down to their shorts and danced sensually together. At a school sanctioned event?! Peruvians seemed much more free and expressive than Canada. Though I never thought of Canada as repressed. I thought of my time in Taiwan. Taking a Taiwanese person to Peru would be the biggest culture shock possible, I thought.
The next morning, or afternoon it was by the time we woke up, Reny, Sebastian, and I went to a local chicken soup store. Chicken soup is the best cure for hangovers, they told me, and a staple Peruvian food. According to Sebastian, this establishment was part of a chain that had better soup at other locations, but the other locations were a bit far to drive right now. The soup tasted delicious enough for me as it was.
As I spent more time in Peru I realized that, at least in Sebastians circle of friends, spending time together and helping each other out is much more valued than in Canada. Sebastian spent a whole day helping someone on a school project for a course he had never taken and never planned to take. Another day, a close friend spent hours on the phone helping him with a school assignment, and that friend didn’t even go to the same university. Remi came over again to help move boxes and organize things. One day, I wanted to go to the beach and surf on a day no one was free, so I planned to take an Uber. When he heard that, Sebastian said, Uber? No. Let me see if the neighbour can take you. I couldn’t imagine asking the neighbour to drive me to the beach when I could easily pay for an Uber. I guess that’s something all these for-hire services has lost us – a helping hand from a neighbour and a sense of community that arises from it. If you’re Canadian, what would your neighbour say if you asked them to drive you to the airport? Most neighbours, if they’re nice, would probably do their best to help. But no one is going to ask because Uber is right there. What if you’re three eggs short in your banana bread recipe? In another life I would ask my neighbour for three eggs and give them some banana bread in return. In this life, everyone has UberEats and InstaCart. But I still might ask my neighbour! It’s not about the eggs.
I learned about the three regions in Peru – the desert (desierto), the highlands (sierra), and the jungle (selva). Each region had their own cultural differences, traditions, music, slang, and stereotypes. Sebastian told me wild story after wild story of getting lost in the highlands and the desert, having to rely on the kindness of random strangers, who always pulled through, it seemed. He warned me about dangerous areas and crimes that happened regularly in Lima, as well. I asked about the bus system, and it seemed so unpredictable and irregular as to be basically useless. I asked many people I met what their favourite thing about Peru was, and the most common response was the food. Everyone loved their Peruvian food. And I did too! Every meal I had was delicious.
Everything everywhere was pretty loud in Lima. People played music at all hours of the night, in the streets, in their cars, and in their houses with the windows and doors open. There were lots of loose dogs running around, too. Everyone was open and friendly and nice, and asked me if I wanted to climb mountains with them, or go to their beach house, or go to their actual house. And they genuinely meant it, too, they weren’t just being nice. Sebastian happily took near strangers up on these offers and didn’t have any of my Canadian-culture apprehension about imposing.
One time, we walked an elderly gentleman home from Mass. Lo and behold, at his house there was a party – I guess he had taken a brief departure as the host to go to Mass – and the people their eagerly invited us in and fed us hors d’oeuvres. Sebastian kept saying, we really can’t stay, but they insisted. Finally, we managed to get away. As we left, one man called out, “Ah, you can go but at least leave the gringa here to party!” and everyone laughed (out of context that might sound creepy, but it was said in jest and not in a creepy way).
I picked up some Spanish pretty quickly, which made me realize how hard learning Mandarin actually was. Whenever people ask me if it was hard to learn Chinese, my answer is always that I have nothing to which I can compare the experience. Learning French in school for several years doesn’t really compare to living in immersion in Chinese in a small town in Taiwan for a year. Sure, I read the newspaper and worked hard to study and watched Peppa Pig in Chinese every day on the bus. Was it difficult? I didn’t know. Difficult is relative. I was blessed in Taiwan that I was committed to the journey. I never wanted to give up. Oftentimes I felt frustrated that my Chinse wasn’t improving as fast as I wanted, but the way I saw it, I didn’t have any other options other than to keep learning and keep trying.
After a week in Peru, I can confidently say that learning Chinese was very difficult. In one week in Peru, my Spanish improved more than my Mandarin had after three months in Taiwan. After one week (and two months of study back in Canada) I could hold stilted conversations and get around words I didn’t know with descriptions. If I stayed for two or three months, I would be able to communicate as well as I could after a year in Taiwan. Spanish is way easier to pick up! It helped that there are so many like words and similar grammatical structures. One thing I really like about Mandarin Chinese is the functional, practical grammar. There’s no verb conjugations in Mandarin and man do I not like verb conjugations. Or gendered nouns. I’m not a fan of gendered nouns.
Dust settled over everything in Lima – there was no place, inside or outside, that can escape the dust. Driving through the city, we wove around dune-like hills, barren except for small cacti and scratchy plants. Dust blew over the streets and highways. The sun shone behind a constant veil of fog and smog. I had never been anywhere like it.
I had a great time in Peru, and I’m glad I had the chance to experience a slice-of-Peruvian-life through my friendship with Sebastian. Isn’t it neat how some friends you can go your separate ways for years and years and then when your paths converge again, you can pick up right where you left off!
My trip also inspired me to work harder to learn Spanish, because there’s a whole world out there only available to Spanish speakers. Music, artists, books, movies, culture, friends, places, and perspectives unlockable only through learning more Spanish. I feel the same about learning Mandarin. One day, I hope, I can unlock more the Spanish-speaking world out there. Then I’ll be able to glimpse into three of the biggest, most prominent worlds out there: the English-speaking world (born and raised in it), the Mandarin Chinese speaking world (I feel that I understand that world to some extent), and then, the Spanish speaking world.
Serena Around the World 