Well, the day of reckoning has arrived.
After a year of touting my cricketing credentials, thereby managing to get myself a job as official scorer (see previous blog) and elected at Women’s Cricket Officer for Peru Cricket, I was told that I had to pull together a team for an historic Peruvian event: the first ever women’s cricket match between MY(??!) team and a far better practiced team of teachers from Markham School.
As anyone who knows me can tell you, I talk a good game. But I haven’t hefted a bat since university days and can’t bowl worth a toss. I could as much set the hounds to the foxes as set a field.
After a mad scramble involving begging on bended knee and blackmailing a couple of my students I now have the required quantity for a six-a-side and, as soon as I finish writing this, I am off to the Lima Cricket Club.
This morning it suddenly occurred to me that we have no uniforms. I thought I’d have a rummage through my extensive T-shirt collection and take along a few white tops. I discovered that I have loads of white T-shirts left over from the various Commonwealth Election Observer Missions I had done in those countries where the colours of the main political parties clashed with those of the Commonwealth. In those cases we used to hurriedly commission white T-shirts with the Commonwealth logo on the pocket surrounded by the words “Commonwealth Expert Team” plus the place and date of the election.
Ooooh, I thought, we’ll be the Commonwealth Expert Team! On my team I have a half-Aruban-half-Peruvian, a half-Kiwi-half-Peruvian, an Auzzie, two full Peruvians, an American and, I think, a Pakistani.
We, of course, suck. The Peruvians (an art teacher and a veterinary student) have never played cricket and have watched a grand total of one game. The Aruban is sporty as hell, as keen as mustard and reminds me of myself at that age (15). The Auzzie attempted to take an interest in cricket when married to her first husband but had since moved on. I have never met the Pakistani but have great hopes. I have been suffering for a few months with tendonitis of the wrist and am secretly hoping that I can use this as an excuse to get out of the whole thing.
Markham ladies look out!
I am a bit nervous about posting this blog for fear of getting into post-employment trouble from the Commonwealth Secretary-General for misuse of the logo, though I think that any non-criminal promotion of the Commonwealth is A Good Thing. However, even if I get sued, I would like to dedicate this rout – I mean match –to Amitav, my fellow COMSEC cricket enthusiast and a great all-rounder.
So Amitav, morituri te salutant!
Update: We won! Several of my players didn’t turn up so the Markham captain unwisely lent me three Peruvians who had never played cricket before but were members of the national women’s rugby squad. A five minute coaching session later we were off.
The Pakistani turned out to be an Indian with great line and length and a thorough knowledge of the rules. She promptly stumped any opposition player who stepped outside her crease, gaining us several crucial wickets. She and I took turns keeping wicket and the rest of the match consisted of a contest between which side bowled the least amount of wides. We won by two runs.
Sunday 7 November 2010
Thursday 17 June 2010
Does Criticizing People In Positions Of Authority Excite You Sexually?
I have suddenly realised why people looked at me aghast and reached for the straightjacket when I told them that after nine years I was going to have another child.
It’s not the midnight feeds or the diaper changing or the fact that I can no longer wear dangly jewellery; it’s the children’s TV programmes. I now have to re-live Playhouse Disney and the Teletubbies.
For those of you who have never had the pleasure, the Teletubbies are all the rage among the infant and pre-school set: a group of plush, amorphous creatures of assorted bright colours; asexual yet thoroughly camp. The big purple one, Tinky Winky, is fond of carrying around a red handbag. They speak in incredibly annoying baby language and are much given to group hugs. Like a recurring nightmare I am now having to watch the Teletubbies not only AGAIN but in Spanish, which I assure you does not improve their adult appeal. And don’t get me started on that purple paedophile Barney...
And speaking of paedophiles, I am officially not one. Or so I assume having just been through a most rigorous psychological testing process while applying to teach at a school here in Lima.
In my other life, I have been through and sat on interview panels, observed a variety of group exercises and participated in assessment centres for jobs involving postings to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. I’ve had interviewees reveal the most amazing personality traits (particularly when asked to illustrate their understanding and appreciation of cultural diversity). I’ve been asked to draw a tree and a picture of a man in the rain by a forensic psychologist. I’ve even been required to play a complicated version of Cluedo with a bunch of Foreign Office types – If we could conclude that it was Miss Scarlet in the study with the candlestick we would presumably be good at figuring out where the roadside bombs were if we happened to be posted to Basra.
But I’ve never experienced such a thorough mental grilling as this one.
It started off innocuously enough. Could I please, asked the pleasant lady school psychologist, draw a picture of a house? Piece of piss. I drew a box with curtained windows, a triangular roof, a door and a welcome mat. I then gratuitously added such peripherals as a swimming pool, a bike lying on the grass, a barbeque grill and some frolicking children. Lady Psych then quizzed me gently about the house. Is it inhabited? Whose is it? Is it in the country or the city? What does it have inside? (A large kitchen and lots of space for books.) I signed my name on the back and we moved on.
Could I please draw a picture of a person in the rain? Now I have come across this before. My theory is that if you leave the poor person in the rain without either raincoat or umbrella you are revealing an unpleasant tendency to be unfeeling or cruel. I therefore gave my person an umbrella and one hand extended to check if the rain was about to let up – meant to demonstrate an optimistic outlook – driving the point home by plastering a large grin on the face. I was also very careful to include ears. I had read somewhere that psychiatrists leap upon the absence of ears as evidence of some subconscious statement or the other.
My efforts got a noncommittal smile from the Psych and a request that I arrange six or seven coloured cards into the order which I found most appealing. Having started with orange and ended with a kind of boring beige (with black and white somewhere spaced out in the middle), I moved on to a computer test which required me to rate myself on a scale of one (rarely/never) to five (frequently/always) in reply to statements like: “I often see and hear things that other people do not” or “I sometimes feel that I am outside of my own body”.
Bear in mind that all these test are administered in Spanish so one has to beware of subtle linguistic pitfalls. For example, were they asking if I had had experiences of being out of my own body or in someone else's? Or maybe experiences with someone else´s body – which would be an entirely different kettle of fish. One can´t be too careful.
These difficulties were compounded when we moved on to the final part of the test.
I was presented with 250 A or B statements. I had to choose whichever statement I agreed with most. If I agreed with neither I had to choose the one I disagreed with least. But I HAD to choose one. No question could be skipped.
At first they were pretty straightforward:
A. I like to have my desk and workspace neat and tidy or B. I enjoy laughing publicly at the mistakes of others. Duh.
A. I like to plan a trip well in advance or B. I enjoy asking questions that I know no one can answer.
But questions kept recurring in less palatable combinations:
A. I like to criticize people in authority or B. I enjoy laughing publicly at the mistakes of others.
I spent a particularly long time on: A. I enjoy reading books with a large sexual content or B. I like to tell other people how to do their jobs.
Well, I thought, obviously you don’t inform your would-be employers in advance that you plan to be a pain in the ass to your colleagues. But do I want to give the impression that I have a bedside collection of naughty novels? On balance I figured that many great works of literature could be considered to have a large sexual content and I’d rather argue the toss than come across as a coy, hypocritical, busybody.
But forget the risqué books, the sexual content of the test started to increase alarmingly.
Did I, it inquired, A. Prefer to plan a trip well in advance or B. Enjoy listening to or telling jokes with high sexual content?
Do I A. Enjoy laughing publicly at the mistakes of others or B. Like watching movies with high sexual content?
The test was obviously designed to weed out paedophiles, other sexual deviants and anyone with an irreverent sense of humour. Eventually being faced with the choice of: A. I enjoy criticizing people in positions of authority. Or: B. I enjoy exciting myself sexually, I had to exert all my self control not to reply “Criticizing people in positions of authority excites me sexually”.
I figure that the computer rating test I had done before was a general intelligence test since you´d have to be pretty dumb to admit in a job interview that you have out-of-body experiences or regularly hear voices and see ghosts. The final test was obviously personality based, possibly of the popular Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) variety which, Wikipedia tells us,
I got the job so I’ll leave it to my readers to decide which category I should be filed under.
Well, my regression is complete. Not only am I re-living The Baby Years but I am also awash with adolescents on a daily basis. I am teaching English to grade eights; being addresses as Meeees; singing along to the Wiggles; and my knowledge of current affairs is once again limited to the latest episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.
To mitigate the shock of this transformation and to escape the Peruvian ‘winter’ I’ve decided to take the family to Trinidad in July for a sun and sea vacation. I have therefore embarked on a strict diet and exercise regime to get in shape for the necessary swimwear. I call it Road to Bikini Bottom.
And I plan to take along a lot of naughty books to read by the pool.
It’s not the midnight feeds or the diaper changing or the fact that I can no longer wear dangly jewellery; it’s the children’s TV programmes. I now have to re-live Playhouse Disney and the Teletubbies.
For those of you who have never had the pleasure, the Teletubbies are all the rage among the infant and pre-school set: a group of plush, amorphous creatures of assorted bright colours; asexual yet thoroughly camp. The big purple one, Tinky Winky, is fond of carrying around a red handbag. They speak in incredibly annoying baby language and are much given to group hugs. Like a recurring nightmare I am now having to watch the Teletubbies not only AGAIN but in Spanish, which I assure you does not improve their adult appeal. And don’t get me started on that purple paedophile Barney...
And speaking of paedophiles, I am officially not one. Or so I assume having just been through a most rigorous psychological testing process while applying to teach at a school here in Lima.
In my other life, I have been through and sat on interview panels, observed a variety of group exercises and participated in assessment centres for jobs involving postings to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. I’ve had interviewees reveal the most amazing personality traits (particularly when asked to illustrate their understanding and appreciation of cultural diversity). I’ve been asked to draw a tree and a picture of a man in the rain by a forensic psychologist. I’ve even been required to play a complicated version of Cluedo with a bunch of Foreign Office types – If we could conclude that it was Miss Scarlet in the study with the candlestick we would presumably be good at figuring out where the roadside bombs were if we happened to be posted to Basra.
But I’ve never experienced such a thorough mental grilling as this one.
It started off innocuously enough. Could I please, asked the pleasant lady school psychologist, draw a picture of a house? Piece of piss. I drew a box with curtained windows, a triangular roof, a door and a welcome mat. I then gratuitously added such peripherals as a swimming pool, a bike lying on the grass, a barbeque grill and some frolicking children. Lady Psych then quizzed me gently about the house. Is it inhabited? Whose is it? Is it in the country or the city? What does it have inside? (A large kitchen and lots of space for books.) I signed my name on the back and we moved on.
Could I please draw a picture of a person in the rain? Now I have come across this before. My theory is that if you leave the poor person in the rain without either raincoat or umbrella you are revealing an unpleasant tendency to be unfeeling or cruel. I therefore gave my person an umbrella and one hand extended to check if the rain was about to let up – meant to demonstrate an optimistic outlook – driving the point home by plastering a large grin on the face. I was also very careful to include ears. I had read somewhere that psychiatrists leap upon the absence of ears as evidence of some subconscious statement or the other.
My efforts got a noncommittal smile from the Psych and a request that I arrange six or seven coloured cards into the order which I found most appealing. Having started with orange and ended with a kind of boring beige (with black and white somewhere spaced out in the middle), I moved on to a computer test which required me to rate myself on a scale of one (rarely/never) to five (frequently/always) in reply to statements like: “I often see and hear things that other people do not” or “I sometimes feel that I am outside of my own body”.
Bear in mind that all these test are administered in Spanish so one has to beware of subtle linguistic pitfalls. For example, were they asking if I had had experiences of being out of my own body or in someone else's? Or maybe experiences with someone else´s body – which would be an entirely different kettle of fish. One can´t be too careful.
These difficulties were compounded when we moved on to the final part of the test.
I was presented with 250 A or B statements. I had to choose whichever statement I agreed with most. If I agreed with neither I had to choose the one I disagreed with least. But I HAD to choose one. No question could be skipped.
At first they were pretty straightforward:
A. I like to have my desk and workspace neat and tidy or B. I enjoy laughing publicly at the mistakes of others. Duh.
A. I like to plan a trip well in advance or B. I enjoy asking questions that I know no one can answer.
But questions kept recurring in less palatable combinations:
A. I like to criticize people in authority or B. I enjoy laughing publicly at the mistakes of others.
I spent a particularly long time on: A. I enjoy reading books with a large sexual content or B. I like to tell other people how to do their jobs.
Well, I thought, obviously you don’t inform your would-be employers in advance that you plan to be a pain in the ass to your colleagues. But do I want to give the impression that I have a bedside collection of naughty novels? On balance I figured that many great works of literature could be considered to have a large sexual content and I’d rather argue the toss than come across as a coy, hypocritical, busybody.
But forget the risqué books, the sexual content of the test started to increase alarmingly.
Did I, it inquired, A. Prefer to plan a trip well in advance or B. Enjoy listening to or telling jokes with high sexual content?
Do I A. Enjoy laughing publicly at the mistakes of others or B. Like watching movies with high sexual content?
The test was obviously designed to weed out paedophiles, other sexual deviants and anyone with an irreverent sense of humour. Eventually being faced with the choice of: A. I enjoy criticizing people in positions of authority. Or: B. I enjoy exciting myself sexually, I had to exert all my self control not to reply “Criticizing people in positions of authority excites me sexually”.
I figure that the computer rating test I had done before was a general intelligence test since you´d have to be pretty dumb to admit in a job interview that you have out-of-body experiences or regularly hear voices and see ghosts. The final test was obviously personality based, possibly of the popular Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) variety which, Wikipedia tells us,
“...is a highly validated psychopathology test generally used in a clinical psychology setting that may reveal potential mental health disorders...Notable situations in which the MMPI may be used, and is sometimes mandated, are in final selection for police officers, fire fighters, and other security and emergency personnel, especially when required to carry weapons. In that context, an assessment of mental stability and fitness can be argued as "reasonably related" and necessary in the performance of the job.”I don’t know whether a marking book and a memory stick can be considered weapons but I suppose teachers are reasonable candidates for “assessment of mental stability and fitness”. But what kind of personality were they looking for? I have no doubt they have some fancy grid that they lay over your answer sheet and hey presto, your true colours emerge. I had in fact heard that several promising candidates had failed the test so it wasn’t just a box-ticking exercise on the part of management. But, staggering out exhausted after two hours, it seemed to me that one could only emerge as either A. a dangerous sex maniac or B. an anal retentive bully.
I got the job so I’ll leave it to my readers to decide which category I should be filed under.
Well, my regression is complete. Not only am I re-living The Baby Years but I am also awash with adolescents on a daily basis. I am teaching English to grade eights; being addresses as Meeees; singing along to the Wiggles; and my knowledge of current affairs is once again limited to the latest episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.
To mitigate the shock of this transformation and to escape the Peruvian ‘winter’ I’ve decided to take the family to Trinidad in July for a sun and sea vacation. I have therefore embarked on a strict diet and exercise regime to get in shape for the necessary swimwear. I call it Road to Bikini Bottom.
And I plan to take along a lot of naughty books to read by the pool.
Tuesday 8 June 2010
Y ¿Qué Tal la Comida?
Far be it for me to be judgemental about other people’s self-delusion. I have enough of my own. I defend fiercely anyone’s right to their beliefs, no matter how absurd. And I would go to great lengths to avoid embarrassing people by revealing their harmless mistakes, particularly when I am a guest in their country.
For example, one day I told my helper – who speaks no English – that I had bought but misplaced some furniture polish. I described what it was for and said it was in a spray bottle. A few days later she informed me that she had found it, no worries. It was only several weeks later that I discovered that she has been assiduously anointing my furniture with SPF 4 Banana Boat Dark Tanning Oil. I have not had the heart to point out the misunderstanding so my bookshelves are benefitting from being moisturised with aloe vera and carrot extract.
While this may indeed be skin off my nose, to me it wasn’t worth making her feel silly. But there are limits.
As any regular reader of this blog can testify, I have endured with great stoicism the national obsession with food. If I had a sol for every time a taxi driver has asked me “Y ¿qué tal la comida?” I would have a chauffeur and several personal slaves and not have to take taxis at all. I have answered politely millions of questions about the relative merits of Caribbean over Peruvian food. I have endured uncomplaining endless rants about the charms of raw fish, lime and onions; bravely sampled and enjoyed alpaca and guinea pig; and even ingested purple corn in various liquid and gelatinous forms despite rumours that the key ingredient is spit.
But there is such a thing as mass delusion which, as history has shown, is often best nipped in the bud. So if no one else will speak up, I will. At the risk of causing permanent trauma to the Peruvian national psyche I am compelled to call a spade a spade. Or rather, a roast chicken a roast chicken.
Sorry for my grumpiness but you don’t have to smile and exclaim hypocritically every time someone in Lima promises you with an arch expression the equivalent of an edible orgasm and then presents you triumphantly with yet another pollo a la brasa.
With all due respect to Mr Schuler, pollo a la brasa (at least in its modern form) that reverentially named staple of Peruvian cuisine is...chicken and chips. It is not, as all Peruvians believe, uniquely Peruvian and – though I have utterly failed to convince my in-laws or any other Limeño of this – can be found worldwide.
Rotisserie chicken: the healthier alternative to KFC.
Yes, yes, I say (raising my voice to be heard over the clamour of Peruvian protest) no doubt there are differences in seasoning, but nothing so startling as to base an entire expatriate culture on, I assure you. And yet, check out this You Tube clip. When we lived in London my husband would play it over and over again late at night, salivating and sighing with frustrated desire. Watching New Yorkers sing the praises of this ethnic culinary phenomenon you would be forgiven for thinking this is a new cult founded on the Upper West Side by the Peruvian diaspora. The gringos lick their fingers and exclaim at the flavour, the juiciness. “Mah gaaad, it’s awesome!” they gush.”It’s better than sex!”
For god’s sake, it’s fucking rotisserie chicken and chips, not the long lost recipe for manna from heaven!
Now if you tell me about parihuela, the seafood soup to end all seafood soups, you have my full respect, and anyone who says that French bouillabaisse is better will have me to deal with. Revel in the fact that Peru has more varieties of potato, corn and peppers than anywhere else in the world. Boast about the artistic layering of potatoes and various other ingredients to produce the delicious causa; continue – if you must – to bore me to death about ceviche in all its manifestations; stuff me with choclo con queso and drown me in chicha but trust me, pollo a la brasa is not the best example of a national dish. Hang your sense of national identity on that and you’re in for a nasty shock if you ever visit Hi Lo Supermarket in Port of Spain or Tesco’s in London.
I’m just saying.
Oh, and while we’re setting the record straight, Chinese food is NOT indigenous to Peru even if you’ve changed the name so stop giving me that blank look of disbelief when I say we have lots of it in Trinidad too.
Here endeth the rant. Time for a pisco sour...now there’s a well-deserved Peruvian bragging right.
For example, one day I told my helper – who speaks no English – that I had bought but misplaced some furniture polish. I described what it was for and said it was in a spray bottle. A few days later she informed me that she had found it, no worries. It was only several weeks later that I discovered that she has been assiduously anointing my furniture with SPF 4 Banana Boat Dark Tanning Oil. I have not had the heart to point out the misunderstanding so my bookshelves are benefitting from being moisturised with aloe vera and carrot extract.
While this may indeed be skin off my nose, to me it wasn’t worth making her feel silly. But there are limits.
As any regular reader of this blog can testify, I have endured with great stoicism the national obsession with food. If I had a sol for every time a taxi driver has asked me “Y ¿qué tal la comida?” I would have a chauffeur and several personal slaves and not have to take taxis at all. I have answered politely millions of questions about the relative merits of Caribbean over Peruvian food. I have endured uncomplaining endless rants about the charms of raw fish, lime and onions; bravely sampled and enjoyed alpaca and guinea pig; and even ingested purple corn in various liquid and gelatinous forms despite rumours that the key ingredient is spit.
But there is such a thing as mass delusion which, as history has shown, is often best nipped in the bud. So if no one else will speak up, I will. At the risk of causing permanent trauma to the Peruvian national psyche I am compelled to call a spade a spade. Or rather, a roast chicken a roast chicken.
Sorry for my grumpiness but you don’t have to smile and exclaim hypocritically every time someone in Lima promises you with an arch expression the equivalent of an edible orgasm and then presents you triumphantly with yet another pollo a la brasa.
“Pollo a la Brasa,...is a common dish of Peruvian cuisine and one of the most consumed in Peru, along with ceviche, and Chifa. The dish originated in the city of Lima in the 1950s...The origins of the recipe are attributed to Roger Schuler, who devised the specific method of cooking the chicken, observing his cook's technique in preparation, and gradually, along with his business partners, perfected the recipe, creating the Granja Azul restaurant in Santa Clara, district of Ate, in Lima....Originally its consumption was specific to the high socioeconomic classes (during the 1950's until the 1970's); however its consumption later became(sic) to include the medium and low socioeconomic classes as well. The original version consisted of a chicken (cooked in charcoal and marinated only with salt) served with large french fries and traditionally eaten with the fingers, without cutlery. Its popularity became massive in the 1970's.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollo_a_la_Brasa)
With all due respect to Mr Schuler, pollo a la brasa (at least in its modern form) that reverentially named staple of Peruvian cuisine is...chicken and chips. It is not, as all Peruvians believe, uniquely Peruvian and – though I have utterly failed to convince my in-laws or any other Limeño of this – can be found worldwide.
Rotisserie chicken: the healthier alternative to KFC.
Yes, yes, I say (raising my voice to be heard over the clamour of Peruvian protest) no doubt there are differences in seasoning, but nothing so startling as to base an entire expatriate culture on, I assure you. And yet, check out this You Tube clip. When we lived in London my husband would play it over and over again late at night, salivating and sighing with frustrated desire. Watching New Yorkers sing the praises of this ethnic culinary phenomenon you would be forgiven for thinking this is a new cult founded on the Upper West Side by the Peruvian diaspora. The gringos lick their fingers and exclaim at the flavour, the juiciness. “Mah gaaad, it’s awesome!” they gush.”It’s better than sex!”
For god’s sake, it’s fucking rotisserie chicken and chips, not the long lost recipe for manna from heaven!
Now if you tell me about parihuela, the seafood soup to end all seafood soups, you have my full respect, and anyone who says that French bouillabaisse is better will have me to deal with. Revel in the fact that Peru has more varieties of potato, corn and peppers than anywhere else in the world. Boast about the artistic layering of potatoes and various other ingredients to produce the delicious causa; continue – if you must – to bore me to death about ceviche in all its manifestations; stuff me with choclo con queso and drown me in chicha but trust me, pollo a la brasa is not the best example of a national dish. Hang your sense of national identity on that and you’re in for a nasty shock if you ever visit Hi Lo Supermarket in Port of Spain or Tesco’s in London.
I’m just saying.
Oh, and while we’re setting the record straight, Chinese food is NOT indigenous to Peru even if you’ve changed the name so stop giving me that blank look of disbelief when I say we have lots of it in Trinidad too.
Here endeth the rant. Time for a pisco sour...now there’s a well-deserved Peruvian bragging right.
Wednesday 26 May 2010
Hubris is a Hell of a Thing
When my daughter, now happily ensconced in a new school, announced that it was Sports Week and that one evening would be devoted to a parents swimming competition, I jumped at the chance to impress her.
After all, I’ve been swimming my whole life. My father, the Colossus of our childhood, had deemed me the most aquatically streamlined of his children and insisted that I swim endless lengths on all water-related occasions. At the age of twelve I swam lengths of the university pool, closely followed by our enthusiastic, long-clawed dog. I swam against fierce currents off the coast of the island we grew up on. I swam lengths of every hotel pool on every holiday we ever had.
Being crap at athletics, pathetic at maths and completely useless at attending PTA Mothers Day luncheons I thought that this was an opportunity to make a contribution to her school life. I pictured myself turning up at the pool and wowing the assembled crowds with stylish freestyle and Olympic-class breaststroke. “Goodness” they would exclaim, “now we know where she gets her talent from.” (My daughter had won all her swimming events the day before.)
In addition, I would be honouring a long family tradition. My father is an excellent and stylish swimmer and I well remember how in my childhood, when our school announced the introduction of a father's race in its annual swimming gala he went into training and we boasted for weeks. On the day, due to some misunderstanding between himself and the starter as to whether the starter should have said “Ready, set, go” or “Ready, go”, he false-started twice and ended up giving an exhibition performance of his immaculate freestyle.
So I dug out my one-piece from the back of the cupboard, shaved my legs and bikini line with the crappy razors they sell in Lima and borrowed Smuggies’ swimming cap. The swimsuit was stretched, the cap too small.
“Mum” said Smuggies in a doubtful tone. “Are you sure you want to compete? You really think you can win?”
“Of course!” I scoffed. “Don’t you have any faith in me? You think I can’t swim?”
“Well whenever we’re at a pool you spend all your time sun-tanning. And you never want to get your hair wet.”
It’s not my fault that I am pigmentally challenged. My older sister took all the brown genes and left none for me. It’s not my fault that water makes my hair expand like a huge fuzzy sponge.
I should have realised that something was amiss when we arrived at 6.35 for a 6.30 event and the pool was already full. Peruvians are NEVER on time. There is an official term for it: Hora Peruana, where one expects all events to start at least an hour late. But these folks were keen. In Smuggies’ last school in England the parents swimming race was cancelled for lack of interest (I was travelling at the time). But here were parents decked out in Speedos, swimming expert-looking warm-up lengths, their latex caps and ergonomic goggles bearing no sign of having been recently bought.
Peruvians, as I may have mentioned before, are generally rather diminutive. The women are well-turned out and apparently physically expert at nothing more strenuous than a twenty-meter dash for a taxi in painfully high heels. Gym attendance consists of mirror gazing and some gentle heel-raises to try to develop shapely calves to match unrealistic-looking boobs. In fact, my sister-in-law claims that exercise stops completely after university.
In addition to being taller and presumably stronger, I figured that I’d have the inherent advantage of the Caribbean island dweller over the denizens of a country which boasts beaches washed by the blood-freezing Humboldt Current. There are penguins and sea lions living off the coast of El Callao for god’s sake!
The parents were to swim for their respective children’s Houses. The British International School of Lima prides itself on Houses named Shakespeare, Dickens, Churchill and, mysteriously, Eckford. I would be swimming for (and hopefully like the) Dickens.
The pool was a classy 25 metre job complete with racing lines, starting blocks and lane dividers. A balcony above housed the spectators – on this occasion presumably proud sons and daughters. Having no babysitter I had brought along the Baby Inca, who was summarily banished to the upper balcony in the care of his sister. Rather nerve-wracking since the balcony railing was a bit low.
I jumped into the mercifully heated pool, paddled across to the Dickens group of parent and introduced myself with the usual cheek kisses. As we were all sporting swim caps and exposing rarely-seen body parts, it was unlikely that we’d recognise each other the next time we met.
Everyone seemed to know what the format was and I was pleased to see that Dickens had more competitors than the other Houses. Almost all were women; short, deceptively mild mannered, with well-muscled limbs and broad backs. I was delighted to note that one had a pronounced pot belly which even her designer Speedo could not subdue. I felt a bit more at home. I recognised a mother-and-father team whose son was in Smuggies’ class. In his miniscule trunks he looked like a Japanese version of Mark Spitz. His wife, on the other hand, looked like the female Michael Phelps complete with knee-length lycra speed suit and a Peru National Swim Team cap. My heart sank.
In the first race – freestyle – the Dickens mother in the heat ahead of me rocketed off the starting block in a long shallow dive, covered three-quarters of the length of the pool with a Man From Atlantis type underwater undulation, and, finally surfacing, touched the wall in two efficient strokes. Fuck.
“Dickens! Dickens!” the chant went up, echoing around the enclosed pavilion. Startled, the Baby Inca began to wail hysterically above.
I adjusted Sumggies’ undersized cap on my head and stepped up on the starting block, trying to suck in my stomach and stop my decidedly squishy post-natal legs from trembling as the whistle blew.
I came second.
But then, there were only two people in my heat.
After that it got worse. I backstroked so valiantly that I still have a black and blue on my forearm where it collided with the wall and my breaststroke, quite adequate for a leisurely swim to the nearest hotel pool bar, proved insufficient to garner more than last place. Emerging red-eyed (I had not deigned to wear goggles) I approached the crowd of mums at the scorers’ table, thinking I had to give my name and House. But no, the women were merely comparing their times to those before them. "¡Gané! (I won!)” cried the potbellied lady exultantly.
I limped back to the Sports Coordinator and explained that the baby was crying; that butterfly was not my best event; and that anyway, there were more than enough parents to make up the relay team.
“Never mind Mum,” said the valiant Smuggies, balancing her traumatised brother on one hip and firmly discarding inconvenient details, “you got a second place.”
As we made our premature exit I reflected on the innocence of childhood. Could it be possible that all those years ago my father had forfeited the possible thrill of victory in order to evade the potential agony of defeat?
Nah. But I will certainly keep the false-start technique in mind for next year. For now I take comfort from the guaranteed future anonymity provided by the swim gear. But should I soon forget this valuable lesson, the razor bumps in my crotch region will serve as an itchy reminder.
By the way, Dickens won.
After all, I’ve been swimming my whole life. My father, the Colossus of our childhood, had deemed me the most aquatically streamlined of his children and insisted that I swim endless lengths on all water-related occasions. At the age of twelve I swam lengths of the university pool, closely followed by our enthusiastic, long-clawed dog. I swam against fierce currents off the coast of the island we grew up on. I swam lengths of every hotel pool on every holiday we ever had.
Being crap at athletics, pathetic at maths and completely useless at attending PTA Mothers Day luncheons I thought that this was an opportunity to make a contribution to her school life. I pictured myself turning up at the pool and wowing the assembled crowds with stylish freestyle and Olympic-class breaststroke. “Goodness” they would exclaim, “now we know where she gets her talent from.” (My daughter had won all her swimming events the day before.)
In addition, I would be honouring a long family tradition. My father is an excellent and stylish swimmer and I well remember how in my childhood, when our school announced the introduction of a father's race in its annual swimming gala he went into training and we boasted for weeks. On the day, due to some misunderstanding between himself and the starter as to whether the starter should have said “Ready, set, go” or “Ready, go”, he false-started twice and ended up giving an exhibition performance of his immaculate freestyle.
So I dug out my one-piece from the back of the cupboard, shaved my legs and bikini line with the crappy razors they sell in Lima and borrowed Smuggies’ swimming cap. The swimsuit was stretched, the cap too small.
“Mum” said Smuggies in a doubtful tone. “Are you sure you want to compete? You really think you can win?”
“Of course!” I scoffed. “Don’t you have any faith in me? You think I can’t swim?”
“Well whenever we’re at a pool you spend all your time sun-tanning. And you never want to get your hair wet.”
It’s not my fault that I am pigmentally challenged. My older sister took all the brown genes and left none for me. It’s not my fault that water makes my hair expand like a huge fuzzy sponge.
I should have realised that something was amiss when we arrived at 6.35 for a 6.30 event and the pool was already full. Peruvians are NEVER on time. There is an official term for it: Hora Peruana, where one expects all events to start at least an hour late. But these folks were keen. In Smuggies’ last school in England the parents swimming race was cancelled for lack of interest (I was travelling at the time). But here were parents decked out in Speedos, swimming expert-looking warm-up lengths, their latex caps and ergonomic goggles bearing no sign of having been recently bought.
Peruvians, as I may have mentioned before, are generally rather diminutive. The women are well-turned out and apparently physically expert at nothing more strenuous than a twenty-meter dash for a taxi in painfully high heels. Gym attendance consists of mirror gazing and some gentle heel-raises to try to develop shapely calves to match unrealistic-looking boobs. In fact, my sister-in-law claims that exercise stops completely after university.
In addition to being taller and presumably stronger, I figured that I’d have the inherent advantage of the Caribbean island dweller over the denizens of a country which boasts beaches washed by the blood-freezing Humboldt Current. There are penguins and sea lions living off the coast of El Callao for god’s sake!
The parents were to swim for their respective children’s Houses. The British International School of Lima prides itself on Houses named Shakespeare, Dickens, Churchill and, mysteriously, Eckford. I would be swimming for (and hopefully like the) Dickens.
The pool was a classy 25 metre job complete with racing lines, starting blocks and lane dividers. A balcony above housed the spectators – on this occasion presumably proud sons and daughters. Having no babysitter I had brought along the Baby Inca, who was summarily banished to the upper balcony in the care of his sister. Rather nerve-wracking since the balcony railing was a bit low.
I jumped into the mercifully heated pool, paddled across to the Dickens group of parent and introduced myself with the usual cheek kisses. As we were all sporting swim caps and exposing rarely-seen body parts, it was unlikely that we’d recognise each other the next time we met.
Everyone seemed to know what the format was and I was pleased to see that Dickens had more competitors than the other Houses. Almost all were women; short, deceptively mild mannered, with well-muscled limbs and broad backs. I was delighted to note that one had a pronounced pot belly which even her designer Speedo could not subdue. I felt a bit more at home. I recognised a mother-and-father team whose son was in Smuggies’ class. In his miniscule trunks he looked like a Japanese version of Mark Spitz. His wife, on the other hand, looked like the female Michael Phelps complete with knee-length lycra speed suit and a Peru National Swim Team cap. My heart sank.
In the first race – freestyle – the Dickens mother in the heat ahead of me rocketed off the starting block in a long shallow dive, covered three-quarters of the length of the pool with a Man From Atlantis type underwater undulation, and, finally surfacing, touched the wall in two efficient strokes. Fuck.
“Dickens! Dickens!” the chant went up, echoing around the enclosed pavilion. Startled, the Baby Inca began to wail hysterically above.
I adjusted Sumggies’ undersized cap on my head and stepped up on the starting block, trying to suck in my stomach and stop my decidedly squishy post-natal legs from trembling as the whistle blew.
I came second.
But then, there were only two people in my heat.
After that it got worse. I backstroked so valiantly that I still have a black and blue on my forearm where it collided with the wall and my breaststroke, quite adequate for a leisurely swim to the nearest hotel pool bar, proved insufficient to garner more than last place. Emerging red-eyed (I had not deigned to wear goggles) I approached the crowd of mums at the scorers’ table, thinking I had to give my name and House. But no, the women were merely comparing their times to those before them. "¡Gané! (I won!)” cried the potbellied lady exultantly.
I limped back to the Sports Coordinator and explained that the baby was crying; that butterfly was not my best event; and that anyway, there were more than enough parents to make up the relay team.
“Never mind Mum,” said the valiant Smuggies, balancing her traumatised brother on one hip and firmly discarding inconvenient details, “you got a second place.”
As we made our premature exit I reflected on the innocence of childhood. Could it be possible that all those years ago my father had forfeited the possible thrill of victory in order to evade the potential agony of defeat?
Nah. But I will certainly keep the false-start technique in mind for next year. For now I take comfort from the guaranteed future anonymity provided by the swim gear. But should I soon forget this valuable lesson, the razor bumps in my crotch region will serve as an itchy reminder.
By the way, Dickens won.
Wednesday 14 April 2010
Do You Know Who I Am? I Am The Official Scorer for the Peruvian Cricket Federation! Oops, no I’m not, the babysitter can’t make it.
“There is a widely held and quite erroneous belief that cricket is just another game”
Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
“I don’t ask my wife to face Michael Holding, so there’s no reason why I should be changing nappies.”
Ian Botham
It’s a glorious day for cricket. The groundsmen are refreshing the somewhat meandering boundary line; Vishal is overseeing net practice for the newcomers; Harry is busy on the cell phone routing hungover players out of bed; and Peter, the Chilean cricket convert, is attempting to explain the game in Spanish to some of the Peruvian WAGs. “Well, you see there are two bateadors and the bowleador has to try to knock over those palitos...”
I have in my West Indies 2007 World Cup souvenir knapsack my sharpened pencils, my scoresheets, my ‘First Steps to Cricket Scoring’ manual downloaded off the internet, my thermos flask of lime juice and my open-toed sandals for when the score moves into double figures. I really must buy a calculator.
I have persuaded my husband to look after his son for the day. The sense of liberation is exhilarating.
When Julian, my fellow thespian from the Christmas pantomime, informed me via Google Chat that the cricket season was starting and that I was welcome to come watch any time at the Lima Cricket Club I agreed enthusiastically. So enthusiastically in fact that he ventured tentatively; “You wouldn’t like to be the scorer would you? We’ve been looking for one for ages.” I agreed even more enthusiastically. So enthusiastically in fact that he added – even more tentatively – “you do know how to score don’t you?”
“Of course!” I lied breezily, frantically entering “how to score a cricket match” into the search box at the top of the webpage.
As every cricket fan like me knows, watching the West Indies get their asses kicked or keeping score for a university pick-up-side match is one thing. Deciphering an official ICC scoresheet and converting results into statistics is entirely another. One might think that cricket in Peru would fall firmly into the “pick-up-side” category but one would be sorely mistaken.
The Lima Cricket (and Football) Club* is the oldest sports club in Peru and one of the oldest in Latin America, having celebrated its 150th anniversary last year. The LCFC was founded in 1859 at the height of the “guano and railway” era, which brought to Lima a great influx of English immigrants. English residents in Lima and Callao in that year rose to 1,397 as opposed to 442 at the start of the 20th century. Over time the LCFC became a multi-sport club and the cricket element waxed and waned, presumably depending on the number of dedicated ex-pats living in Lima at any given time. The first match against a foreign team was against Sir Pelham Warner’s MCC side on its way back from Australia via Chile and Peru in 1927. The former England captain, Freddie Brown, was born in Lima and his father took five wickets against the MCC.
Today, Peru Cricket - the national cricket association - has a national team plus four registered teams in Lima and one in Tacna that compete in domestic tournaments. After their 2006 season, the association applied for and got affiliate membership of the International Cricket Council (ICC). Peru is now in the ICC Americas Division III and ranked 75th in the world.
But they’ve never had an official scorer before. And believe me, it’s a tough job. Last week I scored for the first ever regional youth tournament held in Peru. “Awwww” you say? “All those Argentinean, Chilean and Peruvian under-13s looking so cute in their oversized sports shorts trotting around with their cricket bats and helmets”.
First Ever Under-13 Youth Tournament (Argentina, Chile, Peru)
Ha! You try figuring out who's who between two completely identical batsmidgets wearing identical gear. And the scoring box thronged with eager munchkins impatiently wanting to know their own personal score and fighting to change the scoreboard before the over is finished. Compounded by clueless Peruvian parents – eager to support their sons but having absolutely no idea of the rules of the game – poking their heads in through the window, blocking my view of the pitch and asking hopefully “Is it true the other team beat Peru by only one point?” “Is 16 for 5 off 11 overs a good score?”(Of course, when Peru won their first ever match in a truly nail-biting finish the jubilation was enormous and even the scorer may have shed a few proud tears.)
It’s slightly easier to tell the grown-ups apart. You can generally memorise whose tummy is bigger or who is wearing the Man. U. T-shirt, the wraparound shades or the non-regulation Auzzie beach shorts.
Indian Sub-Continent vs Rest of the World (guess who won?)
Tony comes in to bowl, it’s a wide and the batsmen steal a run. Small cross with dot in upper left hand corner. Bowling a bit tighter now, two dot balls and an appeal for LBW. Oh, square cut to the boundary, 4 runs. But wait, umpire signals a no-ball so (tongue sticking out of the side of my mouth) circle with a 4 in it on the cumulative total and in the bowler’s figures, 4 to the batsman, one in the extras and 5 against the bowler – I think.
Brrringg.
That’s over, change of bowler, Miles. We’re into double figures now so my shoes are off and my feet up on the table to assist in calculation.
Brrringg.
Was that a signal for bye or leg bye?
Brrringg.
“Si mi amor?”
“The baby’s crying”
“Did you give him milk?”
Click
An antipodean voice yells “my ball!” Dropped catch. Two singles, a dot ball and what was that last signal? No ball? Leg bye? Short run? Oh, the umpire is just answering his phone.
Brringg.
“Si mi amor?”
“He won’t stop crying. When are you coming home?”
“Walk him around a bit”
“I AM walking him around! He’s still crying”
“Perhaps if you stopped yelling “callate enano!” at him at the same time?”
Click.
“This is it Lima Cricket!” roars Julian, captain of LCFC and the Napoleon of the pitch, coming in to bowl his speciality: a ball so cunningly mediocre that the batsman invariably loses his wicket through sheer puzzlement. Record time of wicket, cumulative score at fall, how out, bowler’s name, batsman’s total score, time of entry of following batsman, small w in bowler’s box, check how many balls left in over...
Bbbbrrringg.
“When are you coming home? I gave him medicine and everything but he won’t stop crying.”
“Don’t give him medicine just to make him sleep! He’s not sick.”
“But he won’t stop crying. He must be sick!”
“He’s bored. Why don’t you take him to the park? It’s just across the road.”
Dot ball, a leg bye and, fuck who took that catch?
“I’m not taking him to the park! I’m watching football! When are you coming home?”
“So you want me to stop watching cricket, leave here now, take a taxi, come home and take him to the park across the road because you’re watching football?”
Click.
Change of bowler. Who’s that? “Bowler’s name!” I yell across the field. “Dinesh” floats back the reply. I have no Dinesh on my team list. “Who??” I yell. “Lakmal!” they shriek “everybody calls him Dinesh.” Except on the team list obviously.
Bbbbrrringgg.
“Juliet! When are you coming home? What’s more important to you? Cricket or your son?”
Dot ball, wide, single and over, “Hmmm? Sorry, I didn’t hear you just now.”
Click.
Brrrrringgg
Brrringggg
Fortunately, Peru Cricket is paying me just enough to cover babysitting fees.
*‘Football’ was added to the name in 1900 or 1906.
Saturday 27 March 2010
Peruvian Parricide, or “Come to the Dark Side Luke, We Have Pisco Sour”
Part Two
The story so far...
Having mastered the art of pisco souring, our heroes have flown to Cuzco where they have contracted soroche and embarked on a whirlwind tour of the ancient Inca capital.
After a day of ruin-scrambling, earnest listening and heavy breathing, we returned to the hotel and agreed to give the second day’s planned tour of the Sacred Valley a miss. Instead we decided to sleep a lot and stagger casually around Cuzco to acclimatize ourselves for the assault on Machu Picchu the following day. In the interest of efficiency, we split the duties and my father slept a lot while I staggered around Cuzco.
Having skipped the sacred I thought I would embrace some of the profane and hooked up with a Caribbean friend of mine who had been living in Cuzco for the past six months. She in turn introduced me to a representative cross-section of local gringos. Cuzco has a small, vibrant and variously transient foreign population ranging from long-term enterprising coffee shop and Irish pub owners through guidebook-clutching four-day tourists like ourselves to medium-term backpackers and alternative-lifestyle/mind-altering-substances-seekers. In fact, there is quite a bit of overlap among the groups.
My friend had spent the first few months in Cuzco designing a business plan for a shaman in return for room and board. When her market research indicated that, due to the glut of shamans on the Cuzco market, his business was not viable, she had to move on to other accommodation. Apparently shamans are a dime a dozen in Cuzco, far more than the number of rich Americans seeking enlightenment so, unless you are really good at calling the condor, you have no value added.
The Inca believed in the interconnectedness of sky, earth and underworld, the spirit gods of which were the condor, puma and snake respectively. A vulture, the Andean Condor is the largest flying land bird in the Western Hemisphere. It is considered a symbol of power and health and features heavily in Peruvian tourism. Now I’m a little hazy on the details but apparently some well-heeled travellers pay a lot of money to be taken up some remote Peruvian peak by a shaman to “call the condor”. This, I understand, involves the shaman rubbing his forehead and navel against those of the hopeful tourist, thereby transferring his condor-calling powers. If, after this exchange of sweat and bellybutton fluff, a condor soars into view, the tourist descends empowered and ready to play the stock market with renewed vigor. I can’t imagine a better business model. All you need is a gullible tourist – already addled by altitude sickness – and a crafty Cusquenian accomplice lurking over the next ridge with a Monty Pythonesque condor-on-a-stick.
For those who can’t afford the condor-calling fees, there’s always the mind-altering alternatives. On arrival in Cuzco you are greeted with a cup of mate de coca, a tea made of coca leaves which is good for staving off the effects of soroche. For the average visitor it also provides a pleasurable frisson of naughtiness since 297 grams of dry coca leaf can theoretically be converted into 1 gram of cocaine. In Cuzco you can buy coca flavoured ice cream and drink coca sours without fear of arrest or the slightest enhancement of euphoria. For those in search of more authentic spiritual experiences I was told that the ubiquitous shamans also dispense various psychotropic substances. Ayahuasca is particularly popular in Peru. According to the font of all knowledge, Wikipedia:
Having been thoroughly briefed on the local drug culture, and having marginally enjoyed a meal of grilled alpaca (edible llama), I was taken on a tour of Cuzco by night by a group of medium-term frustrated volunteers. This is a growing demographic in Peru: educated and qualified individuals wanting to see the world while doing volunteer work along the way. Unfortunately, volunteering has become so fashionable that you now have to pay to do it. I kid you not. It has been described as the “gap-year effect” because many middle-class parents with a child wanting to take a year off before going to university are willing to pay for them to do “something useful”. So if you offer your services to an NGO or community group you are likely to be asked to pay US$6000 for the privilege. Many of the group I met had been working in coffee shops and bars to make ends meet and were therefore presumably well placed to reveal to me Cuzco’s reputedly very vibrant night life.
It turned out to be the shortest pub crawl in history.
It wasn’t for lack of nightspots. The numerous discos, bars and restaurants are mainly clustered around the central Plaza de Armas or perched along the steep, narrow stone stairways leading up from Cuzco to San Blas above it. This makes getting from one to another either very quick or discouragingly vertical.
Secondly, I discovered that dancing at 3,600-plus metres above sea level is not a sustainable activity. Two steps and you’re panting for breath. It also doesn’t help that the places are so crowded that what little air your belaboured lungs are able to take in, has already been appropriated by someone else.
Thirdly, the expatriate Cuzco community is relatively small and highly incestuous so every time we approached a likely-looking nightspot one or other person in the group would say “oh no, we can’t go in there. I had/have a thing/fling/affair with/crush on the bartender/manager/performer/bouncer and I don’t want them to think I’m stalking them”.
We ended up on a bench in the Plaza de Armas sharing pisco sour from a plastic water bottle provided by an understanding bartender while the local police patrol strolled by asking “¿Aguita? ¿Augita?” in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink sort of way.
So I was well-rested for the 7.00 am start the next morning. A three and a half hour train journey took us down to Aguas Calientes (Machu Picchu is actually 1,000m lower than Cuzco) where we then took a 20 minute bus ride up the extremely winding mountain road to the entrance of Machu Picchu.
Of course, this is the lazy option. For the more adventurous there’s always the four-day trek on the Inca Trail, but the 10 minute climb from the ticket office to the lookout above the lost city nearly killed both of us.
My father almost died of lung collapse and had to sit down frequently and inhale oxygen from his handy tin and I came close to stumbling off the cliff several times while walking backwards taking photos of his travails. At one rest stop he encountered another tall, bearded, winded individual. “Age or altitude?” the man wheezed. “Both” puffed my father. This obviously Masonic greeting out of the way, they sat together on the narrow Incan step catching their breath in companionable silence while younger, eager tourists flowed past them like ants around a picnic treat too heavy to carry. 
The story so far...
Having mastered the art of pisco souring, our heroes have flown to Cuzco where they have contracted soroche and embarked on a whirlwind tour of the ancient Inca capital.
After a day of ruin-scrambling, earnest listening and heavy breathing, we returned to the hotel and agreed to give the second day’s planned tour of the Sacred Valley a miss. Instead we decided to sleep a lot and stagger casually around Cuzco to acclimatize ourselves for the assault on Machu Picchu the following day. In the interest of efficiency, we split the duties and my father slept a lot while I staggered around Cuzco.
Having skipped the sacred I thought I would embrace some of the profane and hooked up with a Caribbean friend of mine who had been living in Cuzco for the past six months. She in turn introduced me to a representative cross-section of local gringos. Cuzco has a small, vibrant and variously transient foreign population ranging from long-term enterprising coffee shop and Irish pub owners through guidebook-clutching four-day tourists like ourselves to medium-term backpackers and alternative-lifestyle/mind-altering-substances-seekers. In fact, there is quite a bit of overlap among the groups.
My friend had spent the first few months in Cuzco designing a business plan for a shaman in return for room and board. When her market research indicated that, due to the glut of shamans on the Cuzco market, his business was not viable, she had to move on to other accommodation. Apparently shamans are a dime a dozen in Cuzco, far more than the number of rich Americans seeking enlightenment so, unless you are really good at calling the condor, you have no value added.
The Inca believed in the interconnectedness of sky, earth and underworld, the spirit gods of which were the condor, puma and snake respectively. A vulture, the Andean Condor is the largest flying land bird in the Western Hemisphere. It is considered a symbol of power and health and features heavily in Peruvian tourism. Now I’m a little hazy on the details but apparently some well-heeled travellers pay a lot of money to be taken up some remote Peruvian peak by a shaman to “call the condor”. This, I understand, involves the shaman rubbing his forehead and navel against those of the hopeful tourist, thereby transferring his condor-calling powers. If, after this exchange of sweat and bellybutton fluff, a condor soars into view, the tourist descends empowered and ready to play the stock market with renewed vigor. I can’t imagine a better business model. All you need is a gullible tourist – already addled by altitude sickness – and a crafty Cusquenian accomplice lurking over the next ridge with a Monty Pythonesque condor-on-a-stick.
For those who can’t afford the condor-calling fees, there’s always the mind-altering alternatives. On arrival in Cuzco you are greeted with a cup of mate de coca, a tea made of coca leaves which is good for staving off the effects of soroche. For the average visitor it also provides a pleasurable frisson of naughtiness since 297 grams of dry coca leaf can theoretically be converted into 1 gram of cocaine. In Cuzco you can buy coca flavoured ice cream and drink coca sours without fear of arrest or the slightest enhancement of euphoria. For those in search of more authentic spiritual experiences I was told that the ubiquitous shamans also dispense various psychotropic substances. Ayahuasca is particularly popular in Peru. According to the font of all knowledge, Wikipedia:
"Ayahuasca tourist" refers to a tourist wanting a taste of an exotic ritual or who partakes in modified services geared specifically towards non-indigenous persons. Some seek to clear emotional blocks and gain a sense of peace.Which is all very well if, in order to gain a sense of peace, you are happy to enjoy Ayahuasca’s ‘purgative properties’ in which “the intense vomiting and occasional diarrhea it induces can clear the body of worms and other tropical parasites”. Nice. Still, I hear Isabel Allende once used it to get rid of writer’s block so I’ll keep it in mind.
Having been thoroughly briefed on the local drug culture, and having marginally enjoyed a meal of grilled alpaca (edible llama), I was taken on a tour of Cuzco by night by a group of medium-term frustrated volunteers. This is a growing demographic in Peru: educated and qualified individuals wanting to see the world while doing volunteer work along the way. Unfortunately, volunteering has become so fashionable that you now have to pay to do it. I kid you not. It has been described as the “gap-year effect” because many middle-class parents with a child wanting to take a year off before going to university are willing to pay for them to do “something useful”. So if you offer your services to an NGO or community group you are likely to be asked to pay US$6000 for the privilege. Many of the group I met had been working in coffee shops and bars to make ends meet and were therefore presumably well placed to reveal to me Cuzco’s reputedly very vibrant night life.
It turned out to be the shortest pub crawl in history.
It wasn’t for lack of nightspots. The numerous discos, bars and restaurants are mainly clustered around the central Plaza de Armas or perched along the steep, narrow stone stairways leading up from Cuzco to San Blas above it. This makes getting from one to another either very quick or discouragingly vertical.
Secondly, I discovered that dancing at 3,600-plus metres above sea level is not a sustainable activity. Two steps and you’re panting for breath. It also doesn’t help that the places are so crowded that what little air your belaboured lungs are able to take in, has already been appropriated by someone else.
Thirdly, the expatriate Cuzco community is relatively small and highly incestuous so every time we approached a likely-looking nightspot one or other person in the group would say “oh no, we can’t go in there. I had/have a thing/fling/affair with/crush on the bartender/manager/performer/bouncer and I don’t want them to think I’m stalking them”.
We ended up on a bench in the Plaza de Armas sharing pisco sour from a plastic water bottle provided by an understanding bartender while the local police patrol strolled by asking “¿Aguita? ¿Augita?” in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink sort of way.
So I was well-rested for the 7.00 am start the next morning. A three and a half hour train journey took us down to Aguas Calientes (Machu Picchu is actually 1,000m lower than Cuzco) where we then took a 20 minute bus ride up the extremely winding mountain road to the entrance of Machu Picchu.
Of course, this is the lazy option. For the more adventurous there’s always the four-day trek on the Inca Trail, but the 10 minute climb from the ticket office to the lookout above the lost city nearly killed both of us.
My father almost died of lung collapse and had to sit down frequently and inhale oxygen from his handy tin and I came close to stumbling off the cliff several times while walking backwards taking photos of his travails. At one rest stop he encountered another tall, bearded, winded individual. “Age or altitude?” the man wheezed. “Both” puffed my father. This obviously Masonic greeting out of the way, they sat together on the narrow Incan step catching their breath in companionable silence while younger, eager tourists flowed past them like ants around a picnic treat too heavy to carry. 
Despite the overexposure of Machu Picchu in photographs and publicity posters, it is still truly spectacular when seen live and direct for the first time. One’s appreciation is of course enhanced by the relief of actually reaching the damned place at last. However, just to ensure you don’t get too smug about your achievement, the guide quickly points out Waina Picchu, a yet higher peak, where some 400 people a day line up from the crack of dawn for the privilege of being allowed to climb it. I had no idea the global mental health problem was so acute.
If there was a contest to decide the exact geographical location of the middle of nowhere, my vote would go to Machu Picchu. Surrounded on three sides by cliffs which drop vertically for 450m to the Urubamba River below and with a near impassable mountain at its back, it is a natural fortress and if Hiram Bingham had not been shown the site by a 15-year-old local boy in 1911, he would never have discovered it on his own.
After some confusion involving varying interpretations of the phrase “a guide will be waiting for you with an orange flag”, we were taken under the wing of a stocky weatherbeaten guide by the name of Willy who had an Incan rainbow flag (more recently co-opted by the Gay and Lesbian Movement) and a habit of balancing nonchalantly on the very edge of every available precipice while lecturing to his audience.
Willy was another staunch patriot. Open-minded about the various theories of what Machu Picchu was actually used for (Country estate? Sanctuary of the sacred virgins? Prison? Administrative centre? Agricultural field station?), he had fixed views on Hiram Bingham transporting all the artefacts he found there to the United States and little faith in Yale University agreeing to return them. He kept up a cheerful discussion with the spirit gods as we went along, introducing us all as “Willy’s group” and assuring them that we had the best intentions and would leave them lovely presents in the various sacrificial spots.
My father was a bit disappointed to learn that there is no evidence of human sacrifice ever having been performed in Machu Picchu but, faced with a particularly treacherous descent down the side of the ancient observatory, strenuously declared that he had no intention of being the first. Having made it safely down to the lower level he plonked himself sternly on a large flat stone structure to rest.
This was the ritual Intihuatana stone. The Quechua name translates as “the hitching post of the sun” because it was believed to hold the sun in place as it moved through its annual celestial journey. On midday on the equinoxes the sun stands directly above the Intihuatana stone, casting no shadow. I have no idea what effect my father’s bottom had on this ancient artefact but if he had damaged it, it would not have been the first time. In 2002, during the filming of a beer commercial, a 1,000lb crane fell on it, chipping off a piece.
I don't know what UNESCO had to say about this defacement of one of their World Heritage Sites, but I'll bet Willy's god buddies sent the beer company into receivership, because I am convinced that the severe flooding which took place two weeks after my father sat on the Intihuatana was divine retribution for this piece of posterial lèse majesté.
But it is understandably hard work conquering one of the New Seven Wonders of the World so we were glad to wrap up the tour and leave Machu Picchu to the four official llamas (not naturally found at Machu Picchu but apparently transported there to provide authentic photo ops and lawnmowing services) and the gaggle of dreamy-eyed backpackers still sprawled on the terraces thinking deeply about life, the universe and everything.
Personally, I was thinking deeply about a cold pisco sour and the dusty but breathable atmosphere of Lima.
But it is understandably hard work conquering one of the New Seven Wonders of the World so we were glad to wrap up the tour and leave Machu Picchu to the four official llamas (not naturally found at Machu Picchu but apparently transported there to provide authentic photo ops and lawnmowing services) and the gaggle of dreamy-eyed backpackers still sprawled on the terraces thinking deeply about life, the universe and everything.
Personally, I was thinking deeply about a cold pisco sour and the dusty but breathable atmosphere of Lima.
Monday 8 February 2010
Peruvian Parricide or “Come to the Dark Side Luke, We Have Pisco Sour”
Part One
It was easy to spot the departure gate for the flight to Cuzco. Two saffron-robed monks; a Caucasian Rasta in parachute pants and a well-worn The North Face backpack; and several middle-aged individuals with Lonely Planet Peru guidebooks, sturdy walking shoes and a see-Machu-Picchu-and-die expression.
My father and I had just finished doing the Lima tourist round. A retired linguist, he had enjoyed himself thoroughly grumbling about the terrible English translations on the exhibits in the museums and experimenting with Pisco Sour, the trademark Peruvian cocktail. Something of a perfectionist, he spent every evening poring over recipe books, squeezing limes, separating egg whites and concocting syrup on the stove, all ingredients carefully measured in a baby bottle borrowed from his grandson.
Pisco is a liquor distilled from grapes and takes its name from one of the Peruvian towns where it has been produced since the 16th Century. The right to produce and promote pisco has been the subject of prolonged international legal disputes between Chile and Peru. Until recently, Chile had successful promoted pisco as its very own and many a promising intercultural relationship has been ruined by the announcement on the part of the non-Peruvian that they had imbibed a delicious pisco sour while visiting Santiago. Trust me, I speak from experience.
Peruvians get very emotional on the subject and some years back the government even made the importation and sale of pisco from Chile illegal. These days the Chileans are making conciliatory noises about “why don’t we market the stuff together?” – a sure sign that they are at the losing end of this particular battle.*
However, this piscotorial petulance is only one aspect of the ongoing bad blood between the two nations which dates back to the 19th Century when Chile won the War of the Pacific (1879 – 1883) against Peru and Bolivia, taking away Bolivia's access to the sea and a lot of land from Peru. Things have never been the same since, with the most recent manifestation being in November 2009 when a Peruvian air force officer was arrested on charges of spying for Chile. Peruvian public opinion was most regretful that execution for treason is no longer an option.
Having paid due homage to pisco, my father indicated his willingness to cast a critical eye on Peru’s other national treasures.
If you are thinking about bumping off an elderly relative in a non-suspicious way I can recommend a trip to Cuzco and Machu Picchu. If altitude sickness in Cuzco doesn’t polish them off the vertiginous climbing around Machu Picchu should do the trick.
Along with long division and degrees centigrade, I have always viewed altitude measurements as fairly useless information. After all, I come from a Caribbean nation where the normal temperature range is between 28° and 32°C and the highest point is 940 metres (and who the hell lives there?). The practical implications of being told that Cuzco is located 3395 metres above sea level escaped me entirely.
My husband however, was clearly nervous about the trip. He minutely inquired about the state of his father-in-law’s health.
“Is his heart OK? Does he suffer from high blood pressure? Don’t forget your insurance card. Walk very slowly and remember to buy oxygen at the airport.”
Yes, they actually sell tinned oxygen at Cuzco airport. I heard one American tourist thinking aloud that she’d like to buy one but was afraid it might be too heavy to carry around. It was, of course, lighter than air.
Having very nearly been put off the entire trip by these solicitous utterings, I was less than happy when, sitting in the plane waiting to take off, my father remarked idly “they’ll have to land at a hell of a speed in Cuzco. At that altitude the air is so thin a plane has to fly extremely fast or else it’ll drop out of the sky.” On the approach to Cuzco the plane did indeed hang a sharp left turn and descend with a stomach-fluttering acceleration. “See what I mean?” said my father smugly as we taxied to the terminal.
Sometimes it is hard to tell which sensations are real and which are brought on by a stimulated imagination. On disembarking I had the impression that I was doing a bit of a moonwalk (the astronaut kind, not the Michael Jackson variety) but I put it down to imagination. Then there comes a moment when you lean down to drag your luggage off the conveyor belt and realise that you can’t catch your breath. Scary. Within an hour my father sounded like Darth Vader and we were both feeling queasy.
Do NOT look up the symptoms of Soroche (altitude sickness) on Wikipedia. You will never visit Cuzco and possibly never climb as much as a sand dune again.
But it’s not that bad. Walk slowly and carry a can of oxygen and you’ll be fine.
Oh, and take Soroche tablets.
And, according to the taxi driver, don’t eat red meat or noodles for the first day.
Oh, and lie down a lot. Not too much vigorous activity.
We had purchased a four-day, three-night tour package consisting of much vigorous scrambling around ruins: a city tour of Cuzco, a trip to the Sacred Valley and – the pièce de résistance – a visit to Machu Picchu.
Archaeologists will tell you testily that the Inca were not the most ancient Peruvian civilization or even the most talented. But they were certainly the most bossy. Like the Romans they subjugated several other communities and moulded them into a vast administrative network with Cuzco as its capital.
I am not going to add to the existing glut of information and contesting theories of Incan culture already available on the internet – look it up yourself. But I did reach a few anthropological conclusions of my own which I am happy to share with you as we go along.
For example, the Inca’s communication and administrative network was so efficient that it is said that despite the lack of wheeled vehicles, fresh fish was regularly brought to Cuzco from the coast 200 miles away by chaski runners. Each chaski would sprint for about 2.5 km before handing over to another. By my calculation that is roughly 129 chaski runners per fish delivery. The fish can’t have been that fresh when it reach Cuzco and would certainly have been well-marinated in chaski sweat – hence the invention of ceviche.
We spent the first day visiting various ruins in the company of an eloquent and sardonic guide with scathing views on the Spanish conquest. Taking us around Qorikancha, the Incan temple of the sun which had been largely dismantled by the Spanish to build the Santo Domingo Church with which it now shares space, he succinctly explained the difference in architectural and construction techniques as the first having been built by the Inca and the second by the incapaz (incapable). The walls of the temple, built 600 years ago with no mortar or cement between the blocks but so well fitted that a piece of paper can’t pass between them, have survived many earthquakes. The church, built in part from slabs stolen from the dismantled temple but stuck together with mortar, has collapsed 4 times since its construction by the Spanish around 1633.
He also pooh poohed conventional notions of the Inca worshipping various deities in a kind of mindless, the sky-will-fall-on-our-heads, fear-of-the-wrath-of-the-gods kind of way. No, everything these canny fellows constructed was geared towards predicting the seasons and weather for agricultural purposes.
They were also expert brain surgeons – or at least skull surgeons.
Enthusiastic practitioners of trepanning, scientists say that their success rate was around 80%, as opposed to surgeons in Europe and America in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, only about 25% of whose patients survived. With a pleasing symmetry, at the same time as drilling a hole in your head, the Inca could fill the holes in your teeth. Stone or cement fillings for the masses and gold or silver fillings for the upper classes. There is as yet no evidence that the Inca also went in for breast augmentation, but a glance around my gym leads me to believe that this practice is ancient and ingrained in Peruvian culture.
Certainly the current enthusiasm of Peruvian women for postponing the ageing process appears to date back to Inca times. Our first day’s ruin inspection tour ended at Tambomachay, an excellent example of an Inca system of aqueducts and site of what we were informed was the Fountain of Eternal Youth.
Unfortunately I am not in a position to comment on the veracity of this claim. Being of a highly suspicious and distrustful nature, I noted carefully that the guide had actually said “If you put the water on your face you will stay as you are for a very long time.” I was suffering from a disfiguring eye infection that day and figured that on a strict interpretation, the fountain of youth might actually be a fountain of the “if-you-put-your-face-like-that-and-the-wind-changes-it-will-stick” variety, known to all parents of grimacing adolescents. At any rate, I declined to take the chance.
*According to legal documents recently found in the U.S. National Archives of San Francisco, California in 2007, it has been proven that at least until 1864, Pisco was considered a liquor native only to the Republic of Peru. (Wikipedia)
Next: Darth Vader shuns the Sacred Valley and I investigate Cuzco by night...
It was easy to spot the departure gate for the flight to Cuzco. Two saffron-robed monks; a Caucasian Rasta in parachute pants and a well-worn The North Face backpack; and several middle-aged individuals with Lonely Planet Peru guidebooks, sturdy walking shoes and a see-Machu-Picchu-and-die expression.
My father and I had just finished doing the Lima tourist round. A retired linguist, he had enjoyed himself thoroughly grumbling about the terrible English translations on the exhibits in the museums and experimenting with Pisco Sour, the trademark Peruvian cocktail. Something of a perfectionist, he spent every evening poring over recipe books, squeezing limes, separating egg whites and concocting syrup on the stove, all ingredients carefully measured in a baby bottle borrowed from his grandson.
Pisco is a liquor distilled from grapes and takes its name from one of the Peruvian towns where it has been produced since the 16th Century. The right to produce and promote pisco has been the subject of prolonged international legal disputes between Chile and Peru. Until recently, Chile had successful promoted pisco as its very own and many a promising intercultural relationship has been ruined by the announcement on the part of the non-Peruvian that they had imbibed a delicious pisco sour while visiting Santiago. Trust me, I speak from experience.
Peruvians get very emotional on the subject and some years back the government even made the importation and sale of pisco from Chile illegal. These days the Chileans are making conciliatory noises about “why don’t we market the stuff together?” – a sure sign that they are at the losing end of this particular battle.*
However, this piscotorial petulance is only one aspect of the ongoing bad blood between the two nations which dates back to the 19th Century when Chile won the War of the Pacific (1879 – 1883) against Peru and Bolivia, taking away Bolivia's access to the sea and a lot of land from Peru. Things have never been the same since, with the most recent manifestation being in November 2009 when a Peruvian air force officer was arrested on charges of spying for Chile. Peruvian public opinion was most regretful that execution for treason is no longer an option.
Having paid due homage to pisco, my father indicated his willingness to cast a critical eye on Peru’s other national treasures.
If you are thinking about bumping off an elderly relative in a non-suspicious way I can recommend a trip to Cuzco and Machu Picchu. If altitude sickness in Cuzco doesn’t polish them off the vertiginous climbing around Machu Picchu should do the trick.
Along with long division and degrees centigrade, I have always viewed altitude measurements as fairly useless information. After all, I come from a Caribbean nation where the normal temperature range is between 28° and 32°C and the highest point is 940 metres (and who the hell lives there?). The practical implications of being told that Cuzco is located 3395 metres above sea level escaped me entirely.
My husband however, was clearly nervous about the trip. He minutely inquired about the state of his father-in-law’s health.
“Is his heart OK? Does he suffer from high blood pressure? Don’t forget your insurance card. Walk very slowly and remember to buy oxygen at the airport.”
Yes, they actually sell tinned oxygen at Cuzco airport. I heard one American tourist thinking aloud that she’d like to buy one but was afraid it might be too heavy to carry around. It was, of course, lighter than air.
Having very nearly been put off the entire trip by these solicitous utterings, I was less than happy when, sitting in the plane waiting to take off, my father remarked idly “they’ll have to land at a hell of a speed in Cuzco. At that altitude the air is so thin a plane has to fly extremely fast or else it’ll drop out of the sky.” On the approach to Cuzco the plane did indeed hang a sharp left turn and descend with a stomach-fluttering acceleration. “See what I mean?” said my father smugly as we taxied to the terminal.
Sometimes it is hard to tell which sensations are real and which are brought on by a stimulated imagination. On disembarking I had the impression that I was doing a bit of a moonwalk (the astronaut kind, not the Michael Jackson variety) but I put it down to imagination. Then there comes a moment when you lean down to drag your luggage off the conveyor belt and realise that you can’t catch your breath. Scary. Within an hour my father sounded like Darth Vader and we were both feeling queasy.
Do NOT look up the symptoms of Soroche (altitude sickness) on Wikipedia. You will never visit Cuzco and possibly never climb as much as a sand dune again.
But it’s not that bad. Walk slowly and carry a can of oxygen and you’ll be fine.
Oh, and take Soroche tablets.
And, according to the taxi driver, don’t eat red meat or noodles for the first day.
Oh, and lie down a lot. Not too much vigorous activity.
We had purchased a four-day, three-night tour package consisting of much vigorous scrambling around ruins: a city tour of Cuzco, a trip to the Sacred Valley and – the pièce de résistance – a visit to Machu Picchu.
Archaeologists will tell you testily that the Inca were not the most ancient Peruvian civilization or even the most talented. But they were certainly the most bossy. Like the Romans they subjugated several other communities and moulded them into a vast administrative network with Cuzco as its capital.
I am not going to add to the existing glut of information and contesting theories of Incan culture already available on the internet – look it up yourself. But I did reach a few anthropological conclusions of my own which I am happy to share with you as we go along.
For example, the Inca’s communication and administrative network was so efficient that it is said that despite the lack of wheeled vehicles, fresh fish was regularly brought to Cuzco from the coast 200 miles away by chaski runners. Each chaski would sprint for about 2.5 km before handing over to another. By my calculation that is roughly 129 chaski runners per fish delivery. The fish can’t have been that fresh when it reach Cuzco and would certainly have been well-marinated in chaski sweat – hence the invention of ceviche.
We spent the first day visiting various ruins in the company of an eloquent and sardonic guide with scathing views on the Spanish conquest. Taking us around Qorikancha, the Incan temple of the sun which had been largely dismantled by the Spanish to build the Santo Domingo Church with which it now shares space, he succinctly explained the difference in architectural and construction techniques as the first having been built by the Inca and the second by the incapaz (incapable). The walls of the temple, built 600 years ago with no mortar or cement between the blocks but so well fitted that a piece of paper can’t pass between them, have survived many earthquakes. The church, built in part from slabs stolen from the dismantled temple but stuck together with mortar, has collapsed 4 times since its construction by the Spanish around 1633.
He also pooh poohed conventional notions of the Inca worshipping various deities in a kind of mindless, the sky-will-fall-on-our-heads, fear-of-the-wrath-of-the-gods kind of way. No, everything these canny fellows constructed was geared towards predicting the seasons and weather for agricultural purposes.
They were also expert brain surgeons – or at least skull surgeons.
Enthusiastic practitioners of trepanning, scientists say that their success rate was around 80%, as opposed to surgeons in Europe and America in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, only about 25% of whose patients survived. With a pleasing symmetry, at the same time as drilling a hole in your head, the Inca could fill the holes in your teeth. Stone or cement fillings for the masses and gold or silver fillings for the upper classes. There is as yet no evidence that the Inca also went in for breast augmentation, but a glance around my gym leads me to believe that this practice is ancient and ingrained in Peruvian culture.
Certainly the current enthusiasm of Peruvian women for postponing the ageing process appears to date back to Inca times. Our first day’s ruin inspection tour ended at Tambomachay, an excellent example of an Inca system of aqueducts and site of what we were informed was the Fountain of Eternal Youth.
Unfortunately I am not in a position to comment on the veracity of this claim. Being of a highly suspicious and distrustful nature, I noted carefully that the guide had actually said “If you put the water on your face you will stay as you are for a very long time.” I was suffering from a disfiguring eye infection that day and figured that on a strict interpretation, the fountain of youth might actually be a fountain of the “if-you-put-your-face-like-that-and-the-wind-changes-it-will-stick” variety, known to all parents of grimacing adolescents. At any rate, I declined to take the chance.
*According to legal documents recently found in the U.S. National Archives of San Francisco, California in 2007, it has been proven that at least until 1864, Pisco was considered a liquor native only to the Republic of Peru. (Wikipedia)
Next: Darth Vader shuns the Sacred Valley and I investigate Cuzco by night...
Monday 25 January 2010
When In Lima...
One of the reasons one goes in for foreign travel is so that one can have authentic cultural experiences. You will therefore be unsurprised to learn that three weeks after arriving in Peru I auditioned for a Christmas pantomime.
This thoroughly English tradition of musical-comedy theatrical performance has been kept alive here for many years by the Good Companions, Lima’s amateur English-speaking theatre group, founded in 1947. Surfing a website for expatriates in Peru I stumbled across an appeal for actors for their 2009 offering, Little Red Riding Hood. I waddled along with my heavily pregnant self and secured the role of Dizzy, the Spirit of the Woods and Smuggies became my Sprite. They obligingly designed me a voluminous costume and only blinked slightly when, halfway through October, I announced that I would be giving birth the following Monday and would therefore be unable to make rehearsals that night.
Two missed rehearsals later we were back, two-week-old Smuggitos in hand. He soon got used to sleeping in his portable bassinet behind the backdrops and, when awake, being handed off to whichever actor was not currently on stage. On an average night he would work his way from Wolf to Prince to Huntsman to Little Red Riding Hood herself. On one occasion I entered stage right for a curtain call and met my son approaching from the other wings in the arms of the Sprite. He became known as the Prop Baby and no amount of bathing could eradicate the traces of greasepaint and glitter from his face.
Of course, pantomimes are as Peruvian as Buckingham Palace but you’d be surprised at the number of local references that can be worked into a script and the joy of yelling “Boooooo!!!” at the baddies is universal.
My next cultural experience occurred exactly three months after giving birth. My husband excitedly announced that for our first romantic post-partum outing he had secured tickets to Metallica’s World Metallic Tour 2010 concert.
Oh joy.
But what to wear? My husband, having invited me only the night before, had denied me the luxury of sartorial cogitation. Post-pregnancy chic is hard to come by and, though I toyed with the idea of a caftan sporting the logo “I Just Had a Baby, Give Me a Break”, I eventually settled for the universal rock uniform of black T-shirt and jeans.
I was delighted to find that I could once more wiggle into my button-front Levis until I discovered that they made my midsection look like a well-executed soufflé. I wiggled back out, wiggled into a girdle (yes, Dear Reader, let there be no secrets between us), donned the Levis once again and kept my fingers crossed that my caesarean scar wouldn’t split at the seams.
I had been instructed to leave home at 3.45 pm in order to take a taxi and meet Bigboy at his office at 5.00. The concert was due to start at 9.00 pm but we would obviously be competing for a good view with all those Heavy Metal fans who had reportedly come to Lima from various surrounding countries especially for this event.
Lima is the graveyard of rock. Any used-to-be-famous bunch of geriatrics can turn up in the City of Kings and expect a rapturous welcome, but this was apparently going to be the biggest concert in Peru’s history. The only venue large enough was the 50,000-seat stadium of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. The first officially established university in the Americas, San Marcos was founded in 1551 by a decree of King Charles V. Originally named the ‘Royal and Pontifical University of the City of the Kings of Lima’ it is one of the oldest universities in the world.
It sits near the border of Lima with the Constitutional Province of Callao, where the port, the airport and Bigboy’s office are located. El Callao has the reputation of being a fairly dodgy place. Its local football team, the SportBoys, play in pink uniforms and their mascot is the Pink Panther and yet they do not get beaten up on a regular basis. This says a great deal about the type of hard men produced in El Callao.
A taxi ride there will cost you in both soles and serenity. Social historians will tell you that the era of anarchy in Peru ended in 1992 with the defeat of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrilla group and the capture of its leader Abimael Guzman. This is incorrect. Anarchy is alive and well on Lima’s roads and asking to be taken to El Callao is obviously tantamount to indicating that you have no objection to living dangerously.
A working horn and good brakes are essential; indicators, shock absorbers, and following the rules of the road optional. Traffic police (of which there are many) hold animated personal conversations on their hands-free Bluetooth devices while conducting traffic, others demand the right of way when transporting their girlfriends on the back of their official motorbikes, overloaded shopping baskets held at arm’s length at each side. Drivers weave through traffic at high speeds, holding a cell phone clamped to one ear and taking the other hand off the wheel to point out to you the infractions of others: “¡Mire este loco! ¡No sabe manejar!”
Your best option is to close your eyes and hope that the pious name inevitably painted on the side of the taxi serves some protective purpose. However, I once saw a taxi called Divine Baby Jesus the Third. Whether the driver thought the Holy Trinity was made up exclusively of the Son, or he just liked the name and had written off two previous vehicles, it did not inspire confidence.
Having careened safely to a halt in front of my husband’s office, we walked the 10-15 blocks to the stadium. The route was littered with hardcore fans who had travelled up to 30 hours by bus and camped out for days outside the venue. The usual collection of hawkers darted about flogging Metallica T-shirts and cheap binoculars. While the age of the majority of fans ranged from toothless to shopworn – about the same vintage as the band itself – there was a significant percentage of younger fans who had obviously been introduced to Metallica via the Guitar Hero video game and were keen to see the real thing.
Inside the stadium we found the essential ingredients of every Peruvian public event: cerveza and choripan. Wisely only on sale between 4.30 and 8.30 pm, the beer was served in large plastic pint cups at a shudderingly lukewarm temperature. Choripan – the Peruvian equivalent of CMOT Dibbler’s sausage-inna-bun, immortalised in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld – consist of fat, bright pink sausages, lightly grilled and shoved unceremoniously into a hunk of bread. They are extremely delicious.
While they waited the crowd entertained itself trying to get a Mexican wave going around the stadium accompanied by shouts of “¡Con ganas carajo!” (Politely translated: “Like you mean it dammit!”) Interim entertainment consisted of a local rock band with an inferior sound system and a name like Necropsia or Necrophilia or some such death-related theme. They got a polite hearing from the crowd but once they retired the chant went up, football terrace style: “¡Olé, olé, olé, olé, Meh-taaa-leee-ca!”
When Metallica began to play, the stadium instantly lit up with the glow of 49,999 tiny lights. Cigarette lighters waved in appreciation of the music in the time-honoured fashion? No. Mobile phone cameras recording.
So ironically, those who spent up to US$400 on a ticket watched the entire concert via a screen smaller that their TV at home. Others ran up their phone bills by dialling friends and holding the phones up in the air to transmit the music and the roar of the crowd.
Now I couldn’t name a Metallica song if you put lighted matches between my toes, far less sing along to one. This turned out to be no problem. All that was required was a good deal of epileptic head bobbing and the occasional fist pump. (Surprisingly few air guitars made it through security.) Down near the stage we could see enthusiastic arms waving and, for those unable to contain their delirium, a small oasis of people skipping and leaping about in an uncoordinated way.
Up in the top tiers of the stadium where we were, the crowd was surprisingly sedate. Standing and mouthing the words with an intent look on their faces, they appeared to be considering the band’s place in music history for the doctoral thesis they planned to write later.
Two hours later, after the usual pre-arranged curtain calls where the band was ‘persuaded’ to return to the stage and play their most popular hits, we all filed meekly out and the crowd dispersed in an orderly fashion pursued by last-ditch T-shirt sellers.
My eardrums didn’t bleed and no guitars were smashed on stage so I suppose the Metal wasn’t as Heavy as I had expected, but beyond a few strangled cries of “Suicide!”, “Kill them all!” and “Seek and Destroy!” I still couldn’t sing you a Metallica song. However, it will take weeks to stop chanting “¡Olé, olé, olé, olé, Meh-taaa-leee-ca!”
This thoroughly English tradition of musical-comedy theatrical performance has been kept alive here for many years by the Good Companions, Lima’s amateur English-speaking theatre group, founded in 1947. Surfing a website for expatriates in Peru I stumbled across an appeal for actors for their 2009 offering, Little Red Riding Hood. I waddled along with my heavily pregnant self and secured the role of Dizzy, the Spirit of the Woods and Smuggies became my Sprite. They obligingly designed me a voluminous costume and only blinked slightly when, halfway through October, I announced that I would be giving birth the following Monday and would therefore be unable to make rehearsals that night.
Two missed rehearsals later we were back, two-week-old Smuggitos in hand. He soon got used to sleeping in his portable bassinet behind the backdrops and, when awake, being handed off to whichever actor was not currently on stage. On an average night he would work his way from Wolf to Prince to Huntsman to Little Red Riding Hood herself. On one occasion I entered stage right for a curtain call and met my son approaching from the other wings in the arms of the Sprite. He became known as the Prop Baby and no amount of bathing could eradicate the traces of greasepaint and glitter from his face.
Of course, pantomimes are as Peruvian as Buckingham Palace but you’d be surprised at the number of local references that can be worked into a script and the joy of yelling “Boooooo!!!” at the baddies is universal.
My next cultural experience occurred exactly three months after giving birth. My husband excitedly announced that for our first romantic post-partum outing he had secured tickets to Metallica’s World Metallic Tour 2010 concert.
Oh joy.
But what to wear? My husband, having invited me only the night before, had denied me the luxury of sartorial cogitation. Post-pregnancy chic is hard to come by and, though I toyed with the idea of a caftan sporting the logo “I Just Had a Baby, Give Me a Break”, I eventually settled for the universal rock uniform of black T-shirt and jeans.
I was delighted to find that I could once more wiggle into my button-front Levis until I discovered that they made my midsection look like a well-executed soufflé. I wiggled back out, wiggled into a girdle (yes, Dear Reader, let there be no secrets between us), donned the Levis once again and kept my fingers crossed that my caesarean scar wouldn’t split at the seams.
I had been instructed to leave home at 3.45 pm in order to take a taxi and meet Bigboy at his office at 5.00. The concert was due to start at 9.00 pm but we would obviously be competing for a good view with all those Heavy Metal fans who had reportedly come to Lima from various surrounding countries especially for this event.
Lima is the graveyard of rock. Any used-to-be-famous bunch of geriatrics can turn up in the City of Kings and expect a rapturous welcome, but this was apparently going to be the biggest concert in Peru’s history. The only venue large enough was the 50,000-seat stadium of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. The first officially established university in the Americas, San Marcos was founded in 1551 by a decree of King Charles V. Originally named the ‘Royal and Pontifical University of the City of the Kings of Lima’ it is one of the oldest universities in the world.
It sits near the border of Lima with the Constitutional Province of Callao, where the port, the airport and Bigboy’s office are located. El Callao has the reputation of being a fairly dodgy place. Its local football team, the SportBoys, play in pink uniforms and their mascot is the Pink Panther and yet they do not get beaten up on a regular basis. This says a great deal about the type of hard men produced in El Callao.
A taxi ride there will cost you in both soles and serenity. Social historians will tell you that the era of anarchy in Peru ended in 1992 with the defeat of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrilla group and the capture of its leader Abimael Guzman. This is incorrect. Anarchy is alive and well on Lima’s roads and asking to be taken to El Callao is obviously tantamount to indicating that you have no objection to living dangerously.
A working horn and good brakes are essential; indicators, shock absorbers, and following the rules of the road optional. Traffic police (of which there are many) hold animated personal conversations on their hands-free Bluetooth devices while conducting traffic, others demand the right of way when transporting their girlfriends on the back of their official motorbikes, overloaded shopping baskets held at arm’s length at each side. Drivers weave through traffic at high speeds, holding a cell phone clamped to one ear and taking the other hand off the wheel to point out to you the infractions of others: “¡Mire este loco! ¡No sabe manejar!”
Your best option is to close your eyes and hope that the pious name inevitably painted on the side of the taxi serves some protective purpose. However, I once saw a taxi called Divine Baby Jesus the Third. Whether the driver thought the Holy Trinity was made up exclusively of the Son, or he just liked the name and had written off two previous vehicles, it did not inspire confidence.
Having careened safely to a halt in front of my husband’s office, we walked the 10-15 blocks to the stadium. The route was littered with hardcore fans who had travelled up to 30 hours by bus and camped out for days outside the venue. The usual collection of hawkers darted about flogging Metallica T-shirts and cheap binoculars. While the age of the majority of fans ranged from toothless to shopworn – about the same vintage as the band itself – there was a significant percentage of younger fans who had obviously been introduced to Metallica via the Guitar Hero video game and were keen to see the real thing.
Inside the stadium we found the essential ingredients of every Peruvian public event: cerveza and choripan. Wisely only on sale between 4.30 and 8.30 pm, the beer was served in large plastic pint cups at a shudderingly lukewarm temperature. Choripan – the Peruvian equivalent of CMOT Dibbler’s sausage-inna-bun, immortalised in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld – consist of fat, bright pink sausages, lightly grilled and shoved unceremoniously into a hunk of bread. They are extremely delicious.
While they waited the crowd entertained itself trying to get a Mexican wave going around the stadium accompanied by shouts of “¡Con ganas carajo!” (Politely translated: “Like you mean it dammit!”) Interim entertainment consisted of a local rock band with an inferior sound system and a name like Necropsia or Necrophilia or some such death-related theme. They got a polite hearing from the crowd but once they retired the chant went up, football terrace style: “¡Olé, olé, olé, olé, Meh-taaa-leee-ca!”
When Metallica began to play, the stadium instantly lit up with the glow of 49,999 tiny lights. Cigarette lighters waved in appreciation of the music in the time-honoured fashion? No. Mobile phone cameras recording.
So ironically, those who spent up to US$400 on a ticket watched the entire concert via a screen smaller that their TV at home. Others ran up their phone bills by dialling friends and holding the phones up in the air to transmit the music and the roar of the crowd.
Now I couldn’t name a Metallica song if you put lighted matches between my toes, far less sing along to one. This turned out to be no problem. All that was required was a good deal of epileptic head bobbing and the occasional fist pump. (Surprisingly few air guitars made it through security.) Down near the stage we could see enthusiastic arms waving and, for those unable to contain their delirium, a small oasis of people skipping and leaping about in an uncoordinated way.
Up in the top tiers of the stadium where we were, the crowd was surprisingly sedate. Standing and mouthing the words with an intent look on their faces, they appeared to be considering the band’s place in music history for the doctoral thesis they planned to write later.
Two hours later, after the usual pre-arranged curtain calls where the band was ‘persuaded’ to return to the stage and play their most popular hits, we all filed meekly out and the crowd dispersed in an orderly fashion pursued by last-ditch T-shirt sellers.
My eardrums didn’t bleed and no guitars were smashed on stage so I suppose the Metal wasn’t as Heavy as I had expected, but beyond a few strangled cries of “Suicide!”, “Kill them all!” and “Seek and Destroy!” I still couldn’t sing you a Metallica song. However, it will take weeks to stop chanting “¡Olé, olé, olé, olé, Meh-taaa-leee-ca!”
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