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!”