Lima, Second Day

Hi All,
Jer posting again today.  Miss Helen a bit under the weather, nothing serious.  I think she’ll be back tomorrow.
Yesterday was our second day in Lima, and once again we did a full day tour.  In the afternoon part of the tour, we went to the main tourist attractions in central Lima.  It is a large, busy, clean, and beautiful city.  The architecture is amazing.  But I am not going to post about that now.  That will come later, probably tomorrow.  Now I want to post about our morning tour.  We went to where two million of Lima’s poorest people live, Shanty Town.  The ship’s tours don’t go anywhere near Shanty Town.  Some people were almost horrified when we told them where we were going.  We toured with the same people with whom we did the cooking school the day before, 4 of us.  The tour company is run by Incas and is called Haku Tours.  Haku means “Let’s go” in Inca.  The company is a non profit that puts the money it makes back into Shanty Town projects to help the people who live there.  Helen and I discussed whether or not we should go to Shanty Town.  What would the people who live there think about well off Americans looking at where they live and work, taking pictures, etc?  Would they not want us there?  Well, the opposite was true.  The people were so friendly.  Many wanted to be in pictures with us.  They seemed happy.  It is hard for people like us to imagine being happy living in such squalor, but they seemed happy.  They smiled a lot.  A very interesting thing happened just before our van arrived in Shanty Town.  We stopped to picked up a uniformed policeman.  What was he there for?  To protect us?  No, he was there to protect the people in Shanty Town FROM us.  In the past, less recently, people have come to Shanty Town to steal children while their parents are off at work.  The children are quickly taken out of Peru and sold as slaves, for organ harvest, etc. Our guide said not a single child has been recovered.  So now tour groups travel with a policeman to assure the people that their children are safe.
The children were beautiful.  Very friendly and a bit shy, but they all wanted their picture taken.

Helen took this picture of a pretty little girl.  She looks so sad, but she really wasn’t.  She was shy, but she smiled a lot at us.

This woman was selling corn, and she wanted her picture taken with Helen.

This woman asked us to take her picture.  I think she looks so proud and strong.  She is a survivor.

This is an example of what the people live in.  Some of the houses are made of whatever materials people can scrounge. Others are made of brick.  Almost none of them have electricity, running water, or sanitation.

Most of the town is built on steep cliffs, and the people use steps like these to get around.  There are no cars.

Our guide said these steps are fairly new.  It seems there was a recent election and the government threw some money at Shanty Town to win votes.  Hmmm, sound familiar?  Our guide was Inca, and they believe in reincarnation.  He said he was trying to build good Karma so he wouldn’t come back as a politician :). The guide said we would be perfectly safe in the Inca section of Shanty Town that we visited.  He said the Inca people live by three principles.  They don’t steal, don’t lie, and they are not lazy.  Some other sections of Shanty Town are controlled by the mafia and they are not safe.
I said our tour company builds projects to help Shanty Town people.  Here is a community kitchen (on right) and a day care center they funded.

The “hospital” for the people of Shanty Town is 20 ocean shipping containers joined end to end.  It costs $1 to visit the doctor.  The problem comes when the doctor prescribes medicine that the people can’t afford to buy.  They then turn to a Shaman.  Shaman brew all kinds of remedies to cure almost anything.  This guy can ever cure cancer!  BTW, that is our police escort in the picture.

So, that is a look at Shanty Town.  Visiting a place like this and then returning to our beautiful ship is a sobering experience.  How fortunate and thankful we are.
We are now at sea heading for Easter Island, will arrive there Thursday.  Can’t wait to see the Moai.
Bye for now,
Jer and Helen