This is a photo of a barrio outside of Lima, Peru. I was there a little more than a year ago. There is no running water here, elctricity or sewers. The air smelled so bad I did not want to breathe as we drove through this neighborhood on the one bumpy narrow paved street. The poor people in Lima live on the hillsides. The hills are devoid of any vegetation, just rocks and dirt. Not a single tree grew anywhere on the mountains above Lima where the gente pobre live. It was made the capitol of Peru by the Conquistadores because it had a natural harbor from which the conquerors could load and haul the treasure they stole back to Spain. Infant mortality is greater than 50% and tuberculosis is high in this place called San Juan de Lima. Respiratory infections are frequent and there is no Insta Care or IHC to take your kid to when he has a fever. Garbage was piled along the street and the sorriest junkyard dogs I have ever seen look for something to eat. They compete with the residents looking for scraps of paper or metal to recycle and sell.
I was told by my body guards this was not the worst neighborhood in Lima. We could not go to the worst because they would break the mirrors off the van or try to carjack us. I had to be content with experiencing the second worst neighborhood. When I retrurned home to Centerville I showed this and other photos to my son in law K. I said I could not believe there was an LDS Church there and missionarios, even gringos serve here... He laughed and said he was a Zone Leader in San Juan de Lima.
Mi vida es facil!
1 comment:
Not exactly the kind of hillside housing one finds in Oakland CA or Bountiful UT. Great post WP. I am amazed at times by the human will and capacity to survive in the worst imaginable circumstances. Even the people here who live in cardboard tents by the river in Sacramento have more opportunities and a far better quality of life; our safety net has some big holes in it but at least we have one. Short of committing murder, when a person is faced with the choice of saving their own life / family's life and breaking some law, he or she can argue necessity defense. There is such a pervasive cluelessness about the realities of poverty in our own land, how can the U.S. powers that be even fathom a place like San Juan de Lima?
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