Sunday in Comas and Miraflores

On Sunday, Juan Pedro came to my house to pick me up and take me to visit his place in Comas! First we grabbed some snacks (cachanga, chocolate, fruit juice, and platanos) in Metro grocery store, then took the hour-long bus to Comas. The landscape changed a lot as we left the main part of Lima, into smaller houses, more trash along the roadsides, and a little more of a desert look.

First Juan Pedro showed me the Municipality building, where the local government manages the area of Comas. This pretty statue was outside the small building. It says, "Heroic Town of Comas." As we were standing there and Juan Pedro was telling me about what the municipality does and how this particular plaza used to be really ugly and dirty compared to its nicely manicured sidewalks, a drunk man came up and started trying to talk to me, asking me where I was from and telling me I was beautiful. I got pretty scared but Juan Pedro didn't seem too concerned, just kept saying, "Move along, yes, okay, on your way now," to the guy. Eventually he left, but I was hiding behind JP. :)

Right next to the municipality building was a busy marketplace, and we walked through it to see all the neat items for sale. The legal part of it was indoors, the unregistered part was filling up the streets and blocking most of the traffic except on foot or mototaxi.

Then we took a moto-taxi to the Civic Center of Comas, a building that was going to be the new municipality building but the new mayor disagreed with the plans and made it into a concert, art, theatre, and meeting place. It was really fancy for Comas!

The courtyard in front, where people can sit and watch plays or shows on the steps. Juan Pedro was once in a show here. He played Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar, I think he told me. :D

We bought some bite-sized sugarcane and he taught me how to chew it. It was really tasty!

At one of the bus stops, we saw young boys getting piercings on the street from unregistered  piercing and tattoo artists. It did not look sanitary at ALL. This one boy had a small metal rod jammed through his eyebrow, with blood coming out... I won't forget it! Juan Pedro asked the piercer if we could take a picture but he said no, probably for fear of getting punished for semi-illegal piercing on the street.

We took another mototaxi to Juan Pedro's house in the 5th district/etapa, the highest part of the hill. It was a different kind of beauty than what I'm used to considering "beautiful". But thousands of people live here, and this area has come so far from its origins of dilapidated houses and dangerous streets. This is the soccer field Juan Pedro played on as a child and adult. He has lived on this street his whole life, and his kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, and high school are all located in a few small buildings literally right across the street from his house. He said if he was ever poorly behaved in school, his teachers could just tell his mom right away, haha. But Juan Pedro was a tranquil child, he told me.

Look at this beautiful hill. Maybe by the end of this post, everyone can see what I mean by a different kind of beauty, because not once in Comas did I think it was ugly just because it was more poor than my district of Jesus Maria.

The tasty lunch his grandma made for us! Sheep meat, beans, and rice. We also ate an amazingly good but slimy fruit called a granadilla (and I made a mess of it, to my embarrassment), and drank manzanilla tea. This was the first time I had eaten beans in Peru, actually. When he saw we were eating beans, Juan Pedro made me feel embarrassed by making me tell his grandma the phrase he and Enrique taught me in Spanish: "A fart is the dead soul of a baby bean."

Juan Pedro's grandma and aunt. I think you can tell that his grandma liked me. :D

After lunch, Juan Pedro and I walked up to his neighborhood soccer court. He showed me the place where the neighborhood boys smoke marijuana next to a statue of a dove, and pointed out a tree that contains a medicine for relieving mosquito bites.

Juan Pedro with his hill. I think it's really cool that he has spent his entire life on one street, and also is so often in Jesus Maria at Inppares, an hour or more from his house. His family doesn't usually leave Comas except for specific events or to see the sights in other parts of Lima occasionally.

I have to admit that I didn't know someone who lives out in the hills could be as successful as Juan Pedro is, but I am really glad to get rid of some of my stereotypes. He is 22, in law school, and spends all of his free time either volunteering/working at Inppares or playing soccer. He's been at Inppares for more than a decade, only recently getting paid for what he does, and he really loves sex education. He has also been paid to play soccer because he's very good and it's his passion. He's really funny and works as a clown for special events, a vocation that is way more respected and admired in Peru than in the US. I would have thought someone like him would have moved out of Comas into more affluent parts of Lima, but he identifies with his neighborhood and likes living with his mom and grandma. His family also prefers staying in the same house and not living in a cramped apartment.

The cement stairs outside of Juan Pedro's house were incorrectly made and so were very steep! You can't see it in this picture but the steps on the upper part are only a few inches in width but a foot or more in height, so it is like rock climbing. :D

His house is two floors and only parts of the second floor have a roof. There was laundry hanging in the hallway without a roof and I was reminded of the Disney movie Aladdin, in a good way. The toilets in his house were flushed with a bucket of water, not with a handle.  He showed me his uncle's carpentry skills in the form of a beautiful bedframe made on request that was about to be sold. It seems like a really comfortable place to live, even though it's a different style than in the US or in the apartment where I'm staying.

We lamented the trash that people threw behind this building. :( There is a real lack of concern for trash in this area and Lima in general. As we were eating lunch, some old drunk guys threw a bunch of dead leaves into the road in front of Juan Pedro's house. His aunt asked the men to please move the leaves, but they didn't. Really sad.

Not far from here, we saw another drunk guy. He was dancing in the street, collecting rocks, and calling out to me to dance with him. Juan Pedro laughed and said this guy was no one to fear, drunk every day of the week at every hour. I took a short video that is pretty funny. He yelled, "Vamos, rubia!" to me. (Come on, blonde girl!) In that video, you can also see a dog who was eating soup out of a plastic bag in the road. Unfortunately, next to the dog were her very young puppies and one of them had a huge tumor, almost a quarter of the size of its body. :(

Juan Pedro took me to the cemetery of Comas, which was a lot more beautiful than I had imagined. I really like this style of burial. Juan Pedro instructed me that navigating through the cemetery involved climbing on top of the graves and not touching the dirt if possible. As you can see from the fog above the hills, Comas has more of a sierra climate, where it is very humid.

This fancy grave has an open area for people to pour libations to the dead.

The pathway leading into the cemetery. Juan Pedro thinks it's funny that there's a locked gate because there are no walls keeping anyone out of the cemetery. In fact, there are some graves right next to the soccer field bordering the graveyard.

After a short collective taxi ride to the main road, I took the bus by myself back to Inppares despite Juan Pedro worrying that I wouldn't know how or where to get off. I really enjoyed my visit to Comas, and I hope I get to go back.

At night, I went out with Andre Luis to Legendaris, a gay dance club in Miraflores. First we saw some people dancing capoeira in Kennedy Park. It was the first time I have seen anyone do that dance. Really awesome!

At the club, we had a really awesome time dancing. A lot of the music was American dance hits from Top 40, but also some great music in Spanish that I've come to love. A pretty girl made eye contact with me, came over and told me in broken, drunk English how beautiful I am, and then followed me into the bathroom to kiss me. She told me she wanted to buy me a drink and have a dance, but I lost track of her hanging out with Andre and the next time I saw her, she was on the stage dancing with a stripper and taking her shirt off. Oh, Peru.

There were a ton of muscled, oiled men dancing in tiny jock straps on large platforms throughout the club. At first I couldn't believe it, but they were wearing even less than a thong, definitely employees of the club. Drag queens in zebra costumes and sexy dresses were also up on the stage dancing. The lights in the club were even better than in Vale Todo, a great mix of lasers and strobe lights. The songs repeated more often than they should have, what with the variety of songs that exist in the world of dance music... There was a hilarious slideshow at one point about "types of gay friends" because this was the Day of the Friend in Peru. Then La Hora Loca was announced, and balloons and glitter and confetti rained down from the ceiling. Peruvians really know how to throw a party.

I bought myself a beer mixed with some types of juices and vodka, it was no better than decent but it was really cheap. :) Then a gay guy hanging out with us bought me a Fresa Colada, pretty tasty. I was only a tiny bit tipsy throughout the evening, but poor Andre got hammered and got lost at one point. I was desperately looking for him and had a PMS-induced cry when I couldn't find him after 10 minutes because I thought he got hate-crimed and someone might be driving away with him, getting farther every minute.... I was on the stage with a microphone in hand given to me by a concerned staff member, crying and ready to announce in Spanish that I needed everyone to help me look for my drunk friend when suddenly Andre called me and I found him outside on the street. In the taxi on the way to my place, I talked on the phone with his boyfriend, warning him that his lover was drunk as hell and might not find his way home easily. Andre was in the car, laughing and screaming I'M SO DRUNK CAROLINE OMG!! Poor guy had a wicked hangover the next day and had to leave work. His bf was pissed.