Monday 16th October. Lima, Peru.

Today is a day at leisure. I am very well catered for and Rosa, the maid, is busy attending to my washing and the preparation of my lunch of tasty freshly squeezed juices and local meats.

We have a wonderful conversation about the city and Rosa’s impressions of life in Lima.

She loves it here in Los Alamos de Monterrico with its tranquility and she is at pains to point out that Peru is a very safe country, no different to the UK in this respect.

Tim and Margarita’s home is simply stunning. It is an architecturally designed masterpiece with huge picture windows looking out onto the family garden and park beyond. Tim’s gardener keeps all of this land pristine.

The neighbourhood is a gated community of stunning properties, as indeed are the myriad of homes I see on my way into and out of this particular sub-division.

Lima is not all barred-in as was the case in many cities in other South American countries I have visited.

I feel so at home here, not only because of the warmth of Tim and Margarita’s welcome; but also because of their American style house that I am very used to from my life in the US.

The one key distinction here is that no matter how friendly Rosa and I are becoming she chooses to eat alone in the kitchen. The demarcation of class is still so evident in Rosa’s attitudes to life.


The Joys of the English Language.

For some reason I have found the last few days difficult, and I have again begun focusing on my negative experiences in Ecuador. However I sat down to read for the afternoon today and became focused on the Robert Frost (1874-1963) poem The Road Not Taken.

It served to remind me that there were at least two different roads I could have taken this year and that I chose to take "the one less travelled...and that has made all the difference".

This thought process caused me to drift into the inspirational text of IF by Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) and the fact that you "don't give way to hating": that you "meet triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same".

I am finding it really difficult not to hate my attackers, yet I know that I must seek to understand what happened to me, to treat it as another of life's experiences that will shape and inform the man I am yet to become.

I know that everything you touch cannot turn to gold and indeed that the way I handle my problems may be more of a maturing and growing exercise than a project year that had sailed through with no trauma.


When Kipling talks of watching "the things you gave your life to, broken" he touches a cord with how I feel about having made such a great effort to get this project off the ground only for the rug to be pulled from under my feet.

Yet as Kipling continues, so have I since that August day, to "stoop and build'em [back]up with worn-out tools".

Coming back to South America is the greatest challenge I have ever faced and yet I knew that I had no option but to see this project through and make of it the potential I saw from the start.

In many ways I have lived literature since late August. As Kipling points out

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it one one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings....[then maybe you have achieved something in life?]

This is what has happened with me. I have lost all we raised to provide this scholarship program and so infact I am no further forward, nor any further back than I was at my beginnings...

Yet, I am arguably further forward as I am experiencing new horizons every day.

And again I have held on when there was nothing left in me, except the WILL that said you must hold on.

I hope for me that this year follows the sentiments of Kipling and that my experiences enrich my life and make me a better man than I might otherwise have become.

I know that on my return to the UK next year I must make that pilgrimage to Bateman's to thank Kipling for his inspirational words. It is strange that Bateman's remains one of the few cultural sites near my Sussex home that I have never visited!

One of the interesting observations I have made that in some way helps me to understand the attack I faced, is the fact that in South America in general there is a very short term mentality that cannot see beyond today...as long as I can make it today, then tomorrow, next week etc will take care of themselves.

Tonight Tim introduces me to Pisco. We sample an aromatic pisco made from the Italia grape which you should drink straight.

Pisco is brandy that is not stored in barrels. Remember that brandy gets its flavour and colour alteration from storing in barrels. With Pisco there is no alteration occurring from the storage vessel.

The funny thing about tonight is that in all my anal and organized state I had posted parcels to myself across South America. I love to give gifts from HOME when I travel and so I sent Scotch to various of my hosts.

No thought of course was given to the fact that I could have bought the Scotch in the airport Duty Free cheaper than in the UK and saved on the postage.

The Chile delivery has apparently arrived smashed, but not so here in Peru. Although the £20 spent to post it is actually more than the bottle would have cost in Duty Free.

Why the digression?

Well.

Tim’s bottle got here safely. But when he opened it we discovered that this bottle, bought and posted in Scotland, is actually an export strength bottle that is labelled for where?...Ecuador…the country of my torment.

We all have such a laugh about the fact that Ecuador seems to keep haunting me.

So to restore the balance, with supper, we have a wonderful bottle of wine called Aberdeen Angus from Argentina!

You know the more and more I travel the more I realize that we live in a world where distances may be short in relative terms, but we all forget that understanding of each other and our respective cultures remains a long term phenomena. We really still don’t understand or, at least most people choose not to understand, the differences that make the world a great big melting pot.

I am enjoying the opportunities this project is creating that allow me the privilege of learning about my brothers and sisters at close quarters!