No one is dancing, eating or playing table hockey.
This is where I am right now.
Tonight I drove into a town in northern Peru where on the main strip all the stores and houses are clay boxes with impossibly tall, thin, wobbly telvision antennae sticking up from tin roofs and there are many people sitting against the walls, waiting maybe, or maybe just sitting there. It is not uncommon for some people in every town to be doing this in South America, but here it is everybody. Nothing else happening aside from the sitting.
I stopped because I was very exhausted and also because it looked like a strange place.
The police didn't seem to have a lot to do. I asked two officers advice on where to stay for the night and after they could not convince me to drive to another town, they came back with the disclaimer "our hotel isn't like a hotel for tourists... it's just for the people from here." I was confused as to whether this meant I wasn't allowed to stay there since I'm not Peruvian, or that I might not find it luxurious enough since the dirt smeared on my face and the mud caked on my shoes hinted to them what a classy lady I am. I assured them that wherever "people from here" slept I would also sleep.
I got a police escort to a hotel where I paid three dollars for a barebones, concrete room with a thin matress sagging into a metal bedframe. Then I drove my motorcycle into a cavernous bar/billiards hall next door where it would be kept for the night, so that none of the sitters would steal it. A round table in the dark corner was host to six men playing a game with dice, all of whom lifted their heads and turned to stare as I unloaded my luggage. The owner pulled a metal curtain with a tiny door cut into it over the entryway, so that going back out was like following the White Rabbit through Wonderland.
Up the block and around the corner I found the main plaza, empty. A megawatt PA system was blaring regaetton that no one was dancing to, and under a tent sat twelve unused table hockey tables. I looked around to see if I was the only one there who found this a little odd. I was. In fact, I was the only one there, period. Everyone else was out along the main road, too busy just sitting against the walls, waiting maybe, or maybe just sitting there, to dance or play table hockey.
Looking for dinner, I wandered in to a well lit yet deserted room that had tables and chairs and napkins like one would see at a restaurant. I stood near the entryway and shouted "Hola? Hola, buenas noches?" until a bald old man shuffled out to attend to me. I asked him if it was indeed a restaurant, and he confirmed that it was. I asked what there was to eat, and he said there was no food. "It's all gone by noon. People don't eat in the evening." This left me to ponder why a restaurant that has no food would be open, but it explained why there wasn't anyone eating there.
Down the street I passed a funeral home/food mart, where two coffins wrapped in plastic were displayed in front of shelves loaded with bottles of Pepsi, cans of condensed milk, strawberry wafers and toilet paper. There was also an arcade/food mart, and a hardware store/food mart where I bought a roll of electrical tape and a candybar. I am undecided as to whether a food mart is so lucritive a venture that you should couple it with any other use of retail space, or whether it is so unprofitable that if you are to have a food mart you must subsidize it with a secondary business. Perhaps selling food only worthwhile until noon, since apparently that's when people stop eating, so the rest of the day you have to sell coffins and hammers.
I stopped in a few other places decorated to look like restaurants, some even doing business under the label "restaurant", yet none had any food. I finally got directions to a place on the outskirts of town where I was sure to find a meal. In the end it was so far away, I realized it was the reason no one had bothered to eat all their food earlier in the day when they were eating the bald man's food, and the food of everyone else on his street. Maybe they're like bears and they eat once a day to store up fat for the rest of the day when they hibernate on the sidewalks, and this is why they cannot dance to reggaeton or play table hockey. They must eat and sit, eat and sit, nothing else.
Walking back to my concrete room I passed through a street with walls on both sides, where all that could be seen over the tops were the towering television antennae. In the dark, they appeared to be crosses. Hundreds of them. A cemetary for people whose legs are stilts and everything in their world is lanky and loft, even their grave monuments.
I don't know the name of this town and I never want to find it out. I prefer to let it melt into one of those memories that later you think maybe was a dream, or into a dream that later you think was a memory. A very strange place indeed.
Tonight I drove into a town in northern Peru where on the main strip all the stores and houses are clay boxes with impossibly tall, thin, wobbly telvision antennae sticking up from tin roofs and there are many people sitting against the walls, waiting maybe, or maybe just sitting there. It is not uncommon for some people in every town to be doing this in South America, but here it is everybody. Nothing else happening aside from the sitting.
I stopped because I was very exhausted and also because it looked like a strange place.
The police didn't seem to have a lot to do. I asked two officers advice on where to stay for the night and after they could not convince me to drive to another town, they came back with the disclaimer "our hotel isn't like a hotel for tourists... it's just for the people from here." I was confused as to whether this meant I wasn't allowed to stay there since I'm not Peruvian, or that I might not find it luxurious enough since the dirt smeared on my face and the mud caked on my shoes hinted to them what a classy lady I am. I assured them that wherever "people from here" slept I would also sleep.
I got a police escort to a hotel where I paid three dollars for a barebones, concrete room with a thin matress sagging into a metal bedframe. Then I drove my motorcycle into a cavernous bar/billiards hall next door where it would be kept for the night, so that none of the sitters would steal it. A round table in the dark corner was host to six men playing a game with dice, all of whom lifted their heads and turned to stare as I unloaded my luggage. The owner pulled a metal curtain with a tiny door cut into it over the entryway, so that going back out was like following the White Rabbit through Wonderland.
Up the block and around the corner I found the main plaza, empty. A megawatt PA system was blaring regaetton that no one was dancing to, and under a tent sat twelve unused table hockey tables. I looked around to see if I was the only one there who found this a little odd. I was. In fact, I was the only one there, period. Everyone else was out along the main road, too busy just sitting against the walls, waiting maybe, or maybe just sitting there, to dance or play table hockey.
Looking for dinner, I wandered in to a well lit yet deserted room that had tables and chairs and napkins like one would see at a restaurant. I stood near the entryway and shouted "Hola? Hola, buenas noches?" until a bald old man shuffled out to attend to me. I asked him if it was indeed a restaurant, and he confirmed that it was. I asked what there was to eat, and he said there was no food. "It's all gone by noon. People don't eat in the evening." This left me to ponder why a restaurant that has no food would be open, but it explained why there wasn't anyone eating there.
Down the street I passed a funeral home/food mart, where two coffins wrapped in plastic were displayed in front of shelves loaded with bottles of Pepsi, cans of condensed milk, strawberry wafers and toilet paper. There was also an arcade/food mart, and a hardware store/food mart where I bought a roll of electrical tape and a candybar. I am undecided as to whether a food mart is so lucritive a venture that you should couple it with any other use of retail space, or whether it is so unprofitable that if you are to have a food mart you must subsidize it with a secondary business. Perhaps selling food only worthwhile until noon, since apparently that's when people stop eating, so the rest of the day you have to sell coffins and hammers.
I stopped in a few other places decorated to look like restaurants, some even doing business under the label "restaurant", yet none had any food. I finally got directions to a place on the outskirts of town where I was sure to find a meal. In the end it was so far away, I realized it was the reason no one had bothered to eat all their food earlier in the day when they were eating the bald man's food, and the food of everyone else on his street. Maybe they're like bears and they eat once a day to store up fat for the rest of the day when they hibernate on the sidewalks, and this is why they cannot dance to reggaeton or play table hockey. They must eat and sit, eat and sit, nothing else.
Walking back to my concrete room I passed through a street with walls on both sides, where all that could be seen over the tops were the towering television antennae. In the dark, they appeared to be crosses. Hundreds of them. A cemetary for people whose legs are stilts and everything in their world is lanky and loft, even their grave monuments.
I don't know the name of this town and I never want to find it out. I prefer to let it melt into one of those memories that later you think maybe was a dream, or into a dream that later you think was a memory. A very strange place indeed.
posted by Tracy at 5:16 PM
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