Saturday morning at 6am, the warm, humid Lima air greeted my body, overheated and uncomfortable from the seven hour night bus through the mountains. Returning to Lima to escape the cold had been the goal for the last few days. How happy I was to see the familiar sights of Lima. I rode home with Marisol and her spouse, looking out the window at the now familiar billboards, restaurants, stores, the agricultural university and the Peruvian ministry of agriculture lands near CIP. They chatted with me and told me that I should run an 8K marathon with them. In Spanish, a marathon is a race of any distance- not 26.2 miles, or the 42K they refer to The Marathon as. I happily agreed. How nice it is to be back in the warmth- back in Lima.
Immediately upon arriving home, I washed up, and changed into running clothes. I wanted to do something purely physical after a week of feeling physically inadequate in the field. Ten minutes out, I found myself in the bathroom with the awful feeling of a rebellious stomach. Altitude sickness in the least expected place: from descending the mountain.
That afternoon, I went with Rocio and Nataly out to the biggest shopping center in Lima. Spectacular designer window displays and elegant architectural design reminded me of my small town origins. What a contrast from the fields one day ago in Huancayo. Returning to Rocio and talking to her about what I saw in Huancayo made me feel at home. We stood on the corner of a street in La Molina for an hour waiting for a friend to pick us up for our trip to the shopping center. The hot wind and exhaust of the autos felt normal, I knew how to ignore the whistles of passersby, and while I talked to Rocio candidly about my perceptions, I felt at home with a friend. Anywhere in the world, a friend can bring me a little bit of what I'll always search for: home
No comments:
Post a Comment