The girl with kaleidoscope eyes

Posted on August 12, 2013 by wwelvaert under Life in Peru

Today’s the first day back to school after the 2 week “winter vacation” of the schools here in Peru. The “winter vacation” coincides with the Fiestas Patrias (national holiday) the end of July. After two weeks of sleeping in, our Brianna wasn’t ready to wake up on time for school this morning but papi knew just what to do. For some reason Brianna has been totally enamored with the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” so when papi was checking his early morning emails (and that pesky CSRF_TOKEN that keeps appearing on my work but that’s another story) I cranked up the volume on my laptop and hit “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” in iTunes.

Listo, Brianna wakes up, goes of to jardin and papi now has 4 blessed hours of peace and quiet in the house! Thank God and Profe Shirley!!!

Anyway, our Brianna is NOT the girl with kaleidoscope eyes. She has beautiful big brown eyes just like almost all the Cusqueñas. When Brianna was born some of Patricia’s friends and family could barely hide their disappointment that she wasn’t a blonde blue-eyed baby. They just expect any gringo baby to be that way. I may be tall and sexy but I’m not blonde blue-eyed myself so I don’t get why they expected my baby to be that way 😉

However, our second baby, Claire Josephine, was born with blue-ish eyes like her papucho. Most of the time the baby’s eyes are blue-ish gray-ish like mine but sometimes they appear more green or beige. Heck I’m a middle-aged white guy I don’t know more than 6 or 8 basic colors (fuchsia what’s that?) but the baby’s eyes are some undefined blue-ish color. Even on an RGB color chart I couldn’t nail down the exact color. Our baby’s eye color changes with the light or her moods I don’t know but she really has the kaleidoscope eyes like the little girl who John Lennon said inspired him to write the song. (the drug references are supposed to be secondary)

The point of this rant on colors is that people in Cuzco treat my baby like a goddess because of her eye color. Very few Cusqueños have light or blue colored eyes and whenever they see somebody who does have blue eyes, in the view of your average Cusqueñian, the blue or green eyes define that entire person, that person is better and more beautiful than any other. Almost to the point that it annoys me, like my oldest daughter is OK no mas but the one really came out good is the baby with the blue eyes.

People stop me in the street to check the color of my baby’s eyes. I was at the market the other day with the baby in the stroller when two teenage girls stopped me:

“Sir, please stop, wait one moment.”

They said it in a very serious voice like perhaps my baby was getting ready to fall out of her stroller or something. I stopped to check the baby but one of the girls stuck her face in the stroller and with a look of approval turned to her friend “Yes she’s got blue eyes.”

Our beautiful baby girls 🙂

The girl with kaleidoscope eyes

UPDATE: Kind reader Kristin passed along this link about genetics of eye color: How blue eyed parents can have brown eyed children.

Going through the motions

Posted on August 4, 2013 by wwelvaert under Life in Peru

I took Brianna to a birthday party last weekend. I’ve been to probably 10 or 15 birthday parties with her now. Especially since she’s been in “jardin” (pre-school) she gets regular invitations and we usually try to go. I’m a regular, even some of the clowns that usually work the kids’ parties know me, they call on me when they need a tall doofus to participate in their act. They know by now I’m usually up for anything. At this last party I was the helper when the clown did his balloon tricks (ie. make things out of balloons and do a little sketch).

Some of the moms (other moms?) at the parties know me too, the regulars. And then there are the working moms, the professionals, the ones who hardly ever have time to go to a party with their kid. Those moms are usually all Nervous Nellie when the clown calls on them, or they are beaming with pride when their kid plays in the party. The moms who come to every party, they’ve pretty much seen it all before. They still enjoy seeing their kid at a party but they’ve seen most of the magic tricks, they’ve danced “chu-chu-ua-ua” and “gangnam style” 200 times before. The “regular moms” are sort of tuned out, they chat with their friends, wait for the chicken and the cake. Even during the “hora loca” the “regular moms” still shake their booty but they’re just sort of going through the motions.

Until the piñata.

There’s no more going through the motions when it’s time to “rompe la piñata”. Not for the moms who have been to 20 or 200 parties before, not for the moms who are taking their kid to their first party ever. When it’s time to “rompe la piñata” all the moms get up, grandmas are rolling around on the floor, mothers are stepping on their own kids, anything and everything just to get that plastic helicopter or jojo.

Have fun at your next party!

Quien rompe la piñata?

Brianna’s 4th birthday party

Like the hat?

Ask and you shall receive: Gold vs. S&P500

Posted on July 11, 2013 by wwelvaert under Business & Economy

TY to Otto at IKN. A few days ago I asked “how about a gold vs. S&P 500 chart” and here she is:

Gold vs. S&P500, courtesy IKN

If you were looking for accompanying words of wisdom, best I can offer is, when given the chance, take love over gold.

The difference between men and women – baby food edition

Posted on July 9, 2013 by wwelvaert under Business & Economy, Life in Peru

Mamacita linda feeds the baby:

Get out your handy “baby nutrition needs” chart provided free of charge by your friendly local pediatrician, courtesy of Nestle and Abbott Labs.
Run to grocery store and buy the recommended baby cereal. Interesting! This cereal is made by Nestle.
Stop at the pharmacy on way back from grocery store, buy recommended baby powder milk. Hey, look at that, powder milk is manufactured and sold by Abbott Labs!
Boil water, get out the blender, read the instructions, throw it all together and listo! Yummie baby cereal is ready.
Put bib on baby, wipe her hands with Huggies no-alcohol wet wipes because you never know when the dog might have licked her or drooled on her. Es capaz!
Feed baby.

Papucho feeds the baby:

Get whatever food is on the table.
Mash it, add a twist of lime. Nah, just kidding about the twist of lime.
Feed baby.

Now it isn’t that I don’t care about proper nutrition for my baby, only that I don’t believe some big multi-nationals know better what my baby needs than the Pachamama. We eat fresh and heathy foods, so if baby craves it, I figure it must be good for her.

Here in Peru multi-nationals and their slick marketing campaigns are still fairly new, people tend to put a kind of innocent faith in what they see in commercials on TV. It must be good for your baby because the trustworthy pediatrician (tall and white, of course) in the TV commercial said so. I think people in the industrialized countries have become so accustomed to the consumption society that they take for granted but also with a grain of salt the constant marketing thrown at them. Some commercials are cute, most are just good bathroom breaks. You understand it affects your buying habits yet you don’t take the commercials very seriously. By contrast, here in Peru I’ve had more conversations with people where they were trying to convince me of some point of view very similar to one being made in a current advertising campaign on TV.

Not saying multi-nationals are all bad, I’ve worked for one and it’s true that you can do great things by combining the talents of many people. I happen to believe that human beings should put their intelligence and creativity to use, I don’t believe in the noble savage of old. Having said that, big business answers to their shareholders first and in countries like Peru that is not something the average consumer is always aware of.

Many moons ago, when Brianna Nayaraq was just a baby.

FAB-001 Evo Airplane Turnaround

Posted on July 4, 2013 by wwelvaert under Life in Peru

Three possibilities regarding the Evo airplane (call sign FAB-001 for Fuerza Aerea Boliviano 001) turnaround yesterday:

1) The White House interns are so naive they really believed Edward Snowden was onboard FAB-001 and pulled some strings to force the airplane to land in Wien, where they’d catch him in Hollywood fashion. (my odds: 15%)

2) Putin set the US up, led them to believe Snowden was onboard Evo’s airplane. Putin enjoyed the embarrassment of his US/European “friends”. (my odds: 30%)

3) The whole thing was an elaborate hoax: somebody wanted to give Evo the high ground and good excuse to grant asylum to Edward Snowden, thereby making the whole headache go away for everybody. (my odds: 30%)

For bonus points: how long before we see pictures of Obama/Hollande/Putin hanging out together at one of Berlusconi’s bunga-bunga parties saying “Edward who?”

I know, my odds don’t add up to 100%. Here’s why: the cockpit audio of FAB-001 landing in Wien seems to indicate the pilots are landing because they have trouble with the fuel quantity (or fuel flow) indication. It’s only 2 minutes of audio prior to landing so we don’t know what the conversations with previous controllers were like. A reasonable guess could be that they were never planning to stop in France but asked to land there due this fuel indication problem. Somebody thought the pilot’s request was suspicious and denied permission to land in France perhaps? But the airplane was over Austria heading for Italy, so the French angle is odd.

The pilot’s reference to the fuel indication problem doesn’t necessarily contradict the Bolivian narrative that the airplane was denied permission to enter somebody’s airspace. It’s possible, for example, that while enroute the pilots were denied clearance at some point to continue along their flight planned route (over France, presumably) and were punching new/alternate routes in their FMS (flight management system). Due to the complexity of the European routing requirements this could have taken them far enough off course that the FMS was giving them “low fuel” calculations for their intended point of landing (I believe they were making a refueling stop in the Canary Islands). If you’re going 500 miles an hour over unfamiliar areas (assuming the Bolivian Air Force pilots don’t holiday in the south of France every year) with the Prez of your country in the back, you’d prefer not to have any confusion about your fuel status and land somewhere.

Maybe there was nothing to it after all, just a media story with no more legs than a pilot making a precautionary landing.

A few pictures from our trip to La Paz, now many moons ago:

In La Paz, back when there were two 🙂

At the elevation of La Paz, nothing better than yummie ice cream when the sun is out.

Typical Bolivian food

One of the main government buildings in La Paz, Bolivia

Having..em dinner in Copacabana, Bolivia

“Evo SI” Billboard in La Paz

Travel to USA on invalid / altered passport.

Posted on July 3, 2013 by wwelvaert under Life in Peru

Note to NSA and other security types: Sorry if you don’t like this innocent yet true story, don’t kill the messenger. Draw your own conclusions, I’m sure most will just take this story to reinforce their own belief systems.

* * *

All the news about Edward Snowden being stuck in Moscow, supposedly because he doesn’t have valid travel papers, reminded me of a young lady I know who traveled from Peru to the USA on an invalid / altered passport.

Twice.

It was all innocent. It happened a few years ago but post 9/11, when you’d think it wouldn’t be so easy. This young lady flew from Lima to the US and back twice, went through all the preliminary passport checks before she boarded and then the “real” checks after landing. She had a valid US visa and never overstayed it, her passport is another story.

So what happened? What’s the big deal?

Sometime after said travels I happened to look at this young lady’s passport and about fell over at what I saw. I can’t be seeing this! You know how today’s passports have the picture printed / embedded on the page, not stapled or glued on it like 30 years ago? Like any good girl, this young lady didn’t like her passport picture, so with a little dab of scotch tape she’d taped a cuter picture over the original. When I first saw the taped picture I asked her if she had traveled with her passport like that and she proudly responded “Of course, I wouldn’t show that other ugly picture to anybody!”

No harm done, it was her passport, her picture, just a cuter one. But nobody checked the “real” picture on her passport, she could have been carrying anybody’s stolen passport with her own picture taped over. I’m sure the security types will tell you that’s not possible, that we have biometrics now and all that good jazz – but they also tell you they don’t spy on their own citizens. WTF? Roger Clemens lies to US Congress about getting his ass shot full of go-juice before a game and he goes to trial? Shouldn’t James Clapper go to trial?

Blind faith in the established way obscures what a shallow dog and pony show it sometimes is.

IKN Chart of the Day

Posted on June 26, 2013 by wwelvaert under Business & Economy, History and culture

I caught a glimpse of Otto’s chart of the day over at IKN and shamelessly swiped the same:

Remember when gold was $1,200 and going up? The gold nuts said it was never ever gonna end? Of course neither was the real estate bubble, the internet bubble, RCA in the 1920s and 30s or tulip mania long before that.

Gold is a fickle thingy and I have no earthly idea where it’s going next. Maybe all the retail investors are dumping gold to jump in the big DOW / S&P500 comeback? If that’s the case surely we should call a top in the DOW / S&P500 in the next 24 months or so?

Hey Otto: special request, how about an S&P500 chart expressed in ounces of gold? See if that tells us anything.

I’m sure far more intelligent commentary could be scribbled here but a double shot of Jamaican rum and some fine music will do:

PS: On a serious note, I haven’t seen main street Peru react to the lower gold prices, there is still this “party will never end” attitude and that could be trouble: with the good macro numbers that Peru had been posting on the back of rising mining revenue also came an increase in consumer credit, imported consumer goods, declining trade balance, etc. Not saying end of the world is coming but I doubt Peru’s internal economy is as strong as many have come to believe.

PPS: Even I had something to say about gold going up at $12 something.

Dance Saya!

Posted on June 25, 2013 by wwelvaert under History and culture, Life in Peru

At my tender age it’s just not going to happen anymore but one of the things I wanted to do when I first came to Cuzco was to be part of a Saya dance group. I have work and kids, I don’t have time or style, so being a “Sayero” (that’s probably not a real word) is probably not going to happen for me in this life.

There are many traditional dances in Peru but here in Cuzco the “Saya” dance is by far the most common. I wanted to say “the Saya dance is the most popular” but I hesitate because there’s this odd love-hate thing between Cusqueños and Saya. In festivals and celebrations, parades and school dances, you see more Saya then any other traditional dances. We have several friends who belonged to Saya dance troupes that go to the Virgen de Candelaria festival in Puna every year.

Despite the fact you see more Saya in Cuzco than any other dance, many Cusqueños dislike Saya with a passion. They fuss and complain, why do we have to see more Saya? Why can’t we dance something different? Fuss fuss, on and on. Ostensibly the reason Cusqueños dislike Saya is – are you ready for it? – that the Sayeras show their bottoms when they dance and twirl their skirts and kick their legs up high. The Cusquenian middle class fusses that the “real” Sayeras wore shorts or under-skirts so as not to show their bottom when they twirl or kick their legs up high.

Type “baile saya” in Google images and you’ll see the supposed problem: the Sayeras typically wear these grandma-style black lycra bikini bottoms that wouldn’t excite anyone this side of the Iron Curtain but in traditionally prude Cuzco, that is still a problem.

There’s probably some truth to that, a bit of jealousy maybe on the part of jeans-wearing Cusqueñas (they all wear jeans all the time when they’re not dancing Saya or wearing their work/school uniforms) but I think the real reason Saya is disliked in Cuzco is that it is originally a dance from the Altiplano region of Puno and there’s a traditional jealousy between Cuzco and Puno. In fact there are many ethnic or regional distinctions in Peru: the Limenians don’t particularly like the Serranos, Arequipa is considered almost a country in it’s own, there’s a distinct Afro-Peruvian culture, the Serrano women think all the women of the jungle are horny and of loose morals, etc etc.

Of all the ethnic/regional distinctions in Peru, one of the most noticeable is toward the Puno region. Puno is very traditional Aymara/Quechua and is the region bordering Bolivia. Peruvians still have some resentment towards Bolivia because Bolivia supposedly got Peru involved in the War of the Pacific in the 19th century. In practical terms, Puno is cold as a witch’s boob and many Punenians have moved to nearby parts of Peru such as Cuzco, Arequipa and also to Lima. Punenians are some of the hardest working people you’ll meet but they are not interested in living a fancy pretentious lifestyle. Personally I think this is where some of the dislike of Punenians comes from: good old fashioned jealousy of the middle-class Cusquenians, who wear nice clothes and send their kids to private schools but at the end of the day live from paycheck to paycheck (kind of like, you know, the supposed middle class in the other 250 something countries in the world). Those middle-class Cusquenians grumble at the Punenian entrepreneur who has a little store in one of the “Altiplano” markets in Cuzco, lives in a very unpretentious manner but has $100,000 in the Caja Municipal (and gets 10% interest on his savings).

Anyway, it’s all petty harmless jealousy, I just wish I could be a Sayero!

Ready to dance Saya

Dancing Saya Morena

Where I live there is no water

Posted on May 29, 2013 by wwelvaert under Life in Peru

Mamacita linda fusses at me because I’m always gone longer than I say whenever I go to the bank, to my accountant, things like that. She’s got a point: I work in the house, sit in front of a computer most of the day, so on the rare occasions that I get out I often spend a little extra time just to get out of the house. I’ll stop by to see some friends who work downtown, chat with my accountant or Patricia’s friends who work at the bank, things like that. Whenever I leave the house and say I’ll be back in a half an hour, mamacita knows that I’ll probably be back an hour and a half later.

Our maid also figured this out but she’s good with the kids and doesn’t mind being alone with them for a while. Our maid usually brings her 2 year old boy to the house and after Brianna gets home from her jardin the two of them play together, it works out well. They make a mess, get dirty and the maid cleans them all up. I’m usually so engrossed in my work that I don’t pay attention unless there’s a big spiel going on.

A while back I left to go to the bank and told the maid I’d be back in a half an hour. Mamacita linda was at work, Brianna in her jardin, so the maid was home alone with her little boy and our baby – who was asleep. On this particular trip I didn’t stay out long, no particular reason, I just happened to make a quick trip to the bank and back. When I got back to the house our maid was giving her little boy a bath in the back patio. Surprised that I was back so soon, she kind of sheepishly said “I’m washing Abraham”. I said OK. I didn’t think anything of it because when the kids get dirty she always fixes them up.

But then the maid repeated like 3 times: “I was just giving Abraham a bath”.

Me in my own world, I replied it was fine, no problem. She said: “It’s just that where I live there’s no running water so I took advantage to wash Abraham while we are here.” She had expected me to be gone longer, and she was kind of flustered that I got back and she was giving her boy a bath rather than doing stuff around the house. I told her not to worry, it was fine by me.

But I was floored that she said there’s no water where they live. I know there are quite a few areas in Peru that don’t have running water but somehow in my ignorant gringo bliss I figured it wasn’t right in my backyard. Not that it’s less bad in any place – everybody deserves to have clean running water – but I always figured places without water would be in the “pueblos jovenes” outside of Lima, or in the really remote areas of Peru. Not right here on the outskirts of Cuzco.

And I had just ran to the bank to pay my monthly taxes too. I felt like kicking a wall. You mean I just ran to pay a bunch of $ to the government and while I was at the bank my maid felt like it would be a good time to bathe her boy in my house because they have no water in her house? What do the government bureaucrats do with all their tax money? What can be more important than providing clean water?

I’m not saying it’s easy, there are mountains, deserts and a big jungle in Peru but everybody should have running water. The leaders of government, business and academics need to get their priorities in order, it’s a disgrace that people should live in a country that has such great resources and not even have basic services.

kindergarden parade plaza de armas Cuzco

Parade at the Plaza de Armas, with Brianna’s jardin

With our extended Peruvian family

Multi-lingual kids

Posted on May 3, 2013 by wwelvaert under Life in Peru

Brianna was playing with a little friend today. Yelling and being loud – of course.

Me – in Dutch: “Brianna, stop yelling! I know you guys are playing but don’t be so loud.”

Brianna: “OK papi”

Brianna’s little friend – in Spanish: “What did your dad say?”

Brianna – in Spanish: “Oh, nothing.”

Our Brianna speaks almost exclusively Spanish but she understands Spanish, Dutch and English. Some words she’ll speak in Dutch, a few in English because English is so easy and universally present. Patricia and I still speak English together more than we do Spanish. Patricia says I can go out and practice my Spanish any time I want but she doesn’t get to speak English much outside the house and she wants to keep up her English skills, which makes sense.

Some people say having a multi-lingual child will benefit her down the line, others say it will confuse her at this early stage. I don’t think it will affect her much one way or the other. Many kids here in Peru are multi-lingual Quechua – Spanish but for some reason nobody talks much about that. But when a child is multi-lingual with one of those so called “first world” languages it’s a big deal? What’s up with that anyway?

Our beautiful girls