A new perspective

For those who did not know, Catherine has previously made a trip to Lima in 2010 for volunteer work where she had worked in the Shanty Towns. I will provide a perspective of somebody visiting San Juan de Miraflores in Lima and being confronted by the Shanty Towns in Pamplona Alta for the first time.

Driving outwards from Lima, you observe vast spans of buildings half complete with exposed steel reo bars protruding out from slabs and columns. The locals do this because it gives them the option to extend their houses another floor if they want to upgrade or as their families become larger in the future but can not afford to do so now. At first, I thought that these households were amongst the poorest. In fact, they are amongst the norm and their residents are considered to live comfortably. They are connected to the water and electricity supply and there is little need for a household vehicle as transport is widely available in the form of taxis, the equivalent of tuk tuks, buses and public mini-vans. The road infrastructure is also quite good to cater for the vehicles. The main issue I observe is the pollution due to suspended debris and fumes emitted from the vehicles.

The poorest are found in the shanty towns. They are not difficult to spot from a distance. An array of colourful matchbox looking structures separated by the arid land cover the hillsides on the outskirts of the city. As you approach, the tarmac disappears and a bumpy ride ensues. 

We hop off the taxi, they’re generally reluctant to go through the shanty town any further. On foot, the ground is either mud, dirt, dog poop, rubbish or aggregate. It is extremely dusty as trucks and mini vans drive through the dirt roads. The smell is a mix of dog faeces, urine, rubbish and used soapy water. At times it is close to unbearable. There are dogs everywhere constantly barking, some wailing with a lack of energy. A lot of them are diseased and dirty, wounds are clearly visible. You pity them. Then you approach a child who is weeping alone on a flight of concrete stairs that have been constructed by volunteer workers. Her clothes and skin are also visibly dirty. You ask how she is and she replies that she is ill. You wonder where her mother is. All you can do is offer a smile of encouragement. You proceed and then you see another... and another... Words can not describe the feeling. You proceed further and find girls washing their hair from tubs on the side of the road. Their drainage system is the bare earth. You quickly realize that they would also not have a sewerage system.

It is surreal when you come from a place where basic sanitation is so trivial. You never really think twice about it. Imagine living without running water, proper drainage or sewerage. I wonder if you can (yes, stolen from John Lennon lol). We have since found out that purchasing water from trucks takes up more than 5% of a family’s income (which works out to be around USD 2 per person per day) and that they use it very sparingly because it is so expensive, being charged more than 5 times the price of water that is distributed through the main water supply. The locals have responded very positively towards fog collection stating that they have used an existing system’s water for irrigation and to wash clothes. This is very encouraging and shows that the technology has already helped alleviate some of the burden from not having proper access to the most fundamental resource for human life.