Dear Grandpop,

You would like Peru. You´d be frustrated by people not speaking English, but you would love them for their ingenuity. Riding in a mototaxi to a caserio, or small farm community, I saw all sorts of jerry-rigged things. Nothing ever goes to the trash until it has lived it´s life at least 4 or 5 times over. I´ve seen tables attached to bicycles to create carts and bicycles that are beyond their years but still work thanks to Peruvian ingenuity. Their ingenuity spreads even into jobs. They think of everything to make money, find a need and fill it. Pretty much every family has some sort of side business, and often that business has a side business. For example we make copies, type documents, print, and bind manuals. But the side business of the side business is that we also sell snacks and gum, pens and erasers. All to earn a couple extra soles. Where our bathroom wall doesn´t go up all the way, cardboard boxes have been sewn together and taped up to fill in the 1 foot gap. Most cars should not run. And I don´t mean by US standards. they just shouldn´t work, but they do. Held together with wire and dirt they rumble down the road, a typical station wagon loaded with at least 5 passengers plus the driver and who knows how much other cargo. It´s a mechanics dream.

You would also like the big machines. While the farms are mostly run by manual labor- men and women bent over planting, weeding, and harvesting there are also a good number of big machines. If you were here, you´d probably be able to tell me what they´re all for, but I have no idea, ust that they´re BIG. Our street was being paved and there were more big machines, but also men with buckets of sand and a broom. Quite the contrast.

Most of all, you´d like the drinking circles and cheap beer. It´s not uncomon to start at 9 am on a Sunday and spend the whole day drinking. Or after a long day in the fields to partake in a drinking circle. Sometimes they drink canaso, a strong homemade liquor they make from sugar cane, but usually its one of Peru´s various cheap beers, Pilsen and Cristal and once in awhile Brahma if the money´s really tight. If they´re in a spending mood, they might splurge for a Cusquena which is not too bad. Grandpop, you could pass hours in a drinking circle sharing a couple cases of beer and stories about your farm equipment and what you jerry-rigged that day.

I could see you sitting around shooting the breeze with any number of the various old men I see hanging around town. And when I see something poorly jerry-rigged, I smile and think to myself "My grandpa coulda done better."