"Las dos caras de Lima"

"Las dos caras de Lima" is translated to "The two sides of Lima". Lima houses more than 9 million people in as much as 43 different districts, which makes it South Americas fifth largest city. As mentioned in a earlier post, we early noticed that Lima has a significantly large difference between its districts. As only a tourist visiting the city for a few days, one most likely only sees the small differences such as quiet streets with big cars (ex. Lince), compared to more crowded and busy streets (ex. Surquillo). Differences such as these are found in all cities, but if you get on one of the buses going to the districts furthest out, you can easily see why Lima is called "the city with two faces".

As we are not normal tourists in Lima, we have traveled to some of the more distant districts with Stromme Foundation to see some of the projects they work with. We went to the Ventanilla district in the north and Vía Maria in the south, and we had to drive quite a while to get to both of them. When driving from the city center you see mostly streets with nice brickhouses with locks in front of the windows and guards in front, or apartmentbuildings also with guards. Here you also find large shoppingcenters with KFC, McDonalds, Pizzahut etc. and the cars are not bought used. Magdalena del Mar (where we live), San Isidro, Miraflores are examples of these districts. When driving further out from the center, you see smaller shops, more sand along the streets, the "motorbikes" arrive and the houses become "less equiped". Callao can be an example of such a district.

One can say that the districts differs step by step. The last step is when you no longer see houses, streets or cars. Instead you see huts made out of woodplates and tinplates, sand sand and more sand, only buses, taxis, "motorbikes" and of course the dogs appear. Stray dogs are found all over Lima, but considerably more in the poorer districts. It is also a great deal more insecure in these districts, at least for us foreign looking (white) people.

These are "las dos caras de Lima" - the huge differences between rich and poor which are mirrored in the districts difference in housing and living. Lima has grown considerably the last years, and this has become a consequence. What`s beeing done, or if something`s beeing done, to improve some districts conditions we do not yet know. Considering the fact that hundreds of thousand live in insecure houses built on sandhills when Peru is volunarable for earthquakes, we both hope that there are some plans and that motherearth is in a good mood....