Paths to Rock Bottom - Born and raised in Peru (Uno)
Growing up in Peru: happy family, loving cousins, uneventful within the Latin context of political instability, city and farm life, education, etc.
People get their wake-up call in their own way. Some really see it coming and it can be a major situation after a buildup of challenges and unfortunate choices. For some, it is just a steady and quiet reminder throughout many years. For me it was more of a surprise, at the moment, life seemed good and stable. I used to wonder if I would have seen it coming, I would have paid more attention. In this post I will flash share a bit of my childhood, how was life growing up, school years, and making it to Hawaii.
I was born and raised in Peru. The second child of my sweet parents, and the lucky little sis to a responsible and kind brother Pablito. My parents are still married now, they had their ups and downs, however, they were wonderful attentive parents. Mi papi was loving, fun, a great kids storyteller, and a bit on the tougher end at times (as many Latin dads), he always worked a lot and managed to spend time with us growing; and mi mami was gentle, kind, and the most loving mama bear, for most years stayed at home taking care of us. She had a business while we lived in the North of Peru, but then she had to let it go due to the dangers of terrorism.
We grew up in three cities. Arequipa, in the southern Peruvian Andes, where we both were born and the land of our families. Baby time was there with grandparents and of course little memories of it. For a couple of years, we moved to Chimbote in the north of Peru and then Lima, the Capital of Peru, where I lived until I made my way to my favorite island.
When I was born, my family got a big surprise when the doc got me out of my mom’s belly and I was a girl, everyone thought I was going to be a boy. Parental leave wasn’t a thing back then in Peru, kind of like the US right now, and my dad only had one day off and back to work. When I was two months old, they took me to the beach for my first summer. I tend to think that my love affair with the ocean started at that moment. All my grandparents were around to spoil us, and many aunties and uncles as well. Life was full of family time. That pretty sums it up, since I was a bebe and I don’t remember much.
Between the time I was 2 and 5 years old approx. we lived in Chimbote, a fisherman’s town/city with lots of coastal smells. My dad got a great opportunity on a large company and we moved there amid civil and political unrest in Peru. Also known as our terrorism years with Sendero Luminoso and the MRTA. The MRTA happened to have a strong presence where we moved to. For me, those years were calm and seemingly happy. I mean I was a little kid and I only have some splashes of memories. I remember that we lived in a large two-story white house with a yard. I remember going to el nido (like childcare) walking, picking moras (mulberries) after school from our tree, and having pets that used to disappear. At least our wonderful dog Carolina, a large female Bassed Hound, stayed around long enough to create sweet memories of us playing with her and running around with a happy dog. Every so often we would have our grandparents and other family members visit us. We were fortunate to have a good life in such uncertain times. We were pretty close to potential danger, but luckily that threat didn't directly affect our family. I'm not sure if this is part of my own memory or the story that my parents told us after many years. One afternoon, after a wonderful day at the beach, we were eating slices of watermelon on the side of the dirt road on a small family fruit stand. Suddenly my dad started sternly telling us to jump in the car, that we were done for the day. As a little kid, I had been implanted on my mind to be careful with watermelon and so many other stains, so I was concerned about getting my clothing messed up and I was moving slowly. My dad without much patience got us all on the truck and we left home. Lucky my dad noticed, that across the street a truck full of rebels screaming arengas (political declamations) and with riffles up in the air. Those types of situations did not happen every day and as a kid, I really did not notice them much. I wonder if for my parents they were a reminder of the dire times of our country and that our "peaceful" life could be disturbed anytime, yet that was life and my parents made the best out of it.
Moving to Lima, was not quite a choice, my dad lost his job and he remained as an informal entrepreneur for the next 5 years. We moved into a tiny condo, without a yard or mora tree, but closer to family, grandparents, and cousins, and with lots of neighborhood kids. My dad got a wonderful stable job and things got back to place. We used to split our time between the City life in Lima, and the country life during summer and other school breaks at our grandparents' in Majes and Cerrillos in Arequipa. Majes is the valley where my dad was born and where we spent our school breaks with my cousins and grandparents. Life went by in a gentle rhythm of family time, school, summers at the farm or the beach with our wonderful cousin gang, and repeat. Days at the farm were scheduled and wild. As long as we were at the house for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we could basically roam wherever we wanted and get lost in the rice fields or climb mango trees for days. In Lima, I initially went to the same school as my brother and cousins, but I didn't really fit in. My parents decided to switch me to another school, el Humboldt, closer to home and also cheaper. I hated the idea of it and wanted to rebel against it. Low and behold, it was the best change that I had as a pre-teen. In my new school, I made friends right away and was able to express myself a bit more freely, they had fewer rules and more responsibilities were given to students. P.E. and after-school sports were my happy place. After trying every single one and being pretty ok at them, I ended up staying with football (soccer of course), volleyball, and I was the star javelin thrower from our track and field high school team.
I was lucky and privileged that my parents were able to support me while I went to a great Peruvian University, la Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru. My brother was studying engineering there, I wasn't smart enough for that so I went for the arts instead. Initially, I wanted to study Law, however, I ended up studying Sociology and found so many amazing friends during this time. During my college years, my wanderlust hit hard and I got the opportunity to go on some epic adventures. My classmate and best friend, mi ying Maria Soru, and I became inseparable loquitas viajers (crazy traveling girls). We would work in different gigs at school or wherever, and use most of our money to travel around Peru and eventually the world as we got scholarships to study abroad. When we were 20 years old we somehow got to backpack all the way to the Caribbean coast of Colombia. I'm still not sure how our parents gave us “permission” and the blessing to go, and I am forever grateful they did. Why? 1) Colombia was so far away, from Lima to Cartagena it was 5 days by bus and we had never done a trip like that. 2) Our budget was slim, to say the least, and we took lots of tuna cans for the trip. And 3) it was 2007 and Colombia still had the internal conflict with the FARC. After a month, we came back 10 pounds slimmer and with $2-5 dollars left in our pockets. Our hearts were overflowing with love for the Colombian people, and we had so many wonderful and sketchy memories. Some of the sketchy memories we never shared with our parents until many years later, obviously. We jointly wrote a travel journal about our “Colombia es Pasión” trip. Perhaps we should have looked into travel social media back then.
Then came the Hawaii link. When I was in college, there was this “Work and Travel Program” to come to the US to work during the US winter, our summer. If you were attending college, therefore you had reasons to go back to your country, you could get a J-1 work visa and get to earn a lot of money for a Latin-American standard. In the US, winter resorts basically needed cheap labor. It was a win-win. I hated winter and Maria Soru had already done two winter rounds, so when our bulbs got light and we realized that Hawaii was part of the US, we were set and on our way. We spent 4 amazing months in Hawaii working two jobs, learning to surf, and having a blast with the other crazy Latinos.
In 2010, I graduated college with a bachelor's in Sociology. I had a brand new paper diploma in my hand and a job offer with an interesting position that included traveling around Peru. I was ready to jump into adult life. However, I got all my pennies together and I decided to go to Hawaii for one last trip before the "real world". I still had some friends there from our Work and Travel experience, so with a budget of $10 a day I made it back to the rock and my wonderful Brazilian friend Chris opened her home to me. As soon as I stepped back on the island I was welcomed by kindness, the embrace of mama ocean, a cruiser bike, and a new love.
In summary, life was mellow, I had a loving family, happy memories, no major life-changing events that I knew of. I felt like an odd and cool enough happy person, a bit of an outlier, but also good in sports and sociable. In other words, I wasn’t aware of anything that could have prefaced what happened years later. I wondered a lot about this as I was going through my process: “Why me if my childhood and life seem ok?”
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*This is informally the first post of a series of 3 or 4. We will see where the memory lane takes us