American Comforts

The greatest thing about cultural immersion is the temporary happiness you feel when you find touches of your own culture. In Lima, a city with a population comparable to New York, I found America many places I looked.

As blasphemous as it sounds, I took great pleasure in walking around an overpriced mall, watching a movie in English (District 9), eating American candy (Snickers), browsing English bookstores, perusing a supermarket for free samples, getting lost in the toy department of a Wal-mart clone, exploring the downtown with a pack of young Mormon missionaries I encountered (either they're ubiquitous or I'm a magnet), and yes, indulging in a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and a Large Fries at McDonalds.

People travel to visit a different culture, but when you live in one, all you want to see is touches of home.

That said, I came to Lima with expectations of seeing a vibrant celebration of Day of the Dead. Not here. Maybe in some small village somewhere, but here it's all about commercialization. The holiday of choice is Halloween. For the first time in perhaps 3 years, I'd get one.

Local clubs all offered Halloween-themed parties to draw in the city's gringos, but I decided to reach out to them directly. Couchsurfing, a networking site for travelers, was something I'd used extensively in my domestic roadtrips to make connections and find free places to crash, but I had yet to use it down here. A quick post on their messageboard resulted in an innundation of emails, mostly unsolicited and unwanted, but one containing an invite to the Lima CS Halloween party, a costumed shindig promising atleast 50 people from all over the world.

Getting there wasnt going to be easy. I arranged to meet a caravan heading out from the local McDonalds, but I had nobody's number, and was dependant on someone noticing a lost gringo wandering around the hub of the traveler ghetto. Naturally, this failed and I didnt meet anyone. Next I tried to take a bus, but all the buses that said 'Callao' on the front werent actually going to Callao, since displaying their actual destination would be entirely too logical for the Peruvian bus system. Then I tried a taxi, but none were licensed to travel to Callao. I finally convinced one to go illegally for an exorbitant price, but he had no idea where he was going and had to stop and ask for directions 5 times.

Upon reaching my destination, paying the taxi, and paying to get into the party, I realized I'd either been pickpocketed or grossly misjudged my money this evening, since I just had enough for a beer, and not enough to get back to the hostel, where my ATM and credit cards are.

The party was what it promised to be, a large costumed houseparty full of CSers. Half the girls were witches, half the boys were girls, and barely a fraction spoke English. People mingled in tight circles in one part of the house, and boys grinded with girls in another. It was kinda like any party I've ever been to, which is to say I hated it almost immediately.

I chatted up a few English speakers, but became more tired and reclusive, and only an hour after arriving I was ready to go. Instead, I thought to go upstairs and lay down.

Me: "I'm not feeling well, can I lay down?"
Host: "Feeling sick? Would you like some cocaine?"

At first I thought he meant coca tea, a local remedy for an upset stomach. Cocaine is derived from coca much like heroin is derived from poppies. At first I thought he just spoke wrong, but with his friend motioning me to join him in the bathroom, I corrected my own false notion. And this was only one of maybe half a dozen times I was offered over the course of the night. Instead, I walked upstairs and passed out on the nearest bed.

Somehow I even managed to sleep. I would wake up sometimes, listen to the party, even steal a peak out the window at the festivities. It sounded fun. I was enjoying it from a distance. After a few hours, I felt reinvigorated and emboldened to rejoin the party. However, before I even reached the bottom of the stairs, a fight broke out on the floor. Edging past, I looked at people's eyes. Everyone was either drunk or fiending on coke. I felt even more isolated, and quickly retreated to the room until the end of the party at sunrise.

The host, to his credit, seemed neither drunk nor high, and seemed responsible and to genuinely care about my seeming ill health, offers of coke aside. He promised to take me to the bus when it started at sunrise, but instead passed me off to his friend, a big man in full pirate getup who spoke English with a ridiculous mocking accent, who was going the same way I was.

I expected the friend to take me on the bus, but instead he found two of his own friends and hailed a taxi for the 4 of us. They ignored us, likely because 3 of us were double-fisting handles of booze. One was nearly too drunk to stand, the other strung out on coke and could talk about about nothing else. Still, high and drunk as he was, the Pirate promised to get me home.

Our first stop was to drop off the addict. Next we went to drop off the drunkard, but the Pirate got out as well and beckoned me to follow. "Change of plans, we're going to hang out." I shot him an evil look.

At 7 in a morning, the two raided a gas station to buy a 12 pack and chips before stumbling to the drunkard's apartment. I declined beer and converstation, making my hostility as obvious as possible. I wasnt their friend, I was their hostage, but without money to get home I had no choice but to follow them until they felt the grace to give me the means to get back to the hostel.

And to his credit, the Pirate did get me home, against the adament protests of his drunkard friend who was too close to falling asleep to really put up a fight. And all I had to do for the free ride was endure 3 hours of their collective stupidity, a force strong enough to break down the culture and language barriers and make my life hell regardless of the tongue.

I arrived back in the hostel in time for lunch. Cheap Chinese food, an hour of American sitcoms, and an afternoon nap, all on the tail of an all-night unwanted unpleasant bender. Yeah, I definitely felt at home here.