I was surfing channels on my television the other day, searching for a ballgame, when I stumbled across a program popular many years ago — The Beverly Hillbillies. Watching Granny and the rest of her kin entering Beverly Hills in their beat up truck with their meager belongs reminded me of an incident that took place here in Iquitos ten years ago.
After a week of frog-choking rain, the roof of my free daycare center began leaking. I appealed to my landlord to fix the roof. A tall, light skin Peruvian who looked the spitting image of a young Charleston Heston, he refused to even consider it. “Look, gringo,” he said, his blue eyes mocking me, “that is your responsibility.” I paid to have the roof fixed. But when the next month’s rent came due I refused to pay it. When I hadn’t paid the rent two weeks later, he threatened to evict me. Not knowing what else to do, I appealed to the police for help in the matter. The police captain’s decision shocked me. I didn’t have to pay the rent. But I would have to move. In three days.
After the initial shock wore off, I realized that I’d learned an important lesson about justice in Peru. Here, if you’re involved in a dispute you can file a civil action and wait for the court to decide on the matter. Or you can take the matter to the police. If you choose the latter, as I’d done, then you’re compelled to abide by the police’s decision.
It took me two days to find a house suitable to house the twenty-five children who attended the daycare center (losninosdeleo.com). A dozen or so neighbors volunteered to help us move. But Pati, the twenty year old coach of my girl’s volleyball team, brought the team to do the job. It had been drizzling off and on all day, but the sun began peeping through the clouds as I parked the rented flatbed truck in front of the house. The truck was so dilapidated it reminded me of the ones I’d seen in the movie The Grapes Of Wrath year ago.
The move … which the girls turned into a festive event, singing as they loaded the truck … took three trips. When I wheeled the truck in front of the house for the last trip, Senor Charleston Heston had arrived to make sure that we actually vacated the house. A frown frozen on his face. The girls hung off the sides of the truck – banging pots and pans as they shouted insults at our ex-landlord – as the truck spit and sputtered then coughed its way up the street. Despite my bad mood, I chuckled. We were the Peruvian version of The Beverly Hillbillies. The only thing missing was Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs plucking the strings of their banjos.
