Carabayllo

If I close my eyes right now, I feel like I'm still on the combi - sort of like after a day at the amusement park and while lying in bed, you still feel like you're on a rollercoaster.  Today I went way north of Lima with a loan officer to a place called Carabayllo to visit borrowers.  This place has electricity, but no water or sewage.  Here is a neighborhood we stopped by:

As we left Comas, where the local office is, civilization seemed to sort of slip away.  The familiar smell of burning trash returned, and the dust kicked up.  There are not many public schools the further out you go, but there are private schools that have very low tuition rates.  The first borrower we visited used her loan to make improvements to her elementary school.  She is a more "well-to-do" woman, according to the loan officer, but saw the need for a low-cost school out here and commutes a long way each day to get here.

I met the girls below when we stopped by their house to interview their father, who has a mototaxi business.  It was about 11AM and I wondered if the older one went to school:

I am the sort of Kiva court jester with the little kids around here.  When I meet with borrowers, there are always little kids around, and they love it when someone pays them lots of attention.  This little girl below, hanging out at her mother's store, was ecstatic to have an adult play with her:

We played with a piece of twine for longer than you'd think you could possibly play with said twine.  These kids are just learning to talk, and many times have cute speech impediments (like not being able to pronounce their "r's"), but that usually means their Spanish is Greek to me.  For instance, "tres" without the "r" sound becomes "tdes" which sounds to me like "diez."  I knew this could not be her actual age, but I continued to ask until she held up three little fingers.  Duh.