Garua!
Living in the Southern Hemisphere at the end of October means that we are transitioning into Spring! Warm sunny days are slowly replacing the dense fog and humid cold of the city. Most of our group is used to American winters. We know what to expect and how to dress for the dry cold. We rely on central heating to take the edge off.
Winter in Lima requires that we take a Limeña approach. Extra blankets, layers and warm drinks have become the norm for most of us. Small electric heaters are cheap and easy to find, but the electrical costs are prohibitive. A family of four will spend $200 a month on electricity. When a typical lunch costs around $3, spending double that on electricity per day is a lot. Adding a small heater to your bill won’t go unnoticed. While daytime temperatures are mostly fine, sunset freezes the air and our bodies. On the coldest days, a dense fog hangs over the city all day. Everybody talks about how London is foggy, wet and cold. Lima gets 300 hours less sun than London annually with only about an hour of sunshine daily in winter!
Garua! It sounds like a swear word, and maybe it should be. Garua is a Spanish word meaning drizzle or mist. It never rains in this desert city, but the air is always wet. Apparently, the droplets are just so fine that they can’t form actual raindrops. What a shame! While Peruvians have figured out creative ways to create value using the fog (“Peru Fog Catchers Net Water Supplies”), we mostly just feel its cold dark presence. American author, Herman Melville, said of Lima “it’s the strangest, saddest city thou cans’t see.” We feel you Herman!
Here’s a student’s perspective on the Lima winter:
Close your eyes and picture yourself standing in front of an old analog TV. You’re moving in between channels, but nothing’s on, so every time you twist the knob you’re greeted with another blank wall of static. So you keep searching, but again and again, you find nothing on, only static.
This is what it’s like to live in Lima, Peru’s capital city; it’s a cold place blanketed under a cover of smog or fog or just general grayness, enough that the days start to blend together ever so slightly until you’re not quite sure how long you’ve been here or how much longer you will be. But just like staring into that blank TV, that static slowly absorbs you just enough for you to find the tranquility underneath it all, and just enough so on the days where the sun peeks through the grayness for just a moment in the afternoons, you relish its warmth just a little more, like the faint dashes of color in the mess of black and white.
-Joe Whetzel
