Living in Peru : your everyday companion

What cell phone company do you use in Peru?   Claro (America Movil) Movistar (Telefonica) Nextel I use two I use all three

By Bill Gelfeld

Venturing off to Peru for a month-long internship in January of 2009, I had few expectations and little knowledge of the country outside of the common travelers’ tales of Machu Picchu and ancient Incan ruins. I was hardly prepared to be as enamored as I was with Peruvian culture, cuisine, but especially its people.

Flying into Lima on December 30, 2008, I had modest expectations at best for a city that had garnered mixed reviews from the few people who I had consulted. These people invariably described Lima as sprawling, industrial, or bland. But exploring the city over the next several weeks, either making my way to work or heading out at night to different hotspots, I came to appreciate the beauty and vivacity of the city and many of its charming neighborhoods outside of the tourist areas of Miraflores and Barranco.

The central purpose of my visit was a two-week internship with the Peruvian-born governance NGO Ciudadanos al Día (CAD). This organization, referred to me by a graduate school colleague, works in cooperation with civil society and government to improve the quality of and demand for public service provision in Peru.

CAD was founded in 2002 by Beatriz Boza, a law professor and former cabinet minister, with the goal of revolutionizing the relationship of Peruvian citizens to their government. CAD believes that if citizens are more aware of the services they receive or could receive, they will be in a better position to demand improved results from their government; this in turn will lead to improved government performance as well as enhanced public satisfaction.

The organization uses several tools to improve media coverage of positive governance projects and developments so those can be benchmarked and copied throughout Peru. Specifically, they have pioneered the use their Best Practices in Governance Award to create competition among different sectors and levels of government in order to generate more effective public service provision. Additionally, CAD has developed a tool to determine citizen satisfaction with different government ministries which they publish in order to cultivate better government.

Upon arriving, the Beatriz Boza decided that my time would be best spent writing an English-language pamphlet for prospective foreign donors about the benefits of the Best Practices Awards. While this task required that I get up to speed quickly regarding CAD’s programs, deliverables, and impact, I could not have asked for a more willing, helpful and accommodating staff with which to work. In the two weeks that I worked at CAD, I was tremendously impressed with the professionalism and intelligence of the local staff. Their collective grasp of Peruvian domestic politics, as well as complex international dynamics, was remarkable. Not only did they support me in my work by providing all the data and insight I might need, they also made me feel immediately at home by taking to various lunchtime locales to sample Peruvian dishes. I was introduced to ceviche, causa, and, of course, the inimitable pisco sour (warning: more than two lunchtime pisco sours can be dangerous to continued employment prospects).

My lasting impressions of Lima and Peru are of an incredibly warm and diverse place that surprisingly continues to fly below the radar as one of South America’s great unsung cities. Why more people are not singing Lima’s praises is beyond me, but perhaps others have not had the direct and immediate access to Peruvian society that I was granted by virtue of my internship. In the first week I was at CAD, I had been taken to lunch every day and was invited to the house of one of my co-workers for a birthday party. As colleagues became friends over cerveza and pisco, I marveled at how quickly I had been accepted. Though I loved Brazil, where I lived for two years, and will always have a soft spot in my heart for cariocas — natives of Rio de Janeiro — I had not been invited to a local friend or colleague’s house in my first year living in Brazil. The warmth and genuineness of the Peruvians I befriended outside of my work environment only served to reinforce what I had already encountered. Countless times, my friends from work or those I had met around town insisted that my sojourn in Lima would not be complete without visiting this restaurant, that barrio, or yet another colorful bar. Lima captured my imagination and imbued me with an overwhelming fondness for the city and its denizens.

CAD decided to offer the abbreviated winter internship again this January (compared with the three-month summer internship that they offer), and I couldn’t recommend the NGO or the country more strongly when asked by two of my friends. My experience with CAD and with Peru in general was nothing short of fantastic. Though I only had time to get to know Lima, rest assured that my first visit to Peru will not be my last. I know that there is a great deal more to explore and experience outside of Lima, and I intend to return to find out more about the country I so came to adore in one short month.

For more information about CAD, visit their website ciudadanosaldia.org (in Spanish).

tags : citizens NGO government Miraflores Barranco

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1 Comments

# Raquel Arteta Picasso says :
14 January, 2010 [ 10:50 ]

  It´s always good to know that a program like this is working so well, although I am not very familiar with it, I understand the type of this organization may be, then I feel satiesfied by its performance reported by this experience, so i want to congratulate them and thanks them too. Also, as a Peruvian I feel good that this foreinger friend spent such great month here among co-workers and friends, although I am not surprise, and I want to mention that people are our best asset, and that we should be more aware of it, in order to bring the rest of the world get to know us more.
Thanks to Bill Gelfel for such detailed and cute note.

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