Course Kevin, you..you’ve been to..er.. Peru, haven’t you?
Yeah, yeah I worked in Peru for nearly three years.
When..when was that?
Erm….lets see…’99..1995 I went to Peru, in the spring.
..and where were you?
Erm…I was in a town…well…a city…a city called Cajamarca
Right.
In the…erm…the northern Andes of Peru.
Why…why did you decide to go there?
Erm…I saw the job adver…advertised in the Times Educational Supplement. They wanted erm…a director of studies to set up the adult education department in a…in a new school..erm.., so I went up there and ended up teaching English to ..er.. gold miners.
How did you find the…the Peruvians?
Lovely! Ver..very nice people. Very warm and friendly, hospitable. Yeah, I still…I still have email contact with quite a few Peruvians that I made friends with while I was there.
What about the food?
Sebiche! Erm..he..he! no, there’s different food. There’s sebiche from the coast.
What’s Sebiche?
Sebiche is fish..erm…but it’s raw, and it’s effectively cooked in the lemon juice. The..the limes in…in Peru are very small..the lemons. You can’t decide whether it’s a lemon or a lime. They call it a limón.
What colour is it? Green?
No, it’s yellow.
It’s a lemon, then.
It’s a lemon, but it’s the size of a lime, and it’s the strength of battery acid.
And that’s what they cook the fish in.
They cook..they…they…they soak the fish in lemon juice, and i..it cooks. So it’s sebiche…erm...yeah..erm…sebiche de langostinos…hostia! Lovely, lovely, lovely! An..and of course in the…in the sierra…oh…estufada de cabrito…ba…baby goat stew…Mmm…it’s really spicy the…the…food in the mountains.
Not one for vegetarians.
No, it would be very very difficult to be a vegetarian in Peru. There’s...there’s a lot of meat eating I must say.