Metaal en melancholie

Rusty, rattling taxis of different sizes and colours zig-zag across Lima. Their owners jealously look after their vehicles and have all invented foolproof methods of protecting them. A taxi sign can be bought for next to nothing, stuck onto the windscreen and the old car then is driven off into the crazy traffic of a metropolis with seven million inhabitants. An extra job which brings in enough money to survive, as salaries are derisory in a country where everyday life is becoming increasingly difficult day after day. In every driver’s head, man or woman, is a story which makes you laugh or sometimes cry: “A Spanish poet said that Peru is made of metal and melancholy. Metal maybe because suffering and poverty have made us as hard as metal, melancholy because we are also softhearted and nostalgic about the past.”