I never realized how concerned we are in the States about personal and private space. I’ve been in Huaycan for over a week now, and I’ve discovered that the lack of personal space is exhausting. It never occurred to me until now that I’m used to having an awful lot of time to myself: getting dressed, taking showers, eating breakfast, commuting to and from work, watching tv alone or reading a book, spending any kind of time at all in my bedroom, sleeping, going to the bathroom….

It seems a little ridiculous to consider some of those examples as personal time, and I’ve never consciously thought about the fact that those are moments when I have time to myself. I totally took it for granted. But in Huaycan there’s no time to yourself, and it’s never quiet. Ever.

The first obvious sign of the lack of privacy in the LLI house is the bathroom doors. They don’t go all the way to the ceiling, so people can hear everything. It gives you the feeling of using the bathroom or showering in a stall at a public pool. And since we share a house with eleven people and share a bedroom with three, there’s very rarely a moment of solidarity. We also rarely venture away from the house by ourselves, which means we are almost always in the company of at least one other person.

Fortunately I happen to really like everyone in the house, but constantly being with people and being surrounded with noise is actually pretty tiring. It could be far worse though. In Zone Z, many of the shacks were built by piling rocks to form walls and then throwing a piece of tarp over it for a ceiling. The “bathrooms” are more like extremely run down outhouses. Privacy there is non-existent.

The constant noise in Huaycan also makes my surroundings seem chaotic and less private. It’s not at all uncommon to be woken up from dogs barking, people yelling, cars honking or roosters crowing at any hour of the night. This morning I woke up to something that sounded like a man yelling into a megaphone. I peaked out the window and saw a van rolling slowly past with two huge megaphones on top. The man was yelling something about tortillas, but that’s all I could understand. Tortillas? Really? At the crack of dawn? When he’d take a few seconds to catch his breath, blaring music filled what would have been welcome silence. This ridiculous mobile sound machine was insanely loud. It sounded as though someone’s alarm had gone off right next to my head on full volume.

I crawled down from my top bunk and burst out of my room laughing out of sheer exasperation. Clare was looking out the window by the table, marveling at the spectacle. “What are you laughing at?” she asked me. “That crazy man! It’s so early!” I said.

“I just saw him grab a roll of toilet paper from inside the van. He tore a piece off, blew his nose in it, and tossed it out the window. I just–it’s unbelievable. I can’t get over it,” Clare said.

I thought I already had: I’ve heard the Tamale Woman yelling almost every morning since I arrived here, but I’m now able to roll back over and fall asleep after she walks past. But the Tortilla Guy and his megaphones? He was impossible to ignore.

You’d think that with all the chaos, and the noise, and the lack of privacy the pace of life here would be extremely rushed. But despite all these things, people seem to take their time. No one else seems bothered by early morning marketers or dogs who bark for 20 minutes at a time in the middle of the night. People seem to be late as a rule, but they never seem rushed or hurried. If anything, they seem more relaxed and easy going.

Back home, we place a premium on privacy and personal space, yet our schedules feel chock full. There’s never enough time in the day, and people are constantly rushing from one thing to another. The juxtaposition is fascinating to me. In Huaycan, people live in packed houses and communities. The environment is chaotic, noisy, and crowded yet the pace of life is slow and relaxed. In the U.S., people live in giant houses with way more space than they actually need. “Private property” is a sign of success and prosperity (more and bigger is always better), yet the pace of life is often frantic. Why is that?