Reporting from Peru: an introduction

Editor's Note: Olivia Burton will be sharing her adventures reporting from Peru in May with Village Living. This is the first of several installments written by Burton, a 2014 Mountain Brook High School graduate. She interned for Village Living during previous summers and wrote for the Sword & Shield at MBHS.

For the next two weeks, I will be in Peru along with 16 other student-journalists from Yale from the Yale Globalist. Each summer, the Globalist takes a group of students to a foreign country to conduct interviews and research for an article. As a trip leader and a co-editor for the magazine, I help students find their sources for articles about quinoa production, intellectual property rights for indigenous people, the effects of the mining industry on public health, Peruvian surfing culture, Afroperuvian music, and ayahuasca tourism.

Fortunately, I will also have time to do some writing of my own. Last summer, I wrote about the Via Dinarica, a new hiking trail in the Balkans spanning seven countries. This year, I will be writing about Chifa, or Chinese-Peruvian food, and the history of Chinese immigration in Peru. Chifa is essentially Chinese food made with Peruvian ingredients, a unique kind of fusion that exists almost exclusively in Lima.

As a co-leader of the trip, I not only have the opportunity to choose where we go, but I also get a chance to learn from my fellow trip members as I help them conduct interviews for their articles. During my three days in Peru so far, we have visited a former plantation-turned hotel, Lima’s Chinatown, and Playa Hermosa, a popular surfing destination.

Unexpected encounters and conversations are what make Globalist reporting trips so different from the average vacation. We can set up interviews and even imagine what our final article will look like, but our experience will never be predictable. While visiting the former plantation, I drew upon my experience growing up in the South, where former plantations are frequently used as event venues, hotels, or tourist destinations, in a conversation with my fellow trip members about how the darker parts of our histories are remembered and represented today. And at Playa Hermosa, a conversation with a local surfer led to a meeting with a surfing photographer, who gave us tips about being successful in the competitive journalism industry as he packed for a six-month trip to Indonesia.

I look forward to applying some of the skills I learned from working at Starnes Publishing for two summers in a new and challenging setting. Throughout the trip, my fellow journalists and I will post regular updates on tyglobalist.com. We invite you to follow along as we write about Lima’s cat parks, traditional Peruvian food, and whatever else we find in our adventures here.