Recently, I was driving my car along a local Lima street with two Australian friends who sighed, "if only we had brought our cameras." The people at home would never believe the traffic and chaos.
It's the desperateness that first strikes the visitor: people driving broken down cars at seemingly reckless speeds and without any seeming order or reference to any law; people pushing carts, bikes or anything with wheels so they can move loads for which we would hire professional removalists.
What is it all about?
Certainly there is madness about the way of life here in Lima, but I think it could be better described as desperateness caused by poverty. Consider a woman who has three children. Her husband has probably left her and she is surviving, day by day, washing clothes. Her child gets sick and she needs to take time off work without pay to take the child to the doctor (or ignore the illness as long as possible so that she can keep working).
The doctor tells her that she needs to take the child to the hospital, so she either jumps into the cheapest and therefore, most un-roadworthy taxi or goes by bus, thereby running the risk of spreading any infection the child has with the other passengers.
At the hospital she is told that the child needs to be observed but medication must be purchased prior to admittance. This experience is typical of most parents here in our part of Lima. Another example of frustration was our attempt to upgrade one of our more humble Chapels.
For over a year I have been trying to engage the local community in a discussion to determine what they would like to see happen. The community has no money; only a year ago electricity arrived in their neighbourhood; the majority of homes have an earthen floor and makeshift walls; virtually no-one has permanent work.
Living with this reality, the community lacks confidence in expressing their ideas, especially with a priest. We drew up two sets of plans in our process and after the 'final' meeting I went ahead to contract the builders.
When I announced recently that all was set to begin, one person, then another, awkwardly suggested that the building really wasn't what they wanted as it was not going to help them achieve their dream of building a permanent Chapel. 
During the week I tried to put aside my disappointment and frustration at their inability to communicate more directly with me during our process of planning. But, through it all, I have to recognize their great optimism that one day they will achieve what I see as virtually an impossible dream.
So my observation of Peru, its people and systems, is this: although they seem chaotic and fragile to the outsider, the people are in fact full of hope, full of looking to a future when life will be more ordered, more secure and better for the family, the neighbourhood and their beloved country.
Fr Joseph Ruys is an Associate Priest working with the Columbans in Peru.