The Start

This whole saga started three years ago in summer 2004 really whilst I was working as a volunteer with poor street children in the city of Cajamarca in the Andean mountain range of northern Peru which is the main location for my story. Children working (and sometimes living) on the street is one of the great social problems of Latin America, and is something I have always believed is a terrible and preventable tragedy. Although to tell the truth the organisation I worked for did very little to help anyone out. I personally was able to contribute very little to helping the kids because my Spanish was so bad. But I met some really lovely people there, the kids were very lively and I loved watching them play and invent little games amongst themselves. The Peruvian volunteers and other international were hard working and good fun also. But no doubt the Peruvian men who frequented the centre were all after the blonde volunteers from Sweden and the U.S as an exotic sexual conquest, all under the sad delusion that they were available.

It was here where I met Roger Diaz Guerra, the man who plays such an integral part of this story. He lived next door to the centre, in fact the centre was rented from his family. His father was usually away in Lima on business and his mother had recently died. At 25 years old he lived a bit of a playboy lifestyle on an allowance from his father I think. The house where he lived back then is very large and right in the centre of Cajamarca, close to many restaurants, bars and diskotecs. So he went to parties, either with the volunteers or with other friends, every night. If he ever wanted something like a discounted meal or a free room for a night in another city, or advice he always had his family´s vast number of contacts to help him out (the kind of contacts that I´ve never had for some reason). He is a talented and well educated man who seems to understand everything and, at that time, seemed to have everything come so easily and naturally to him. Most of all he was very very charming, gregarious and fun to be with. He took the volunteers regularly in his truck to the family ranch at Huacariz to play football and have barbecues etc. He took us once up to the mountains above Cajamarca at night to see a spectacular view of the city. He seemed very comfortable and at ease in social situations. So it was sometimes difficult not to envy him a little bit, he seemed to have everything right there on a plate for him.

For some reason he has always preferred white skinned, blonde western women to women of his own race. He was one of the few Peruvian men (infamous for their macho, possessive attitudes) I knew who was able to impress the female volunteers. When I asked him why that was he told me it was because he was tired of Peruvian girls. But I don´t believe him. To my knowledge the only serious girlfriends he has ever been with have been European. His friend from universty Miguel told me later on that Roger had only dated one girl whist at university in Lima, a Swede (I don´t know her name). Despite the urgings of his friends he refused to try other girls (the consumate womaniser Miguel was incredulous that Roger did that). He had fallen madly in love with her, but she later chose to return permanently to Sweden without him. I think he may have had his heart broken, although I have never broached this subject with Roger.

Roger later dated (and eventually married) a German girl Susanne. When he was staying with her in Germany in late 2005 he proposed a scheme to me whereby he would pay for me to travel to Gothenburg Sweden to secretly help him track down and drop in unexpected to surprise his ex girlfriend. He needed my help because he doesn´t speak a word of Swedish and he thought he needed my English skills to help him navigate his way around the city. Now I don´t know how much Susanne knows about the ex girlfriend from Sweden, but I´m sure that deep down Roger still pines for her (even though I´m sure he is in love with Susanne). Talk about a passionate Latin lover!!