#life-narrative — Public Fediverse posts

Cerro de Pasco, Peru: Routine, Resentment, and Departure

By Cliff Potts
Bay Bay City, Leyte, Philippines — September 10, 2026

This is a serialized installment from the autobiography of Cliff Potts.

January and February

After Christmas, the plateau settled into routine.

There was no television — only shortwave radio. Armed Forces Radio carried programs like Gunsmoke. Audio storytelling replaced screens.

One afternoon, a group of us demolished a stack of cinder blocks at a construction site and attempted to reassemble the broken pieces to conceal what we had done. The damage was obvious. I admitted my role. My father’s response was brief and controlled.

Street pigs roamed parts of town — large, semi-wild animals. One local handyman used crutches after losing both feet to a pig attack years earlier. That fact circulated without embellishment.

Peruvian children sometimes approached the fence line to practice English. I nodded through Spanish I did not understand.

During a partial solar eclipse, company leadership predicted panic among the local population. None occurred. People darkened glass and observed calmly.

A planned trip to Lima was canceled when my father’s leave was revoked. Other children assumed I had invented the story of the trip. I cried — not for the trip, but for the accusation.

Easter 1967

Easter Sunday, March 26, 1967, included a compound-wide egg hunt. One egg wrapped in aluminum foil carried a special prize. Another child wrapped an egg in shiny Dial soap packaging, creating confusion.

Later, in the clubhouse theater, a showing of The Time Travelers deteriorated into an egg-throwing fight. Within minutes, the room was covered in shells and yolk. The theater was closed to children for a month.

The ban was accepted.

Leaving Cerro

Shortly after Easter, our time ended.

Unlike our arrival, the company did not ship our belongings home. We sold most of what we owned in a rummage-style sale — furniture, toys, the record player.

I sold my pop gun to an older man.

We traveled down to Lima for a short stay while contracts were finalized. We watched early Japanese animation dubbed in Spanish. We ate American-style fried chicken and oversized banana splits.

Then we flew to Miami — wearing jackets in tropical heat — and from there to Chicago. My father remained behind temporarily to complete his contract.

Years later, the mining corporation that sustained the compound would be nationalized. The colony ended.

For six months, we had lived at 14,000 feet in a place that believed itself permanent.

It was not.

Cerro de Pasco, Peru: Christmas on the Plateau

By Cliff Potts
Bay Bay City, Leyte, Philippines — September 3, 2026

This is a serialized installment from the autobiography of Cliff Potts.

Summer in December

December in Peru is summer, even at 14,000 feet.

It did not feel tropical, but the skies were clearer and the wind lighter. There was a brightness to the month that did not resemble any winter I had known.

In Will Savoy’s class, we learned English Christmas carols. Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat… She taught it as a round, the sound circling the cinderblock room. She explained that beggars once sang it in London streets hoping for coins.

I was known for getting dirty between the back gate and the classroom. The nickname followed.

The Play

There was a Christmas play.

My line was simple: “You can’t do that!”

During the performance, I froze. A whisper prompted me, and I delivered the line loudly and late. The moment passed. The play continued.

No lasting damage.

Decorations and a Record

Our shipment had only recently arrived. The compound store was limited. Lauren and I made paper chains and simple decorations to give the house color. I do not remember whether we had a tree. I remember effort.

We had one long-playing record — twelve inches, 33⅓ RPM — and we played it repeatedly. It carried the season inside the house.

Caroling and Fairness

One evening the adults gathered at a management house near the clubhouse. The children went caroling through the compound, including the singles’ bungalows. No one was excluded.

We collected coins and candy, emptied everything onto a table, and divided it evenly.

Norm Owens played Santa. The beard was not convincing, but that was not the point.

Christmas morning brought fruit, candy, and small toys from the compound store.

It was the most intact Christmas of my childhood.

Cerro de Pasco, Peru: Arrival and the Crate

By Cliff Potts
Bay Bay City, Leyte, Philippines — August 27, 2026

This is a serialized installment from the autobiography of Cliff Potts.

Leaving Los Baños

We left Los Baños just days after my ninth birthday on October 28, 1966.

Around November 1, we boarded a plane heading south. I remember Mexico City first — the scale of it, the noise, the sense of movement. Then Lima. Then the climb into the Andes.

The ascent felt gradual and endless. By the time we reached Cerro de Pasco, it seemed we had left ordinary geography behind.

School in Four Days

Four days after arriving, I began school.

Lauren had arrived four days earlier, so she already understood the rhythm. I entered as the new student — again.

The school was small, two rooms. Lil Savoy taught multiple grades in one classroom and maintained order without raising her voice. It was efficient and quiet.

Waiting for Proof

Our household goods had not yet arrived. We lived with borrowed furniture and borrowed utensils. Everything felt provisional.

Then the crate came.

It arrived around Lauren’s birthday, which made sense. It had been shipped from California before we left and had taken roughly ten days to reach us by truck through the Andes. At nine years old, ten days felt extended beyond measure.

The crate contained more than furniture. It was confirmation that our previous life had not disappeared entirely.

Cerro de Pasco, Peru: The Plateau Above the World

By Cliff Potts
Bay Bay City, Leyte, Philippines — August 20, 2026

This is a serialized installment from the autobiography of Cliff Potts.

Above the Tree Line

Cerro de Pasco sits more than 14,000 feet above sea level — a mining city carved into an Andean plateau where the air is thin and the sky feels close.

We were above the tree line. No forests. No tall shade trees. Just low alpine growth, moss, mud, stone, and gullies cut by runoff. The land did not sit flat; it rose and dipped in shallow bowls and soft ridges that concealed deeper cuts in the earth.

From our back gate, one direction led across open ground to a small red schoolhouse. The other direction sloped down through mossy gullies toward the town itself, separated from the Company compound by a fence that marked more than property.

Two Worlds

The compound functioned as an American enclave — structured housing, English-speaking management, a clubhouse at the center. Beyond the fence were Peruvian families whose lives were not tied to corporate schedules.

Even as a child, I sensed the separation.

Two worlds sharing one mountain.

Thin Air

The plateau was shaped by uplift and erosion, not ice sheets. The Andes rose because tectonic plates collided and refused to settle. Wind and water completed the work.

At nine years old, geology did not matter. Breath did.

The air was so thin that running any distance felt like borrowing oxygen from someone else. Every sprint ended sooner than expected.

And yet, for six months, that high, exposed plateau was home.

✮ The Person I Could Become ✮

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✮ The Person I Could Become ✮

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✮ The Person I Could Become ✮

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Every Person We Meet Adds a Unique Thread to the Story of Who We Become. #LifeJourney #HumanConnections #PersonalGrowth #IndividualStories #SharedExperiences #LifeNarrative #SocialEncounters #GrowthAndChange

Every Person We Meet Adds a Unique Thread to the Story of Who We Become. #LifeJourney #HumanConnections #PersonalGrowth #IndividualStories #SharedExperiences #LifeNarrative #SocialEncounters #GrowthAndChange

Every Person We Meet Adds a Unique Thread to the Story of Who We Become. #LifeJourney #HumanConnections #PersonalGrowth #IndividualStories #SharedExperiences #LifeNarrative #SocialEncounters #GrowthAndChange

Every Person We Meet Adds a Unique Thread to the Story of Who We Become. #LifeJourney #HumanConnections #PersonalGrowth #IndividualStories #SharedExperiences #LifeNarrative #SocialEncounters #GrowthAndChange

Every Person We Meet Adds a Unique Thread to the Story of Who We Become. #LifeJourney #HumanConnections #PersonalGrowth #IndividualStories #SharedExperiences #LifeNarrative #SocialEncounters #GrowthAndChange