During my time living and working in the shantytown of Pachacutec in Lima, Peru, something changed within me. My perspective of people living in poverty had changed dramatically; having the rare opportunity to have an insight into life in such a desolate desert environment wasn’t anything like what I expected.
My expectations on how life would be in such a shantytown were very typical of what the average person thinks when they hear the words ‘shantytown’. I expected to see scenes like out of the Danny Boyle film Slumdog Millionaire or Fernando Meirelles film 'Cidade de Deus', what I actually faced was somewhat different.
It’s amazing how one first perceived life in Pachacutec during the first few days when I arrived and now comparing them to how my perspective of life in Pachacutec has change. All the 300,000 inhabitants of Pachacutec live below the poverty line; statistically this is a depressing fact that creates an idea that the problem is something to great to eradicate.
However the shantytown Pachacutec has many different faces, this is what inspired me to create the project ‘In Search of Happiness’.
The entire town of Pachacutec was built by the people for the people; everyone here came in search for happiness and my project focuses on the journeys five different families have taken from leaving there origins through to life in Pachacutec.
The question is has each family found what they were looking for, Happiness.
