We were late for the keynote lecture. Students in purple jerseys smiled at us with nervous grace. Their clothing sported the logo for the ‘Memories in Transit’ conference that we were attending, because they were posted to be our guides. The Universidad Pontificia campus is extensive, with a wealth of gardens. New and older buildings rise among pre-Inca and Inca remains, which are plentiful and sometimes cleared away for further development. These include part of one of the great Inca roads, which spanned what now would be the national territory of three or four countries. It reminded me of the University of the West Indies Mona campus in Jamaica, which ranges across the grounds of a ruined colonial house, where small inky-black wildflowers blow, and some students pass on the secret of the burial place of the skull of an enslaved hero, whom they venerate. Here in Lima, the one-or-two-room-thick four-storey oblongs with semi-open staircases along the sides leading to balconies serving as corridors and hallways, with lecture and seminar venues opening off them, felt familiar. Architectural kinship across the global south is sweetly uncanny, not quite a homecoming, not quite a haunting, to someone like me, who does not know where the designs originate.

Before travelling to Lima from Edinburgh, I had saffron tea and homemade almond cake with a Peruvian friend, a retired urban planner. She must have spent hours adding polka dots to a selection of maps, to show me good ways through the city. Her thinking involved not only safety or convenience, but where best to watch the sun set ...