Bridge to Peru

After a trip to Peru, Les Kelem decided he had to build a bridge to Peru.

“I fell in love with the people and the culture,” he says of his trip in 2000. Six years and several return visits later, he turned his former print shop at 55 Broadway in Denville into Bridges, a Peruvian gift shop filled with handicrafts and traditional foods to show “how much Peru has to offer the world.”

Or, at least, New Jersey.

One day recently Bridges (973-625-8528) hosted a Peruvian festival. Out on the street Wood’n Drums played its trademark blend of world music, mixing rhythms and melodies from Africa, Asia, Native North America, the Caribbean and of course the Andes. El Marino Restaurant in Dover brought free samples of Peruvian cuisine, including ceviche and Ají de gallina, boneless chicken in a creamy egg sauce.

Inside the store shoppers could buy the findings Kelem brought back from Peruvian travels. Some of the items are machine-made in small workshops. Others are handmade by families whose livelihood depends on selling the crafts they make. Kelem met such crafters  in the cities and back roads of this nation, where 45 percent of the population is of Amerindian ancestry and culture, mostly Quechua or Aymara.

Some of their indigenous herbs and traditional grains like quinoa are available at Bridges. You can also get Uña de Gato, or Cat’s Claw, the bark of a woody tropical vine, to brew a medicinal tea people in the Peruvian Amazon have drunk for two thousand years. Modern science is just starting to investigate its properties.

Unframed oils of angels and saints, painted with a Spanish Baroque feel by art students from Cuzco, start at $35. Small handmade clay pots go for a few dollars, as do glass-beaded earrings, bracelets and necklaces. There are handbags made of leather, alpaca or wool under $100. Alpaca sweaters can be had for as little as $25, and a full-length alpaca shawl is only $100.  Some of the clothing has no size label. You have to try it on.

Which is sort of what the store is all about. Les Kelem wants you to try not just a sweater, but the indigenous culture of an entire country. He is planning a trip to Peru next year, and wants to take Americans interested in seeing the people and places that changed his life. “We are here to connect the people of the Americas with a common energy,” he says.

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