This text is dedicated to my beloved roommate and housemate Gabriela, aka ‘The Gab’. Wait…Did I write ‘housemate’? This is actually not the correct notation, because she left yesterday our big house in Lima to return to her home in Amsterdam. A best of a very special person(ality) and character.

And since I sat yesterday in the Taxi with Caspar to bring her to the airport, I am incredibly sad about it. She had tears in her eyes, when she said goodbye to Caspar and me and also I got teary-eyed. This was the first time, that I realized, that our incredible time in Lima will have an end. Before we always talked a lot about it, but yesterday I’ve felt the first time the pain of saying goodbye. And I am really not good in saying goodbyes.

But who is the mysterious ‘The Gab’? Who is this girl, that looks like the younger sister of Naomi Campbell? And why did she became such a good friend to me? I will try to explain it.

Gabriela is a very honest and polite person. She excused for all her “Godverdomme”, she expressed in our time in Lima. Very many people were impressed because of different reasons about her performance. She had always an elegant way to solve things, to talk to people and to move. I remember a scene in the discotheque Gotica on the dance floor, when five boys circled her and tried to munch her like their prey. But Gabriela is a very true and faithful person – To herself and also to her boyfriend. She loves him but also her family. When they arrived for one week in Lima, I didn’t see her very much, because she spend so much time with them to show ‘her’ city and the way she lives and what she experienced. She also talked always a lot about her family and what she learned from her parents and sisters. This way of acting impressed me very much like the five wolves in the discotheque.

She was such a happy person and showed always her smile. I really can’t remember one situation, when she was very disappointed or any comparable.

We traveled together to Iquitos (what was for me the best travel I did in Peru) and to Lunahuana. I like to remember all of the moments with her – Talking was so easy, but on the other way also very ambitious. We ‘talked the same language’ and this not just because of our possibilities to talk in English and Dutch. All conversations were sophisticated, but made me also richer. I liked it, when she asked me for help or how to answer a difficult question.

And because she made all of our times more rich with here elegant, but also sympathetic and helpful way we called her ‘The Gab’.

Gab, you showed me, that you are more than just a housemate. You have become a real good friend to me and I am proud to have had the opportunity to spend my time with you so intense and long. This entry in my blog was just for you and I will show you now the ten best photos of ‘The Gab’. I hope to see you soon – I don’t know when, I don’t know where. But I hope to have it soon. And whilst I write these lines and select the best photos of her, I got teary-eyed again. Because we are quite similar in emotional things and I miss you very much ;´-)