Thought I'd start with my house. It's probably one of the flashest in our street. It's three storeys, has five bedrooms, running water all day (we also have a water filter on the tap), electricity, a flushing toilet and a shower. There's tiles on almost all the floors and glass windows. All the walls are made of brick and concrete and are freshly painted. I'd put it in the middle class range and would go so far as to say that it's really rather flash for Tumbes.
Most of the houses I've visited in Tumbes have been similar but usually a little bit less classy. All have had indoor, flushing toilets but some only have water for part of the day or run out often.
People that can't afford bricks use mud, old cans and whatever else they can find to construct their walls. The frame is provided by thick cables of iron(?). You can see them sticking up in this photo, ready for when the homeowner decides to add another level.
For a while I was trying to work out why there weren't any houses made of wood. I thought maybe it was something to do with the climate - maybe it keeps the house cooler if you use mud or bricks. This may, of course, be true but I also realised lately that there really aren't any trees here which quite likely means there's not a lot of wood around and bricks are just easier to come by.
There are also quite a few houses below road level...
I asked Frinetd why they're like this recently and she said that when it rains a lot (still to see any real rain) the mud piles up around the houses. So this is a house that was built a while before the proper road was constructed and i'ts been surrounded by a few years of mud. In the areas without sealed roads the houses will eventually completely disappear.
I've also visited some very basic houses. Some without electricity (they go to bed early), some with internal walls made only of woven flax-like stuff, some with great indoor/outdoor flow - animals inside and toilet outside. I also now understand why some people looked confused when I tried to explain what a bbq was by saying that it's when you cook outside over a fire. For lots of people here that would just be called 'cooking'.
In Tumbes you can have a fancy house like my family's right next to a much more basic one. Our house started off much more basic and they've gradually been improving it, which I think is a great way to go about it. In larger cities (Piura for example) there are much more obvious rich areas and poor areas. Some houses have full-time segurity guards in little cages. I hear that in Lima the difference between the rich and poor areas are ridiculously large and getting worse.
"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."
- Plato
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