field trip

today i helped another ngo doing work here in grocio prado/chincha with a field trip they were doing for three private elementary school classes from the city of chincha. at 9.40, two busloads of 10- and 11-year-olds rolled up to the plaza de armas de grocio prado to begin a circuito turístico with the goal of introducing the kids to the artesanos and artesanías of grocio prado.

one of the directors of the ngo asked me to help one of the groups out and so i picked the group that was first to go to the house of an artesan i'm working with who lives less than a block from where i'm living. there, the artesano (his name, José), did an incredibly good job describing his work, how he learned the trade, who he sells his product to, how to creates his product, why he enjoys his job, etc. he also showed an incredibly accurate understanding of how the market works here -- basically artisans do all the work, purchasing the raw material, weaving various artesanías, and then selling them to comerciantes who then re-sell the artesanías to the final consumer. this process repeats itself over and over, generation to generation, until someone says that they want it to change and leads by example.

anyways, from there, we went to the house of another artisan -- suprisingly, after having reminded his wife about the visit, he was not in his taller. this meant that the kids from chincha had pretty much nothing to do for the half hour they were supposed to have been listening to the artisan talk about his work in much the same way that José had done earlier on. i asked the artisan's wife to come speak to the kids a little bit just to give them an idea of how the chairs, mirrors, and other artesanías are created, but she declined until just before we were to leave. after instisting and insisting that someone speak to the kids, she finally spoke.

from there we went to the taller of gino and alex (the two artisans i will be taking (hopefully) to the peace corps fair in lima. alex was at school i believe, but gino did a great job explaining to the kids his trabajo.

to finish the day, we went to the taller of margarita and her family. their artesanía is, without exaggerating, the life of her family. they get up, they work, they go to sleep and they do the same thing over and over again. and it appears as though they are extremely content with this life. the only thing they are a little bit discontent with is the fact that they are not paid as much as they should.

this last visit was extremely frustrating to say the least. the kids were to try their hand at making the same artesanías as margarita, her husband, son, and daughters. they had no limits. they were supposed to take two pieces of junco (the vegetable fiber used in their artesanías), but they were not content with that. they kept taking more and more junco and i appeared to be the only one telling them no -- that it was not theirs and that they could not take it. it was not free and they had not paid for it. the artesanos were doing them all a favor by taking time out of their day to give them a demonstration and teach them. they didn't realize or didn't care about the fact that their taller is also their house. dropping scraps of junco where they pleased, taking things that weren't theirs, going places they shouldn't have gone, they did things that i have never seen before out of 10- and 11-year-olds.

to end things, one of the directors of the ngo leading the field trip asked me to start cleaning up the taller. i said that the kids should do it since they were the ones that made it dirty in the first place. she did not agree -- she said they wouldn't do it and that we should discuss it in the office. i was surprised and extremely upset. afterwards, she went back to chincha with the kids and i stayed to help clean up.

in the u.s., i think we grow up with a sense of respect for the property, time, and kindness of others. it appears that these kids falta un poco when it comes to this...