stage 2

well after having been in-site for 3 months, i think i've finally advanced past the honeymoon stage of my time in perú. reality is setting in and things are looking harder and harder every day. doesn't mean i've given up -- not at all actually. i am still as dedicated as i was day 1 -- it's just that i'm beginning to notice more and more each and every day the challenges and problems that exist at my site. i am realizing that one person alone -- a gringo probably isn't going to solve all of them. doesn't mean i shouldn't try to at least positively impact the life of some of the people living here. it just means that i'm not going to affect the change that i had hoped i'd affect.

yesterday i attended a capacitación in a place called cruz blanca right outside of chincha. i was warned that i should "watch myself" being that they aren't so used to seeing gringos. i went with a colleague of mine from an ngo i'm working with here. looks like this ngo may have its days in chincha and grocio prado numbered. they aren't advancing with their project with the speed that they're jefes would like them to. vamos a ver en diciembre que pasa...

anyways, back to the capacitación. the project the ngo is doing is meant for my site grocio prado and the provincial capital, chincha alta -- not necessarily for cruz blanca. but, the president of the artisan association has some family members, friends, other connections out there and as a result, the ngo is testing out doing some of their capacitaciones there rather than here in grocio. in order to achieve this, they need at least 25 people. at one point yesterday, there were 30 y pico artisans in attendance. but, in the end, just 9 or so remained. my colleague then went on to praise the 9 artisans remaining for the attendance of all 30 artisans completely ignoring the fact that more than 20 had left.

the problem was that my colleague wanted to take a short break -- that we did. upon returning, we saw a flood of female artisans going towards the bodega to take a break themselves. we waited a few minutes for everyone to return...then a few more...and a few more...and then we started. i went out to let everyone know that we were starting up again but no one listened. at a few points, i mentioned to one of the artisans that did remain at the end that she should let the other women drinking a gaseosa know that we were starting and that they were going to miss everything. she didn't. they weren't coming back she said.

my colleague went on to present on the tema of enfoque al cliente or customer service. i don't believe that he was the one who had created the presentation and i don't believe that he reviewed the presentation. as a result, he read directly from the slides. to me, it seemed like his goal was to get through the presentation just for the sake of getting through it without much regard for whether the artisans were understanding anything.

bueno...i left a bit frustrated and with a massive headache. the house we were in was dirty. it was really dirty. i guess my gringo body isn't accustomed to that type of environment and so upon returning to chincha alta (the city), i had a massive headache. sick again, i thought. qué suerte!


i recount this story not to be negative. there is no doubt that it is a negative story and it was not an incredibly fun experience. was it valuable? yes. did i learn something? yes. am i frustrated? yes. am i giving up? no.

artisan fair y otras cositas

so, it's been a while since i've posted. apologies but i've been extremely busy since my jefe's site visit. most of my attention has gone to prep work for the peace corps artisan fair in lima. all in all, very very happy with the way things turned out. i was supposed to attend the fair with three groups of artisans, but in the end only one artisan attended. i like to think that he was one of the most successful artisans at the fair. our stand was located at the entrance of the artisan fair, so everytime someone walked into the fair, his stand was the first one that they saw.

in the beginning, alex (yes, my artisan's name is also alex) was a bit shy. this was the first fair he'd been to and i don't think (1) he really knew what to expect and (2) he didn't really know how to talk to the asistentes. any time someone stopped to check out his pieces (he brought a chair tipo fred flintstone, two mirrors, and a biombo, pictured below and translated roughly as folding screen or room divider lol), i encouraged him to start up a conversation. at times it was tough being that a grand majority of asistentes were americans and some did not speak much spanish. i told him that they liked his work and wanted to learn more. i encouraged him to befriend them and to take down contact information of those that were interested in learning more and in possibly making a purchase. in the end, alex sold one of the mirrors he'd brought to the fair and a juego de muebles, a set of two chairs and a table for a living room space. but, i think overall he took back home with him his first feria artesanal experience. people here in grocio prado are so used to staying here and at times, actually appear afraid to leave. for example, i believe that one of the artisans i was planning on taking to the fair did not go precisely for this reason. everyone here always says, but what if it doesn't go right? but what if i don't sell it? yeah, there is always the chance that you don't sell. but you'll never know if you never try. and with good preparation, you're more likely to have success than not to have it.

bueno, in the end, very happy and very impressed with alex. even though not everything has gone right for me thus far, i think this has been one of my early successes and i am really looking forward to working with him for the two years that i'm going to be here in grocio prado.

on another note, on thursay, i had the opportunity to present in the u.s. embassy in lima on the tema de cómo armar un stand que llame la atención or how to put together a stand that attracts attention. i did it not so much because i am an expert in desiging artisan fair stands, but more for the experience speaking spanish in public -- not an easy task. on that note, yesterday i had another opportunity to put my spanish public-speaking skills to use in cañete. there are two business volunteers from my promoción within an hour's drive of me -- patrick and jason. we are planning to do talleres on how to write a business plan in each of our sites, starting with patrick in cañete. yesterday jason (from pisco) and me (from chincha) headed up to pat's site for a charla to discuss what cuerpo de paz is, what we do, and why a business plan is so important. the audience was primarily made up of farmers from the area and it seems like they could really use our help. we are going to do our first taller in cañete in january and then go forward with talleres in pisco and chincha after. all in all, a very successful charla. everyone in attendance seemed excited about our presence -- hopefully everyone shows up for the taller in january!

in other news, no one showed up for the first reunión of my club de orientación vocacional tipo career club today! this past tuesday, we had the second reunión of the club we're doing with high school juniors. today's meeting was supposed to be for seniors. the seniors are going to be graduating in december so if this tema is important for anyone, it would be them. qué se yo...


so, yeah, having finished up with the artisan fair, it looks like alex (the artisan), gino (his brother, also an artisan) and i are going to continue working together. looks like our first goal is getting a website going which we will then send to the people we met during the artisan fair in lima. other than that, i am going to keep the club de orientación vocacional going with the juniors.

it's truly amazing that i've already been at site for three months. have learned a lot during my short time here. have learned that i take my education for granted. that as a develoment worker, you can't work with everyone and shouldn't work with everyone. that sometimes you are going to fail. that sometimes you are going to succeed. that sometimes you don't really know if something is a success or a failure -- at least at first. ya.


all in all, been having a great time. hopefully i can keep this going for another year and nine months...

estrés y éxito

so today was a semi-big day for me. after a few weeks of anticipation, we had the first reunión del club de orientación vocacional (o sea career club) and por casualidad today was also the day of my site visit with the APCD (o sea Associate Peace Corps Director del programa de pequeños negocios), the regional coordinator for ica, and the PCVC (o sea Peace Corps Volunteer Coordinator for el programa de pequeños negocios).

preparation for the career club has been in process for a while and although i had planned everything out, somehow, as always, i end up leaving stuff for the last minute and getting a bit stressed out.

my day:

7.30am to 8 - wake-up and go to the colegio Melchorita Saravia to collect permission slips and to remind the kids from cuarto año de secundaria (the equivalent of junior year in high school) that the first meeting was to be today between 3pm and 5pm.

8am to 9 - sleep

9am to noon - cleaned my room since we were told that the site visit would include a quick look at our rooms, showered, shaved (which is not something i've been doing so often!), breakfasted, and lunched.

noon to 1pm - went to the comedor to prepare materials for the career club -- papelotes (o sea big pieces of paper -- not actually sure what the english translation is) and cut-outs of my hand for one of the exercises we were going to do.

1pm to 3 - went into chincha to print some documents for the career club, to buy tape and markets, and to print out some photos to show everyone at the beginning of the meeting.

at 3pm, i was at the school en punto ready to go. sadly it was just me and Miss Lidia, the English teacher that is working with me on the career club project and on some other things i am doing at the school. thankfully, helping me avoid the potential embarrassment of no one showing up, kids trickled in one by one. at about 3.30pm, we had 25 kids. 33 had signed up when i had gone classroom-to-classroom signing people up last week, but just 16 had turned in their permission slips. thus, i was a bit surprised!

i kicked things off by talking about my life in the united states, showing pictures of washington, then talking about buenos aires, showing pictures of friends, family, and alejandra (sorry 15-year-old grociopradinas, i'm taken jaja).

at that point, my colleagues from peace corps showed up. i introduced them to the class and then alfredo, the APCD gave a short talk on what peace corps is and basically what i'm going to be doing here for the next 2 years (which is now just 22 months!).

Miss Lidia then spoke for a few minutes, talking to the kids on a more personal level about her life and about the three years she spent in the united states. in perú, schools are extremely formal and there is not much one-on-one personal contact between teachers and students. teachers come (or don't come), dictate class, and leave. in the u.s., based on my experience, i feel like kids and teachers are able to form relationships, talking with each other outside of the classroom and just getting to know each other on a more personal level. anyways, Miss Lidia did a great job.

i then had the kids get in groups, having them introduce themselves to one another, talk about their interests, and finally their expectativas for the club (i.e. why they were there). after a few hick-ups (in that the kids weren't speaking with each other!), we got things rolling. after giving the kids a chance to talk in small groups, they came up to the front of the room one-by-one to introduce their partners to the rest of the class. seems like this isn't something many kids are used to, but i think it really helps build self-confidence (o autoestima) in the kids, so i hope to incorporate more excercises like it in the future.

i then talked about the topics we will cover between now and the end of the school year in december and had the kids make a list of rules that they then agreed to abide by. to end the session, i passed out cut-outs of hands to the kids and told them to write in the center of the hand their dream and then in each of the five dedos, a characteristic of theirs that will help them achieve their dream. the kids then taped their hands on the árbol de sueños. i thought this excercise was a bit corny, but it was actually a great success!

after the reunión, my colleagues from peace corps and i had a meeting with the head of the office of tourism in chincha and the head of fovida, an ngo that is doing a tourism project here in grocio prado and chincha. we talked about ways that the office of tourism (dircetur), fovida, and peace corps can work together on projects designed to improve the situation of the artesanos in grocio prado.

needless to say, it was a long, stressful day. but, in the end, it was a successful day! one recommendation the apcd had for me is to slow down, to not try and do everything at once, and to not try to do too many things at one time. i think, the fact that my last "real job" was in investment banking makes me prone to want to get things done quickly, efficiently, and comprehensively. i am realizing that things here in grocio prado don't function like they did at the investment bank. things take longer. and maybe the results and successes are not as concrete as they were at the i-bank. after having pushed really hard over the past couple of days, tomorrow i'm going to try and take it easy. next week, i'll be in lima for the peace corps artesan fair (thursday). on wednesday, i will present during the day of talleres, or workshops, given to the artisans. so, basically, i'll have a lot to do the rest of the this week, this weekend, and next week. should be a great experience -- i'm really looking forward to it!

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...

setbacks

just got back from the house of a family of artisans i was working with. i was going to take them to the peace corps artisan fair in lima at the beginning of november. we were going to begin preparation for the feria on wednesday. i arrived and they told me that they couldn't go -- that they had just received an order that they had to have ready in 5 weeks and that they wouldn't have time. based on my calculations, they will be making 1.350 soles which is not a small sum. but the sad thing is that they are going to be working extremely hard for a month just to give the product to someone else who will be re-selling the product for two times the price she will have bought it for. i tried explaining to them that they have to be the ones selling their product to the final consumer but they are older and have little formal education and just don't get it. it's unfortunate and i am not giving up just yet, but it was hard news to hear. i was really excited about working with them but a little bit nervous about their lack of education. looks like i've got to look for some other artisans to take to the fair!

a full

it's amazing. i remember sitting in an office on the 35th floor of 181 w. madison in chicago basically dreaming about what it would be like. and i'm here! thanks to so many people (they know who they are) who helped me. and every day i am learning un montón about what it's like to live in a developing country. from walking into a home furnished with a laptop and flat screen tv with a floor made of tierra to learning about why the artisans here don't like working with each other. from what i gather so far, most things come down to confianza or trust.

got some cool things in the works, including a pen pal program involving a bilingual school in dc and the local colegio here in grocio prado, an artisan fair project, an artisan association project, and seemingly an endless array of other opportunities. every day i am learning something new about myself, about the people of grocio prado, and about the world. sometimes things seem like they are lost as in when on a survey i gave today to about 200 high school students here almost all responded SÍ when asked whether they like reading when some couldn't even spell simple Spanish words. and then i remember i have two years here.

so much to do...

one month

i've been here in grocio prado for a month now -- i can't believe how quickly it has passed by. basically getting to know the community. every day waking up, going out and just chatting with people. trying to get the lay of the land before i start my projects. i've got to say that back when i applied, i thought it was going to be easier. i had this vision that i was going to come into my site and change things right away. here in grocio i'm confronted with behaviors that have been passed on generation to generation and a way of life people are used to. as a gringo, the first thing people assume about me is that i have money. i'm here to give people things. peace corps is about giving people the tools they need to provide for themselves, without having to rely on hand-outs on others. and so i say no -- that i have no money to give but that i'm willing to give my time and do the best i can to teach people everything i know that can be of use to them.

one of the first things i realized upon arriving to grocio prado is that it is a town of artisans. very very talented artisans who have learned their craft from their parents who learned from their parents and so on and so forth. tremendous talent. but a lack of business know-how. that is where i come in. my job is to teach people with little formal education how they can make more money and salir de la pobreza.

grocio prado, just like any other area in the world is complex. and so getting to know it takes time, it takes sitting down and talking to people, having conversations, asking questions, taking chances, and looking in all nooks and corners. if you asked me tonight what i'm going to do tomorrow, i'd be hard-pressed to tell you exactly what i'm going to do. that is pretty much the story day-to-day. generally, i have a loose plan as to what i am going to do -- but that plan quickly changes.

I'm hereeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Helloooooooooooooooo/Holaaaaaaaaaaaaa a todos.  Here I am in Perú in the middle of my fifth week.  I am staying in a small neighborhood about an hour away from the center of Lima.  It is called 3 de octubre (3rd of October).  Every weekday (and some Sundays) we go to the Peace Corps training center in Chaclacayo (about 15 minutes away from my house by combi).  My fellow volunteer Lindsay picks me up at 7.45am and we arrive at 8am or shortly thereafter.  At the training center, we have between 2 and 4 sessions per day—language/culture class, classes on small business concepts, safety and security sessions, and medical sessions (sometimes we are lucky enough to get shots, too!).

I live with a Peruvian family with a mother (Trinidad), her two sons (Enrique y Gustavo), and one of her son’s esposas.  I see Trinidad’s son Carlos, his wife Rebecca, and their two daughters almost every day (Yanela y Yerlin).  I have a lot of fun with my family and I think they have a lot of fun with me.  They get a big kick out of my Porteño dejo and like to make fun of me for it (much like the other volunteers do), but it’s all good.  It’s kind of sad that in another 5 weeks, I’ll be in another part of the country probably a few hours away from my host family.  (Volunteers from this group are going to be sent to Piura, Lambayeque, La Libertad, Cajamarca y Arequipa).  Arequipa is supposed to be a beautiful mountainous department south of Lima.  The other four departamentos are to the north of Lima.

This weekend in fact, we are heading to Cajamarca for “Field Based Training”.  We will be teaching a three-day class (apparently from 4pm to 10pm) on entrepreneurship to students studying in a technical institute.  On the fourth day, the plan is that they will simulate a business of their choice using a loan from el banco del Cuerpo de Paz.  Should be a lot of fun!

The following week will be a short one (Fiestas Patrias are celebrated on Thursday and Friday—the 28^th and 29^th).  However, I should note that that week I will find out where the Peace Corps will be sending me for the remainder of my service.  Wish me luck!