April Come She Will

As my first three weeks here draw to a close, I'm finding myself a little shocked that April is already upon us. After feeling completely overwhelmed for much of the first two and a half weeks, things are finally starting to settle down a little here mentally and emotionally, even as the pace is beginning to pick up in my work at Alto Cayma.

The past week was packed and seemed to fly by without a second glance. One way or another, things are moving ahead at Alto Cayma to begin the process of expanding the market for the knitted goods. As of now, we are sort of operating on two parallel planes. For the immediate goal of selling the products online through the Serving Alto Cayma website, we've been working on creating new designs, photographing existing models of products, and researching issues like shipping and online business transactions (successful on the second, but the shipping continues to be a problem). Longterm, I've been looking into the application process for the Fair Trade Federation, trying to identify the steps we will have to take and changes to be made, and how to accomplish all of this in an inclusive, but efficient manner. It can be a bit overwhelming at times, but I'm learning a lot both from talking to the ladies and from online research. Now here's how it all looks on the ground:

Monday I had been told would be our first shoot, but this ended up not to be the case. Instead we set out to try calling the Fair Trade group located in Arequipa again to set up a visit. On our way to the office to place the call, I mentioned again to Maria that I'd really like to meet with the ladies before we make the visit to find out what questions and concerns they would like to have answered through the visit, and before I knew it, Maria had turned around and marched back to the workshop, calling all of the knitters together for an impromptu meeting. Caught a little off guard, I did my best to recall the Fair Trade-related Spanish vocabulary I'd looked up the week before as I stumbled through a brief presentation in Spanish on the basics of Fair Trade and potential options for the group. With Maria's help, the ladies seemed to get the idea in the end and presented some very good questions. They are thrilled at the prospect of a steadier and more expanded market, but are also aware that it could take some time (meawhile, I'm trying to figure out how much we can possibly cram into four months).

We were eventually able to do two photoshoots during the week. Both were a little makeshift, but I think the photos turned out pretty well for our first round. We ended up draping whatever solid table cloths were able to find on the premises over plastic tables outside in the sun, then, while I stood on a chair to take the photo from above, the ladies switched the items laid out on the other table. We also took some photos with models (two volunteers from Canada and Holland and several of the knitters). The ladies who asked to model were very nervous once they actually found themselves in front of the camera, but it didn't take too much to get them to smile as they normally do. We still have a few more items to photograph, and then we will have to find a computer capable of importing the photos, but the goal is to get the photos up on a newly-created flickr account in the next week to begin getting some feedback on styles, colors, etc. before we go any further.

The rest of the week was spent either online or with the knitters finding out more about starting an online business, standardizing and creating coding for designs, sizing, and color, trying to understand more about the current pricing system and the distribution of the money that comes in, talking to Betsy about necessary equipment for the level of quality we wish to achieve as well as necessary health precautions we need to take for the workers. We seemed to fit a lot in, an amazing feat considering the amount of time still spent sitting and waiting (the hora peruana is alive and well).

I've also begun meeting 3 times a week for hour-long sessions with a Spanish tutor. Nancy has been wonderful so far--energetic and understanding when I get giddy about complex tenses (yeah...). And I've begun to have something of a social life, playing poker last night with Franny's Peruvian host sister from last summer and 4 European exchange students and enjoying the delicious food made by the owner of El Turco at a volunteer dinner last weekend. Other than that, I've been playing a lot of cards with Maria Paz and watching Pokemon every night at 7:30 with Nicolas (the tv was moved to my room, so we agreed to this nightly engagement to soften the blow a little). Not exactly a Peruvian socialite, but I'm pretty content with things:)

Thank you for all of your emails and continued interest in what is going on down here. I promise to have photos up soon, both of the products and of the people here...maybe some mountains as well. Please keep your eyes open for a posting or email (or both) about this, because your opinions as North American consumers (as well as friends and family) are very important to figuring out the direction we wish to take stylewise and I will be asking you to look over the photos of current designs to offer suggestions.
Until then, enjoy the first days of April and take care.