As with all my weeks here, these past few have been marked by the close quarters kept by little and big joys and sorrows. Every day I see a little more of the struggles the women maintain to get by, and every day I am amazed by their ability to continue to laugh together in the face of it all and to show each other the kindnesses that make these trials bearable.

At the end of last week the new designs were ready to go for the sweaters, but the ladies were still busy working on school uniforms. A little concerned that they had not yet completed an order I believed was due weeks ago, I sat down with Betsy to see what had happened so we could address whatever changes needed to be made for future orders. The problem, however, turned out to be on the other end as the order had not been placed by the school, but rather by parents on an individual basis so that the ladies were forced to wait to make each batch as the parents trickled in to pick up one or two more.

¨It's tragic¨ Betsy said at the end of her explanation, and I laughed, thinking she was referring to the fact that the ladies were still working on the unimaginative uniforms after all these days, then suddenly realized as she went on talking that I had misunderstood and that the tragedy to which she was referring is that the parents don't have the money to buy all of the school supplies for their children at once, and so they are still waiting, two months into the semester, to buy their children uniforms that would cost next to nothing in our terms. (The ladies finally decided to give the order to another group to finish, and so we are now able to focus on our own designs).

Situations like these never cease to astound me. The struggles the people face, not only to get by another day but to make things a little better for the children in the midst of deep inequalities and limited access to resources, make me wonder at times how we will ever make any sort of lasting change. With every attempted step forward comes any number of unforeseen obstacles and difficulties pulling them back. Yet somehow hope still exists.

Last Friday I witnessed another example of this refusal to give up faith when three of the women who were offered work at a store downtown made the decision to instead stay with the group and stick it out a little longer. María told me that they believe in what we are trying to do and believe in the group, and so they would rather keep going the way things are for now than have things a little better shortterm. I was also deeply encouraged by the number of people who turned out for a march two Sundays ago against delinquency, domestic violence, and other sources of insecurity in Alto Cayma. Children, parents, policemen, a school marching band and a good number of senior citizens were followed by a line of combis as they marched 1.5 hours under the blazing Arequipeñan sun, handing out pamphlets on creating a safer community, carrying signs, and playing music through the streets of Alto Cayma. The march ended at the church with chicha morada (a drink made from blue corn) for all and a general sense of goodwill as members of the community spent the afternoon together after taking a collective stand.

Thursday the 26th also marked 22 years for me, and it turned out to be a very nice day with my friends and family away from home. I started the day with Betsy searching the Centro for various types of wool for the new models. When we arrived at the workshop later in the morning some of the ladies were still busy working away at the machines while others bustled in and out, whispering to each other secretively in Quechua. We ended up seated around the multi-purpose plastic tables with plates loaded down with pollo a la brasa and pastel de papas as well as a cake with "Emli" written on the top in yellow frosting. Once everyone had finished eating, we put on the music of Colca, a nearby valley which is the childhood home of many of the women. Some sang and we all took a turn at dancing. As some of the women headed back to work in the workshop, a few stayed behind to sing a few of their favorite traditional songs which I could have listened to for hours (I uploaded some footage of one of the songs to youtube for all to enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXMwWgpCC3c ). When I got home that evening, I had another round of cake with my host family (including grandma, aunt, and cousins) and empanadas. Along with a few skype calls home and all of the birthday wishes that made their way to Peru, it turned out to be a lovely day. I am not going to be able to respond individually to all, but please know that they were very much appreciated, thank you!

I am going to close this time with a brief lesson in Quechua, the language handed down from the Incan civilization and still spoken by some 10 million people in the Andes. This is an approximation, as each knitter offered me a different pronunciation and spelling (there seems to be a great deal of regional variation), so use your imagination. We recently started learning the numbers in English, and in exchange I was taught Quechua for 1-20 so we'll begin with the numbers as well:
One: juk [huk]
Two: ishkay [EESH kai]
Three: quimsa [KEEM sah]

One more note--photos are finally up! Click on this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/efifield26/ or the one on the right side of the page and it should take you right there. Enjoy!

Well, I started off well keeping up on this blog, but I sort of got a little lax these past couple of weeks. For that I apologize, but I do have my reasons. First, since I passed the one month mark April 11, I've been feeling a little frantic thinking of all that still needs to be done before the end of July and have been running around a bit like a headless chicken.
These past few weeks I've also been busy in a new role--that of fashion designer. Please don't laugh. The ladies are so talented, but some of the designs and colors are better suited for the Peruvian market (which doesn't really exist for them at this point) than the American/European market to which we are hoping to connect. So what started out as me giving suggestions here and there turned into me sitting down with pencil and paper first drawing sketches then working through samples of stitches to identify the points to be used. My vocabulary has now expanded to include the words for hem, sleeve, collar, and various knitting points, which I can now identify by sight while window-shopping.

Looking for design ideas for the women has turned into something of an obsession for me, and it reached new lows on Saturday when María (the social worker in Alto Cayma) and I were out running errands in El Centro and began tracking women whose sweaters we liked to get a better look at the points used and the form. María actually stopped one woman so we could get a closer look. She only seemed mildly frightened and was very obliging. Hopefully I will be over this behavior by the time I arrive home in August.

I finished doing measurements and colors with Betsy and Andrea on Thursday, and the ladies will begin working on the first round of models Monday. I'm excited if a little nervous to see how they turn out. After the primary models of the sweaters are finished, we will make corrections and look at colors, and then create countermodels (I think this would be the English terminology - contramuestras?) to reflect these changes. These will hopefully be up on a webpage for your perusal within the next few weeks...

Now that we're getting production nailed down, I'm ready to refocus my efforts on the Fair Trade application process. I will be meeting with the priest Monday to go over some of the questions which still remain about finances, management, and the history of the group, and hopefully that will give me a better idea of the direction we will be taking in the next few months.

There is always so much more to tell, but I will try to keep things a little shorter this time. My Spanish continues to roll along, and I love my tri-weekly lessons with my tutor, Nancy. My family here continues to take good care of me, and the knitters are amazing. I'm still trying to accustom myself to living in the desert, and I'm making a genuine effort to see the beauty of sand, but I still have an overwhelming desire to kick off my shoes and walk around barefoot in any grassy area I happen across. I've still got time.
Take care and do try to stay sane as the end of April approaches.

Poco a Poco

Little by little. This is the refrain of the ladies whenever we talk about the process of connecting to the international Fair Trade market. I found out that some of them have been knitting together and waiting for such changes for over 10 years, so a few months or even another year is just a drop in the bucket for them. There is so much to be done, but their patience encourages me to practice a little of the same. And in the meantime, we are making progress. Poco a poco.

The week started off well. I continued my current regimen of online research and emailing in the morning, heading up to Alto Cayma after lunch. Monday afternoon I tried to photograph the remaining products for the webpage, but the light was waning and my battery died (a common trend), and I asked if I might be able to take products back with me to photograph, a request they willingly granted. Seeing me left without anything pressing to do, the ladies decided it was high time that I learn to knit "a máquina," and I soon found myself seated at a vacant machine with three of the ladies adjusting the settings, untangling the yarn and giving me incomprehensible instructions. After a few false starts, I got the hang of it and got about 1/3 of the way through a scarf before my yarn ran out and I was forced to stop.

I ended up knitting by hand and chatting with the ladies as they worked the rest of the afternoon. Much of the conversation revolved around food, as they asked me my favorite Peruvian dishes and we all got caught up in the various combinations of ají, potatoes, and rice. Eventually the conversation moved on to other things, one woman voicing concerns about her toddler´s persistent low weight, another asking me what I thought about the war in Iraq. In this manner I am learning, bit by bit, about their lives--where they come from, how many children they have, how they learned to knit, their worries, their views of the United States, where they´ve been and where they hope to go. There is still so much I don't know of how they live and how they see themselves in the world, but again, I am learning to be patient.

Tuesday I heard back from the Fair Trade Federation and received some very helpful materials and additional contacts. I've been making my way through a guide to shipping for small exporters which focuses on Latin American artisan groups like our own. It's incredible to see the amount of resources being developed solely for groups like ours, and it gives me a lot of hope to see how extensive the network of support between artisans and more socially-conscious businesses has already become.

In the afternoon I went with Betsy and Andrea down to El Centro (the city center) to do a little shopping, investigating current styles and prices of products made from alpaca wool. It was wonderful spending time with the two of them. Betsy, as I've mentioned, pretty much runs things at the workshop and oversees all of the products knitted by machine. She has a lot of experience and knows how things should work, which is really encouraging as we look ahead. She's always a lot of fun--laughing and poking fun at herself and the other ladies--and treats everyone who sets foot in the workshop with a friendly and respectful attitude.

Andrea is more timid and much less sure of herself. She's had a rough life, and it's evident in the way she reacts to the world. I have never been a good judge of age (and I think her circumstances have aged her to make her seem older than she really is) but she has two sons almost in their twenties, so I would think she's in her late forties or early fifties, but appears to be in her sixties. Andrea is in charge of the handknit products, and she is an incredible knitter. Although she has had problems with her eyesight (probably in large part due to the fact that she used to get up at 1:00am every day to begin knitting when her sons were in school), she manages just fine in her knitting as she barely even has to look at the needles. She is such a sweet lady and so talented, and I hope the future will bring her better days.

It was interesting visiting the various stores with the two of them. After we'd leave, one of them would inform me that it wasn't actually baby alpaca that they were selling (either one can tell by touch), or comment to the other on the various points used on sweaters and scarves. (I think it's points in knitting...puntos?) Both have been knitting as long as they can remember, and were quick to tell me that every woman raised in the mountains learns to make her own clothes from the time she is a little girl. I had been under the impression that some of the ladies up at Alto Cayma were just learning to knit by hand, but all of them have been doing that for ages and are only now learning to knit by machine. Even more eye opening was what they had to tell me about the wages of the knitters who create the products sold in the upscale tourist shops we visited. Both of them worked in stores like these before joining the other ladies in the workshop at Alto Cayma and for a hand knit alpaca sweater sold at 65 or 70 dollars, they were paid 30 soles tops (less than $10.00). A handknit sweater of that quality takes about 3-7 days to knit, which means the knitter makes somewhere between 4-10 soles or $1.25-$3.00 a day. It's unbelievable.

Wednesday I headed up in the afternoon planning on spending a quiet afternoon with the handknitters, hoping to finally start picking up some new puntos. Instead, I ended up on a combi with Andrea heading back down towards town to buy the wool to start making models for the new products we've been designing. We stopped in at Michele and picked out the colors we could find in acrylic blends, since alpaca isn't necessary for the models. Again, it was nice spending time with Andrea and getting more time to talk to her one on one. When we returned to the workshop, we went over the design for the bag they are going to make, and the ladies who volunteered to make the new models took their assigned color and headed home to begin work over the weekend. Hopefully we'll see the results on Monday.

Thursday and Friday are holidays here, so I spent the days with my family and on my own, taking some time to reflect and process everything from the week and to work on my homework for Spanish classes.

I'm off to the Easter Vigil now up in Alto Cayma. A separate entry will be devoted to Holy Week here (La Semana Santa), but I'm waiting first to see what Easter Sunday brings.
Take care and Happy Easter!