Goings on of Ñaña

I knew the two months would pass quickly here, but I had no idea how quickly. Time has flown since I left home, and now I only have two and a half weeks left to spend with the knitters of Ñaña, my host family and friends. As much as I miss all things Iowa, leaving here is always hard.

That said, there is little time to be sad as we have a pretty packed schedule for the next few weeks. One of the victories of the past month was convincing the parish priest to create a separate bank account for Ñaña (rather than using the account shared by the rest of the projects in Alto Cayma) that would be in the names of Maria, the social worker, and Margarita, the knitter who was elected by the other members of Ñaña as the group's treasurer, rather than in the names of the priest in Alto Cayma and Maria as it had been before. There's actually a lot of back story on this, which I will try to explain in a separate entry because it's a pretty strong illustration of the struggles that come with a democratic system, but the outcome is a very positive one in which the knitters have increasing control over their finances.

The big push for the separate bank account actually came from the decision to set up a PayPal account, which is the checkout system we will use on the website for online payments. It's a well-known and trusted system with a lot of really helpful tools for shipping, invoices, webpage design, etc. and the huge benefit of simplifying payments and eliminating the necessity of international bank transfers...or so I thought. After all the work on the separate bank account, I found that I could only enter US banks in our PayPal account information because, long story short, the world is not yet flat, and merchant services are not yet available in Peru. I think it will still work out, but it makes things quite a bit more complicated.

In addition to struggling with PayPal, we're busy in the workshop filling the orders that continue to straggle in. Plus we're finalizing the reference catalog that will put all of the knowledge of measurements, materials, and designs on paper instead of stored in Andrea's head so that it's available to all of the knitters at all times. This project has taken more time than I ever imagined due to the incredible number of details required and irregularities in previous models. It will be well worth the effort because it will free up a lot of time for Andrea and leave the rest of the knitters better informed, making their work easier.

One of the other projects we've been working on is coming up with sample scarves, glittens, and chullos in the school colors of various Des Moines-area high schools and Iowa universities. The hope is to involve teachers, students and alumni in student-led sales within schools to help support the women of Ñaña while outfitting them in their school colors. I've been helped out on the ground by a number of people. Lindsey has already dropped off a purple and yellow scarf with the adviser for student council at Nevada High School; Ann Mincks and Rachel Mullen recently took teaching jobs at East and Johnston High Schools and will recruit student interest there; Tushar got in touch with Mr. Mooney, one of his former teachers who leads the Students Helping Eliminate Poverty and Hunger group at Ames High; Rachel Geilenfeld is helping me brainstorm on styles we can market to ISU and Iowa (through all the proper legal channels, of course:); and a number of the women Mom works with at Meredith have ordered apparel in the colors of their kids' high schools, providing me with invaluable help in color selection. If you are interested in getting involved with this or have contacts you'd like to pass along, please do so! The more the merrier.

I guess my only other news is that I somehow managed to get that infection so dreaded by kindergarten parents: pink eye. Of all the health concerns I have down here, I failed to see this one coming. Luckily, Roxana has plenty of experience with two kids and tons of nieces and nephews, so she sent me off to the pharmacy with the medicine written down on a piece of paper, then provided the directions for proper use that don't actually come with the medicines sold by pharmacies here. Four days later, the goop is gone, and I am seeing clearly again.