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!