Ponchos

Hope House classes have officially started. Woo-who! Yesterday we started our March classes with a crochet class - to be more specific the women made Ponchos. We had three tables and three models of ponchos, so women were directed to select their table according to the model they wanted to learn. The women didn't make a full adult size poncho, but a number of women finished their small poncho model, so they can go home and replicate the stitches to make a bigger poncho. Although we offered this class last year, we had lots of new poncho makers in the class. In reality when I asked the class, who has made a poncho before?, only 4 women replied with a Yes. That means that 11 women learned a totally new skill yesterday. I love it!
Paz ~ Nora

On and Off the Field

So all you faithful blog followers know about the Sunday soccer game .... After a long week of working hard morning, noon and night we were due for some serious physical activity yesterday. A fun filled sunny day in the countryside was just what the weekend ordered for us. Walking today was a little painful, but the joy of coming together as a team, both on the soccer field and in the office, makes all the pain and work worth it.


Maggie is heading back to DHF headquarters tomorrow and leaving the field workers with the enormous task of changing the lives of poor women in and around Cajamarca. I can say with full confidence that our team is ready to do just that. We had a full and powerful week of prep for our work ahead of us. Our time together with Maggie was spent not only mapping out the work plan for village banking and development classes, but also getting to know our fellow "teammates" and their strengths and ideas. It is an uplifting and powerful thing to connect with co-workers in a deep and personal space. It creates a work path that is so much more meaningful and supportive, thus allowing amazing changes and ideas to take shape.

Our last activity together before Maggie finds her way to the early bird flight out of Cajamarca tomorrow was a village banking repayment meeting this afternoon. It was so amazing for the 2nd time in a row this past week to watch a completely successful, women-run bank meeting. Women leaders gathered round with soft, yet firm, instruction from Elizabeth (our awesome bank officer) running their own repayment. Dirt floor, sunlight streaming in, little dirty faces running in and out.... There was a missing .40 cents that was somehow recovered, saving accounts that were misunderstood, and group decision being made....it was all figured out.
Pride, Joy, Team.
On and Off the Field.

Paz ~ Nora

weekend of connecting

A great Sunday full of family soccer, volleyball, and food in the countryside with our local partners here. I think Nora and I held our own and represented the “gringas” from all over the world. Having played soccer competitively in the US through college, I couldn’t help but take the familial game seriously (I don’t know how to play for fun with anyone when it comes to soccer). Needless the say, my body is aching all over after working out at 8500 feet and tackling in 2 foot high grass.

Yesterday, Saturday, was an exciting day as Multicredit hosted their first payback meeting of the year with one of our newest village banks, Las Triunfadoras (The Triumphant Ones). Depending on the microcredit methodology and who is delivering the service, payback meetings can be weekly, every fifteen days, or monthly. Women trickled in with babies tied to their backs and Elizabeth our promotora (bank officer) managed the meeting so well as she allowed the bank President, Treasurer, and Secretary to take ownership over collection of payments with simple monitoring from the outside. The sense of ownership and responsibility within a bank is key to the health of the group and an underpinning of village banking all over the world. It was very interesting to see that one of the socias (women) forgot her money as she thought it was in her bag…and the women covered this for her for the time being so their bank payment was given in full. Watching village banking happen in the field is absolutely awesome!

When this meeting ended, we began a “fraternal gathering” that included the Multicredit team from Cajamarca and San Marcos offices. Peruvians gathering all share certain ceremonial elements and worth noting for you, always an interesting time for sure…

1) About 98 percent of the time, the meeting starts 30 mins to 1 hour later than planned. During these minutes of waiting, people usually sit around the outskirts of the space (I have this image of junior high dances and the girls and boys around the outside of the room). There is minimal talking, and often just staring into space. There is comfort in this time of waiting and total PATIENCE. I’ve noticed no matter what the situation, 3 people or 30 people, everyone is accustomed to waiting patiently. This is so counter to how we do business in the US. I find myself asking about every minute during this waiting period, “what the heck is going on here?” Much of the time, there is no clear indication of what is happening; who is leading, what you are waiting for…and all of the sudden…it begins somehow.

2) There are very formal introductions during meetings here. While everyone is seated around the room, all guests must introduce themselves. You must formally stand up and say something. The art of the introduction is big time here. It goes something like: full and formal given name, the neighborhood you represent, and your business of being there. Applause for you before and after…see next step.

3) Applause is huge. When someone is going to begin talking, you clap for them. When they finish talking you clap for them. You clap throughout Peruvian gatherings, when something exciting is said, when you are thanking someone, pretty much you clap at everything. Clap on. Clap off.

4) Prayer…of course in a Catholic nation, you will usually give some sort of thanks to God at some point. I appreciate their love and commitment to their spirituality, since it is the guide in every home, no matter how poor or rustic….you will always see a picture depicting their strong connection to their religious roots.

5) There is always some kind of refresco (refreshment). At one point during the meeting, someone will bring by a plate with tiny cups of pop (they love this), or juice, or wine…depending on the situation. This refreshing drink comes with crackers most of the time. The cracker plate comes around 2 or 3 times and suddenly you have a love affair with delicious crackers. (And since meetings start late and can go for many hours, you usually want these crackers).

6) Because I am a special visitor, there is a special something prepared for me all the time (both food and celebration). Today it happened to be hot milk and presentation of a traditional dance by two young amazing kids (see picture). The preparation of special food is always a little shaky for me, since I am a vegetarian and you never know what is coming on your plate (i.e. chicken feet)! The “invitation” here means a ton…and the verb “invitar” (to invite) is used with all seriousness. When someone invites you to a lunch, a drink, to their house, etc…it is very formal. To turn down an invitation is pretty much an insult. (This can be hard to understand since in the US we get invited to a lot of things and we simply say no, or we can’t, or we are busy.) if you do this here, you will really hurt people’s feelings big time…so an invitation is serious business!

7) Most gatherings that are about family and being together eventually end up with salsa dancing. If you don’t dance, they think that you are sad and lonely, so there is really no sitting off to the side just hanging out. I love watching Peruvians dance because for me, this is where their joy shines. These amazing people celebrate so wonderfully together the fact that they are with one another and alive. It always leaves me remembering what matters most.

I am so thankful for all of the goodness I have in my life. This is what matters to me.
mm

hope in the campo

Morning hopes float over the green countryside cradled by hands of clouds splattered across the sky. The campo (county) is one of my favorite parts about visiting the Andes. Rolling green hills seem to extend forever, and because the road infrastructure is rudimentary after twists and turns and climbs and falls you feel like you are somehow lost and found in the middle of these powerful mountains.

Thursday we left Cajamarca at 7am to visit the town of San Marcos, about 1.5 hours through the countryside from Cajamarca center. The mission of the trip was to visit loan clients at Multicredit’s site there and to meet with a group of women to discuss village banking in the town.
On the ride there, we took turns listening to “gringo” music and Peruvian music. As co-pilot, I told Oswaldo one of my primary jobs was to “wo”-man the music—Nora brought some country, rock, pop, hip-hop and at one point laughed to myself while skidding around curves on the mountain road as we sang “One Love” by Bob Marley. It is refreshing to find yourself in scenarios you could have never dreamed up for yourself.

Once we descended into San Marcos, which is literally in a hole surrounded by mountains, we visited different clients in the field who raised cuy (guinea pig) as their main source of income. I am adding some pictures to the blog since we have guinea pigs as pets in the US, but here they are a total delicacy and everyone eats them. From the frame of reference of the US, it is a little bit different to walk into a room where hundreds of cuys know they are there for eating. They actually sense this and when you walk by their cages they all begin to squeal loudly and pile on one another to hide so that hopefully they won’t get chosen for the next meal. They sure aren’t waiting to be lovingly petted or to eat yummy pellets and run around a wheel like they are in the US!

We even visited the husband/wife team who proudly celebrated their victory producing “La Reyna Cuy 2009” (The Queen Cuy of 2009). Yes…there is a pageant and everything, and yes this is a picture of the queen’s cape and crown! These types of visits are wonderful in really assessing what kind of capacity training you can give to people based on their passions and desires. For example, the community of cuy growers here talked about benefitting in the past from classes about animal care and prevention of disease, as well as needing space and training on proper sanitary butchering to reduce incidence of contamination.

The visit with a group of women later was an incredible experience. Every village banks starts with a promotional meeting about what village banking is and how it works. Women from different neighborhoods may come depending on where the meeting is and how it formed. I really enjoyed listening to women talk about their businesses, what help they could use, and to watch them organically form themselves into smaller interested groups to move forward with bank formation (usually 3 more meetings if a woman is interested: baseline interview-home and business visit; bank actualization and election of board of directors of bank, name chosen, foundation docs agreed upon; and then formal final meeting to celebrate the bank, swear in the board, receive actual first loans).

On the ride home, we were all beat from the sun and walking and dusty day and I enjoyed hearing the healthy discussion about capacity building in a community, and the despite the ease of trying to tell people what is best for them…the key to everything being the creation of everything from the inside of a community and listening to their hopes, cradled by those amazing clouds hovering in the sky.

Sending all my love.

mm

Buy Day Success

The excitement hung in the air before Buy Day got started and continued all throughout the afternoon. DHF had a great turnout of women and jewelry yesterday at our first official event of the year, Buy Day. We had new loan recipient soak in the creativity of old loan recipients showing off their jewelry creations. The new twist on Buy Day this year is that our loan recipients placed their jewelry on very slick and professional earring cards. You could feel the pride as women were asked to sign their earring card and place their earrings 'for export' on the branded DHF cards.

My favorite part of the whole afternoon was my conversation with Nancy, pictured in the middle of the picture below. Nancy was a very active loan recipient last year, trying to attend classes as much as she could while juggling her fried chicken restaurant every evening. She loves making jewelry and when I called her days before the event she reassured me she wouldn't miss this Buy Day. After all her jewelry was selected we calculated her payment together. She sold almost 100 soles, or $30, worth of jewelry to DHF. I paid her and her eyes got teary. " Thank you. Thank you." I reminded her that I wasn't gifting her any money. She said, "I know, but with this money I can pay for my children school inscription that I have to pay this Monday, so they can enter into their classes. All three of them. Without this sale I don't know how I would have paid for it. I worked so hard to make this jewelry, it hurt. Look at my hands (arthritis). But, I didn't want to let you down, I wanted to come to the first activity this year. And it was worth it, because now my children can go to school on Monday."

We are indeed touching and changing lives....
Paz to all ~ Nora

Back and Forth

Back and Forth.
Moving.
Discussing.
Diving In.
Brainstorming.
Creating.
Hoping.
It is always so good to have Maggie come down to Cajamarca, she brings loads of positive energy and pushes me to brainstorm, think big and make adjustments or changes in the programming part of what I do. As you all know, we have been meeting up with our new village banking partners throughout this week and have started to brainstorm, discuss, break-down our methodology, best practices, and yearly work plan. It has been all interactive and energizing, catching me offguard as I feel a bit like we aren´t in Peru. I am use to dry, unproductive meetings in this country (although I know unproductive meetings happen in other countries, too!) Our new partners, Multicredit, are very professional and dedicated to doing genuine, good work. You can feel it in their ideas and energy. This week has been a re-charge battery pack for village banking for me. I love it!

I am waiting for the afternoon to start, in only a half hour the Hope House doors will open it's doors to welcome old faces and new loan recipients to our first activity of the year - Buy Day. The excitement is hanging in the air as DHF will purchase women's goods to bring back to Austin, TX. Next week classes start, so these next few hours will act as a type of inauguration of our bright, new learning space.

Gotta go put up the last minute signs....
Paz ~ Nora

grateful.

A new day. Truly deep goodness gifts itself to everything in this world. Everything.

The day began with beautiful sun reflecting off the green sea of grass in the morning. I found myself riding on the back of a motorcycle inhaling black exhaust with little boys calling me Barbie on the streets. Walking the streets today in between meetings, I simply watched people. People are beautiful. Everyone of us has deep connected lit up roots to something amazing, and you can see it on every human, if that is the projection you want to see in the world.

The kindness of people here in Cajamarca amazes me. Today Nora and I had amazing conversations and confidence building with our partners here, creating even more new routes to add in more amplified business, leadership, and health training in our development curriculum. So much occurred in the spaces of the day filled with meetings, but TRUST is the overriding feeling I have in my heart. I adore the transparency of our partners here and the willingness to work absolutely hard to make this project a systematic collective change opportunity for women who want to be involved. I am looking forward to DHF including all of this awesome information in the development of our Microcredit Toolkit…essentially a manual that answers the question HOW DO I DO THIS in (any) country. We are in process of putting together the first stages of this A-Z compilation so that people can benefit from the model and knowledge of this work. We have a dedicated team of 12 interns in the USA compiling the data around their research pieces for this project. All together exciting stuff going on, all made possible by the effort, love, and desire of so many beautiful folks.

A reminder of the gifts in life came in a conversation with wonderful longtime friends of mine here, Wally and his wife Miriam. Over a full Spanish conversation and some pisco sours, I listened to Miriam tell me about birthing her second daughter two months ago and a day later her child dying. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the pain she was feeling, and I knew my job was just to listen. Her strength was incredible. This little girl had a heart defect and there was only one surgeon in the country that could perform this heart surgery to save her life. They were in Cajamarca, and this surgeon was in Lima, 20 hours by bus or 1.5 plane ride. They called this doctor and asked him to perform this surgery and he said he had 15 other children in line for a similar procedure and he couldn´t do it. Little Alexandra died after 18 hours. I couldn´t help but pain inside, thinking that if she had access to modern medical help, she would have had an amazing chance at living. Miriam told me after all of this, that she just wanted to tell me one message: to be Grateful for what we have when we have it. I just felt this ruminating in my soul on the way home and wanted to share that.

I am blessed with you all in my life.
Maggie