Wow.

WARNING: long post, lots of pics

I got back today from my trip to Cuzco. Yesterday was such an amazing day that I was too overwhelmed last night to write about it. In summary, we went to visit microfinance clients of our local partner organization in Pisac and Chincheros. All of them were artisans: a silversmith who makes his own jewelery, a carver and potter who makes exquisite bowls from wood and clay, a man who carves and paints beautiful board games and pieces and also makes clay pottery, and others. It was amazing to talk to them all about how they were able to improve their lives with the microfinance loans. Their intelligence, talent, and persistence really impressed me.

I spent like it was the last day of money. My colleagues made fun of me, but how can you not support people like our microfinance clients? They earned my respect, and my soles, with their hard work and beautiful products. The first place we went was the artisan market at Pisac. It was thronged with tourists of all stripes, the good, the bad, and the painful, but you should go there. Buy a bowl from Benturino and a game from Roger. You won't regret it. Ask them about microfinance.

Then, after lunch, we went to Chincheros, where we first met a woman whose name I believe is Matilda. She has sheep, she shears them, washes and cards the wool, spins it, and then dyes it with all natural dyes. She is lively and smart and funny and talented. To the left, she is showing us a hat that she is working on, which is knit on the finest yarn I've ever seen someone using for a hat (like lace weight if you are Barbie) on five of the tiniest needles, which were more like pins, thin rudimentary metal sticks, than like the Addi Turbos some of us claim we can't live without. Stunning color work.

She also showed us some of the yarns she was drying and the things she used for creating the dye. To the right, the bags have green leaves (top), next to the yarn that was dyed using those leaves (chillca), and cochineal (bottom), which makes a beautiful red. Matilda also weaves some really nice traditional Chincheros pattern weavings out of alpaca and wool. She sold me the mountain of natural, un-dyed wool at the bottom for 10 soles, or about $3.00.

After spending some time with her, we went to see two of the most amazing people I've met here: Adrian and Antonia Huaman. These two remarkably talented weavers are also microfinance clients of our local partner organization. And they, for me, are exemplars of what well-implemented microfinance can do for people. Originally, Adrian wove pictorial tapestries and Antonia sold them at a tourist restaurant. Then, they got a loan, and invested it in wooden looms, which they built themselves, and in hiring some younger boys to work with Adrian. Now, from that profit, they have a number of different kinds of looms, both of them make stunning weavings and tapestries in traditional Chincheros patterns, they employ about 10 people, and they bought a new house where they plan on opening a restaurant and gallery, where tourists can not only eat traditional Andean food (yum), but can also learn to weave and purchase beautiful weavings with a deeper appreciation of the tradition and talent that goes into each one.

Antonia's mother gave us a demonstration of how to ply yarn in the traditional way with a hand spindle. I'll have a movie of this, hopefully, sometime soon, so you can see her in action. It is amazing.

Adrian and Antonia showed us their weavings. They make table runners (yes, I bought one, and you should look for the ones that have the borders on them), and tapestries and handbags and purses. It takes 36-40 days to make a table runner, which they can sell to a tourist for around $50. The runners are made with the backstrap loom method, and the scraps of each are saved and used to make dolls and other small items, like change purses. Antonia told me about the dyes that she uses:

Cochineal - reds

Flor de Colli - yellows






Cacasuncay and Motemote - browns and pinks, respectively



and Awaypile - fuscia





Adrian and Antonia also showed us their hand-made looms, and showed us how they work. It was really impressive -- check out all those bobbins hanging from Antonia's loom! Crazy-making. Adrian makes the pictures from his head now, but he first paints the designs on the warp (?) threads, so that when they cross over the weft (? sorry if I'm not using the right words, weavers), they don't stand out as white, but blend in. He does some huge tapestries, with really elaborate pictures, wrapping little bits of colored unspun wool into place deftly.













So, the haul. Below, first picture:
a chess game, a parchesi game (from Roger in Pisac), a hand-painted clay mug (also from Roger, a gift!), two hand-painted wooden bowls from Benturino, baby alpaca yarn (oh, gotta tell you about that...), and a belt, called a faja.


Second picture:
a table runner from Antonia, the wool from Matilda, and a little change purse which was a gift from Adrian and Antonia.

Do you know where your yarn comes from?

Today I had a really great treat -- I had an interview with the woman who is the head of a local organization here in Cuzco that works to provide artisan producer groups with an outlet to the market where they can earn a living wage. Now, I'm honestly not the biggest fan of fair trade, mostly because it has been poorly implemented by so many groups, unsustainable, notably unfair to many, and distorting to the markets. However, there is such a thing as good fair trade, I'm learning. This might be one example.

For those of you who are currently knitting with alpaca and those of you who often do, think about what you paid for the last bit of imported alpaca you bought: $7? $10? more? Now take a moment to think where each cent of those dollars went. How many do you think went to the people who spent the greatest number of hours in the production process? How many to those who have the greatest control over the quality of that product? If you guessed, "very little" or "almost none" in answer to those questions, you are correct. Almost all of the money you spent went to large factories who buy from intermediaries, who buy from other intermediaries, who pay almost nothing, well less than $1/day, to the people who carefully raise, shear, clean, card, and possibly spin that yarn.

It strikes me as strange that the highest value added in this chain goes to those who add the least value: industrial spinning and dying factories, intermediaries who do nothing but move the product from one place to another.

Anyway, the woman I interviewed validated my idea that it is possible to produce yarn in a way that would provide a living wage to women in a positive environment, as well as a more profitable buyer for alpaca herders to sell their fleeces. She wants to start a small-scale spinning factory for women that would also provide them with other social services. The women would hand spin or use wheels or small machines, and all the products would be 100% natural, alpaca and wool products dyed using natural dyes or not dyed at all. Sounds good to me -- I'd buy it. They could hire a consultant to help them improve the quality of the yarns and keep them apprised of changes in the market.

What do you guys think of this idea?

Up there is a project for someone lucky. I'm crocheting it, so they are very lucky.

More vocab:

• Spinnery: hilanderia
• Fair trade: comercio justo

Yay!

I know it is a cheesy post title, but I don't know what else to say! I was just invited by the microenterprise project manager here in our Peru office to accompany him on a survey of our microfinance clients in and around Cusco. While cool no matter what they do with our money, this is an especially cool opportunity because SOME OF THEM SPIN ALPACA! I know. You hate me. I promise I'll take pictures, maybe video if you're lucky, and I'll definitely buy buy buy.
This is a great breakthrough for my not-so-secret alpaca and wool marketing project idea. Just imagine -- fair trade alpaca and wool, just like fair trade coffee and chocolate. Now, I'm not usually the biggest fan of fair trade stuff (really, I could go on for hours), but if we can actually do it in a fair way, or at least work with the producers to get them to be able to enhance their role in the value chain or enter a specialty value chain, I will feel like I can retire in peace.

The graphic below is a copy of the drawing our microenterprise guy put on my whiteboard to show me how the value chain for yarn works. Our clients are in the 1-3% group. The graphic shows the percentage of the final sale price (the price you pay in the yarn shop) goes to each group. We know that almost all yarn shop owners are honest brokers, so take that into consideration:

I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to concentrate for the rest of the day.