During our visit to Fredy’s workshop in dust-choked Ate, he tells us of growing up in the jungle and coming to Lima at age 13. He takes us up to his roof, where he and his wife are slowly building their living space, room by room. I look out at the dust, hovering above the valley and making everything brown, the bleak mountains in the distance, the other buildings with rebar sticking every which way. I think what a gorgeous place he had to leave in the jungle and what he has here, now. As I’m getting increasingly depressed, Fredy gestures out to the same view I’ve been contemplating. “Look at this,” he says. “It’s so beautiful.”
I ask one ceramicist whether he thought his 7-year-old daughter would follow in his footsteps. “I think parents always want their kids to be interested in what they do, but they also want them to be happy and have a better life. We work every day, from around 6:30 in the morning until 10 or 11 at night. We work Saturdays, Sundays, holidays. I don’t want my daughter to work like that.”
Alvina is on her fourth visit to Manos Amigas, attempting to deliver a jewelry order. Each time, Christina carefully checks over each piece and soon has a pile of jewelry that Alvina will need to correct and bring back yet again. After she leaves, Christina, exasperated, says, “She has glasses! She needs to wear them! She is just too ashamed of them, so she doesn’t even see the scratches I’m pointing out to her! Maybe she would learn to wear them after I keep rejecting the order!” On her next visit, Christina asks Alvina to wear her glasses while they review her order together. It works.
At Jacinto’s workshop, I have to use the bathroom. Sam, who had visited the facilities at another artisan’s home earlier, whispers, “It will just be a hole in the ground; be prepared.” I ask Jacinto’s wife where los servicios are. She exchanges a worried look with her adult daughter, but walks me out of the workshop, out to the back of their home. She moves a couple of tubs of clothes soaking in laundry water, and points up the sand hill: Just up there.
I trudge up the hill and see a toilet set directly into the sand with reed mats encircling it for a measure of privacy. I move the mat serving as a door and turn around. The deep blue ocean, sunlit and sparkling on this strangely sunny and clear winter day, is what I see when I look out over rows and rows of homes just like Jacinto’s, shacks without running water, with reeds mats as roofs. The calm, beautiful sea is such a contrast to the difficult life they lead.
Silvia hands me a pair of earrings as a goodbye gift. “I am so sorry that these are not fair trade, but I wanted to give you something,” she said. I look at the sticker on the velvety bag and read that it is from Creaciones Ymelda. This happens to be from Ymelda Diaz, the one artisan who works with Manos Amigas AND has her own puesto in Inca Market. There are literally a couple thousand of these puestos in different mercados lining the same street in Miraflores, and Silvia just happened to go to the one tiny puesto that could be called (but is not advertised as) fair trade. Fate? Chance? Luck? We are both delighted by the coincidence.
While Ymelda lives in Ventanilla and has her ceramic workshop there, she sells a variety of merchandise at her puesto in Miraflores. She works in her taller producing windchimes in the morning, then makes the two-and-a-half hour trip to Miraflores on “2-3 buses, depending which ones come first,” to get to Inca Market to sell in all afternoon and evening. Her dream is to own a car.
We visited Daniel Novoa’s workshop twice, once in November and again in March. (You can see pictures of Daniel in my post about the November visit with Yannina and one of her Italian clients as well as in my dad’s post about my parents’ trip to Peru.) He is young - just turned 33 last month - and is incredibly entrepreneurial. He took a class on starting your own business, wrote a business plan, and learned how to create and maintain a web presence. His first child was born in May. In July, orders were slow so he was working in construction. A friend asked to use his kiln to fire several pieces, not an unusual request. His girlfriend called him several hours later in a panic. Their friend had left something flammable on top of the kiln, which caught on fire and burned his entire workshop down.
Yannina found out several weeks later, when Daniel, ever the entrepreneur, called to ask if she’d buy a ticket to a dinner he and his girlfriend were holding to raise money to rebuild the workshop. After seeing the damage firsthand, Yannina is currently working on securing a bigger loan for Daniel through several client donations.
A large percentage of the artisans want to handle exporting themselves but very few appear to have the capacity to navigate the complexities of international commerce and shipping, let alone the business acumen to market their products and manage client relationships.
Some of Manos Amigas’ artisans brought their products in well before the due date, or right on time, with few or minor corrections needed. But more often Manos Amigas was left hanging until the last minute, wondering whether artisans would bring their orders in on time (and then, when they had not been delivered, Yannina would spend days calling and attempting to reach artisans who were suddenly not answering her phone calls). And often, when an order arrived and Manos Amigas did quality control by inspecting each item, they would find product imperfections (where several products might need to be redone or touched up) or design errors (where the whole order would need to be fixed or redone completely).
We saw this happen so consistently, with a lot of stress on Manos Amigas’ end regarding getting the products to their client on time that Sam and I privately thought physically checking on the order’s status during the production process would be beneficial. Another organization which we respect checks four times on their artisans’ progress and accordingly have fewer surprises. Manos Amigas isn’t staffed for that, though, and they aren’t really set up to work with volunteers. And realistically, visiting the artisans could easily be a full time job. We were exhausted by the travel and pollution with doing an average of one day of visits per week; imagine the exhaustion daily visits would produce.
Zenaida is so outrageously late with an order that Yannina, normally patient in the face of insanity, loses her patience. Zenaida swears she’ll have the order in on Monday the 13th, several months late and after a dozen similar promises. “Monday the 13th?” Yannina asks. “Of what year?” Zenaida doesn’t show up on Monday, surprising no one.
When she does show up, not only is it six weeks after Monday the 13th, but she arrives at 10 pm. My response would have been to go to sleep and deal with the order the next day. It was months late, after all! Yannina stayed up all night, packing the order for shipment.
Showing posts with label artisan story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label artisan story. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Thursday, September 6, 2012
A window into another world
Our final artisan visits were in Ventanilla, far on the northern side of Lima. Ventanilla is a relatively young district, formed in 1969 initially to relieve overpopulated areas in downtown Lima and nearby Callao. Apparently Ventanilla was attractive a couple hundred years ago to pirates off of the coast of Lima who could see that there were a number of caves and grottoes in various rock formations nearby, and they thought those would be good places to hide their treasures. The concentration of rock “windows” from their ocean viewpoint led them to name the district after “little windows” = ventanilla. Later, people were attracted by the lore accompanying the buried treasure, wondering if they could find anything. In summertime it is said to be a popular place to go to the beach, handling up to 40,000 people at once.
Many of Ventanilla’s current residents either arrived as part of land invasions (a group of homeless families squat on an undeveloped or undesirable piece of land, hoping that eventually the government will include them in city planning with services such as water, sewers, and electricity) or were moved here by the government to relieve crowding in other districts. (And, in fact, a week after we visited, I read in the news about a violent confrontation between squatters and police in yet another undeveloped place in Ventanilla - land invasions are not just a part of “old” history but very much part of the present.)
By this point in our artisan visits, Simon had clearly communicated to us that two hours on a bus flying and screeching and bumping through traffic, followed by a long-ish artisan visit, plus two more hours for the return, was unacceptable. The fact that he was also getting carsick with some frequency on the buses made us rethink our strategy. We realized that we just weren’t going to be able to visit all of the artisans we’d intended to interview due to the distances involved, and decided to hire a taxi for our last few days of visits. Gustavo, a friend of Manos Amigas, had quickly become our go-to taxi driver when we needed airport drop-offs or pick-ups. He readily agreed to transport us around the outskirts of Lima for an hourly rate.
Many of Ventanilla’s current residents either arrived as part of land invasions (a group of homeless families squat on an undeveloped or undesirable piece of land, hoping that eventually the government will include them in city planning with services such as water, sewers, and electricity) or were moved here by the government to relieve crowding in other districts. (And, in fact, a week after we visited, I read in the news about a violent confrontation between squatters and police in yet another undeveloped place in Ventanilla - land invasions are not just a part of “old” history but very much part of the present.)
By this point in our artisan visits, Simon had clearly communicated to us that two hours on a bus flying and screeching and bumping through traffic, followed by a long-ish artisan visit, plus two more hours for the return, was unacceptable. The fact that he was also getting carsick with some frequency on the buses made us rethink our strategy. We realized that we just weren’t going to be able to visit all of the artisans we’d intended to interview due to the distances involved, and decided to hire a taxi for our last few days of visits. Gustavo, a friend of Manos Amigas, had quickly become our go-to taxi driver when we needed airport drop-offs or pick-ups. He readily agreed to transport us around the outskirts of Lima for an hourly rate.
One of the reasons we liked Gustavo over any other driver was that he drove pretty slowly and cautiously, given crazy Peruvian traffic. Everyone else we’ve driven with tended to ride the accelerator, then slam on the brakes, over and over and over. (See Simon, carsick, above.) Add free-for-all turn “lanes” (if you don’t want to wait in the line to turn left, then just dart out in traffic and create your own lane), mix in buses, combis, and cars careening between lanes at will and you have a recipe for stressful driving. Except it all seemed to work just fine; I saw the results of just one accident during our year in Lima. But Gustavo did all of the above much more slowly and cautiously, and Simon did well as a result.
I was really thankful that we drove with Gustavo to Ventanilla, since the traffic, impossibly, was crazier than we had ever experienced. After we passed the airport, mayhem broke loose. Apparently the highway was being ripped out and redone without traffic being stopped or redirected in any way. So this meant that six lanes of traffic flowed in various directions, not always on a surface intended for driving and not always flowing in a direction you’d expect. We narrowly missed encounters with semis and dump trucks. Two brave souls were driving on their motorized bicycle cart, their cart stacked with fresh vegetables, weaving between semis, buses, and cars like ours. Drivers created shoulders where I didn’t realize there was space. Sam said, “This is Lima traffic on steroids!” It took us over two hours to maneuver through this mayhem and get to Ventanilla. How long would it have taken us on a bus? I’m not sure we ever would have made it!
We drove parallel to the ocean, passing mile after mile of giant container yards, with thousands of containers ready to be loaded onto ships. Later we passed the funky rock formations that drew the pirates’ attention. Eventually we arrived in Ventanilla, which at that point looked like many other districts, which is to say, crowded, paved, full of businesses and mototaxis. It didn’t appear impoverished at first glance. Gustavo asked around for directions to our artisans’ neighborhood, and we drove still further north, but much closer to the ocean now. We drove up, up, up the giant sand dune, seeing the ocean on one side and the increasing poverty on the other.
Our first visit was to Mario Nolasco. I’d actually interviewed Mario months before, in the Manos Amigas office, before we’d embarked on artisan visits. He’d come to the office to deliver a muestra, a product sample, and Yannina asked me to interview him before he left. Since I had my interview notes, we just needed photographs of his workshop to complete his materials. While I’m glad we visited him, in hindsight that was a long way to travel just for a few dozen photographs! Mario was proud to have us visit, though. He told us that we were just his third set of visitors in five years: Yannina had checked out his space when she was doing her due diligence before they started working together; another Manos Amigas volunteer had come to interview him 3 years ago, and now us.
I was really impressed with Mario’s workshop. He is young, just 24 years old, and has an immaculately kept workshop that he’s built by himself. Compare some pictures from 2009, with ours from 2012; the changes he’s effected since then are striking.
The second oldest of eight children, Mario comes from a line of artisans. His parents couldn’t afford to buy him toys, but there was always ample clay around. Mario would create his toys out of clay and his father would later fire them in the kiln along with his items for sale.
His opportunity to come to Lima came when an artisan asked his older brother if he’d help him out at his workshop for several months. Mario’s brother wasn’t interested, but 18-year-old Mario was. He had never been to Lima before. “I’m from the jungle. I only knew places with lots of plants and animals. I had heard lots of stories of the big city, the ocean, the cars, and the buildings.”
June is wintertime in Lima, and Mario wasn’t used to the cold. “I didn’t like the weather at all and didn’t plan to stay.” But after his month of work was over with and Mario was making plans to return to Ayacucho, another artisan asked him if he would work with him until December. Mario agreed. Once December rolled around, Mario had slowly gotten accustomed to Lima. The artisan offered to pay for Mario to return to Ayacucho and spend Christmas and the New Year with his family, if Mario would agree to work with him for the next year.
By that point, Mario decided that if he was going to spend this much time in Lima, he might as well open up his own workshop too. He had friends who knew of available land in Ventanilla for his future workshop. “But it was just sand; there wasn’t an existing structure to build onto.” Mario spent 2007 working at two workshops, his friend’s and laying the groundwork for his own. He’d work for one week for his friend, followed by a week working on his own workshop.
Since his land was just sand, his weeks in his workshop were spent sinking posts in the ground and building walls with thin wood. He used woven mats for his roof. As Lima is a desert, it rarely rains, so woven reed mats were sufficient as well as typical of his neighbors’ homes as well. But they are not very strong or permanent. “I lived in the workshop too, of course. You have to guard your stuff. People would say, ‘finish your floor; how can you work with a sand floor?’ But, if your pottery piece falls off of the table and onto the sand, it doesn’t break. If you have a floor, it does. And if you are painting it and it falls into the sand, even though the sand sticks to the paint as if it were glue, you can just rinse it off and start again.”
He strengthened his workshop in 2010. Mario now has a cement floor, reinforced and painted walls, a stronger roof. His home is now in back.
As we found out on our way there, the time involved in getting to and from Ventanilla is significant. I asked him how long it takes him to get to Manos Amigas. “I spend three hours in a bus to get to Manos Amigas on time. If I have to bring a big order in, I take a taxi, which would normally take less time, but right now there is construction on both roads in and out of Ventanilla, so it’s about the same amount of time.”
Due to the distances involved, he always makes sure that he has scheduled different days for merchandise to be due and transported to his clients, so that he doesn’t have to trek to more than one place in one day. On the day we visited, for example, Mario’s brother left Ventanilla at 4 a.m. to take an order to a client in Lurín, far on the southern edge of Lima. He arrived at 7 a.m. Because of the normally heavy and insane traffic which is Lima, I can only imagine how long it would have taken him to get to Lurín if he had waited to leave at a more normal hour of 8 or 10 a.m.
Mario’s main plans for the future are to keep growing his business, of course, and to obtain the title of his land. “The government has the title. I am working on getting the title, but it will take time. You have to keep asking for it.” Getting the title to the land is tricky in areas where land invasions have been frequent and the government has relocated people. Back in the office, I asked Christina about Mario’s quest for the title and whether he’d actually ever get it. She told me that it was possible, but that only the people who keep asking for it and are persistent - over years - are the ones who eventually are granted them. I hope Mario is one of the lucky ones.
Mario sticks in my mind. I’m not exactly sure why. Perhaps it’s because he was the first artisan I interviewed. Perhaps it’s because he is so young. Perhaps it’s because he is trying so earnestly to be successful in a tough market, doing something (and doing it well) that so many others do too. (Product plug: Global Gifts is currently selling one of his products, a tealight for $16.) Perhaps it is because he is doing the absolute best he can in a poor area, taking such care with the appearance and upkeep of his workshop in an area where few can or do pay attention to those details.
After talking with Mario, we walked down about 12 shacks until we arrived at Jacinto’s home/workshop.
At first I was surprised by their proximity - Ventanilla is huge! - but later I found out that Mario introduced his neighbor to Yannina, thinking that perhaps he would be a good fit for Manos Amigas.
Jacinto is from Huancayo and produces mates burilados, carved gourds. He and his wife, Vasilia, both learned to make mates from their parents. Each has been working since they were 7 or 8 years old. This was a common story we heard from the mates artisans who are over 40 years old: they all were working, some of them full time, by age 8.
Jacinto and Vasilia have five children ranging in age from 16 to 27. They moved to Lima in 1998 for better work opportunities and lived in Villa El Salvador, on Lima’s far south side. But in 2000, the Peruvian government moved him and 10,000 others from Villa El Salvador to Ventanilla.
When they arrived, there was nothing but sand. There were no existing structures, no services. “They moved us in giant trucks. We slept in the sand with plastic and cardboard boxes for protection. Not many people stuck it out. Life was rough. There was no water, no electricity, no access to transportation, no nothing.” While they have electricity now, 12 years later, they still do not have water. “They promised us that we would have water by 2008. But administrations change and don’t always fulfill previous promises.”
I can’t imagine living so far from the heart of Lima, without any access to transportation, let alone water and shelter. I suppose that is an example of how desperate they and others were for a home. While Jacinto and his family have obviously come far from the days when they slept in sand, they still have a hard life. They must bring in water for everything: washing clothes, dishes, drinking, cooking. Sand is everywhere. As we talked, a dusting of sand blew down on my notes from crevices in the roof.
After we finished our interviews, we thanked everyone and piled back into Gustavo’s car, bracing ourselves for the ride back home. Slowly our scenery changed from ocean and shacks to dusty construction and planes, to frantic streets with everyone jockeying for position, back to Miraflores where parapentes were sailing above the ocean and among the high rises. Parks, filled with greenery in this desert, are pretty much everywhere in Miraflores. During the week, many of those parks are filled with niñeras, nannies, and their charges. While not all of the niñeras are from places as far away as Ventanilla, few are from Miraflores.
What a contrast. On the ride back, I kept thinking about what people like Mario, Jacinto, and the niñeras think when they trek in from their neighborhoods and arrive in the relative luxury of Miraflores and see the wealth everywhere. The luck of having green parks and playgrounds patrolled by security officers, safe places to play outside, the ocean as a backdrop for daily activities: that felt luxurious after days on buses seeing the rest of Lima. As such, Miraflores can be such a contrast to the rest of Lima, and a lot of the expats who live there wouldn’t dare set foot in many of those areas. I remember being that afraid, so I can’t fault them, but I am also thankful I got past my fear.
Once, when we were driving with Yannina through a dusty district far past Lima’s downtown, she commented, “We [in Miraflores] have the ocean. What do they have here? Dust.” So many different worlds, all in the same city.
I was really thankful that we drove with Gustavo to Ventanilla, since the traffic, impossibly, was crazier than we had ever experienced. After we passed the airport, mayhem broke loose. Apparently the highway was being ripped out and redone without traffic being stopped or redirected in any way. So this meant that six lanes of traffic flowed in various directions, not always on a surface intended for driving and not always flowing in a direction you’d expect. We narrowly missed encounters with semis and dump trucks. Two brave souls were driving on their motorized bicycle cart, their cart stacked with fresh vegetables, weaving between semis, buses, and cars like ours. Drivers created shoulders where I didn’t realize there was space. Sam said, “This is Lima traffic on steroids!” It took us over two hours to maneuver through this mayhem and get to Ventanilla. How long would it have taken us on a bus? I’m not sure we ever would have made it!
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| While Gustavo is a cautious driver by comparison, he definitely drives Lima-style. Here we are nonchalantly cutting in front of a semi. |
I was really impressed with Mario’s workshop. He is young, just 24 years old, and has an immaculately kept workshop that he’s built by himself. Compare some pictures from 2009, with ours from 2012; the changes he’s effected since then are striking.
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| 2009: interior of Mario's workshop |
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| 2009: sign on his door with his address & advertising that he does ceramics in the style of Ayacucho, his hometown |
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| 2009: exterior of his workshop/home |
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| 2012: interior of workshop |
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| 2012: entrance to workshop. I love the artful iron lettering of his workshop name, Moya Wasi, which is Quechua for House of Seeds. I also love that he has a tree! His place is nicer and more carefully tended to than some places in our neighborhood. |
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| If you look closely, you can see that the arrow points to "Moya Wasi" spelled out with pebbles. This is the entrance to the workshop. |
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| Mario with some of his products |
His opportunity to come to Lima came when an artisan asked his older brother if he’d help him out at his workshop for several months. Mario’s brother wasn’t interested, but 18-year-old Mario was. He had never been to Lima before. “I’m from the jungle. I only knew places with lots of plants and animals. I had heard lots of stories of the big city, the ocean, the cars, and the buildings.”
June is wintertime in Lima, and Mario wasn’t used to the cold. “I didn’t like the weather at all and didn’t plan to stay.” But after his month of work was over with and Mario was making plans to return to Ayacucho, another artisan asked him if he would work with him until December. Mario agreed. Once December rolled around, Mario had slowly gotten accustomed to Lima. The artisan offered to pay for Mario to return to Ayacucho and spend Christmas and the New Year with his family, if Mario would agree to work with him for the next year.
By that point, Mario decided that if he was going to spend this much time in Lima, he might as well open up his own workshop too. He had friends who knew of available land in Ventanilla for his future workshop. “But it was just sand; there wasn’t an existing structure to build onto.” Mario spent 2007 working at two workshops, his friend’s and laying the groundwork for his own. He’d work for one week for his friend, followed by a week working on his own workshop.
Since his land was just sand, his weeks in his workshop were spent sinking posts in the ground and building walls with thin wood. He used woven mats for his roof. As Lima is a desert, it rarely rains, so woven reed mats were sufficient as well as typical of his neighbors’ homes as well. But they are not very strong or permanent. “I lived in the workshop too, of course. You have to guard your stuff. People would say, ‘finish your floor; how can you work with a sand floor?’ But, if your pottery piece falls off of the table and onto the sand, it doesn’t break. If you have a floor, it does. And if you are painting it and it falls into the sand, even though the sand sticks to the paint as if it were glue, you can just rinse it off and start again.”
He strengthened his workshop in 2010. Mario now has a cement floor, reinforced and painted walls, a stronger roof. His home is now in back.
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| This hallway runs from the back of Mario's workshop, past his living quarters, and out to the bathroom. |
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| The door to Mario's bathroom |
Due to the distances involved, he always makes sure that he has scheduled different days for merchandise to be due and transported to his clients, so that he doesn’t have to trek to more than one place in one day. On the day we visited, for example, Mario’s brother left Ventanilla at 4 a.m. to take an order to a client in Lurín, far on the southern edge of Lima. He arrived at 7 a.m. Because of the normally heavy and insane traffic which is Lima, I can only imagine how long it would have taken him to get to Lurín if he had waited to leave at a more normal hour of 8 or 10 a.m.
Mario’s main plans for the future are to keep growing his business, of course, and to obtain the title of his land. “The government has the title. I am working on getting the title, but it will take time. You have to keep asking for it.” Getting the title to the land is tricky in areas where land invasions have been frequent and the government has relocated people. Back in the office, I asked Christina about Mario’s quest for the title and whether he’d actually ever get it. She told me that it was possible, but that only the people who keep asking for it and are persistent - over years - are the ones who eventually are granted them. I hope Mario is one of the lucky ones.
Mario sticks in my mind. I’m not exactly sure why. Perhaps it’s because he was the first artisan I interviewed. Perhaps it’s because he is so young. Perhaps it’s because he is trying so earnestly to be successful in a tough market, doing something (and doing it well) that so many others do too. (Product plug: Global Gifts is currently selling one of his products, a tealight for $16.) Perhaps it is because he is doing the absolute best he can in a poor area, taking such care with the appearance and upkeep of his workshop in an area where few can or do pay attention to those details.
After talking with Mario, we walked down about 12 shacks until we arrived at Jacinto’s home/workshop.
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| The building next to Mario's |
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| The view of Ventanilla and the ocean from Mario's workshop |
At first I was surprised by their proximity - Ventanilla is huge! - but later I found out that Mario introduced his neighbor to Yannina, thinking that perhaps he would be a good fit for Manos Amigas.
Jacinto is from Huancayo and produces mates burilados, carved gourds. He and his wife, Vasilia, both learned to make mates from their parents. Each has been working since they were 7 or 8 years old. This was a common story we heard from the mates artisans who are over 40 years old: they all were working, some of them full time, by age 8.
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| Jacinto welcomes us to his workshop |
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| Simon, as usual, finds friends to play in the dirt and sand with |
When they arrived, there was nothing but sand. There were no existing structures, no services. “They moved us in giant trucks. We slept in the sand with plastic and cardboard boxes for protection. Not many people stuck it out. Life was rough. There was no water, no electricity, no access to transportation, no nothing.” While they have electricity now, 12 years later, they still do not have water. “They promised us that we would have water by 2008. But administrations change and don’t always fulfill previous promises.”
I can’t imagine living so far from the heart of Lima, without any access to transportation, let alone water and shelter. I suppose that is an example of how desperate they and others were for a home. While Jacinto and his family have obviously come far from the days when they slept in sand, they still have a hard life. They must bring in water for everything: washing clothes, dishes, drinking, cooking. Sand is everywhere. As we talked, a dusting of sand blew down on my notes from crevices in the roof.
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| Jacinto outside of their workshop/home. They have come a long way from sleeping in sand, covered by plastic. |
What a contrast. On the ride back, I kept thinking about what people like Mario, Jacinto, and the niñeras think when they trek in from their neighborhoods and arrive in the relative luxury of Miraflores and see the wealth everywhere. The luck of having green parks and playgrounds patrolled by security officers, safe places to play outside, the ocean as a backdrop for daily activities: that felt luxurious after days on buses seeing the rest of Lima. As such, Miraflores can be such a contrast to the rest of Lima, and a lot of the expats who live there wouldn’t dare set foot in many of those areas. I remember being that afraid, so I can’t fault them, but I am also thankful I got past my fear.
Once, when we were driving with Yannina through a dusty district far past Lima’s downtown, she commented, “We [in Miraflores] have the ocean. What do they have here? Dust.” So many different worlds, all in the same city.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Adventures in Huancayo
Although we are now back in the States, I haven’t finished posting all of my drafts yet! I’ll wrap up the blog before Sam returns to work full-time in September.
As we mapped out our final months in Peru and figured out what travel destinations would make the cut, Sam came across an old email from a fair trade colleague. “It’s really cool to see the artisans in Huancayo creating the carved gourds, the mates burilados. If you get a chance, go.”
Huancayo was an 8 hour overnight bus trip from Lima, and about four hours from the jungle we planned to visit. Deciding to combine the trips was easy.
Huancayo was pretty interesting to visit, period, and not just for their funny crosswalk signs. As usual, any place we visit outside of Lima is shocking in its contrast to the dusty, polluted, giant city (written with great affection for Lima). Here we were, high in the Andes, enjoying the cold and sunshine but wishing our hotel room had heat. There was a far more indigenous presence than anywhere we had traveled to at that point. Homeless people were more visible, especially in the streets in and around the main plaza, than we have seen anywhere in Lima. And did I mention it was cold? They were huddled under cardboard and plastic in an attempt to keep warm.
We had met various members of the Hurtado family at the capacitación training in December, and they urged us to visit their workshops. Sam has described the fascinating process of carving and burning the gourds, so I won’t go into those details here.
At Alejandro and Victoria’s workshop, we first heard of their family’s difficult start. Alejandro’s father died when he was just 3 years old. His mother remarried and left shortly thereafter, leaving Alejandro and his three siblings to raise themselves. His oldest brother Emilio quit school and started working in a mate burilado workshop full time when he was just 12 years old, to support himself and his siblings. As Emilio learned to excel with mates, he taught his brothers. Each has been able to support himself and his family on this artistry since.
Victoria, on the other hand, learned from her neighbors. One in particular saw that she had talent and provided encouragement. “He would give me a mate and tell me to do whatever I wanted with it, to see if I could make something marketable. I played around with it. After I’d made a few, he told me to try to sell them in the Sunday fair. I sold five in a week. I was able to buy myself a few things that I needed. I was 8 or 9 years old.”
Victoria had to leave school after 1st grade to help her family earn money by weaving sweaters and scarves. She has never been able to go back to school. “My parents were very poor. Some of their kids didn’t live because there wasn’t enough food to go around. Our neighbors would help us out with little purchases, some food here, a pair of shoes there. That is how I survived.”
Later we visited Emilio’s workshop and were surprised to see the workshop empty, even though it was a business day. We learned that his workshop keeps a slightly unusual schedule: it is open Wednesday through Saturday. On the other three days, many of his seven workers volunteer in a community church program for children living in extreme poverty. Participating in this church project is not a requirement to work in his workshop, but rather is a project that many in his community are committed to.
As Emilio is committed to hiring people who otherwise would not have a job, he hires workers who do not have a trade. He hires them expressly to be able to teach them a skill with which they can support themselves. Generally his workers haven’t held a job before, and keeping a rigid, regular schedule is something new for them.
At the beginning, his workers agree that they will initially work for a month. If, after that month, they want to continue in his workshop, they sign a contract for one to three years. Not all of the people he hires are interested in continuing in his workshop after the initial trial period. During their period of employment, they gradually learn all the various skills that go into creating mates burilados. If and when they are ready to set out on their own, they give notice up to two weeks prior to their contract ending.
After they open up their own workshop, Emilio continues to give them work, passing on parts of his orders and giving them projects to complete for several years while they build their own client base. When they no longer need work from him, he gradually stops sharing it with them.
After he went to work full-time at age 12, he worked for an additional twelve years with just clothing and food for himself and his siblings as payment. Once he married, though, he had two families to support. Eventually he opened up his own workshop with his wife, Ana.
Ana died in 2010 after a long, expensive battle with cancer, fighting through 33 radiation treatments and three operations. It put him deeply into debt - one of her operations cost $25,000 - but he was ready to sacrifice everything so Ana could be cured. During a four year period they lived in Lima, not working, so she could be close to the hospital for chemo treatments. Their youngest, Joel, quit college to run their workshop for them.
He shared how much he has grieved and still grieves Ana’s death. His sadness was palpable. Yet he knows he has to move on. In May of this year, Emilio paid off his last loan. Joel has started studying again, and has a particularly grueling schedule as he juggles responsibilities in the workshop, church program, and college. He attends classes from 6:30-10:30 in the morning and again from 5-10:30 at night. From 12-4 he is either at the church program or at the workshop.
We stopped by Pablo’s workshop but weren’t able to see him, since he was at a now-annual event for him, giving daily demonstrations at the San Diego Zoo for a couple of months each summer.
In an earlier interview, Pablo shared that his work has opened many doors for him: “My art has made it possible for me to see many places within my country and around the world. I have been able to meet many people who appreciate and value the art that we practice as a tradition that our parents left for us. I have been able to achieve my dreams. Now I try to help unemployed and poor young people and women, by giving them work and teaching them the art of mate burilado.”
Our last visit was to Eulogio Medina and his wife Geralmina Salomé.
Each of the Hurtado brothers worked for Eulogio at some point as they grew up. In contrast to the tiny gas flame “paintbrush” we’d seen at each of the other workshops, Eulogio showed us how he used the traditional thick, pencil-like piece of wood to burn the gourds. Such artistry each person displayed.
In addition to the mates burilados workshops, I have two memories that I associate most with Huancayo. The first is about casual conversation and tourists. Simon and I were playing in the main plaza one morning when he noticed a little kid with a battery-operated car driving around. It was love at first sight, although I’m not sure which Simon was more taken by, the little boy, Adrian, or his car! Adrian and Simon played happily together for an hour while I chatted with his parents, Gladys and Angel.
In between giving taped interviews to several different groups of students working on some sort of interview-the-gringa project, Gladys and Angel gave me food tips for our trip. When I expressed surprise at how many interviews I was giving and the far-more-than-normal pictures being taken of Simon with random kids and their parents, Angel said, “We get tourists here but they are always very heavily guarded. Everyone wants to talk to them but no one knows how. They always are in a big group or stay close together.” That made me wonder how “guarded” I would be if I wasn’t super approachable on account of having a playful child. Simon has certainly opened up a lot of doors for us this year.
The second one relates to music. On the four-hour drive from Huancayo to the jungle, our bus driver loudly played a single cd on repeat. Every single song featured a screeching phrase which the singer would shriek out four times: OSS! OSS! OSS! OSS! Sometimes she would add a dying-away shriek at the end of the song: OSSSSSSSSS. Our napping little boy didn’t stay that way for long. “I think they play this music just to make the trip more miserable,” Sam said. As we have joked about OSS approximately a million times by now, Simon now thinks of Huancayo too. If he hears us say “Huancayo”, he starts chanting “OSS”. Somehow I find that extremely endearing instead of extremely annoying. Maybe I should send a cd of Simon chanting OSS to the bus driver for his next trips!
Next stop: the jungle.
As we mapped out our final months in Peru and figured out what travel destinations would make the cut, Sam came across an old email from a fair trade colleague. “It’s really cool to see the artisans in Huancayo creating the carved gourds, the mates burilados. If you get a chance, go.”
Huancayo was an 8 hour overnight bus trip from Lima, and about four hours from the jungle we planned to visit. Deciding to combine the trips was easy.
Huancayo was pretty interesting to visit, period, and not just for their funny crosswalk signs. As usual, any place we visit outside of Lima is shocking in its contrast to the dusty, polluted, giant city (written with great affection for Lima). Here we were, high in the Andes, enjoying the cold and sunshine but wishing our hotel room had heat. There was a far more indigenous presence than anywhere we had traveled to at that point. Homeless people were more visible, especially in the streets in and around the main plaza, than we have seen anywhere in Lima. And did I mention it was cold? They were huddled under cardboard and plastic in an attempt to keep warm.
We had met various members of the Hurtado family at the capacitación training in December, and they urged us to visit their workshops. Sam has described the fascinating process of carving and burning the gourds, so I won’t go into those details here.
At Alejandro and Victoria’s workshop, we first heard of their family’s difficult start. Alejandro’s father died when he was just 3 years old. His mother remarried and left shortly thereafter, leaving Alejandro and his three siblings to raise themselves. His oldest brother Emilio quit school and started working in a mate burilado workshop full time when he was just 12 years old, to support himself and his siblings. As Emilio learned to excel with mates, he taught his brothers. Each has been able to support himself and his family on this artistry since.
Victoria, on the other hand, learned from her neighbors. One in particular saw that she had talent and provided encouragement. “He would give me a mate and tell me to do whatever I wanted with it, to see if I could make something marketable. I played around with it. After I’d made a few, he told me to try to sell them in the Sunday fair. I sold five in a week. I was able to buy myself a few things that I needed. I was 8 or 9 years old.”
Victoria had to leave school after 1st grade to help her family earn money by weaving sweaters and scarves. She has never been able to go back to school. “My parents were very poor. Some of their kids didn’t live because there wasn’t enough food to go around. Our neighbors would help us out with little purchases, some food here, a pair of shoes there. That is how I survived.”
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| Victoria |
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| Victoria starts to carve owls on a gourd... |
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| Once the carving is completed, Alejandro begins to burn the gourds with a tiny, precise flame. The three owls visible in this picture are all different shades of brown, based on the distance of the flame. He's started to burn the lines as well. |
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| Farther along in the burning process on the same gourd. |
As Emilio is committed to hiring people who otherwise would not have a job, he hires workers who do not have a trade. He hires them expressly to be able to teach them a skill with which they can support themselves. Generally his workers haven’t held a job before, and keeping a rigid, regular schedule is something new for them.
At the beginning, his workers agree that they will initially work for a month. If, after that month, they want to continue in his workshop, they sign a contract for one to three years. Not all of the people he hires are interested in continuing in his workshop after the initial trial period. During their period of employment, they gradually learn all the various skills that go into creating mates burilados. If and when they are ready to set out on their own, they give notice up to two weeks prior to their contract ending.
After they open up their own workshop, Emilio continues to give them work, passing on parts of his orders and giving them projects to complete for several years while they build their own client base. When they no longer need work from him, he gradually stops sharing it with them.
 |
| I never thought of myself as super tall in Peru until I saw photos like these. Here, Emilio and I are holding some of his enormous gourds, intricately carved with scenes which tell a story as you slowly rotate the gourd. |
Ana died in 2010 after a long, expensive battle with cancer, fighting through 33 radiation treatments and three operations. It put him deeply into debt - one of her operations cost $25,000 - but he was ready to sacrifice everything so Ana could be cured. During a four year period they lived in Lima, not working, so she could be close to the hospital for chemo treatments. Their youngest, Joel, quit college to run their workshop for them.
He shared how much he has grieved and still grieves Ana’s death. His sadness was palpable. Yet he knows he has to move on. In May of this year, Emilio paid off his last loan. Joel has started studying again, and has a particularly grueling schedule as he juggles responsibilities in the workshop, church program, and college. He attends classes from 6:30-10:30 in the morning and again from 5-10:30 at night. From 12-4 he is either at the church program or at the workshop.
We stopped by Pablo’s workshop but weren’t able to see him, since he was at a now-annual event for him, giving daily demonstrations at the San Diego Zoo for a couple of months each summer.
In an earlier interview, Pablo shared that his work has opened many doors for him: “My art has made it possible for me to see many places within my country and around the world. I have been able to meet many people who appreciate and value the art that we practice as a tradition that our parents left for us. I have been able to achieve my dreams. Now I try to help unemployed and poor young people and women, by giving them work and teaching them the art of mate burilado.”
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| Two of Pablo's workers, carving gourds |
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| These four all work in quemado, or burning, of the gourds. They use a foot pedal to control the amount of gas in their flame. Note the giant bags of mates behind them, ready for a future order. |
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| The exterior of Pablo's workshop and home. |
The second one relates to music. On the four-hour drive from Huancayo to the jungle, our bus driver loudly played a single cd on repeat. Every single song featured a screeching phrase which the singer would shriek out four times: OSS! OSS! OSS! OSS! Sometimes she would add a dying-away shriek at the end of the song: OSSSSSSSSS. Our napping little boy didn’t stay that way for long. “I think they play this music just to make the trip more miserable,” Sam said. As we have joked about OSS approximately a million times by now, Simon now thinks of Huancayo too. If he hears us say “Huancayo”, he starts chanting “OSS”. Somehow I find that extremely endearing instead of extremely annoying. Maybe I should send a cd of Simon chanting OSS to the bus driver for his next trips!
Next stop: the jungle.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
What would Louise Erdrich write?
One of my favorite authors is Louise Erdrich. I first read one of her novels as part of a Native American Literature class in college. I liked the book for several reasons: it was told from the perspective of a number of different characters, it had overlapping stories (so that you read about various events from the different, and sometimes contradictory, perspectives of several people), and it jumped backwards and forwards in time, somewhat randomly.
Then I read another one of her novels and loved learning captivating (occasionally shocking!) backstory on certain memorable, if not lovable, characters. As she tends to center her narratives on the Native Americans and German immigrants living in a small, fictional town in North Dakota, the same characters and extended families tend to pop up again and again throughout different books. Two years ago, I reread all of her fiction in an effort to get a handle on certain narratives as they changed through books and characters’ perspectives. It made me realize again just how masterful of a storyteller she is.
One of the main things I appreciate about her writing is her ability to take a seemingly unremarkable occasion, or life, and make it fascinating. She easily spins a narrative that helps me empathize with occasionally unsympathetic characters or people I wouldn’t notice otherwise.
I have thought about Louise Erdrich a number of times during our year here, mostly on two themes. The first is regarding the artisan stories we write.
Everyone has a story, whether or not it’s shared, and Louise Erdrich can make any story fascinating. While the stories Sam and I write share a bit about an artisan’s life, they certainly aren’t something you would want to curl up on the couch with and read all afternoon. As I sift through random pieces of information about artisans, I frequently wonder what kind of captivating story Louise Erdrich would build from them. Here are some examples. (Some names have been changed.)
In addition to being a silversmith, Juan is a lawyer specializing in family law.
Pablo is pretty successful based on the number of orders he receives, and yet still lives in a shack without running water or electricity. His wife tells Manos Amigas to only give her the payments and advances, since her husband has a gambling problem. While that strategy worked for some time, her husband now shows up frequently, alone, asking for payments due.
Noemi grew up in her father’s ceramics workshop and now has her own workshop. She sells jellos in the mercado when retablo orders are slow, and also studies cosmetology.
Antonio drives a mototaxi to supplement his work in ceramics.
Jacinto lived in Villa El Salvador, far on the south side of Lima. In 2000, he and 10,000 others were moved by the government to Ventanilla, far on the north side of Lima. When the government trucks dropped them off, he was stunned to see their new home: nothing but sand. No buildings, no structures, no nothing. He, his wife, and their five children slept in the sand, with only plastic and cardboard for protection.
Rosa makes stuffed vicuñas and llamas. She has had absolutely nothing several times, the first time being when her husband sold their house without telling her and kept all of the proceeds. She left him to go to Lima, where she would have more opportunities to support her and her nine children. They left with only the clothes on their backs. The second time was when an earthquake caused a neighbor’s home to fall onto her home, which collapsed. While she and her kids went for medical treatment, everything they owned was stolen. Now, 30 years later, she is a successful and elegant businesswoman. To make ends meet, she has a small storefront where she sells water, sodas, snacks, copies, phone calls, and her family's artesanía, and she also sells typical Peruvian food at a nearby kiosk.
When Melquiades was interviewed several years ago and was asked about his birth year, he responded, “1953 in reality, but 1959 is what is listed on my birth certificate.”
Hugo has been in jail for the last 10 years and his sentence is for five more, but that hasn’t slowed his pottery business. His wife brings him the clay and other raw materials. He’s built a workshop inside the jail, complete with employees: he has trained other inmates to help him. He even has a kiln.
The second reason Louise Erdrich has been on my mind is because of how she portrays the sometimes contradictory perspectives of events in her characters’ lives. It makes me wonder about the nature of truth when I try to figure out what is “true” in any given situation.
Such as: occasionally we have heard people share parts of their lives that, based on someone else’s account, cannot be true. But yet, it must be true, since it’s their own story.
For example, Alejandro and Emilio are brothers. Emilio is the eldest of four, Alejandro the youngest. We interviewed them, each in his own workshop, and each told us how their father had died when they were very young, that their mother had remarried three months later and left them and their siblings to fend for themselves, and Emilio then had to leave school and work to support himself and his three siblings.
But their stories differ on their ages when their father died. Emilio says he was 13 or 14, and that Alejandro was 6. Alejandro told us that he was 3 when his father died and Emilio was 12 when he had to start supporting the family.
Both are true, since each of them is allowed to have their own story, right? But they can’t both be factually correct. Does it matter? I don’t think it does, although I was initially worried when I thought of Manos Amigas clients who might read both Emilio and Alejandro’s stories and wonder at our fact-checking ability.
When I read Louise Erdrich and she includes contradictory accounts like this, I love it since it adds complexity to the story. When I encounter it in real life I am not always as appreciative: I want to know the right answer! Yet the right answer is that there is no truth, perhaps. Or, as one of our fair trade friends said, “there are multiple truths.” I feel like one of the characters in The Matrix: “There is no spoon!”
Louise Erdrich: what a lovely, complicated, and intriguing guide through literature and life.
Then I read another one of her novels and loved learning captivating (occasionally shocking!) backstory on certain memorable, if not lovable, characters. As she tends to center her narratives on the Native Americans and German immigrants living in a small, fictional town in North Dakota, the same characters and extended families tend to pop up again and again throughout different books. Two years ago, I reread all of her fiction in an effort to get a handle on certain narratives as they changed through books and characters’ perspectives. It made me realize again just how masterful of a storyteller she is.
One of the main things I appreciate about her writing is her ability to take a seemingly unremarkable occasion, or life, and make it fascinating. She easily spins a narrative that helps me empathize with occasionally unsympathetic characters or people I wouldn’t notice otherwise.
I have thought about Louise Erdrich a number of times during our year here, mostly on two themes. The first is regarding the artisan stories we write.
Everyone has a story, whether or not it’s shared, and Louise Erdrich can make any story fascinating. While the stories Sam and I write share a bit about an artisan’s life, they certainly aren’t something you would want to curl up on the couch with and read all afternoon. As I sift through random pieces of information about artisans, I frequently wonder what kind of captivating story Louise Erdrich would build from them. Here are some examples. (Some names have been changed.)
In addition to being a silversmith, Juan is a lawyer specializing in family law.
Pablo is pretty successful based on the number of orders he receives, and yet still lives in a shack without running water or electricity. His wife tells Manos Amigas to only give her the payments and advances, since her husband has a gambling problem. While that strategy worked for some time, her husband now shows up frequently, alone, asking for payments due.
Noemi grew up in her father’s ceramics workshop and now has her own workshop. She sells jellos in the mercado when retablo orders are slow, and also studies cosmetology.
Antonio drives a mototaxi to supplement his work in ceramics.
Jacinto lived in Villa El Salvador, far on the south side of Lima. In 2000, he and 10,000 others were moved by the government to Ventanilla, far on the north side of Lima. When the government trucks dropped them off, he was stunned to see their new home: nothing but sand. No buildings, no structures, no nothing. He, his wife, and their five children slept in the sand, with only plastic and cardboard for protection.
Rosa makes stuffed vicuñas and llamas. She has had absolutely nothing several times, the first time being when her husband sold their house without telling her and kept all of the proceeds. She left him to go to Lima, where she would have more opportunities to support her and her nine children. They left with only the clothes on their backs. The second time was when an earthquake caused a neighbor’s home to fall onto her home, which collapsed. While she and her kids went for medical treatment, everything they owned was stolen. Now, 30 years later, she is a successful and elegant businesswoman. To make ends meet, she has a small storefront where she sells water, sodas, snacks, copies, phone calls, and her family's artesanía, and she also sells typical Peruvian food at a nearby kiosk.
When Melquiades was interviewed several years ago and was asked about his birth year, he responded, “1953 in reality, but 1959 is what is listed on my birth certificate.”
Hugo has been in jail for the last 10 years and his sentence is for five more, but that hasn’t slowed his pottery business. His wife brings him the clay and other raw materials. He’s built a workshop inside the jail, complete with employees: he has trained other inmates to help him. He even has a kiln.
The second reason Louise Erdrich has been on my mind is because of how she portrays the sometimes contradictory perspectives of events in her characters’ lives. It makes me wonder about the nature of truth when I try to figure out what is “true” in any given situation.
Such as: occasionally we have heard people share parts of their lives that, based on someone else’s account, cannot be true. But yet, it must be true, since it’s their own story.
For example, Alejandro and Emilio are brothers. Emilio is the eldest of four, Alejandro the youngest. We interviewed them, each in his own workshop, and each told us how their father had died when they were very young, that their mother had remarried three months later and left them and their siblings to fend for themselves, and Emilio then had to leave school and work to support himself and his three siblings.
But their stories differ on their ages when their father died. Emilio says he was 13 or 14, and that Alejandro was 6. Alejandro told us that he was 3 when his father died and Emilio was 12 when he had to start supporting the family.
Both are true, since each of them is allowed to have their own story, right? But they can’t both be factually correct. Does it matter? I don’t think it does, although I was initially worried when I thought of Manos Amigas clients who might read both Emilio and Alejandro’s stories and wonder at our fact-checking ability.
When I read Louise Erdrich and she includes contradictory accounts like this, I love it since it adds complexity to the story. When I encounter it in real life I am not always as appreciative: I want to know the right answer! Yet the right answer is that there is no truth, perhaps. Or, as one of our fair trade friends said, “there are multiple truths.” I feel like one of the characters in The Matrix: “There is no spoon!”
Louise Erdrich: what a lovely, complicated, and intriguing guide through literature and life.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
The ABCs of Ernestos: part C
Okay, so I am cheating a little bit on my Ernesto series. Ernesto’s last name is Orellana Castro, and people go by their first last name, not their second... but since one of his last names started with C, I figured it counted!
Ernesto OC hadn’t really stuck out in my mind since I have yet to meet him; he wasn’t there the day we had arranged to visit his workshop. But luckily there was someone there to open the door and give us the OK to take pictures, and there was enough background info already at Manos Amigas that I could make several edits to create a story. After Sam had placed photos and captions in Ernesto’s story, I was taken with all of the warm colors and different types of beauty found in his workshop. I decided to share them with you too!
Ernesto OC hadn’t really stuck out in my mind since I have yet to meet him; he wasn’t there the day we had arranged to visit his workshop. But luckily there was someone there to open the door and give us the OK to take pictures, and there was enough background info already at Manos Amigas that I could make several edits to create a story. After Sam had placed photos and captions in Ernesto’s story, I was taken with all of the warm colors and different types of beauty found in his workshop. I decided to share them with you too!
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| Ernesto has many, many molds for the countless figures he has created over the years. |
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| Drawings of different projects the workshop has in process |
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| This little boy has his own version of Simon's excavator to keep him entertained while he is in the workshop. |
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
The ABCs of Ernestos, part B
Ernesto Balladares was born in Piura, a city in northern Peru, in 1978. He learned ceramics at 7, and by 12, he had opened his own workshop in his family’s home. As a result, he was able to pay for his own studies from his workshop earnings.
He decided to be an artisan because he loved working with pottery. “I loved experimenting with the clay and firing and learning how to obtain different colors. The results were surprising and exciting and I wanted to keep learning more.”
He adapts his styles, colors, and designs based on what the customer likes: bigger or smaller pieces, different colors. “I used to use black and white only for the Chulucanas pottery. But right now the ones that are selling the most have the green paint and floral or leaf motifs, perhaps because of the growing concern about the environment.”
The Chulucanas pottery is produced in a very specific manner. Traditionally, pieces are formed using a small wooden spatula and a small stone to form the piece. Then it is dried. “Not until it’s rock hard, but until it has the feel of leather. Then you paint it. After that dries, you use a small river rock to polish it, to give it a natural shine. Then you let it dry more, perhaps another day. Then you fire the piece at 900 degrees Celsius. It takes 8 hours to fire. Then you let it cool for 4 hours.”
At that point it is time to add the drawings. Ernesto essentially draws with the ash of mango leaves. “You put mango leaves on the parts of the piece that you want to turn light brown, dark brown, or black. What doesn’t get covered up stays the same color you’ve painted. Then you put it into the cylindrical smoker and smoke the piece. After a half hour, the parts that are covered with the mango leaf have turned light brown. After an hour and a half, the parts that are covered with the mango leaf are now dark brown. And after a third smoking, the parts that are covered with the mango leaf have turned black.” The piece is taken out of the smoker, cleaned, and polished with a small brush. It is finished.
When he does not have many orders, he gives ceramics classes to adults and children to make ends meet.
Eventually, he would like to be able to handle exporting himself as well as sell directly to individuals. “I love everything that I do,” he says with a huge smile on his face. “I love the creation process, the production, teaching others. I am learning and teaching at the same time.”
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| Ernesto is one of five members in an artisan association. They maintain a beautifully arranged shop (above) to display and sell each of their products. Ernesto lives several doors away. |
At that point it is time to add the drawings. Ernesto essentially draws with the ash of mango leaves. “You put mango leaves on the parts of the piece that you want to turn light brown, dark brown, or black. What doesn’t get covered up stays the same color you’ve painted. Then you put it into the cylindrical smoker and smoke the piece. After a half hour, the parts that are covered with the mango leaf have turned light brown. After an hour and a half, the parts that are covered with the mango leaf are now dark brown. And after a third smoking, the parts that are covered with the mango leaf have turned black.” The piece is taken out of the smoker, cleaned, and polished with a small brush. It is finished.
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| The two barrels in the middle are used to smoke the mango leaves on the pottery pieces which produces different colors. |
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| Ernesto explaining the process of smoking the pieces in the mango smokers. Check out Simon, or rather his legs, on the left. He's just kicked back, learning the process too, paused from playing with his construction equipment. |
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| As I'm making sure I understand what Ernesto's saying, Simon finally has to take a peek inside this vase which we've been examining for some time. |
Eventually, he would like to be able to handle exporting himself as well as sell directly to individuals. “I love everything that I do,” he says with a huge smile on his face. “I love the creation process, the production, teaching others. I am learning and teaching at the same time.”
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