Andrea Campos Sánchez

Callanca looks like one of those towns that Clint Eastwood rode into to kill a few people in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Though it isn’t pretty and at times not even hospitable, I’m learning to love it. They tell me that all Peace Corps volunteers eventually develop this inexplicable and unreasonable attraction to their sites. It’s the same desperate state of mind that results in the phenomenon of hostages falling in love with their captors. If someone had offered me the deal I’ve got here in Callanca six months ago, I’d have laughed in their face, told them they were crazy and stayed put in Northampton, Massachusetts. But in light of what I’ve learned to expect and to appreciate since, I’m more than satisfied.

The one thing I really miss is good coffee. Judith send me a letter with a three-pack of Starbucks instant coffee inside and I almost wept with joy.

One of my friends responded thusly to an e-mail of mine that mentioned I was working in small-business development: “I wonder what you actually do all day to promote business development… “ Excellent question. There actually are some business opportunities here in Callanca. There are 15 or so “restaurants campestres” here and the restaurants need publicity—logos, signs, brochures; menus translated into English. They need training in how to keep hair out of the food and scrawny dogs and cats out of their kitchens. Handwashing 101 wouldn’t hurt, either. “Capacitación” we call that. All the businesses in town—bodegas to zapaterías—need to learn to smile at people and offer something more than every other bodega and zapateria in Perú offers.

My host mom runs a bodega (a general store with a walkup window) and when a customer comes up to the window to ask for something one of the kids screams ¡buscan! (“They want something!) and Margot eventually comes out of the kitchen yelling ¡dime! (Talk to me!) or ¿qué quiere? (What do you want!?). When they run out of a food item in the house they walk into the store and grab it and unwrap it and put it on the table. So basic accounting principles like don’t mix up your personal accounts and your business accounts are lacking. Yet almost everyone in Callanca has a cellphone and plenty of people have computers. So it’s a strange mix of the modern and the stone-age around here. As one of my Peace Corps friends quipped, “There are more flat-screen color TVs in my town than teeth.”

I’m also working with a group of artesans and we’re going to attend an art fair sponsored by the Peace Corps in November in Lima. This has turned out to be a boost for my reputation in town. It makes me look like I’m actually accomplishing something concrete. In order to raise the money for the trip we’re slaughtering a goat and selling tickets to a “cabridita” (that would mean something like “pig roast” except with a goat) for six soles each. My artesan’s group is also less than a mean fighting machine when it comes to business. Most of them are women who embroider items for traditional weddings held here in Callanca. The weddings last two or three days. On the first day the groom invites all the guests to his family’s house for a celebration of food and drink and dance that lasts from the afternoon until dawn the next day. The second day the bride invites the guests to her family’s house for a celebration of food and drink and dance that lasts from the afternoon until dawn the next day. The third day the groom invites all of his family’s friends to his family’s house and the bride invites all of her family’s friends to her family’s house for celebrations of food and drink and dance that last from the afternoon until dawn the next day. At some point in these marathon celebrations the bride’s and groom’s families and the godparents all receive beautifully embroidered alforja’s and paños and other hand-made gifts which they wear on the wedding day and then retain as keepsakes thereafter or sometimes make use of in their homes. The alforjas are hand-woven shoulder bags embroidered with peacocks or chickens or flowers or other traditional designs. The paños are hand-woven towels also embroidered with designs and commemorative details of the wedding—names and dates and good wishes.

The artesans I’m working with have traditionally produced these items on commission for engaged couples and their families but now will be producing them for purchase by the public as well. I designed the logo you see here for them (I photographed some embroidery by one of the artesanas) and am also teaching workshops on budgeting, costs and pricing, marketing, product design and related topics. Those of you who have seen the cigar box in which I kept the receipts for my own small business back in the States, rest assured that Peace Corps is helping out all of the small-business volunteers with these workshops—providing us with materials and advice. Much of the training I received during my first three months in the Peace Corps involved learning how to conduct such workshops.

That having been said, don’t let me mislead you. We’re at a very basic level of business acumen here. The two people I’m taking with me to the artesan’s fair in Lima have never traveled further than two hours from Callanca.

However, we have many positive things going for us. The group of artesans is called Asociación de Artesanas de Callanca Andrea Campos Sánchez, named for an artesana and brewer of chicha and proprietress of the first countryside restaurant (“restaurant campestre”) in Callanca. She was to have been one of the founding members of the group but on the day the group’s founding members met to draw up the papers for forming the association and registering it with the municipality, Andrea didn’t show up. Word reached the group that she’d died the night before. So the rest of the members of the group decided to name the association in her honor. For the art fair I hope to set up a series of pancartas (letter-size stand-up displays) that describes the founding of the group and illustrates how the artesanía has been traditionally used and how it reflects the rural, agricultural and family- and community-oriented nature of Callanca and of callancanos. The community has existed for nearly a thousand years so momentum is on our side.

On November 5, somewhere, Andrea Campos Sánchez will be knocking back a glass of chicha de jora in our honor and wishing us well in Lima. Assuming that she knows where Lima is.