Logotipos

You haven’t lived until you’ve tried to design a logo for persons who have never before in their lives seen a logo. Or who think they haven’t. Of course they’ve seen hundreds, thousands, but they’ve never given any thought to what a logo is for or what value it might have.

Come to think of it, how much value, in fact, does a logo have?

At any rate, as part of my work as a Peace Corps small–business development volunteer, I’m now in the business of designing logos for small businesses here in Callanca, Perú. I’ve designed three very attractive logos but I’ve yet to get any response in return beyond inquisitive stares. Until my arrival, the concept of publicity in Callanca has been to cram as much information and as many images on a business card as will possibly fit and then to add 5 more images and 30 more bulleted items to that count.

I’ve designed logos for two artisans’ associations and for one restaurant. The restaurant really interests me due to the fascinating and soap opera–like elements to the story behind its existence. The restaurant is operated by three sisters, Juana, Marlene and Manuela. Their father and brother still own and previously operated the restaurant. However, two years ago they joined an evangelical church here in Callanca and, due to the zeal with which they approached their new-found faith, began to neglect the restaurant. Even worse, they refused to serve beer or chicha. In Callanca, this is roughly equivalent to refusing to offer tartar sauce in a seafood restaurant. Fortunately, the three sisters remain staunchly catholic and serving liquor doesn’t seem to violate any of the precepts of their religious faith.

So the three sisters are taking over the restaurant and changing the name from El Buen Samaritano: el Primer Restaurante Campestre Cristiano de Callanca (The Good Samaritan: the First Christian Country Restaurant in Callanca) to Las Tres Hermanas (The Three Sisters). Good move, girls.

Perú’s is still a decidedly macho society and the thought of three women running a restaurant in Callanca is mildly revolutionary. In Callanca the men love nothing better than to get shit-faced on Brahma beer and chicha and go looking for a woman to beat up. So I’m feeling good about supporting Juana, Marlene and Manuela. In addition to designing their logo I helped them come up with a list of possible names for the restaurant and suggested that they let their customers help select the name via a popular vote.

In Callanca working in small-business development generally requires this type of personal approach. I’ve tried organizing meetings of interested businessmen for the purpose of presenting workshops on basic business principles. Generally three people show up and those three show up an hour late, accompanied by scrawny dogs and a daughter or niece who opens her blouse in the middle of my presentation and begins to suckle her infant. But I’ve had very good success going to the homes or businessplaces of people who’ve expressed an interest in improving the prospects of their businesses. I’ve helped artisans determine a fair price for their artesanía by means of startlingly innovative approaches like adding together the cost of materials and the value of wages earned during the time devoted to producing an object of art, tacking on a 20% profit, and fixing a price based on these calculations. I’ve visited the workshop of a mechanic who fixes motorcylcles and mototaxis and helped him come up with a business plan that takes into account the future changes in transportation norms likely to occur in Callanca due to population increases, the lengthening of the paved section of road that traverses Callanca, and the influx of automobiles and public transportation accompanying the changes mentioned and the resulting transformation of Callanca from a comminity dependent upon one form of transportation—motos—to a community utilizing many forms of transportation—cars and microbuses and trucks and taxis in addition to motorcyles and mototaxis.

All this has been great fun since, instead of standing in front of a white board with a dry marker in my hand, I’ve been able to visit people in their homes and businesses and see how they live, share whatever they’re having for lunch, and better understand the exact circumstances under which their businesses operate. I’ve never been much of a professor type and I have a lot more success dealing with people as individuals rather than trying to motivate people en masse. Were I the epitomy of evil I’d be Charlie Manson not Adolf Hitler.

However, sometimes I wish I were an Environment or Water and Sanitation volunteer rather than a Small-business Development volunteer. There are a great number of very basic needs and there is a great deal of poverty in Callanca. People living in mud houses with dirt floors and roofs made out of sticks and straw. People drinking water they haul from ditches in buckets. People who eat rice and potatoes with boiled chicken feet three times a day. There’s no sense in Callanca or in Perú that one can start with nothing and through hard work and resolute determination rise from a less prosperous to a more prosperous economic class. Instead there’s a sense that one sure as shit better work hard and better work with grim determination or one will starve to death or die of dyssentery or cholera. Although they don’t appear much like philosophers callancanos could teach Immanuel Kant himself a thing or two about the philosophy of determinism. There’s a nearly universal belief here that nobody in power will help you, that no amount of effort will make anything better, that nothing you could ever possibly do would ever change your fate one whit. So you find very few people willing to try out new ideas or take risks or get very excited about anything at all. That’s what makes people like Barco, the mototaxi mechanic, and Juana, Marlene and Manuela, the restarateurs, so inspiring.

Complacent, resigned, beaten down, beaten up, cynical, skeptical, apathetic, inert, hurt, betrayed, cheated, swindled, bewildered, lied to, shit on, misled, mistreated, aggravated and exhausted. That’s your average callancano. And in general they feel that way for good reason. Nevertheless, they’re still able and willing for the most part to greet a newly arrived gringo—even a gringo wearing 80-dollar tennis shoes and carrying a laptop—with curiosity, respect and occasionally even a hint of optimism. Many believe that all gringos arrive with scads of money. So as a gringo it’s not unusual to find yourself in the middle of a discussion that you believed was about the weather or the relationship of your partner in conversation to other callancanos with the same last name and suddenly be asked about your “mensualidad”—how much money the Peace Corps pays you—or about how much you’re paying your host family to live with them or if the Peace Corps could provide a sum of money so that the questioner’s wife could plant and raise produce in his front yard. Not infrequently someone will just flat out ask you for cash. Fortunately, once the community recognizes that you’re not a tourist and that you’ll be living there for an extended period of time and once they see that you’re actually doing work every day, this line of questioning becomes less frequent. But it never really goes away. Peruvians think all gringos are rich. And compared to Peruvians we all are rich. For instance as Peace Corps volunteers living “under conditions of hardship, if necessary” and at an economic level “that enables them to maintain a modest but safe, healthy, and adequate lifestyle” we receive 1000 soles a month (about $300) from Peace Corps for food, housing and daily expenditures, while the monthly wage of the average Peruvian is about 550 soles a month. So as “volunteers” we’re making more than a Peruvian with a full-time job.

I’m “integrating” as Peace Corps likes to put it. That means that I’m now used to and not distracted by very natural, commonplace and necessary acts like breastfeeding during a PowerPoint demonstration or peeing in public against the side of a building. Every day I see at least one thing that shocks and disquiets me but most days I also see something that surprises and delights me. Sometimes the two things are the same thing. The two phenomena no longer seem to me to be mutually exclusive.