Actividad

In Perú when you need a relatively large amount of money for a group project or when someone in the family gets sick and there’s no money to pay the medical bills, you schedule an “actividad.” An actividad is like a bake sale of gargantuan proportions—an outdoor activity where you offer food for sale and perhaps supplement the mega-cookout with a dance, beer sales and/or “fulbito” (a soccer tournament). These activities have been known to raise up to 10,000 soles ($4,000). The cookout goes by various names depending upon the meat dish served. “Pollo” means “chicken” therefore your event is called a “pollada.” “Cabrito” means “goat,” therefore “cabritada.” “Causa” is a seafood dish served at a “causada.” So call your next bake sale a Peruvian browniada and see how many takers you get.

Only in Perú where food is king could four or five neighbors with less than 10 years of schooling between them put together a cookout for 600-1,000 people and raise $1,500.

The juntas vecinales (“posees” or “neighborhood watch groups”) of Callanca wanted to buy a motocarguero (a motorcycle-truck hybrid, see above) to use to patrol Callanca in the prevention of robberies and burglaries, which are frequent here since there’s no police presence aside from the juntas. They formed a committee and because they knew I had a bank account, wouldn’t pilfer from or “misplace” the money and wouldn’t be in jail the day of the actividad or otherwise mysteriously absent when money was needed, they elected me treasurer. As the Alcaldesa swore us in that day I knew I was in for a memorable ride long before my rear end ever saw the saddle of a motocarguero.

An activity works like this: you have 1,000 tickets printed. You sell the tickets or “comprometer la gente”—give them a ticket in exchange for a promise to show up the day of the actividad and pay for their chicken dinner. In a well run pollada you collect money on the spot for every ticket you hand out; you then buy just enough chicken to prepare the number of plates you’ve sold. That way you maximize your profit and your profit is guaranteed up front. That’s how things work in a well run actividad. Was our actividad a well run actividad? If you’ve been reading this blog on a regular basis you already know the answer to that question.

Here are a few things people always say in advance of actividades and which in my experience never turn out to be the case:

Top 5 Actividad White Lies

1) “We’ll insist that everybody pay up front!” (Eighty percent take a ticket and say they’ll show up on the day of the actividad to claim their food; of that 80% maybe 40% actually show.)

2) “We’ll get everyone involved and by dividing up the work make it less of a burden on everyone. Everyone will contribute his ‘grano de arena’ (grain of sand).” (Four or five people end up doing everything and for them it’s in fact a significant burden; I know because I was one of the four or five who bore the burden and hauled the ton of sand comprised of the grains that others didn’t contribute.)

3) “Anybody who takes a ticket is “comprometido”—if they don’t show up to claim their food we’ll go to their house after the activity and insist that they pay anyway.” (Actually those people “comprometer” to stick the ticket in their pocket and then you never see them again; nor do you mention it to them afterward because you in fact  will do the same thing when they ask you to contribute to their activity.)

4) “We’ll raise 3,500 soles easily (and in our case have enough money to buy the best motocarguero on the market).” (You end up raising about half of what you estimated and therefore will need to program another activity in order to make up the difference.)

5) “La unión hace la fuerza (In unity, strength).” (In reality it’s every man for himself so good luck.)

Because in our heart of hearts we knew that the few would be doing the work of the many, we decided to hire a “pollero” instead of buying everything and cooking it ourselves. A pollero is a professional caterer who runs a business that caters polladas. On the day of the actividad he shows up with his staff of three, an industrial grill, gas, plates, forks, napkins, take-out containers and 600 chicken dinners including potatoes, sweet potatoes, lettuce, hot sauce, vinegarette and of course chicken. You pay the pollero 3.80 a plate and you charge 7.00. Up front you pay a deposit of 500 soles and tell the pollero how many polladas he’s to bring.

On the morning of the actividad (always a Sunday), people who’ve been selling tickets for the last month show up with wads of bills and loose change in their pockets and dump it in front of the treasurer (in this case, me). With this money and the money you’re about to collect at the pollada itself you’ll pay the pollero at the end of the day and (let’s hope) realize your profits from what’s left over. The night before, somebody buys a sheet of poster board and with a magic marker rules off squares and writes the number of a ticket in each square (the tickets come preprinted with serial numbers). As people arrive with their tickets to claim their dinners you indicate in the appropriate square that the dinner is paid for and delivered. Then you tear the ticket in half, give a half to the guest so that he or she can claim a dinner at the grill and drop the other half in a plastic bag. The pollero keeps a half and you keep a half, that way at the end of the night you can verify the number of polladas paid for and delivered.

This sounds very orderly and efficient but in fact total chaos reigns during this process. People show up and swear that they’ve pre-paid but their square has not been appropriately pre-marked “pagado” on the score sheet. So you have to yell at the person who sold the ticket (remember, a DJ has brought multiple zillion-megawatt speakers that are pumping out cumbia at maximum volume), who verifies from memory whether or not the ticket was in fact paid. Someone shows up with 100 or 200 soles and a list of names and numbers written on his arm and wants to pay multiple tickets. Meanwhile, wild dogs are trying to swipe polladas as they come off the grill and have to be shooed away. The woman taking tickets is trying to breastfeed her baby at the same time. You have all the money in a plastic supermarket bag and have to dig to the bottom for change when someone pays you with a bill. People show up without their tickets and you have to verify that they’ve paid and then prepare an improvised scrap-paper ticket, stamp it with the Juntas Vecinales seal and use it as a substitute ticket. People crowd around wanting to buy tickets and you extract one from the pile of unsold tickets, stamp it, collect their money and make change from the shopping bag. People show up wanting to “fiar” dinners (“For a hamburger today I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday”) and if you trust them you give them a ticket and mark the transaction appropriately in the corresponding square.

This goes on from 12 noon until 7 o’clock at night. At that point people who only want to drink beer and dance have shown up. These are mainly young men from 16-24 years of age who buy a case, encircle it and pass around a bottle and a plastic glass. At about 10 o’clock they all decide it’s time to start a fight. Everybody runs out of money and goes home by midnight.

I had to ask for an armed guard with a private vehicle to escort me back to my house with the money (remember what I said about the juntas vecinales, robberies and burglaries?). The next day someone told me that as we drove away an unidentified suspect cranked up a motorcycle in a nearby alley and took off after us at high speed. If so they never caught us. I arrived safely at home with fifty pounds of loose change in my plastic grocery bag, stowed it under the bed and went to sleep.

So how did we make out in the pollada? As of today (four days later) we have in hand 650 soles profit from the polladas with another 500 or so to be paid “mañana.” We showed 600 soles profit from beer and soft-drink sales. So we’ll clear around S.1,750 ($700) according to the Exel spreadsheet written on my arm.

From beginning to end I was sure that the entire spectacular would collapse under the weight of its own seemingly arbitrary and ill-conceived nature. The pollero wouldn’t show up. It would rain. Everybody would have forgotten to write down the numbers of the tickets they’d sold. The DJ would forget the date or if he didn’t the electricity would go out. Nobody would come. I was sure we wouldn’t make a dime. And if we did some thug would waltz in at 11:00 P.M. with a shotgun and steal it all. Some of it almost did but in the end nothing of the kind happened. It seems that my socios know both the limits of polladas and their potential as well; they know that even if a boat isn’t airtight that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will sink. Given that we’d already received S/.2,200.00 in donations and raised another S/.700.00 on our own prior to the activity, “mañana” we’ll have S/.4,600.00 with which to purchase our motocarguero.

So since “palabra” means word I guess that means that I get to serve myself a “palabrada.”

And next time? Next time we’ll get everyone involved! We’ll make sure everybody pays in advance! Or if not we’ll make them comprometer! That way we’re sure to raise S/.3,500.00 no sweat! Everyone will contribute his grano de arena!

La unión hace la fuerza!