Wednesday, April 30, 2008

The Circus

April 26th, 2008 La Encantada, Peru

The Circus

Peru is one big circus but that doesn´t stop a formal company from staking a tent in small rural towns and offering a few hours of needed amusement. I noticed that every night a couple of my favorite kids kept going to hang out in front of the circus tent. So I decided to treat a family of 4 and their cousins. We got their early to make sure we had good seats. I mean location. I don´t think my legs or but has ever been so sore after spending 4 hours on hard narrow wooden benches with my legs practically crouched up in my face. But the circus was rather amusing. The acts were what´s expected of a small town Third World circus. But the comic troupe was actually quite funny although crude. Due to my superb ability to stick out, I was fortunate to be the butt of two jokes. For one I was forced to stand in front of the crowd of 500 while the clown demonstrated the four parts of the body: the head, the trunk, the extremities, and the little trunk. Afterwards, one clown wanted to teach a younger teenage clown how to pursue a love interest. He instructed the young clown to choose a girl from the stands. He chose one of the girls from my youth group and proceeded to botch sweet nothings and sing to her. She was quite embarrassed but handled it well. Around midnight I headed home with several happy kids.

Doing Business in Peru

April 17th, 2008 Chulucanas, Peru

Frankfurt Fair Order and Consortium

Several pottery associations sent show pieces to one of the largest handcraft fairs in the world. From this fair, an order for 2000 pieces was obtained. My association had 2 of the sample pieces chosen and therefore is responsible for an order 720 pieces. In order to pursue similar opportunities in the future, the 5 associations of Chulucanas are forming a business consortium. My counterpart NGO, Cite Cerámica, has brought in a consultant to help in the formation of said consortium. We have been meeting weekly with the presidents of each association.

The consultant´s name is Antonio. This guy understands business. Although Peruvian he spent the first few minutes chewing out all the presidents for their inexcusable tardiness, explaining how time is money and such tardiness demonstrates a lack of respect for those left waiting. From the start I knew I was going to like this guy. After spending several years between Washington, DC and Paris as a marine, he really understands what it is that keeps Peru from advancing.

Expanding the Pie, not the slice

In my opinion, one of the main reasons Peru doesn´t develop as it should is because most Peruvians refuse to work cooperatively. Everyone is always out for himself. In order for an individual to have more it isn’t necessary to take a larger slice of the pie. This would require that some other individual take a smaller slice. In general Peruvian society fails to see that if instead the pie is expanded, it’s possible for all to enjoy more. I can´t tell you how many times I have drawn 2 concentric circles in the dirt road in order to explain this concept. Some get it. They just have trouble convincing others work together with them.

Perhaps because Peru is a nation that has continually been conquered, the people lack all sense of trust in cooperation and in each other. At some point though, excuses become just that: excuses. The other day my Peruvian friend Alfredo complained to me how you can´t trust anyone because they are always trying to scam you. For instance, while buying fruit in the market the other day Alfredo picked a ripe peach. The vendor exclaimed, “Perhaps you want two?” After nodding indifferently, the vendor quickly grabbed another peach and tossed both into an opaque plastic bag and double knotted it. When Alfredo arrived home he discovered one savory peach and a rotted one. Needless to say, Alfredo will not be buying fruit from this stand again. This shortsightedness is a plague infecting all of Peru. The perfect example is a story Antonio told that he claims is the most frustrating story of his career as a Peruvian business man.

Before consulting, Antonio owned an industrial fishing company that ranked #1 in Peru. He attended an international seafood fair in Boston where he met a business man from Florida looking to buy a particular kind of shrimp. Although he wasn´t actually in the shrimp business himself, he knew someone who had this particular kind. So the American business man flew to Peru to meet with Antonio and his contact. The Floridian proceeded to check the quality of 10 different cases chosen from random. He sized up the texture, the smell, size and taste of each of the 10 cases. He was content and informed Antonio´s contact that he would send a fax within 48 hours confirming a deposit of $50,000 into his bank account for the first container. The contact would profit $8,000 a container and Antonio would profit $2000 a container as the broker. The American stated that he would need 8 containers a month.

When the fax came through, Antonio´s contact exclaimed, “Look how trusting these Americans are. Lets take the money and run.”

Antonio, “Are you stupid? You want to forego $10,000/container by 8 containers a month for only $50000. Were talking almost a million dollars a year in profit.”

“Well, since he is your contact, we´ll send the first container.”

Upon arrival, the American calls, “Peruvian scammers! Half the container is of the quality we agreed upon. The other half is practically garbage.”

“Well, fine! I´ll send another half container”

The American never ordered another container. And this is why Antonio lives a frustrating life. The most shocking part of this story is that this is just one of thousands of similar stories occurring every month all around the country.

Site Development

April 15th, 2008 Yapatera, Peru

Site Development II

This time Wilfredo, Luiggi and I headed out to Yapatera to conduct a formal meeting with various townspeople. I was very impressed with Wilfredo and Peace Corps in general. Peace Corps does a really good job informing the people of the role of the volunteer as well as gauging the level of community interest in a volunteer. The town was left with a list of homework duties such as determining 3 possible host families. Wilfredo instructed these community leaders to call him when they had completed their homework in order to set up another meeting.

April 10th, 2008 Yapatera, Peru

Site Development

Peace Corps is constantly looking for new sites to place volunteers and current volunteers play a large role suggesting possible sites. Therefore, Ryan and I headed out to a town called Yapatera near Chulucanas. It is an Afro-Peruvian community, founded hundreds of years ago when slaves were imported to work in the sugar cane fields. Mario and Luiggi accompanied us and were a great help since they knew the local mayor. We set up a meeting for Tuesday with the Peace Corps regional coordinator, Wilfredo.

Grupo Cinco Concert

April 7th, 2008 Chulucanas, Peru

Grupo Cinco Concert

Grupo Cinco is a Peruvian band that has become quite successful and well-known recently. Since they were playing in nearby Chulucanas, I headed to the concert with a few friends from town and my good friend Ryan. Ryan is a volunteer in the sierra but due to the recent rain has not been able to get back to his site because the road currently is not passable. So he has been hanging out with me the past few days.

We met up with my counterpart, Mario, and some other Peruvian friends of mine. It was a great concert. The band played 5 continuous hours without taking a break. I have been to a few concerts here before but most were disappointing. On the contrary, Grupo Cinco was quite fun.

GMAT Studying

April, 2008 La Encantada, Peru

GMAT Studying

Although I do not plan on attending graduate school for at least a few years, I thought I would take of advantage of all my free time to study for the MBA entrance exam. Thus, I have been studying for a couple hours every night this month. I would appreciate any prayers during my preparation as well as for the day of the exam, the 6th of May.

Friday, April 04, 2008

Buy Dried Fruit!

April 3rd, 2008 La Encantada, Peru

Buy Dried Fruit!

When I went home for Christmas I carried home slightly more than a hundred bags of dried mangos produced by mango farmers. These mangos are seriously quite tasty and definitely a healthy snack alternative. The bags sell for $2 each plus shipping and handling. You can write me at brent.benner@gmail.com with your order and your mailing address. I will forward the information to my mother who will promptly send you your tasty treat. If you need to be further convinced:

Why You Should Buy Some Dried Mangos

1) They are tasty
2) They are healthy
3) They are cheaper than you could find elsewhere
4) They are fair trade product
5) You like what I am doing here

Check out the Website

April 2nd, 2008 La Encantada, Peru

Website is up and running

I just wanted to let everyone know that the website is up and running. You can find the link to the right. You can find electronic catalogs in pdf format as well as general information about the association. Right now the spacing is a little off, but I think most of the links work. Over the next few months, I will be working with the association to include various features and polish the overall appearance of the site.

Formalization Process

March 31st, 2008 Piura, Peru

The Formalization Process

In order to sell our dried fruit in supermarkets, we have to formalize our business and obtain a health certificate. We originally planned to do this through the regional government with the help of the Program for Social Aid because they offered us a discount on the excruciatingly high fees and general consultancy. Since they have been even more bureaucratic than the average Peruvian government employee, we have elected to seek formalization without their help. Today we completed the first step by registering our business name.

In the States, I formalized a small business I had in less than a day and for the small sum of $15. To do so in Peru would take several several months and cost upwards of $300. That is a sum almost equal to the national GDP per capita. Therefore, more than 50% of the Peruvian economy is informal and underground. Hernando de Soto, coincidentally a Peruvian author, is one of the foremost experts on Third World economics and argues in his renown book, The Mystery of Capital, that the main reason developing countries take so long to catch up to their rich neighbors is because their governments are plagued with corrupt bureaucracy and do not offer their citizens property rights or the ability to establish themselves as creditworthy and thus access to capital. Although the book can be quite technical at times, I highly recommend it if you desire to understand the plight of these countries.

March Madness and Easter Weekend

March 21st-23rd, 2008 Mancora, Peru

Semana Santa

Peruvians celebrate Holy Thursday through Easter with several days of holiday. Since my town doesn´t seem to celebrate anything (read the Christmas entry from 2007 for an especially disappointing holiday celebration anecdote), I took advantage of the free vacation days to head to the beach.

Originally we were headed to Chachapoyas in the higher altitude part of the jungle, where you can find the world´s third highest waterfall and 1000 year old ruins. But due to the rain, those plans were canceled.

Therefore, we hung out at the beach and literally did nothing. Besides getting destroyed by killer waves and tossing the football and discussing various issues such as universal health care, the public education system and the effectiveness of aid work. I mean we are Peace Corps Volunteers.

March 19th-20th, 2008 La Encantada, Peru

March Madness

Perhaps the hardest part about living in a foreign country for a guy like me is the inability to watch the sports games I would like to. I mean Baylor actually made the tournament this year after spending decades in a drought. Of all of March Madness, I have watched about 10 minutes of one game. Although other networks might have the rights to certain games, ESPN Deportes usually is able to pick up most matches. But sometimes they fail. Hence the reason that golf was being showed most of the first two days of March Madness.

The other volunteers and I could only day dream about spending two straight days at Buffalo Wild Wings next year. If I have vacation days by then, I might consider taking two days off just to eat wings, drink wheat beer and salivate over 17 screens each featuring different games.

March Madness has not only been confined college basketball this year. Check out the NBA. In the Western Conference, nine teams are vying for 8 playoff spots and are mostly within 2 games of each other. Someone will win 50 games this year and not make the playoffs. Hopefully, I will be able to catch a least a few games as the NBA is much better known here than college basketball.

A Constantly Changing House

March 17th, 2008 La Encantada, Peru

A Constantly Changing House

My host brother, Edwin, moved to Iquitos in the jungle nine years ago. He married, had two daughters and recently moved back to La Encantada last December with said family. Although the weather is fairly similar to the jungle, Iquitos is a town of 100,000 while La Encantada is only home to 3,500. Lenny, Edwin´s wife, has not got used to living in La Encantada and has therefore decided to move back. Everyone is quite sad. My host mother has only known her grandkids for 3 months and now they have headed back to Iquitos. Edwin has stayed for now because Lenny claims she is just taking a trip to the jungle and will return in May. Since this appears to just be smoke blown in one´s eyes, it is assumed that Edwin will eventually have to return to the jungle as well, if he wants to live with his wife and daughters. Since my host mother has not seen her son daily for 9 years, today was a day to cry as she understood the reality of Lenny´s departure. People all around town can´t comprehend the fact that I have accustomed myself to the living conditions of La Encantada, whereas Lenny failed to do so. Its all attitude.

I will really miss the 5 year old, Jessariah. I have never met such a young kid with so much personality. I mean this girl understood the talent of sarcasm and employed it at the ripe age of 5 years old. And rumor has it, I was to be the Godfather of the 6 month old baby.

As often as the residents come and go at our house, you´d think we were running a studio hotel.

Warden Training

March 10th-12th, 2008 Lima, Peru

Warden Training

Certain volunteers are chosen by the Security Coordinator, to participate in Warden Training. Basically, we learned how aid the Peace Corps staff during any emergencies. Should there be an emergency (such as the earthquakes that devastated southern Peru last August), these volunteers would help locate the whereabouts of all volunteers. Last August, the phone lines for the entire country went down for a period of time and now it is required that a plan be implemented to locate volunteers by passing notes on public transportation. Thus, I spent a couple days in Lima being trained for something that will hopefully never come to fruition.