Finally Some Pictures
Sorry for the delay, they wouldn't post forever, but here they are.
More...
aftermath
It's been over a month since we returned from Peru and my experience has affected me in ways I suspected it would and, in other ways, more than I had previously assumed. I have mouthed off to more than a few people on fair trade and what it means and why they should by it and who it helps and what it does. And in smaller ways, I am recycling more, using less water, and much more concious of what affects I am having on my surroundings.
I miss everyone I met and soon, hopefully, we will finally get ourselves together enough to have a proper reunion of sorts.
More...
PICTURES
Some wonderful pictures that I finally loaded!!!
More...
Wonderful conference!
Hey everyone, A great big hug and a thanks to everyone who came out to the United Students for Fair Trade conference this past weekend! Quite a wonderful event and an opportunity to connect with the Fair Trade movement on all levels: producers, co-ops, Fair Traders, solidarity lenders such as EcoLogic, international NGOs such as Oxfam, community organizations such as Community Agroecology Network, academics, and plenty of students from high school to grad school! I felt a real sense of unity across generations, from adolescents to industry veterans.
Well, we did it! We presented our project Saturday afternoon, after a rousing Friday evening opening speech and song by Jewish Ugandan coffee producer J.J. Keki and a Saturday morning dialogue between students and producers (with Just Coffee's Matt Earley moderating.) After lunch we were on, and had a fantastic attendance - about 20 people in the room besides us. We each presented the parts of the projects that we focused on, with Tolly covering for both herself and Emerald, and myself filling in for Becky and Zoe. Wonderful job, Andy, Heather, Katya, Tolly, and Hannah on presenting the convenio! Afterwards we had a brief but lively discussion which included a representative from Starbucks who defended the company's practices, and Phoebe Sullivan from Dean's Beans who scored a definitive blow. From my work and the work of many other researchers and Fair Traders, it is clear that buying coffee from co-operatives at below-Fair Trade prices undermines the sustainability of the co-operative, as well as being unjust to the farmer. So why couldn't Starbucks commit to buying all their coffee from co-operatives at above Fair Trade prices? Surely they could afford it. Good one Phoebe!
It is unfortunate that we did not have two full periods in which to present both our projects, and thus the comida group had to make do with the last fifteen minutes of the workshop. Nonetheless, Austin, Marty and Mike did an excellent job of summarizing the project and its importance. People were equally excited about both projects ... comida people, I have a couple new contacts for you! ...
Overall, I cannot stress enough the importance of beginning to articulate the values that we hold dear with concrete and practical career paths. It is one thing to believe something, and it is another important step to speak out on that belief, to campaign and to raise your voice in protest of injustice and in support of actions to repair that injustice. The next step is to build those values and visions of a just and sustainable world into all aspects of your daily life, from your chosen profession to your consumption choices. Organizations such as United Students for Fair Trade are important in bridging that all-important gap between College and Life (or rather, the Rest of Your Life). Fair Trade organizations know this and send their people to these conferences to educate and network with students. And these conferences are of course vital to coordinated campus organizing efforts as well - in the struggle for universities to uphold the values taught (well, often taught!) in their classrooms by purchasing ethically and sustainably from honest and just suppliers.
OK - enough pontificating. I am really glad we made the effort and came out to the conference. I had a wonderful time seeing all of you and meeting new people as well, and I hope you all did too. Now it's back to Peru for me (tomorrow night!) and onwards to creating my farm household study... blessings to all of you, Noah
Our Projects at the United Students for Fair Trade Conference!
Hello everyone - Noah Enelow, your TA, here - I am finally posting to this blog at long last, after a whirlwind 3 1/2 weeks that left me exhausted and inspired at the same time. This was the first time this course has ever been taught, and for me it was a wealth of new experience and knowledge that have fed into each other.
As far as the trip is concerned, the unquestionable highlight for me - and, I think, for all of us - was the four-day stay in the communities. I was blessed to be assigned to the native community of Alto Shambuyacu, where the seven of us (six students and me) were treated with incredible kindness, generosity, and hospitality by the Salas family and their extended network of family, friends, and fellow members of the Alto Shambuyacu community and Oro Verde coffee co-op. We learned how coffee, rice, and the traditional subsistence crops plantain, beans, and yuca are grown and harvested; we learned how to make traditional handicraft items such as the beautiful woven belts everyone wears and the highly useful palm mats for sitting and sleeping; we learned a few traditional baking recipes; we worked on building the wall of a house; and every night we exchanged music, song and dance with the co-op members at the co-op´s meeting hall. It was an amazing time overall and the beginning of lasting bonds, between each of us and our hosts, and between our program and the Shambuyacu community.
For those of you who do not know me yet, I am a fourth-year graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, in the Department of Economics. My interests are broad, and are currently leaning heavily towards the ecological side of economics - being in Peru, one of the world´s three most biodiverse countries, how could it not be? I came here to Peru to study the impact of Fair Trade, which I believe is one of the most important movements for social justice in the world today, because it looks at an entire system of production and exchange, and aims to make it both socially just and ecologically sustainable. Fair Trade, to me, is a movement to re-embed economic concerns in ethical and ecological values. It is also a great deal of fun, because it is as much about building relationships and exchanging experiences and ideas as it is about abstract principles and benchmark standards.
This last paragraph is just preamble to the exciting news that BOTH of our workshop proposals were accepted at the United Students for Fair Trade (USFT) Convergence, which will be held this February 16-19 in Boston, Massachusetts. Technically, only one of them was accepted at first (I won´t tell you which one), but we got the other one onto the program by splitting up the panel time between the two of us. So - anyone who is going to be in Boston in February 16 through 19, come find us Saturday between 3:45 and 5:15 PM! Our workshop title is "Dynamic Relationships in Fair Trade" and we are the "Allima Mikuna Collective" (Allima Mikuna means Good Food in Quechua).
Dean´s arrival on the scene the second week of the course was like a flash of inspiration for all of us. His outspoken honesty and willingness to relate the personal to the political elements of his work had us all buzzing with inspiration. What happened then was a spontaneous emergence of creative ideas that led to us submitting two proposals to the USFT! The first one is an explanation of the long-term written agreement that is currently evolving between Dean´s Beans and the Oro Verde cooperative. This is an extremely important issue in Fair Trade. Long-term relationships are an important principle of Fair Trade - according to the Fair Trade ethic, the buyer and the supplier should evolve a relationship of mutual trust and cooperation - but in practice, these relationships are very difficult to enforce through a formal certification system. Instead of relying on the formal system, pioneers of Fair Trade such as Dean and Oro Verde are simply taking the bull by the horns and creating the relationship themselves. The result promises to be a model for future Fair Trade relationships, as well as an exciting joint creative adventure between two very dynamic business organizations, both of which are model companies in terms of both social justice and ecological sustainability.
Here is our abstract:
"Long-term relationships are part of the original vision of the fair trade movement; however, recently they have been ignored due to an exclusive focus on price, perpetuating the existing unfair power dynamic between Northern buyers and Southern producers. As a group of students, we are assisting Dean’s Beans and the Peruvian coffee cooperative, Oro Verde, in the historic process of establishing a written, long-term agreement. This agreement will be designed to improve the quality of the product as well as the livelihoods of the farmers and the ecological sustainability of their communities. Our workshop will discuss this agreement, its role as a model for other fair trade relationships, and what we as student activists can do to promote long-term relationships as a basic norm of fair trade."
The second project is a wonderful Fair Trade Cookbook which draws entirely on the traditional subsistence field or "chacra de panllevar" that has sustained the people of the High Amazon for thousands of years. This cookbook was inspired by the amazing organic food we ate every morning, noon and night, entirely supplied by the members of the Oro Verde co-op, with supply organized by Oro Verde´s brilliant agronomist Sonia and recipes masterminded by our chef de cuisine, our "Mama", Maribel! Peru is currently experiencing something of a food renaissance, with "novo andino" restaurants cropping up in Lima and other cities. What about "novo Amazonico" or New Amazonian cooking? It´s clearly the next step!
I´ll send the abstract along when I receive a new copy of it.
Until then, all the best and we hope to see you all in Boston!
¡¡¡ Ahhh.. Tarea Cumplida !!!
Hoy fue el último día del curso en Peru, Lamas especificamente, y debo decirlo, fue bastante dificil decir "Adios" a todos. De hecho Royal Pool estaba lleno de lagrimas esta tarde, porque todos se acostumbraron mucho a la comida, las bromas, la vida dulce de la selva.
More...
How to say farewell. Mejor Hasta Luego!
Today we leave. I apologize I have not written for a few days, but when I returned to Lamas I got a serious infection and therefore have been in bed for a few days. I am all better now and healthy for the trip home. Becky recounted her story of Alto, but I went to Huapo where things were quite different. Earlier in the blogs I have spoken of our day trip to Huapo and our 4 day stay was basically an extension of such.
We arrived early on Friday morning, as it is only 30 min from Lamas and set up in our lovely room in the house of the president, Manuel Coral, where we were to stay. Manuel Rios was our ingeniero for our trip, also a very pleasant and kind man. We hung out and had some lunch, then did some touring of the cane fields and saw much of what we had previously. We then ventured into the small community of Chololon, where everyone is cousins, and attempted a conversation.
Our group had also been shrunk quite a bit because two from our group had stayed back in Lamas due to illness. Therefore, four of us were this journey in Huapo with the cane. It was quite interesting and very eye-opening. From the bathroom to the way the community was run and how the cane was cut. The day we did try cutting the cane was extremely laborous work and we all tired very quickly. It was also very hot and we walked quite a lot. The river where we bathed was our source of comfort after a long day in the heat, sun and humid weather.
We also went to the house of a native family, where the mother of one of the socios showed us how to weave and spin cotton. It was impressive how quickly she worked the loom and spinning tool, because when we tried it seemed almost impossible. The final evening we had a party, where we were all taken as surprise for we were honored with being named the godparents of a 8-month old girl named Nirma. She is quite the cute baby and I will for sure post pictures when I get home and the internet is fast enough to load them. Emily did arrive a day late and therefore we became a group of 5.
Overall our stay in Huapo was very interesting and delightful. The food was delicious, we danced well at the party and certainly had many laughs. Though this community was just developing into a community, the recently became part of the coop, they welcomed us with open arms and open doors and invited us back whenever.
Our journey back to Lamas was short and sweet. We were all exhausted and ready for a shower and clean bed to sleep in. We spent Tuesday and Wednesday working on our final projects and reflections of the trip as a whole. I have to say, this trip has been phenomenal and I couldn´t have asked for anything else. No trip is ever perfect but sometimes the imperfections are what make the trip so much better and memorable. I have truly enjoyed the company of ever person on this trip and will miss Peru dearly. Smith calls me back, as we all start classes on MOnday. I must go back down the hill to Royal Pool to have my last meal, say my farewells, pack and board the plane to LIma where I will be leaving at 1:30am for Atlanta, Georgia tomorrow morning.
I so much want to return that instead of saying ¨goodbye¨I have resorted to saying ¨hasta luego¨which means ¨until next time¨. I hope to return soon to Peru and Lamas. Besos
The End Has Arrived
So here I am on our very last night in Llamas, sitting in Salatiel´s internet cafe for the last time and listening to the horrible techno and dance beats playing overhead for one last round of writing on the blog.
Today was filled with reflecting, thanking, a little packing, and last minute almost-forgotten purchases. We met as a group and talked about our community stays, then later about this course as a whole - this being the very first year they´ve done this course, there was a lot to talk about.
Right now I´m wearing a little Peruvian get-up including traditional belt, neclace, and skirt and we are about to leave to go to our very last fiesta with everyone we´ve met and enjoyed while in Peru from Oro Verde and our program. There are so many more people to thank and so much more reflecting on everything we´ve learned about Fair Trade practices, Shamanism, and what we are all intending to do with this new information upon returning.
I am not concious enough of everything I have learned here to have this be my last entry (don´t worry) so I´ll be writing some reflecting after entering back into The States.
-Becky
Ahhh, Back home to Llamas
It would be impossible to encompass everything I did in our community stay in Alto Shanbayacu let alone explain all 3 different communities that were visited. It was an incredible experience to be let in to such a small a tightly knit community and the amount of information and new relationships gained haven´t even been digested yet.
Every single thing we did was brand new to me - what we ate, the cloths we wore, harvesting coffee and rice. I think my brain has expanded a few inches and I´m still conciously trying to catch myself up on all that has happened. The first day included coffee harvesting, catching snails, shrimp, small fish, etc. in an unlikely streem for the intention of making dinner, harvesting rice which was later thrushed and cooked to eat that night, and lastly, a festival with the community with dancing and music and a ridiculous amount more of dancing.
The second day we watch and unsuccessfully tried to learn the trades of basket weaving, the making of traditional cotton woven belts, and traditional cooking, along with harvesting more rice and, of course, much more dancing and this time in tradition Peruvian dress.
The next day was low key and filled with conversation and interviews with people from the community and the family we stayed with, Ronald and Betty and their children, to understand their life in the small town and how the Oro Verde coffee co-op has changed aspects of their trade and personal lives. We later attended a mass for the Eve Angelical church in town which sounded much more frightening before we got there and ended up mostly filled with a wonderful style of song and barely any preaching. We were also honored this day by being asked to be god parents for children in the community and they held a ceremony where they presented us with native dresses of our own to wear to the celebration for our last night, which is, of course, where more dancing comes in.
I´m usually not one to complain about dressing silly and dancing but you must understand what this entails in Peruvian tradition. The outfits we wore had shirt necks so tight they left marks by the end of the night, more ruffles down the front than I´ve worn since I was 6, and the tightest wasted skirt I could have possibly worn without fainting. And my kind godchilds mother thoughtfully rebuttoned my collar and retied my skirt every time I tried to loosen it enough to catch a breath. Thats really just the half of it, the real test came when trying to dance in these lovely outfits.
Peruvian dance is nothing like I´ve done before and mostly centers around partnered choreography consisting of running, yes literally running, to the music in circles or twisting your body back and forth so fast you feel like you´re vibrating - and all this to songs that lasted on average 15 or so minutes. It was all in good fun and very entertaining but I have to say, we were not cut out for it.
This is just the skeleton of all we really did in Alto Shanbayacu and the others in this course staying in the different communities have similar stories of acceptance and community and an enormous berth of new information.
I had so much fun and we all wished the community stays could be longer, but I also have to say, the shower I got to take upon coming back was glorious.
The day before...
So it´s the day before we all leave for our community stays and we have split up into 3 groups of 6 students; each with one person who can translate and one engineer from Oro Verde coffee co-op. We are all very excited to get on our way for the 4 day stay. the first community, Guapo, grows sugar cane and students staying there will experience the growing season, whereas the coffee and cacoa communities are not at harvest time. The second community is Chirapas, which grows both coffee and cacoa and the third is Alto Shambayacu, located at the highest elevation of the 3 and grows just coffee.
All communities go without electricity or running water and are much more tradiational than Llamas so we will be getting a small taste of what ¨roughing it¨ really is. And we will also be able to do a lot more research for our two projects by understanding the growers way of life, biggest needs for improvement, and what being fair trade means to them. Altogether, we are very excited and wish it could be a longer stay.
Now back to today´s events:
We visited the Takiwasi rehab center in Tarapoto this afternoon which is a drug rehab facility which uses plant remedies and the hallucinagenic affects of ayahuasca to help with chemical dependencies. The owner of Takiwasi is Jacques Mabit M.D., a friend of Frederique´s and an expert in the field of medicine and indigenous plants. The pretense to the facility is using the healing affects of the hallucinagetic plant mixture ayahuasca along with other plant remedies to flush out the bodies addiction and reach a state of independency in substances by balancing out your body.
It was intriguing and enlightening to see there are ways beyond western medicine to cure drug addiction.
NEXT page
Finally Some Pictures
Sorry for the delay, they wouldn't post forever, but here they are. More...
aftermath
It's been over a month since we returned from Peru and my experience has affected me in ways I suspected it would and, in other ways, more than I had previously assumed. I have mouthed off to more than a few people on fair trade and what it means and why they should by it and who it helps and what it does. And in smaller ways, I am recycling more, using less water, and much more concious of what affects I am having on my surroundings.
I miss everyone I met and soon, hopefully, we will finally get ourselves together enough to have a proper reunion of sorts.
More...
PICTURES
Some wonderful pictures that I finally loaded!!! More...
Wonderful conference!
Hey everyone, A great big hug and a thanks to everyone who came out to the United Students for Fair Trade conference this past weekend! Quite a wonderful event and an opportunity to connect with the Fair Trade movement on all levels: producers, co-ops, Fair Traders, solidarity lenders such as EcoLogic, international NGOs such as Oxfam, community organizations such as Community Agroecology Network, academics, and plenty of students from high school to grad school! I felt a real sense of unity across generations, from adolescents to industry veterans.
Well, we did it! We presented our project Saturday afternoon, after a rousing Friday evening opening speech and song by Jewish Ugandan coffee producer J.J. Keki and a Saturday morning dialogue between students and producers (with Just Coffee's Matt Earley moderating.) After lunch we were on, and had a fantastic attendance - about 20 people in the room besides us. We each presented the parts of the projects that we focused on, with Tolly covering for both herself and Emerald, and myself filling in for Becky and Zoe. Wonderful job, Andy, Heather, Katya, Tolly, and Hannah on presenting the convenio! Afterwards we had a brief but lively discussion which included a representative from Starbucks who defended the company's practices, and Phoebe Sullivan from Dean's Beans who scored a definitive blow. From my work and the work of many other researchers and Fair Traders, it is clear that buying coffee from co-operatives at below-Fair Trade prices undermines the sustainability of the co-operative, as well as being unjust to the farmer. So why couldn't Starbucks commit to buying all their coffee from co-operatives at above Fair Trade prices? Surely they could afford it. Good one Phoebe!
It is unfortunate that we did not have two full periods in which to present both our projects, and thus the comida group had to make do with the last fifteen minutes of the workshop. Nonetheless, Austin, Marty and Mike did an excellent job of summarizing the project and its importance. People were equally excited about both projects ... comida people, I have a couple new contacts for you! ...
Overall, I cannot stress enough the importance of beginning to articulate the values that we hold dear with concrete and practical career paths. It is one thing to believe something, and it is another important step to speak out on that belief, to campaign and to raise your voice in protest of injustice and in support of actions to repair that injustice. The next step is to build those values and visions of a just and sustainable world into all aspects of your daily life, from your chosen profession to your consumption choices. Organizations such as United Students for Fair Trade are important in bridging that all-important gap between College and Life (or rather, the Rest of Your Life). Fair Trade organizations know this and send their people to these conferences to educate and network with students. And these conferences are of course vital to coordinated campus organizing efforts as well - in the struggle for universities to uphold the values taught (well, often taught!) in their classrooms by purchasing ethically and sustainably from honest and just suppliers.
OK - enough pontificating. I am really glad we made the effort and came out to the conference. I had a wonderful time seeing all of you and meeting new people as well, and I hope you all did too. Now it's back to Peru for me (tomorrow night!) and onwards to creating my farm household study... blessings to all of you, Noah
Our Projects at the United Students for Fair Trade Conference!
Hello everyone - Noah Enelow, your TA, here - I am finally posting to this blog at long last, after a whirlwind 3 1/2 weeks that left me exhausted and inspired at the same time. This was the first time this course has ever been taught, and for me it was a wealth of new experience and knowledge that have fed into each other.
As far as the trip is concerned, the unquestionable highlight for me - and, I think, for all of us - was the four-day stay in the communities. I was blessed to be assigned to the native community of Alto Shambuyacu, where the seven of us (six students and me) were treated with incredible kindness, generosity, and hospitality by the Salas family and their extended network of family, friends, and fellow members of the Alto Shambuyacu community and Oro Verde coffee co-op. We learned how coffee, rice, and the traditional subsistence crops plantain, beans, and yuca are grown and harvested; we learned how to make traditional handicraft items such as the beautiful woven belts everyone wears and the highly useful palm mats for sitting and sleeping; we learned a few traditional baking recipes; we worked on building the wall of a house; and every night we exchanged music, song and dance with the co-op members at the co-op´s meeting hall. It was an amazing time overall and the beginning of lasting bonds, between each of us and our hosts, and between our program and the Shambuyacu community.
For those of you who do not know me yet, I am a fourth-year graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, in the Department of Economics. My interests are broad, and are currently leaning heavily towards the ecological side of economics - being in Peru, one of the world´s three most biodiverse countries, how could it not be? I came here to Peru to study the impact of Fair Trade, which I believe is one of the most important movements for social justice in the world today, because it looks at an entire system of production and exchange, and aims to make it both socially just and ecologically sustainable. Fair Trade, to me, is a movement to re-embed economic concerns in ethical and ecological values. It is also a great deal of fun, because it is as much about building relationships and exchanging experiences and ideas as it is about abstract principles and benchmark standards.
This last paragraph is just preamble to the exciting news that BOTH of our workshop proposals were accepted at the United Students for Fair Trade (USFT) Convergence, which will be held this February 16-19 in Boston, Massachusetts. Technically, only one of them was accepted at first (I won´t tell you which one), but we got the other one onto the program by splitting up the panel time between the two of us. So - anyone who is going to be in Boston in February 16 through 19, come find us Saturday between 3:45 and 5:15 PM! Our workshop title is "Dynamic Relationships in Fair Trade" and we are the "Allima Mikuna Collective" (Allima Mikuna means Good Food in Quechua).
Dean´s arrival on the scene the second week of the course was like a flash of inspiration for all of us. His outspoken honesty and willingness to relate the personal to the political elements of his work had us all buzzing with inspiration. What happened then was a spontaneous emergence of creative ideas that led to us submitting two proposals to the USFT! The first one is an explanation of the long-term written agreement that is currently evolving between Dean´s Beans and the Oro Verde cooperative. This is an extremely important issue in Fair Trade. Long-term relationships are an important principle of Fair Trade - according to the Fair Trade ethic, the buyer and the supplier should evolve a relationship of mutual trust and cooperation - but in practice, these relationships are very difficult to enforce through a formal certification system. Instead of relying on the formal system, pioneers of Fair Trade such as Dean and Oro Verde are simply taking the bull by the horns and creating the relationship themselves. The result promises to be a model for future Fair Trade relationships, as well as an exciting joint creative adventure between two very dynamic business organizations, both of which are model companies in terms of both social justice and ecological sustainability.
Here is our abstract:
"Long-term relationships are part of the original vision of the fair trade movement; however, recently they have been ignored due to an exclusive focus on price, perpetuating the existing unfair power dynamic between Northern buyers and Southern producers. As a group of students, we are assisting Dean’s Beans and the Peruvian coffee cooperative, Oro Verde, in the historic process of establishing a written, long-term agreement. This agreement will be designed to improve the quality of the product as well as the livelihoods of the farmers and the ecological sustainability of their communities. Our workshop will discuss this agreement, its role as a model for other fair trade relationships, and what we as student activists can do to promote long-term relationships as a basic norm of fair trade."
The second project is a wonderful Fair Trade Cookbook which draws entirely on the traditional subsistence field or "chacra de panllevar" that has sustained the people of the High Amazon for thousands of years. This cookbook was inspired by the amazing organic food we ate every morning, noon and night, entirely supplied by the members of the Oro Verde co-op, with supply organized by Oro Verde´s brilliant agronomist Sonia and recipes masterminded by our chef de cuisine, our "Mama", Maribel! Peru is currently experiencing something of a food renaissance, with "novo andino" restaurants cropping up in Lima and other cities. What about "novo Amazonico" or New Amazonian cooking? It´s clearly the next step!
I´ll send the abstract along when I receive a new copy of it.
Until then, all the best and we hope to see you all in Boston!
¡¡¡ Ahhh.. Tarea Cumplida !!!
Hoy fue el último día del curso en Peru, Lamas especificamente, y debo decirlo, fue bastante dificil decir "Adios" a todos. De hecho Royal Pool estaba lleno de lagrimas esta tarde, porque todos se acostumbraron mucho a la comida, las bromas, la vida dulce de la selva. More...
How to say farewell. Mejor Hasta Luego!
Today we leave. I apologize I have not written for a few days, but when I returned to Lamas I got a serious infection and therefore have been in bed for a few days. I am all better now and healthy for the trip home. Becky recounted her story of Alto, but I went to Huapo where things were quite different. Earlier in the blogs I have spoken of our day trip to Huapo and our 4 day stay was basically an extension of such.
We arrived early on Friday morning, as it is only 30 min from Lamas and set up in our lovely room in the house of the president, Manuel Coral, where we were to stay. Manuel Rios was our ingeniero for our trip, also a very pleasant and kind man. We hung out and had some lunch, then did some touring of the cane fields and saw much of what we had previously. We then ventured into the small community of Chololon, where everyone is cousins, and attempted a conversation.
Our group had also been shrunk quite a bit because two from our group had stayed back in Lamas due to illness. Therefore, four of us were this journey in Huapo with the cane. It was quite interesting and very eye-opening. From the bathroom to the way the community was run and how the cane was cut. The day we did try cutting the cane was extremely laborous work and we all tired very quickly. It was also very hot and we walked quite a lot. The river where we bathed was our source of comfort after a long day in the heat, sun and humid weather.
We also went to the house of a native family, where the mother of one of the socios showed us how to weave and spin cotton. It was impressive how quickly she worked the loom and spinning tool, because when we tried it seemed almost impossible. The final evening we had a party, where we were all taken as surprise for we were honored with being named the godparents of a 8-month old girl named Nirma. She is quite the cute baby and I will for sure post pictures when I get home and the internet is fast enough to load them. Emily did arrive a day late and therefore we became a group of 5.
Overall our stay in Huapo was very interesting and delightful. The food was delicious, we danced well at the party and certainly had many laughs. Though this community was just developing into a community, the recently became part of the coop, they welcomed us with open arms and open doors and invited us back whenever.
Our journey back to Lamas was short and sweet. We were all exhausted and ready for a shower and clean bed to sleep in. We spent Tuesday and Wednesday working on our final projects and reflections of the trip as a whole. I have to say, this trip has been phenomenal and I couldn´t have asked for anything else. No trip is ever perfect but sometimes the imperfections are what make the trip so much better and memorable. I have truly enjoyed the company of ever person on this trip and will miss Peru dearly. Smith calls me back, as we all start classes on MOnday. I must go back down the hill to Royal Pool to have my last meal, say my farewells, pack and board the plane to LIma where I will be leaving at 1:30am for Atlanta, Georgia tomorrow morning.
I so much want to return that instead of saying ¨goodbye¨I have resorted to saying ¨hasta luego¨which means ¨until next time¨. I hope to return soon to Peru and Lamas. Besos
The End Has Arrived
So here I am on our very last night in Llamas, sitting in Salatiel´s internet cafe for the last time and listening to the horrible techno and dance beats playing overhead for one last round of writing on the blog.
Today was filled with reflecting, thanking, a little packing, and last minute almost-forgotten purchases. We met as a group and talked about our community stays, then later about this course as a whole - this being the very first year they´ve done this course, there was a lot to talk about.
Right now I´m wearing a little Peruvian get-up including traditional belt, neclace, and skirt and we are about to leave to go to our very last fiesta with everyone we´ve met and enjoyed while in Peru from Oro Verde and our program. There are so many more people to thank and so much more reflecting on everything we´ve learned about Fair Trade practices, Shamanism, and what we are all intending to do with this new information upon returning.
I am not concious enough of everything I have learned here to have this be my last entry (don´t worry) so I´ll be writing some reflecting after entering back into The States.
-Becky
Ahhh, Back home to Llamas
It would be impossible to encompass everything I did in our community stay in Alto Shanbayacu let alone explain all 3 different communities that were visited. It was an incredible experience to be let in to such a small a tightly knit community and the amount of information and new relationships gained haven´t even been digested yet.
Every single thing we did was brand new to me - what we ate, the cloths we wore, harvesting coffee and rice. I think my brain has expanded a few inches and I´m still conciously trying to catch myself up on all that has happened. The first day included coffee harvesting, catching snails, shrimp, small fish, etc. in an unlikely streem for the intention of making dinner, harvesting rice which was later thrushed and cooked to eat that night, and lastly, a festival with the community with dancing and music and a ridiculous amount more of dancing.
The second day we watch and unsuccessfully tried to learn the trades of basket weaving, the making of traditional cotton woven belts, and traditional cooking, along with harvesting more rice and, of course, much more dancing and this time in tradition Peruvian dress.
The next day was low key and filled with conversation and interviews with people from the community and the family we stayed with, Ronald and Betty and their children, to understand their life in the small town and how the Oro Verde coffee co-op has changed aspects of their trade and personal lives. We later attended a mass for the Eve Angelical church in town which sounded much more frightening before we got there and ended up mostly filled with a wonderful style of song and barely any preaching. We were also honored this day by being asked to be god parents for children in the community and they held a ceremony where they presented us with native dresses of our own to wear to the celebration for our last night, which is, of course, where more dancing comes in.
I´m usually not one to complain about dressing silly and dancing but you must understand what this entails in Peruvian tradition. The outfits we wore had shirt necks so tight they left marks by the end of the night, more ruffles down the front than I´ve worn since I was 6, and the tightest wasted skirt I could have possibly worn without fainting. And my kind godchilds mother thoughtfully rebuttoned my collar and retied my skirt every time I tried to loosen it enough to catch a breath. Thats really just the half of it, the real test came when trying to dance in these lovely outfits.
Peruvian dance is nothing like I´ve done before and mostly centers around partnered choreography consisting of running, yes literally running, to the music in circles or twisting your body back and forth so fast you feel like you´re vibrating - and all this to songs that lasted on average 15 or so minutes. It was all in good fun and very entertaining but I have to say, we were not cut out for it.
This is just the skeleton of all we really did in Alto Shanbayacu and the others in this course staying in the different communities have similar stories of acceptance and community and an enormous berth of new information.
I had so much fun and we all wished the community stays could be longer, but I also have to say, the shower I got to take upon coming back was glorious.
The day before...
So it´s the day before we all leave for our community stays and we have split up into 3 groups of 6 students; each with one person who can translate and one engineer from Oro Verde coffee co-op. We are all very excited to get on our way for the 4 day stay. the first community, Guapo, grows sugar cane and students staying there will experience the growing season, whereas the coffee and cacoa communities are not at harvest time. The second community is Chirapas, which grows both coffee and cacoa and the third is Alto Shambayacu, located at the highest elevation of the 3 and grows just coffee.
All communities go without electricity or running water and are much more tradiational than Llamas so we will be getting a small taste of what ¨roughing it¨ really is. And we will also be able to do a lot more research for our two projects by understanding the growers way of life, biggest needs for improvement, and what being fair trade means to them. Altogether, we are very excited and wish it could be a longer stay.
Now back to today´s events:
We visited the Takiwasi rehab center in Tarapoto this afternoon which is a drug rehab facility which uses plant remedies and the hallucinagenic affects of ayahuasca to help with chemical dependencies. The owner of Takiwasi is Jacques Mabit M.D., a friend of Frederique´s and an expert in the field of medicine and indigenous plants. The pretense to the facility is using the healing affects of the hallucinagetic plant mixture ayahuasca along with other plant remedies to flush out the bodies addiction and reach a state of independency in substances by balancing out your body.
It was intriguing and enlightening to see there are ways beyond western medicine to cure drug addiction.
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