Live cuys and potatoes

As I waslked over the bridge leading to the community of Huycho, carring a bag containing 5 live cuys in each hand, a woman wearing the traditional Andean top hat and blue skirt stopped me to ask if I'd bought cuys. It must be a funny sight, a gringa carrying live cuyes. I told her--no, the cuys are Rosa's--my host the previous night. I had accompanied her to the market and now I was helping her carry her things up to her house. The woman asked me what I was doing there, and I told her about our volunteer project. She asked me if we could send volunteers to her community, and I told her our project is just starting, but if we get more volunteers we'll expand. I walked up to Rosa's house with the cuys, back with an empty wheelbarrow and up again carrying carrots, beans, chicken feet, and chicha (a drink made fermenting different vegetables).

Later, as I was having lunch, Rosa's daughter Amelie came to say there was a woman looking for me. I went to the door and Asunta, the woman from the bridge, was there with her daughter. I was going to tell her I can't do anything for her, when I had an idea. She told me she is part of a cooperative making crafts, so I thought volunteers can visit her community over a weekend, spend the night there (they said they can have a bonfire) and learn about Andean craft-making traditions, and buy their products as gifts to bring back home. I need to go and visit her community first, but I think it would be interesting for volunteers, and maybe we can sell their products on our website too!

Together with the volunteer project, we are working on a development project for women in the district of Huayllabamba. There are abandoned houses on the road of the Valley circuit, where about every tourist who comes to Peru passes. The previous Mayor of Huayllabamba had built them for a craft market, which failed because there are other internationally renouned artesan markets on the circuit. Now the houses are abandoned but still in good conditions. Maria's idea is to have an Andean product tasting market. Local women would be given microcredit loans and be taught about microfinance, cooking and nutrition by specialists. They would rotate weekly and sell food to tourists: an entrance fee would be charged to go and taste the different types of Andean potato and potato products (cakes, etc), corn and other foods from this region. Food would also be on sale if, say, you tasted a food and wanted to buy more to eat on the spot or take away.

The mayor of Huayllabamba is enthusiastic about the project but expects us to do everything. Yesterday we talked with an economist who specializes in drafting budget plans for all sorts of projects and he told me all the steps we need to go through. Monday I will talk to the Mayor again so we can get the project going and hopefully have it running by the Northern hemisphere summer, the highest tourist season. In March there will be meetings to distribute milk to women in the communities, and before the meetings we'll talk about the project and see what reactions we get.

I don't know how much this is a grassroots project, as the idea is not coming from the village women, but from a wealthy and educated woman from Cusco, and developed by a relatively clueless gringa (that would be me). On the other hand if an individual is very entrepreneurial and rich of initiative s/he is probably not "the poorest", and also it's much easier to have ideas if you're higly educated in education systems encouraging critical thinking, you've travelled the world, talked to different people and been exposed to all sorts of environments, like Maria and myself.

The main problem, as always, is the funding. Apparently (and obviously) Huayllabamba is not considered the poorest area of the Sacred Valley, which will make it harder to obtain funds, but this is the International year of the Potato, as initially suggested by Peru, and I am going to ask for funding from the FAO for a potato project in Peru...