Meeting with Patty & Mario

Mario was so eager to get started with the workshops that he asked if we could set up a meeting where he could meet with Patty and here her ideas. We did set up Tuesday's meeting last Wednesday, so it's possible he just forgot. Although I remember watching him write it down in his calendar.

In any case, Mario's absence ended up giving us a chance to get to know Patty better. Compared to the average Urubambino, Patty is quite cosmopolitan. She has lived in Lima and Arequipa and now lives in Cusco while maintaining a studio near the NeVo headquarters in Urubamba.

One of Patty's side projects is working with a women's knitting group in Coya. Every Saturday, the women meet to chat and knit and Patty teaches them new designs, normally children clothes because they don't take as long. When they finish their work, they sell to one store in Cusco. Because they are "mujeres del campo" or women of the fields, they don't know how to write the purchase orders most stores require, but they did find one store that was willing to work with them.

Patty's set out to help the women gain a little independence by making their own money. She's talked to them about reaching out to more stores, but the women are against it. They say they won't have time to make more products, because they have families to take care of. One idea of Patty's - and I thought it was a great one - was to help the women save up to buy a collective washing machine so they could save time on household work.

The women were strongly opposed to this idea. For one, washing clothes in the canal - like knitting - was another opportunity to be social. Additionally, even with the small bit of success they experience now, literally taking care of their families is their primary concern. Even if their families could use additional income, the women did not view it as taking care of their family.

Maybe the US economy is overspecialized and Americans outsource too many household and parenting responsibilities, but it's certainly clear that the Peruvian economy - with an average annual income $3,500 - could benefit from increased specialization. When I think about all the time Urubamban women spend butchering meat for lunch each day, it just seems like time wasted. It would be so much more efficient for the vendors to butcher the meat rather than send it home half-butchered with a woman whose tiny kitchen only includes two knives, both dull. But the Urubambinas I know don't seem to mind: it's just another part of taking care of her family.