The trip to Cusco - Inti Raymi festival

This post brings the pictures from Cusco! We were privileged to see the Inti Raymi, the Inca festival of the sun. It was a very impressive representation of what happened during the Inca times. Since the Incas followed a circular way of life, the solstice was important to mark a renew cicle.

To be honest, I got a mixed feeling towards the Incas, not sure if I would like to be living under their 'management'. In this sense, I still prefer the Moche culture from all I have seen from here but the reason is subject to another post.

The Inca king appears - impressive posture

Servents from different tribes prepare the King's path

Tribes loyal to the Inca's post themselves in the cerimony

The sun (God Inti) hears the claims from the Incas and decided to appear

Tribes aligned to reverend the Inca king and start the party

Tough walk to go and to come back to the Inti Raymi festival site

Ayacucho and Huanta (Day 2)

The second day in Ayacucho was pretty full and we continue to visit business ideas in order to understand better what is the impact of business model generation in small scale entrepreneuship, we started with two businesses that are more than interesting.

The first one uses cactus to produce various handcraft such as lamps, frames, tables, earrings and others. What is interesting with the cactus is that it is a raw material that is abundant in the region and its properties are light and at the same time hard. The only issue with it is that it takes around 20 to 40 years to have a cactus that is ready for use so some thinking about the business sustainability will be needed in a medium/long term.

Products made of cactus



Explanation on the production process

The second business was some sort of school formed by youngsters that were graduated in several fields of knowledge and decided to give classes to develop the children in Ayacucho. The main idea is to develop some children that have potential and give them free or very cheap education. This business has the profile of other new business, the youngsters have tried to open the school on 2006, and then on 2008 again. They succeeded but they had to close again. On 2010 they have been through the Emprende programme (this is the name of the CEDRO's programme that teaches Entrepreneurship) and finally reopen in 2010 as they were one of the awarded initiatives. The results are already appearing as they have gone very well into the Peruvian mathematics Olympics and several 2nd places on other competitions like that.

Talk with the social innovator

One of the spaces used to teach children

After that we went to Huanta, a different province that is around one hour from Ayacucho. Huanta is interesting because it shows one of the first districts that saw the potential for business developments in small scale. CEDRO has developed the Emprende Progamme there and the municipality has hired themselves some consultants to continue the programme. We have seen some initiatives from the first year:

The first was a farm that grows chicken and cocks, the chicken are taken to the farm to produce eggs and the cocks are sold, just one remains to be the reproducer. The eggs are organic as they are fed with organic corn since they are raised up thus getting a better price for it. The business is very sustainable, the only issue is the wolf that sometimes attacks the chickens.

Piero with the pollitos

Organic eggs

 

Meeting in the municipality of Luricocha (notice that the symbol in the flag is an avocado)


The second initiative is a girl that sells popcorn. With the money awarded from CEDRO, she bought a popcorn car and she now owns already 3 cars. She is soon diversifying the business and will start offering fried potato and banana to schools.

One of the Popcorn car (started with one and there are four already!)

The last intiative was a pig farm where the pigs were awarded by the Emprende programme. The business is also growing as no pig has died yet and the profitability is strong.

Pig growing site

The trip itself was very usefull to understand how CEDRO has been working with new business generation and also to understand the profile of business we are talking here. More important, it shows that small initiatives using people's creativity can indeed take people out of poverty.

If you want to see all pictures, you can click here!

Ayacucho (Day 1)

We came to Ayacucho to investigate better the initiatives around Entrepreneurship projects done by CEDRO and so far we had a very good impression.
Ayacucho is a place with lots of history, it was the land of the Wari's, a warrior tribe which lived with the Incas. The Wari's were very powerful thus respected by the Incas that were not able to dominate them.
Later on, the region suffered from the terrorism with the Shinning Path (Sendero Luminoso) which also contributed to the expansion of the coca plantation.
After the Shinning Path was dismembered the region started to recover and reborn - there are still some terrorist acts in the region but way more isolated.
In the beginning, lots os NGOs came to Ayacucho to help and lately the city and its municipalities are investing a lot in new business initiatives.
CEDRO is part of this movement and as we could see in other parts, they study very well the population before starting a project. In Ayacucho, there are projects for Communication and Entrepreneurship,which was initiated in 2008. Another thing is that the entrepreneur programme here is very professional as they give initial capital for the projects that are approved besides supporting the business implementation with an external consultant.
We visited today three business, a tailor office, a coffee packager and a restaurant. They have very distinc characteristics, let me try to describe them:

The tailor place was run by three women that run through the course and won the right to buy a small sewing machine. Busines has been growing and they acquired a new machine and are thinking about expanding even more. In their case, a market study was essential to understand whether their services were required in their neighbourhood.

The sewing place

The models they already produce

They are also designing some models

In the second place, there was the coffee packer (they also do the roasting and grinding). It is a family business as the daughters are taking over the company and bringing them forward by diversifying production as it has started with coffee but they now have chocolate, soya milk and others. The Emprende programma from CEDRO helped them mainly on legalizing the product in order to expand their business but production is still small with around of 40 kilos of coffee production per year.

Coffee is roasted, grounded and packed

The third business was a restaurant (Cocina Andina) that has the main value to provide fair and home made food from the Cocina Ayacuchana. We have tried the food there and it is indeed excellent as you can feel that they use natural ingredients and herbs. The restaurant started small, when their business plan was approved they got the oven, plates and some pans. Still today, the fridge is rented but they recently moved from the outskirts to the city centre of the town. Their customers are local people and you could see that they have movement all time, including in a monday night which is always a difficult day of the week.

The restaurant speciality is the Cocina Ayacuchana

The kitchen, which is already small for the demand

Marcelino explaining to us his journey

These small initiatives are the ones raising people out of poverty, these initiaves, although simple and short ranged can, in the future, become something else and create the right environment for a more entrepreneurial city that can blossom in their social and economical conditions.

You can see other pictures here!

How to make coffee in Peru

Due to the difficulties to make coffee in Peru, I decided to write this post for the future foreigners here.

Peru is a and with excellent, excellent coffee. The coffee plantations are over 1000 meters with produce the arabica grains wich are full of the best flavour and aroma. The interesting thing is that Limeños prepares instant coffee instead the real stuff.

This explain why it was so difficult to find things such as coffee and the paper filter. So.... I had to improvise (I would like to say innovate but not sure if that is the right word):

1. Try to find an imported coffee paper filter

 2. Put the paper filter in a sieve

 3. Grab one of the various quality coffee from Peru (this one is an extremelly good one from Tarapoto)

 4. Put the coffee in the filter

 5. Boil water and pour through the coffee!!

 6. There you go, coffee brewed!!! Ready to drink!

Wayku Community - Lamas - San Martin (2nd Day)

In this second day in Tarapoto, we have visited a native community in the city of Lamas called Wayku. CEDRO and the Finnish Children and Young Foundation (FCYF) host a project there to form leaders in the community also a project to support local cultural initiative such as the production of musical instruments.
These instruments were commonly made by the people in the community but with time, these started to be forgotten and the way to produce them was also destined to oblivion. The raw material for those instruments (that can include flutes, drums and others) is located in special places were there are some sort of cerimony to extract them.
This project created a sustainable practice by teaching youngsters on how to make the instruments by the more older people. The instruments are then used in the biggest community party which is the Fiesta de Santa Rosa.

We also visited the city of Lamas where we could try this organic grown coffee from a local cooperative. In the last couple of years, Tarapoto and region has moved from the coca to legal crops such as coffee, cacao, rice and corn. Farmers have understood that prices for the legal crops were better than the risk of planting the coca, which is a change that happened in the last couple of years. Nevertheless, José (local monitor from CEDRO) showed the empty lands in the mountains and explained that these are a heritage from those times once coca plantation was done in a way that year after year, the old fields of coca would be left alone and more forest would be turned down to become crop. This has happened because the coca plant exhaust the land and it takes rather a while to recover from it.

Las Leyendas de la Selva

There is something mysterious about the thick Amazonian rainforest. No wonder it has inspired so many stories, beliefs, myths in countries of South America. A classical one being the Eldorado story for instance. Although that’s more of a colonization related legend. All the same, a myth. But the amount of other leyendas circulating in the local communities in these areas is amazing. The creativity, creepiness, funniness, symbolism, morals of these stories make you wonder, excited and inspired. And they create a whole belief system. A connection with the spiritual world. Stronger among the local communities of course, but a culture known or understood all over the country.

When I was telling my Spanish professor about our trip to Tarapoto (a city at the edge of the Andes and at the beginning of the Peruvian Amazonia), she asked me in a joking way whether I met the Chullachaqui or the Tunche. She then explained that they are creatures, spirits of the selva (rainforest): Chullachaqui. The chullachaqui is a creature with one goat leg and one normal leg (or two normal legs but facing opposite directions), haunting the forests, taking appearances as people the lost wonderer knows, seducing them into the middle of the forest, where who knows what happens to them J I think the Brazilian version of them might be somehow Saci. The point is, that my teacher immediately had a story to share about a friend meeting these spirits in the forest.

Knowing about the Chullachaqui and the Tunche, explains the case of the windowless houses as well. In Lamas (a pueblo near Tarapoto) for instance, the traditional way of building a house is not to build any windows. Explanation being: preventing the bad spirits from entering the house. Practical explanation being: keeping the air fresher (we are talking about adobe houses), and preventing animals as well from entering. Of course animals can still enter through the doors and walls (again, adobe houses), which is why they sleep in the attic: a ladder leading the way up. A ladder which may be removed by the wife to punish the late and drunk arriving husband, posing the challenge: you can sleep up there if you are sober enough to put the ladder up and climb it. Otherwise you sleep downstairs exposed to possible animal attacks and other discomforts.

Leyendas as morals. Issue being: Greediness. There used to be a lake in the town. The town being far away from the sea, the lake’s salt supply played a crucial role in the local’s lives. It was the mother of the lake, the Boa that provided the salt and the lake. You were not supposed to be greedy and take too much salt from the lake. But as we know, people were. And hence came the punishment of Mother Boa. She left the lake, left the town, leaving the lake empty of water, empty of salt. She wondered away into the mountains, where she deployed her salt supply. This is why those hills are today rich in salt. And the empty lake today in the town currently functions as a football pitch…

Me encantan estas leyendas! El chullachaqui, el tunche, Mother Boa, are just a few examples of the possibly thousands of other mysteries. And it’s so beautiful how these influence beliefs, customs, lifestyles. Yet an other way of expressing fear and respect of the selva. 

View over Lamas, with the footballpitch/ ex-lake

San Roque - San Martin (Day 1)

Our first visit to a CEDRO project site was Tarapoto in the San Martin province. It is a place in the jungle as the peruvians like to say. It is in the inner part of the country, after the Andes and already near the amazon. The weather is completely different from Lima, it is more moist and rain can fall at any time.

Today we visited San Roque which is also part of the San Martin province and one of the places where CEDRO currently has a project. It is also a place with good potential for eco tourism thus local government is looking foward new ways to promote San Roque as a place to visit.

Willian Del Aguila Vela, a local enterpreneur, have even won some national competitions on enterpreneurship so there are also great potential on local resources. We have met also the local mayor to understand better their point of view on the issues with San Roque.

One of them is about the transportation as the road is not paved. The other is about how to diferentiate the city from others so it requires some strategic thinking. San Roque is a city that is safe and even has some foreigners living over there.

Below some images of what we could see:




Coffee and cacao drying under the sun in San Roque

 

Bungalows in San Roque

Meeting with the local authorities

By the river

By the river in San Roque

By the river in San Roque

Flowers in San Roque

La Banda de Shilcayo - San Martin (Day 1)

In the second location of the day, there was an established project that supports initiatives from the young people towards music, dance, video making and theatre in the local community.

The interesting fact here is that they use them as a weapon against drugs - whenever there is a traffic location, leaders from diverse communities are called to gather together and promote events on the traffic region. These events serve as triggers to both advise the danger of drugs and also to make a movement of inclusion where young people can participate on the activities of the group.

All activities and parties are designed to be alcohol free and have the focus on the young people performing the acts. In fact, a short video made by the children will be broadcast in the local tv soon featuring the group activities.

The issue with this initiative is that it greatly depends on the local municipality. The current one is very conscious about the drug issue and have been supporting this initiative but a change of mayor can also change everything.

Below you can see the pictures:

Julio and Jose (from CEDRO)

Instruments used by the youngsters to promote cultural events

Library created by CEDRO

Front of the Escuela para Jovenes