I spent the Christmas holidays, through New Year’s, traveling around Peru, specifically in and around the two largest cities — Lima, the capital, and Arequipa. I was lucky to be joined by friends from the States — Abhi, his sister Adithi, and Glenn — for much of the time, and local friends for the rest.
Below, a few vignettes and some photos to illustrate the beauty and excitement of some parts of the country that are very different from my small town in the jungle.
For nearly three months now, I have been working in rural Peru as an economic development consultant promoting entrepreneurship. I’m assigned to a specific component of a USAID-funded development project, the inaugural business case competition Idea Tu Empresa (“Your Business Idea”), which has the goal of identifying high-potential entrepreneurs for goods and services primarily related to cocoa and coffee. From an initial pool of roughly 200 ideas submitted, a whittling-down process which included hundreds of hours of business training for participants ultimately led to ~20 finalists who are being assisted by Technoserve consultants such as myself with the implementation of their business plans.
By now I’ve become quite familiar with the many cultural quirks and attributes that are an impediment to the success of many would-be businesspeople here. Chronic tardiness (“la hora Peruana“, as it’s joked about here); unresponsiveness to emails or phone calls (unless those calls are of a frivolous nature and interrupt a meeting, in which case, it is seen as mandatory to take said call without a hint of self-consciousness); not doing something that was promised; and a general passivity / lack of urgency which one would normally find surprising from people trying to create their own livelihoods. Within my own organization in-country too, I’ve had to deal with inefficiency, muddled or missing oversight, interminable and unproductive staff meetings, and petty annoyances like a shortage of fans to get through these hot jungle days. Luckily for me, I had heard beforehand about similar trying experiences from friends who have worked for NGOs in other countries, so I knew going in how to set my expectations.
The good news is that, on most days, all of those challenges are more than offset by my pleasure at being my own boss, trying to figure out for myself what initiatives to pursue and how best to help my clients, and feeling genuine pride when I’m able to achieve results and have a tangible impact here. So yes, although it takes hard work mixed with occasional pushing and prodding, progress can be achieved! To do so effectively, I’ve had to take to heart several lessons — and undoubtedly will continue to learn more in the months ahead.
A late Thanksgiving post is better than no Thanksgiving post, right? Unfortunately I’ve had some stomach woes the past few days, likely stemming from a little over-adventurousness at an out-of-town street food fair. It’s a little ironic because when I started writing this entry, one of the things I mentioned being thankful for was having been relatively completely healthy after my first week here. Oops.
But no worries. What some people call “dysentery”, I call my patented Third World Diet TM, which I hope to someday turn into a successful business catering to supermodels. “Why deal with the unpleasantness and cravings of starving yourself,” I’ll tell them, “when you can eat all of these delicious juanes, cebiche, and paiches a la parilla, and still melt away the pounds?”
Below, details of my Peruvian Thanksgiving (Dia de Acción de Gracias), hosting a “North American-style” barbecue, trying “pantie rippers” and local “drunk food”, and more.
The alarm clock went off on Sunday morning at what seemed like mere minutes after my head had hit the pillow. After a late night dancing at the discoteca my beauty rest was being sacrificed because Yun, Vero, our Liman buddies Fernando and Jean, Vero’s visiting friend Camille, and I had made plans to visit the nearby Catarata de Huacamaillo — a scenic local waterfall that we had been told would be a pleasant 45 minutes with a hired guide.
We met up at the colectivo station near my house, squeezing the 6 of us into one taxi by having Fernando and I sit in the trunk. The ride to the town of San Antonio de Cumbaza actually wasn’t uncomfortable, though along the way we encountered yet another one of the vigilante groups in this area manning a makeshift roadblock. It’s pretty customary here to see these groups, often featuring a few armed men and some assorted hangers-on, stopping all cars and asking (demanding) for small donations (bribes) before they let you pass. The vigilantes claim they are providing security on the road — the idea being, I suppose, that legitimized highway robbers are better than the alternative.
Fording the River > Caulking the Wagons and Floating
The hike itself was a lot of fun, reminiscent in many ways of Great Falls back home in the D.C. area with big rock scrambles and a trail following a river. That said, it was very different from what we were anticipating, thanks to us not hiring a guide and the route being entirely unmarked and often difficult to make out. Also, the previous two days of torrential rains had turned the tiny stream intersecting the trail in several places into something else entirely — we had to wade through waist or even chest-high water during multiple crossings of the Cumbaza River, clambered over huge and slippery boulders, squelched through mud, and frequently lost the proper trail. Luckily, the nearest we came to an Oregon Trail-style disaster was Yun losing a sandal and Fernando falling headlong into the water during separate crossings. But after roughly 3 hours, we finally reached our destination.
This past weekend, I took advantage of the Nov 1 national holiday for Dia de Todos los Santos (All Saints’ Day), and took a 4-day trip to Pacaya-Samiriya National Reserve. Pacaya-Samiriya is a vast expanse of dense Amazonian jungle, a bit difficult to access, and not heavily frequented by tourists. In order to get to our destination, our group — myself, fellow TNS volunteer Yun, and a Canadian NGO worker I met recently named Veronique — had to take a colectivo from Tarapoto to Yurimaguas, a long ferry ride from Yurimaguas to the flyspeck town of Lagunas, and from there ride several hours in a canoe to get to our first campsite.
Holding a baby crocodile pulled from the water by our canoe during a night-time excursion in the park
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At the Edge of the World The Salar de Uyuni and surrounding areas feature lunar landscapes, algae-tinted lakes, an ethereal and endless sea of salt, and a "cemetery" of abandoned trains in the middle of the desert |
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Mundo de Chocolate Meeting the First Lady of Perú; learning all about chocolate production from cocoa growers, processors, and chocolatiers; and helping chocolate makers manage and grow their businesses |
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Land of the Cloud People Attending a massive street festival, seeing one of the world's tallest waterfalls, and exploring the lonely and majestic ruins of Kuelap |
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Profesor de Negocios Teaching business classes in Spanish to farmers and aspiring entrepreneurs |
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The Motorcycle Diaries I buy and learn to ride a beat-up old motorcycle |
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Junglin' Enduring hordes of mosquitoes, being outwitted by piranhas, surviving a rickety ferry, and other (mis)adventures on a camping trip in the Amazon jungle |
Jay Nargundkar
Mi Vida S.A. 