Teaching business classes to agricultural workers and entrepreneurs in Juanjui
In another century in America, teachers received apples from their students on the first day of school. A few weeks ago I began my first of a series of weekly workshops to provide business plan training to farmers and aspiring entrepreneurs in the rural town of Juanjui. Instead of apples, I was greeted with a basket of several kilos of oranges and other citrus fruits, courtesy of a pair of middle-aged farmer women (one who lives in a village sans electricity) who are students in my class. At the end of our first session, they led the class in a group toast with freshly squeezed orange juice, and I received the first of many invitations to visit their farms.
Initially, I wasn’t sure how I would take to this new component of my work, which involves traveling a couple hours out in the countryside via cramped colectivo taxis. My trips always involve hoping there are enough other passengers with the same intended destination to fill a car, hoping that heavy rains don’t strand me somewhere inopportune, and hoping to avoid an accident on the dark, scary roads late at night. (On my way home tonight, in fact, my taxi struck and killed a large dog that was in the middle of the road. Damn sad.)
My students come from outlying areas which aren’t the most accessible either. So it’s no wonder that during a conversation with a colectivo driver in Juanjui, he complimented my work with cocoa and coffee farmers, but countered “You must have also encountered la blanquita?” Of course, the “white girl” he was referring to was not any foreign tourist (of which there are none out in Juanjui) but cocaine — and as the driver rattled off a list of places in the area where coca is grown, I was reminded that the region’s alternative development campaigns are not yet “Mission Accomplished!”
Jay Nargundkar
Mi Vida S.A. 