Lasting memories from the pizzeria

Tonight Heather and I took Jenry, Margarita, and Adrian out to eat at a pizzeria here. Jenry's sister and her family came for a visit from Lima, so we decided to take everyone out. Jenry's sister's name is Silvia, her husband is Angel Santos, their son is Angel David, and their brand new baby is Silvana. So all of us, 6 adults and 3 kids, crammed into a taxi that was sort of like a small Subaru Outback. The two men were nice and climbed into the back, each of them with their sons, and the rest of us women situated ourselves in the seats. We drove like that to the other side of town and it cost us 4 soles, which is about $1.30.

When we arrived at the restaurant, everyone was excited. It was obviously a really nice pizzeria. Our friend Alberto Puertas has recommended a few places for us to go to and the funny thing about it is they're all at the level of what you would find in the United States, which is REALLY rare around here. Jenry saw Alberto's list and he commented that all the places were really expensive, but it's kind of nice to occasionally go to places that are really nice and feel comfortable and familiar.

So after we arrived at the restaurant, we ordered three pizzas and sodas for everyone. Heather and I invited everyone and so we were paying. I started to feel a little nervous because the prices were definitely much, much, much higher than what you normally find in Peru. But in the end, it was totally fine.

Everyone had a good time and Adrian and Angel David reminded me of what it's like to eat with my nieces and nephews. They never want to sit still and eat. They want to get up and walk around and so one parent--usually the mother--is constantly following them so they stay entertained. Poor Margarita didn't get much time to eat. In Angel David's case it was Angel Santos who had to do the following so that Silvia could hold the baby.

Angel David likes to do everything that Adrian does, so when Adrian said he had to go to the bathroom, Angel David said he did too. Adrian and Margarita returned from the bathroom but no sign of the two Angeles. Adrian wanted to go to the bathroom again. Still no sign of the two Angeles. Finally Margarita let Adrian go to the bathroom by himself and he returned running saying, "Aunt Silvia! Aunt Silvia!" (in Spanish of course) "More toilet paper!" We all started giggling, so Margarita went with him to the bathroom. They returned but still no sign of the Angeles.

We all just continued eating and talking. We had a really great time laughing and just enjoying ourselves. When all of us were pretty much finished eating, Angel Santos finally emerged from the bathroom carrying his son (who is only 2 years old) who was completely naked from the waist down. We were all in shock and started laughing. Angel Santos was carrying his pants rolled up tight. Angel David had had a little problem, but Silvia and Angel Santos had never had to deal with this before so they hadn't brought a change of clothes. Angel Santos plopped his son down in the high chair totally naked and let him continue eating. He hadn't finished eating himself, so Silvia looked at him and said, "Eat fast!" We were all laughing and just a little embarrassed at the same time.

Every now and then Angel Santos would look at his son and say, "Where are your pants?" And he would point in the direction of the bathroom. Angel David is such a cute kid. He was kind of embarrassed by all the laughing and attention and he knew he wasn't wearing his pants, so he kept giving everyone this shy look. We're going to post a picture here. Angel Santos, on the other hand...we were trying to be supportive and say, "Oh, that's so awful, what a bad experience," and he said, "No! It's funny. I started laughing." Only a dad would look at it that way.

Pics of the Morning Visits

Morning Visits

Today we visited three small companies.

Leche Aasada (cooked milk): This lady is 71 years old. She wakes up every morning in time to buy milk at the market. Apparently if you don't wake up and go first thing in the morning, you miss your chance to buy milk. She prepares her dessert to sell on the streets during the morning hours, goes to a bakery where she pays for use of their oven, and then walks the street selling her goods. She sells it nice and hot, right out of the oven. We met her father, who is still alive at a whoppin' 104 years of age.

Laundromat: Most of the laundromats we're used to in the states are full of coin-operated washer and dryers. Here, it's different. You drop your clothes off, and they will wash, dry, and fold them for you. Most laundromats here only have one washer and many of them will simply hang-dry your clothes. With the loan the owner bought three new machines to increase his capacity. He was super happy with a great smile.

Phone/internet: A lady in the ward who taught my sunday school class on sunday is about to open a place where people can come and use her phones for international or long-distance calls. She has rented a little place along a busy street and has little cubbies for the people to go into, but is waiting on the telephone company to put her line in before she starts. She thinks she will be successful because there aren't any other "locutorios" nearby.

We came home and wrote up suggestions for all of the individual companies we have visited so far. We will give these suggestions to Eagle Condor and they will work with the companies after we leave. Most of the individual suggestions relate to marketing and service. Although the truth is we have found that they don't keep track of their costs, and this is a real problem. They have no idea what the costs of the materials are, their profit margin of different items, etc. With the money they earn from selling their goods or services they pay all of their bills (both personal and business), feed themselves, and then buy more inventory/supplies. One suggestion we're going to make is that Eagle Condor does a training to teach them how to pay themselves a salary, and separate their personal money from their business income.

Tonight we're taking our little family out to pizza :) Yum.

My turn to write

It's Saturday evening. Danielle wasn't feeling well today so she went to bed really early and has been asleep now for about 4 hours. I went to the store with Margarita and Adrian to buy some gatarade and soda crackers for Ms. Danielle. Hopefully she'll be feeling better tomorrow.

In the meantime, I've been kickin' it solo in our little place for the past little while. I decided I should take advantage of this time and write a little about our experiences down here. This morning we decided we would spend the day as tourists. We visited Chan Chan which is a historical site with ancient ruins. We toured a palace that was built 800 A.D. It was pretty cool. Our tour guide was an archeologist and knew what he was talking about. I could tell he was used to speaking very simple spanish to all of the north americans that visit. I wasn't complaining, I was actually able to understand most of what he was saying. I'll post some pictures. After Chan Chan we went to a restaurant that a friend in the U.S. recommended to us, "The Chelsea." It was a nice restaurant, a nice place to relax and have a good lunch. I ordered salmon. Bad choice. It came out in thin slices of what looked like raw salmon. I automatically said to Danielle, 'I am NOT eating this.' Not that I'm a super picky eater, but let's be honest, I have my limits. I ordered another dish, and it was just great.

I won't go into detail about the inner-workings of my heart though this experience, but I'll just tell you that I am so happy I am able to be here. I think it is inevitable that when one leaves their comfort zone to "change the world" the truth is that the world changes them--an inevitable law. I hope that Danielle and I can share a little of our expertise with the people here; however, I am confident I will leave more affected by them than they could ever be affected by me.

Out and About

It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt...

...or until people get really, really tired and on the verge of cranky. The fun and games are definitely over. And the problem with the project that Heather and I are doing is that we live across the street (and a tiny little park) from Jenry, so he is at the office from the time he has breakfast till he goes to bed or goes home to spend time with Margarita and Adrian...which is good and bad. We are with him all the time, so it's like we are working all the time. We're constantly working on our projects unless we are running errands or having breakfast, lunch, or dinner with him and his family. It has left us feeling pretty tired. In fact, it is after 11 here and I think Heather is doing the go-to-bed routine. We still have tons to do and Jenry is in his office blasting Latin rock and working on his end of the month financial statements. We have a big meeting tomorrow with all our microempresarios and so there's a lot to do. Plus, since Heather and I are only here for three weeks total (and two weeks from tomorrow!!!!), there is so much to do all the time.

Yesterday we went and did visits in the morning. We went to visit three families and their small businesses. It was kind of like being on a mission except Heather and I were wearing jeans. We were just dropping by the businesses to see how things were going and to say hello. You cannot believe the poverty. We went to a place called Salaverry. It's an important port for exports in Peru, but even with that, it's basically completely rundown. It seems sort of like a shanty town. The buildings seem sort of thrown together with whatever materials they have--cement, wood, tin, plastic. It's amazing.

We stopped first at the home of an acuña maker. Acuñas are little rectangles that are really similar to peanut brittle. We went to visit the home of the man who makes them. He makes them in a room in his house designated for that purpose, but the whole house is so tiny that it seems sort of strange that it's even a home. It was basically a long dark hallway with a little bit of space off to the side here and there. He was very humble and had served as a bishop. His family was very kind and generous. They gave us each three acuñas to take with us, which was close to all the inventory they had at the time. When we tried to pay them, they wouldn't let us.

After that visit, we stopped by the stand of another business owner. The stand is one of many in a small marketplace. Everyone sells essentially the same thing from stand to stand. Heather and I are supposed to come up with suggestions for each business. We're sort of at a loss with this business, because what we want to tell them is, "Your business sucks and you need to revamp the whole thing because you can't expect to make a profit selling the exact same thing for the exact same price as the ten other stands next to you. You have no competitive advantage." It didn't help either that when we got there, their stand was closed and we had to call them on the cell phone to come open it. Um...sort of hard to make money when you don't open for business. This one is going to be a little difficult to work with.

Our third visit was to the home of a fisherman. He was out fishing. Always a good sign. We decided to walk down to the shore to see if we could find him. He wasn't there, because he was out on the ocean. We couldn't even see him or his boat from the shore. There was a man there offering to give all three of us a ride in his rowboat for five soles, so we went. It was fun to go around the bay and see the other boats up close, to be on the water, to watch Jenry get totally splashed by a wave...but mostly I was struck by how hard this man and so many others work. 5 soles is only about $1.60. You can buy shampoo for 9 soles, so...that's really nothing. It probably took him about 20-30 minutes to row us around. Being Peruvian, he was already dark, but the sun had bronzed him even more, he was thin with taut, defined muscles, and very kind.

After our little excursion to Salaverry, we returned to the main part of Trujillo to have lunch at the Silvas. After lunch, we worked on writing up reports on our morning visits, talked to Jenry about ideas for Eagle Condor, worked on presentation stuff. Heather worked really hard for hours on a presentation with a slideshow of a bunch of the microempresarios. It took forever and we still have more work to do on it.

We also went to the grocery store yesterday and bought a bunch of groceries for dinner so that Margarita could have a break. We made Chinese Chicken Salad and rice crispy treats. The Kellogg's rice crispies here are either chocolate or strawberry or you can used other puffed rice cereal that is vanilla flavored. That's what we went for...not the same. They don't have mandarin oranges here or water chestnuts so we had to leave those out of the salad (they do have ramen noodles if you can believe it). And they have great marshmallows and butter, but the rice crispies...interesting. All in all, it was still a great meal...if we do say so ourselves.

Well, Heather took a bunch of pictures from our visits and excursions yesterday, so I'll let her post those when she gets a chance. She already posted a picture of a little boy from Salaverry. He was so adorable. I gave him a cracker and he just stood there staring at it and us. He finally started eating it. The children here are so cute. I just wish I could stay and play with all of them and love all of them. They have hard lives ahead of them.

Heather and I have talked a lot about how the lives here are all the people know. They don't know any different, but at the same time...it's not an easy life. There's a lot of stress for people to just get by. At our first visit, this man who was once a bishop talked about how he would make 100 or so acuñas a week and then each day he would go into the main part of Trujillo and walk the streets as a street vendor calling out for people to buy his wares. He wouldn't return home until he had earned enough money to buy food for the evening. I don't care if that's all you've ever known. That ain't easy. If Peru has shown us anything, it's that we are ridiculously wealthy...and also that not all puffed rice is created equal.

Cute Little Guy