Hey Russia!....what’s goin’ on?

On September 1, 2009 I wrote my first post on this blog. This post is #387. I had a statistics counter program running in the background but never paid much attention to it and forgot about it some time ago. This last weekend I was cleaning out old photos and documents to free up space on the hard drive when I came across and old ‘favorites’ list, and there was the link to the statistics program. I clicked on it and was surprised that it recognized this computer and was still accumulating information.  I like numbers and did an analysis to see where the visitors are coming from. The top 10 countries have remained fairly consistent, except for Russia (click on the chart to enlarge it).

I can think of no reason why the sudden interest from Russia, unless it was the ‘Chiclayo…A spy Capital’ post about Nikita and James Bond, but probably not. If any of you Russian readers would care to enlighten me I would appreciate it. And by the way, Promesa Peru has never had a donation from Russia. We and PayPal will gladly accept Rubles. J

The Business side of Promesa Peru

Promesa Peru is a small charity focused on furthering education in the poorer areas of the Lambayeque Region. In the posts on this blog and on the Promesa Peru webpage we show photos and write about the village schools we visit and donate to. That’s the visible part of our organization. Behind the scenes is the business end.

We rely on donations to fund our activities. The people who donate to us rightfully expect us to use their money wisely, and that means doing our best to control the costs associated with purchasing and transporting donated items to schools often located in difficult to reach villages.

Transportation has historically been our holy grail. The ideal vehicle for our needs is either a medium sized truck or a full sized combi but both are too expensive to rent, costing $65 and more for use in adjacent districts, and at least three times that amount for remote districts. By using a combination of motos, taxis and combis we’ve been able to keep transport costs to about 8.5% of total project costs but frankly it’s a real pain. To illustrate…a typical trip to a Tùcume District village involves tying a whiteboard, storage shelves, teaching aids and whatever else to the top of a moto or taxi at our home. From here we go to the Chiclayo combi station that provides service to Tùcume, where we transfer the items to a combi, paying for the seats the items take up. In Tùcume we unload the combi at a moto station and reload everything in /on a moto. From there we go to the carpenter’s shop who hopefully has the tables and chairs ready, unload again and reload everything in a motocar. We need to hire a separate moto to transport me and Maribel, and finally we head for the village. If there is no motocar available we need a fleet of motos.

Hopefully, with the recent advent of our partnership with the Pronoei Education Management Unit of the Lambayeque Province that hassle is over. They have the means to transport our donated items to any village in the province. I said hopefully because we have yet to test the system.

Let me digress for a moment. To avoid repeatedly typing ‘Pronoei Education Management Unit of the Lambayeque Province’ we're going to start using an acronym...PEMU. I hope regular readers will remember it.

  

Purchasing items is the other facet of the operation. We have an Excel spreadsheet with all of our suppliers and current prices listed. On it is everything we typically purchase, from tables and chairs to uniforms to sweet bread for Chocolatadas. All we have to do is enter the quantity and current exchange rate and it gives us the cost in US dollars. That’s how we estimate the cost when we ask for donations. Keeping that list current takes time and diligence. Suppliers come and go and prices change.  Last week we learned that the 3 shelf storage shelves we always purchase for $24.42 were discontinued. A five shelf unit costs $38.16. The kids can’t even reach the top two shelves on a 5 shelf unit. We’re going to keep looking for 3 shelf units, but until we find them we’ll be paying $13.74 more per shelve.

When we picked up the tables and chairs for Tabacal last week the carpenter told us he was raising the price of chairs from 46 to 50 soles. That’s an increase of 8.7% or $1.18 per chair. Even at that price he is still the lowest priced carpenter we’ve found, but both Maribel and I feel the quality of his work has slipped and he’s missed a couple of completion dates. We need to give PEMU (that works pretty neat!) three days’ notice to schedule a truck so it’s important that the furniture is available when promised.

One option is Maribel’s former classmate supplying us with metal chairs manufactured in Lima. The cost per chair at the current exchange rate would be $18.07 delivered to our home, or $16.56 if 24 or more are purchased, as opposed to the new price of $15.03 from our present supplier. On a typical purchase of 16 chairs the total increase using the volume discount rate  would be $24.48 . That’s not too bad and there are several advantages. Quality would be consistent; the chairs are stackable requiring less space for storage and transport and they’re more durable than wood chairs. And assuming transport costs have been eliminated that savings would more than offset the increased cost. The disadvantage is we'll have chairs on hand that we don't need at the moment and money tied up in inventory. It’s an issue we have to make a decision on fairly quickly if we’re going to supply furniture to the school in Surupampa.

Anyway, the point of all this is that when we’re not in the field  there is still activity going on in the background. We’re never complacent when it comes to monitoring and controlling quality and costs. It’s not just that we feel a responsibility to our donors and ourselves; it’s also a fun challenge to see how cost effective we can be.

The Village of Tabacal Project is completed

It was two weeks ago that we first visited the pronoei in Tabacal. We had expected to deliver the donated items a week ago but the carpenter who builds the chairs and tables told us he was having a problem locating dry lumber. This morning everything was ready to go.

We chartered a motocar in Tucume to transport the items four miles to the path leading to the village. Motocars are handy for hauling small to medium size loads and they’re not very expensive. Motocar owners usually do a brisk business.

It’s a 20 minute walk from the road to the village and the only way to transport anything is to carry it. The kids carried the chairs while the adults handled the tables, storage shelves and whiteboard.

The wood chairs are sort of heavy and the kids needed several rest stops though I think some of those stops were to make a game out of sitting in the field in their new chairs.

The cost of this project was:

3 tables - $109.89

8 chairs – 108.09

1 storage shelf – 38.16

1 whiteboard – 45.76

Markers & erasers – 6.11

Toys & candy – 19.82

Transport – 27.86

Total - $355.69

The final cost was $41 over our estimate. Most of that was for toys, candy and erasers that I forgot to budget for. Also, we were told by our supplier that the 3 shelf storage shelf is no longer available. We purchased a 5 shelf unit for $38.16 – a 56% increase over the previous model.

The toys and candy are something we recently decided to include when we donate to pronoeis. The kids like their new furniture but they get really excited over a simple toy and candy. Maribel and I are paying for those items. I show them in the cost figures only for a complete record of the project cost.

The pronoei in Tabacal was another worthwhile project. Chris Raupe, Johany Glen-Webster University, and the Alice Cool Foundation made it happen. Please accept our thanks and the thanks of the teacher and kids of the pronoei Joyitas de Cristo.

About Mountain Villages

I’ve been in Peru for eight years. The sights and sounds that at first were so different from anything I’d known have faded into the background. I don’t see them anymore. I’ve become indifferent to sights that tourists spend a lot of money just to get a glimpse of on a ‘once in a lifetime’ vacation.

Back in the early 1960s when it was my time to be young and foolish I could never have imagined that someday I would be standing on an Andes mountain top in northern Peru, being welcomed to a tiny village by some of the poorest, friendliest people on earth and that they would invite me into their homes and share their food with me...fresh food that was grown or raised just outside their door.

Surupampa sits on a long narrow ridge running east-west. The houses to the left and right in the photo define the limits of travel north and south. Just a few feet beyond the houses is an abyss. The villagers joke that if you fall into the abyss on Monday you will arrive at the bottom in time for the weekend.  Electricity and lights came along with a rough road that connected Surupampa to other communities two years ago. No one in the village owns a vehicle. Some homes have radios. There are no televisions; the signal is too weak. The daily routine consists of getting up at sunrise, work in the fields, tend the animals, and go to bed by 8:00 pm. Perhaps once a month if there’s transportation available some people will go to a town ‘down below’ to sell or buy something, or maybe just get away for a while. They don’t blend in with the people ‘down below’. You can always recognize people from the mountains by their dress and mannerisms.

   

The story of Surupampa and its people is the story of thousands of villages in these mountains. Civilization is slowly starting to encompass them but for now they still occupy their own part of the world. I am just now beginning to know these people and to understand what they think and feel. Basic needs, beliefs and values are really no different than those of families occupying condos in Manhattan. It’s when you get beyond the basics, when things like social standing, wealth and appearances come into play that the differences are apparent.

Life in the mountains is a solitary, simple, hard existence. If you ask these folks if their life is a good life you’ll probably get the same answer I did…”We are accustomed to it”. I still haven’t decided if that was a yes or no.  

Above the Clouds Again in the Village of Surupampa

Surupampa was officially certified and recognized as a caserio (a community too small to be a village) in 2008. A road connecting the caserio to the rest of Peru was carved out of the mountainside in 2014. It is still being worked on. Previous to that it was a 7 hour walk to Motupe, the nearest town of any size. Surupampa is dead center in the photo (click on it). Surrounding the village are cultivated patches of wheat, corn, sugar cane and coffee. Further down the mountain where the land is a little more level there are vast tracts of papaya and mango trees.

It was the rich patches of soil and a perfect growing climate that brought people to the area. As mentioned earlier Surupampa officially began in 2008 but there were people planting crops here long before that. Some of the village residents are over 70 and were born in what was to become Surupampa.

To understand the people who live in these mountain villages it is necessary to remember that they have lived in virtual isolation for many years. They are friendly but shy and reserved with strangers. In the low-lying desert villages it is usually women who welcome us; tell us about their village and answer our questions. It is the complete opposite in Surupampa and Shita Loma where we visited last week. We saw the women only when saying goodbye.

This photo says much about the village and culture. Notice how they grouped themselves…with one exception women and men separate. The expressions, even on the kids showed their reservedness. The kids are dressed in their best clothing. You won’t find women wearing pants, even when working in the fields. In the background are fields of coffee, corn and wheat. Farming is all hand labor; there is no machinery up here. A pronoei/community hall is to the right.

The pronoei, Niño del Saber was started this year and has eight students. Anastacio Ventura (yellow shirt) is the teacher. Two kids were added just recently and with the new road providing access more families are coming. Fernando Vilcahuaman (red jacket) is the director of the pronoei education management unit for the Lambayeque province. He and his 17 coordinators are responsible for the 205 pronoeis in the province. He and the Salas district coordinator Maria Elena accompanied us on this trip. Maria visits every pronoei in her district once each month.

Having just started up the school has many needs. We’d like to provide:

3 tables - $109.89

12 chairs – 168.50

1 whiteboard – 42.74

2 storage shelves – 48.84

Erasers and markers – 7.63

Teaching aids – 100

Total - $477.60

One hundred dollars may sound like a lot for teaching aids, but this school has absolutely nothing. They need puzzles, coloring books, crayons, pencils, poster paper, glue, etc.

Notice there is no transport cost. The Management Education Unit in Lambayeque will transport donated items anywhere in the province at no cost to us. That is a tremendous savings and will make it financially possible for Promesa Peru to contribute to the needs of these isolated village schools.

As always, we’re going to need your help. Please visit the Promesa Peru webpage to contribute to this project. Thank you.

Above the Clouds in the Village of Shita Loma

It’s an adventure getting to Shita Loma, and frankly one that I don’t want to repeat again. We left Chiclayo at 6:30 AM, arriving at the city of Salas at 9:15 where we picked up Maria who is one of two pronoei coordinators in the Salas District.

From Salas we took a boulder strewn, deeply rutted dirt road that twisted its way upward into the mountains. At first our vision was obscured by clouds but when we broke through the cloud line we were greeted by some beautiful scenery though it was nearly impossible to take photos due to the violent motions of the truck. It was 45 minutes after leaving Salas that we arrived in Shita Bajo. That’s where the road stops and the climbing begins.

With young, fresh legs it would probably be a 45 minute climb to Shita Loma. It took us 2 hours. The path is covered with boulders, slippery mud, and deep ruts made by rain and burro traffic. Occasionally a mountain brook would be bubbling on either side of the path, and sometimes it became the path. That’s when we learned why Maria was wearing knee-high rubber boots. We were not and our tennis shoes took a beating.

At the time this photo was taken we were about half-way up. Shita Bajo, our starting point is below the orange butterfly.

The pronoei Estrella de Maria is located in one room of the second and only other house we saw. We were told there are 20 families in Shita Loma with houses scattered among the sugar cane and coffee fields that are the main sources of income. 

Dagoberto Rojas (blue shirt) has 9 students attending the one year old pronoei. The classroom is barren. Though there are only 20 families in the village, many of them are young and have one or two kids of pronoei age but because of space and equipment limitations most are not being schooled. The community has a plane to deal with that.

Like several of the villages we’ve visited recently, there is a building lot where the villagers plan to build a pronoei. They will make and erect adobe brick walls themselves, much as each of them did with their houses. They hope to have the walls up by October. What they need help with is corrugated metal for the roof, and a metal door and window. They have some donated chairs and tables that need repair and painting and have asked for our help with the expense of that.

We asked them to get costs for what they want, and in October when they have the walls erected we will try to help them. I asked how they will get from four to six large sheets of corrugated metal for the roof, and a large metal door up that mountain path. They told me that’s what all the burros we saw are used for. I’d like to see that but there is no way I’m going back up that mountain again.

Sitting on a log in the shade deliberately procrastinating about facing the path again I asked some of the men and women what their lives were like up in the clouds; what did they do during the days and nights, how often did they make the journey to Salas (once every Saturday) and was there a lot of visiting back and forth. Those are not normally questions you would ask a Peruvian so it took some time to get answers. My final question was, “Is it a good life up here?” They looked at each other with hesitant smiles, and finally one of them said, “We are accustomed to it.”  

The Invisible Village of Redondo

Somewhere around 90 miles north of Chiclayo; all of it on a decent asphalt highway is the small town of El Porvenir in the Olmos District. It took us 2 ½ hours to get that far. Public transportation would have added another hour. At El Porvenir there is a dirt road heading west toward the village of Redondo 15 miles away.

You need a guide to get there. We followed a guy on a motorcycle. There are no landmarks, and there are many forks in the road leading off in all directions. The country all looks the same; scrub desert growth. There is no agriculture here because there is no water. This is goat, sheep, turkey, and for some of the more affluent people, cattle country.

   

After 35 minutes the guide stopped and told us we were in Redondo. I thought he was joking. There was not one single house in sight. Other than a fence and a hut constructed of poles and weather-beaten fabric there was nothing visible that had been touched by the hand of man.

The hut is what we had been brought there to see. The hut is pronoei Alegria de Los Niños. It’s been there for one year with teacher Isabel Monja trying her best to teach the 9 kids regularly attending. 

She has absolutely nothing to work with. There are other kids in the area but they don’t come because of the limitations of the school. They’re not attending school at all.

In ones and twos from out of the woods a delegation of parents appeared. I don’t know how they knew we were there. They told us the same story we’re heard four times this year at other caserios. They have a lot to build a pronoei on but no money to do it and the authorities in Olmos say they don’t have money to build. One of the men works in construction in Olmos. He estimated that the cost of a concrete slab and modular building with restroom would cost $6,200. Labor would add another $1,550. That’s a lot of money.

It’s a helpless feeling…not being able to do anything for them. Those kids are not getting the kind of education they need and it’s nobody’s fault. Our discussion ended as it did in Olleria yesterday. A delegation will visit the mayor in Olmos to see if the district can contribute something if there were outside help. We’ll wait to hear from them.

Tomorrow we’ll be at the village of Chita Loma in the district of Salas. We don’t know what we’ll find there but it won’t surprise us if it’s another pronoei that needs a home.