Colleen's Five Talents Fellowship ~ Lima, Perú

Update!

2011-11-29T16:36:00.006-05:00

I can hardly believe that it has been three months since I arrived back to Arlington, VA! It has been awhile since I've posted, so I wanted to send out a little update so that you know that I am alive and kickin'! While being in a time of 'transition' and having more questions than answers can be unsettling, overall, I am doing really well and I feel blessed for all the ways God has been providing. The initial 'cultural shock' of being here has passed (meaning I can walk down the cereal aisle at Giant without getting overwhelmed) but I am still in the process of re-building my life here and figuring out my new niche in DC given my changed perspectives and attitudes.

I spent most of September seeing friends, family and donors and getting set up with a cell phone, health insurance, a temporary place to live etc. In October, I began work (part-time) with Five Talents and have been enjoying meeting with donors, continuing to work on some projects with ECLOF-Peru as well as get to know their other partners' programs through a spiritual transformation project that I am spearheading. My contract with Five Talents is just until the end of the year, so I've been doing a lot of job searching/networking and sending out applications for a full-time job come January 2012. I am hoping to continue to work in the area of entrepreneurship in Latin America; either on a policy/trade level with USAID, Commerce, IADB, World Bank etc. or on a grassroots level with a microfinance organization or NGO working with Latino populations in the DC area.

In addition to re-connecting with friends, one highlight from being back has been connecting with the Latino community here through various hispanic Christian ministries at Harvester Presbyterian, Alexandria Presbyterian, Truro and Casa Chirilagua. This week, I will also be starting to volunteer with the Hispanic Committee of Virginia and will be helping Latino entrepreneurs with their business plans. I can't wait to get involved!

I've been blessed by SO many people here who have helped make my transition a smooth one, but I want to mention a few who have been instrumental helping me re-adapt to DC life: Irene Yung for providing a place for me to stay and being my pop culture re-entry coach, Nina Neubauer for letting me borrow her car, Brad Lips for providing me with parking passes, Aldo Ortega and Marc Wachtenheim for being good friends when I am missing Peru, Julianna Hutchins and Kelley Cantrell for always being there if I need something, my Dad and brother for storing/bringing me my stuff, Suzanne Schultz and McKenzie Butler at Five Talents who have been 'my rock' for the past two years and absolute joys to work with, Bev Halberg for understanding my guy drama and to Sara Ortiz and Katherine Halvorson who just 'get it' because they have been in my shoes in the past. Thank you!

Your names are too numerous to mention here, but I want to extend a special thank you to each of you who have donated to help me during this time of transition. It can be scary to come back and not have a steady paycheck, but a lot of new expenses like health and car insurance and other start-up costs. Your donations have helped to ease my anxiety and really made me feel supported, so thank you!

Just to let you know, as of December 31, 2011, SAMS will no longer be accepting donations on my behalf. If you have any questions about your donations or account with SAMS, please let me know. Thank you to each of you for being so generous in supporting me with your financial donations, encouragement and prayers.

You're Invited!

2011-11-02T07:43:00.006-05:00

On Sunday, November 13, 2011 from 1:30-3:00pm, I'll be giving a presentation about my Five Talents fellowship at The Falls Church (Fellowship Hall). A chili lunch will be served.

To hear more about Peruvian microfinance and learn about Five Talents, please contact me so that I can reserve a seat for you! I hope to see you there! pare.

Reconnecting

2011-09-12T22:48:00.016-05:00

(My siblings!)

In addition to adjusting to the foods and culture, an important part of my readjustment process has been reconnecting with loved ones.

I just got back from a 10-day trip to Seattle to do just that! I went to college in Tacoma and my older sister and her husband moved to Seattle a couple of years ago, so I had a busy schedule visited family, friends and supporters.

The best part was that EVERY SINGLE DAY was sunny. Almost unheard of in the Pacific northwest.

All of my siblings came up for the weekend and we had a blast exploring Seattle and spending time together.

I rode my first sea plane to visit my dear friend Karly and her family at Lopez Island.

(Karly and Colleen)

(Exploring Lopez Island in a golf cart)

I got together with lots of friends from college and even took a tour of my alma mater (University of Puget Sound)! I shed a few tears walking by my old house and shocked a prof when I crashed his 9:30am International Political Economy course.

(My undergrad thesis advisor, Mike Veseth, and his wife, Sue)

(Cynthia and Colleen)

(My college bible study...minus one...we missed you Betsy!)

(Blakely and Colleen)

(Former college roomies!!)

(UPSers!)

The trip felt like my heart had come ‘home’ and it was such good fuel for my soul.

Next week, I am off to Colorado Springs for a post-field debrief and trainings with Mission Training International. I am really looking forward to sharing experiences with other missionaries and spending some time reflecting on my two years in Peru and discerning my next steps.

Readjusting to life in America

2011-09-12T22:20:00.003-05:00

I’ve been back for about two weeks now and there have been a lot of adjustments. My stomach is still trying to get used to new foods and my wallet to the high prices for a bag of groceries. (Ok, in my stomach’s defense, I have been doing a gastronomical tour of all my favorite restaurants since touching down in Arlington, VA).

The variety of products available and technological gadgets has been a bit of a shock to my system. What the heck are ‘Angry Birds’? Why would anyone pay $3.25 for a fancy cupcake? Do we really need Febreze added into our kitchen garbage bags? I couldn’t believe the variety of milk at the store…one even had omega-3 added into it! I am used to two main varieties: in a refrigerated bag or an unrefrigerated box. Yet, I do confess that I got a ‘go phone’ (no contract) that has a data plan included and it is pretty fun to check my email from anywhere! (I know, I am pretty behind the times…)

I do admit, while the consumerism does seem a bit over the top, it is still really fun to go to Target (they have groceries there now!!) and go into public restrooms and always fine a toilet (with a seat!) that flushes. I feel like I am in a five star hotel if they have soap, paper toilet covers and paper towels.

In addition to technology and new products on the shelves, the level of affluence here has made me a bit sick to my stomach. I look around and see a sea of people with beautiful suits, expensive wedding rings, cars with built-in DVD players and a $5 cup of Starbucks coffee in their hands. Not to mention, 24-hour convenience stores, (free!) public bathrooms everywhere, restaurants with gluten-free/low-fat etc. options and online websites that sell everything you could ever need with one click of a mouse. Our society caters to every single preference and people don’t seem to be in want of anything.

Oh and you can pay for everything with one swipe of your credit card...even street parking meters!

Most employed people have easy access to healthcare and medicines and children have the privilege of going to school each day opposed to out in the streets to beg for money or sell candy.

Some days, it has just felt like too much. Too affluent, too opulent. Most of the world DOES NOT live like this and this just seems too excessive and not sustainable in the long term. Yet for a lot of people here, this is their reality and they don’t realize how PRIVILEDGED they are to be living these lifestyles and enjoying so many creature comforts. My fear is that I will fall back into this culture and lose perspective and stop being grateful for what God has blessed me with.

I'm back in the US!

2011-08-27T19:38:00.004-05:00

Despite some air turbulence leaving Miami from Hurricane Irene, I arrived safely into Arlington, VA on Thursday afternoon. As I write this, I am currently bunkered down in my friend Irene's apartment in Crystal City as the hurricane hits Ocean City, MD and starts to head up north. They say that the worse will hit us between midnight and 5am. While a lot of people have lost power, I think that it will be mostly those living along the coast. Thanks to Irene (my friend, not the hurricane), I have plenty of candles and flashlights just in case!

While I will have more reflections on my transition back in future blogposts, I will say that it has been WONDERFUL to start re-connecting with friends and enjoy the creature comforts of life in the U.S.!

Oh my...the lights in my apartment are starting to flicker, so I had better sign off and go find that flashlight!

Saying Goodbye...

2011-08-27T18:34:00.020-05:00

My last week in Lima was full of 'despedidas' (goodbyes).

At work, we went out for a staff lunch at a Peruvian food buffet (Rustica) which allowed me to say goodbye to co-workers and a lot of my favorite foods. (Saying goodbye to 'ceviche' was the hardest.)

(The ladies of ECLOF!)

(Me and my co-worker, Alejandro, who always kept me laughing and with a smile on my face.)

I finished up a few things at the office and then my boss, Carlos, surprised me with some beautiful jewelry (with my name engraved on the back).

(The central ECLOF office in Pueblo Libre.)

(Inside the ECLOF office)

(Me with Carlos, ECLOF's executive director)

I also made the rounds to the shantytowns to say goodbye to the staff and our Lima south (Villa María del Triunfo) and Lima north (Independencia)

(Me with some Lima north staff)

(Me with office director, Rosario, and Alejandro)

There was also lots of goodbyes with friends.

(Me and Rosana)

(Eden and Colleen)

(Sara, Rusty and Colleen...my favorite Pueblo Libre neighbors!)

(Me and Fran)

(Me with my roomie, Katrina, and future roomie, Amanda)

(I loved our Jesús María apt!)

(Our empleada, Pilar, came all the way to the airport to say goodbye to me!)

I was blessed to meet such wonderful people during my time in Lima.

Belonging

2011-08-17T17:13:00.003-05:00

They say that coming back home can be harder than going to your country of service. Why? People have changed, the country has changed, I´ve changed. When I think about it, I´ve missed two years of pop culture, technological advancements and inside jokes. Friends have changed jobs, moved, gotten married or had kids.

Yes, there will be a wonderful ´honeymoon´ period filled with quality time with friends, family and double-ply toilet paper, but what is after that?

As a foreigner, Peru doesn´t feel quite like home, but I am not sure the U.S. will either. A lot about Peruvian culture fits me well. There is the obvious; the slow pace, super friendly people, affordable prices and amazing food. And then there is the not so obvious. I have loved ´who I have been´ while living here: open to new experiences, entrepreneurial in my ventures, receptive of new people and opportunities that come my way, willing to tackle fears and challenges and submerse myself in a foreign culture. I have loved making a direct impact in people´s lives in a meaningful way and engaging with people in a language and culture that is not my own. It has been invigorating, fulfilling and thrilling!

Going back to very affluent part of the U.S. that values status, power, connections and material possessions is a hard pill to swallow. When you work with people that have so little and in a place that has much more family/work life balance, it is hard to go back to such an extreme environment.

The good news is that I can take what I have learned here and find a place (in VA or somewhere else) that fits who I have become. I am excited to start this next chapter in my life and make decisions and engage in life with a different perspective. I have tons of ideas of what I want to do when I get back and I can´t wait to get started and see what the future holds.

A new adventure awaits...

Expectations

2011-08-17T16:43:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow is my last day at ECLOF-Peru. The following Thursday (Aug 25), I will be arrving back to VA. How do I feel about leaving? Bittersweet. I feel like my time here is done and I feel peace about leaving, but I am not sure I am ready to adjust back to American culture.

It seems like just yesterday that I arrive to Lima. It was July 8, 2009. I had never been to South America (much less Lima) and had no idea what was awaiting me. However my life had become so routine and predictable in Virginia and my desire to engage in economic development work overseas was so strong that I was so excited to be here. The challenge was daunting, but extremely thrilling.

Looking back, it has been an amazing two years.

I have pushed myself physically, emotionally and spiritually. I have hiked through Andean mountain passes where ipods don´t function and paddled down Amazonian rivers in hot jungle heat where mosquitos aren´t phased by deet. I have had the chance to be entrepreneurial, to work directly with poor entrepreneurs in Peru´s shantytowns and to develop new products and programs. I worked for a cause that I believed in with 100% of my heart and which perfectly intersected with my passions. I have survived a million cultural challenges…from Peruvian bureaucracy to crazy landlords. I have met people that have touched my heart deeply and which I will never forget. I have grown deeper in my relationship with Lord and my trust in Him.

Life has not always been comfortable, but it has felt authentic and vibrant.

Yet, if I am brutally honest with myself, I also came with a lot of expectations. Expectations of things I would accomplish, people I would meet, experiences that I would have, ways that I would grow and change. Some of them came to pass, but others didn´t. There is no more time to build new relationships, get involved in different activities or change my life here. What God set out for me has come to pass. Time is up. I have realized that while mourning living my life here and all the wonderful things it encompasses, I am also mourning what never came to pass.

My last month in Lima

2011-07-26T13:51:00.012-05:00

It hasn't really sunk in yet, but this is my last month in Lima. It has been a really busy time!

At work, I am preparing for an upcoming institutional rating, revamping our socio-economic indicators, working with Threads of Hope to place their first order with one of our clients, making arrangements for another volunteer to replace me and continuing discussions with the Anglican diocese of Peru to systematize our pastoral accompaniment trainings (see photo below).

Outside of work, it has been a special time to celebrate with friends (me with my roommate and friends during her birthday party at a discoteca)...

...and start saying goodbye to others. :(

Emotionally, it has been difficult trying to be 'present' here while also making plans for life back in the United States. I have been blessed with lots of support from loved ones back home including care packages with essential survival goodies like green chile to help me through my final stretch. (Green chile is like water for us New Mexicans!)

I wonder if green chile would go well with this supermarket special I just saw in the paper?

If you can't read the fine print, it is a cow lung. They cook up cow hearts here ("anticuchos"), so why not lung. I have stopped asking 'why' ....

Peru, I'm gonna miss you!!

I had a dream recently...

2011-07-11T15:34:00.000-05:00

...that I was eating popcorn. I do so frequently when I watch the TV show, ´Ace of Cakes´ with my roomie, Katrina, in the evenings. When I woke up the next morning, I panicked when I realized that, while dreaming, I had put an actual earplug in my mouth thinking it was a piece of popcorn. Luckily, I didn´t chew or swallow it. What if I had been dreaming of a eating a candy bar ...would I have taken a bite out of my cell phone? (mental note: take all sharp objects off bedside table).

I never did weird stuff like that in the U.S.

It got me thinking about other unusual stuff I have done while in Lima.

* I regularly buy my eggs at the gas station by my house.

* I keep extra 2 L bottles of water and a bucket in the kitchen in case our building decides to randomly shut off the water in the 6am-8am morning rush and I need to give myself a sponge bath.

* I buy unrefrigerated (non-powdered) milk.

* I re-use my plastic ziplock bags from the US because the ones here suck. (Big thank yous to Juli and Juan for keeping me supplied...).

* I shave my legs with men´s shaving cream because they don´t sell shaving cream for ladies. I don´t care if I smell like Old Spice, it is better than smelling like mold (and being hairy).

The other day, a Peruvian friend of mine, Irma, was telling me about a wedding she went to in Lima of a Peruvian-American couple. Knowing that their American and Peruvian guests have two different sense of time, they decided to send out two different invitations. To the Americans, they sent out an invitation that said that the wedding would start at 7pm. To the Peruvians, one that said it would start at 5pm. Genuis. (Despite being Peruvian, Irma is extremely punctual. She was on the ´Peruvian list´ and received the 5pm invite. She showed up at 5:05pm and the church was locked and there was not a single car in the parking lot. Oops. )

Ah, the unusual things you gotta do to make life work in Lima.

Why I DON´T drive in Lima

2011-07-06T16:56:00.003-05:00

People often ask me why I don´t drive in Lima. I think that this video speaks for itself. The images have not been edited, this is real folks!

Cause I´m leaving on a jet plane...

2011-06-21T15:17:00.009-05:00

Don´t know when I´ll be back again, Oh baby, I hate to go...

Exactly two months from today (August 25th), I will be boarding a plane in Lima and moving back to the U.S. I have been experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions as I start preparing for my departure. As I start to plan out my next steps, I have received a wide range of questions from friends and family. Where will you be living? Do you have a job lined up yet? Will your pet alpaca fit in your checked luggage? (Just kidding.) Are you bringing a hot Latin guy back with you? (For me or for them?) Will you be ´going blonde´ again?.... Some have answers, others don´t and no, I don´t think I´ll go blonde again.

I know that there will be a lot that I will miss about Peru; my friends, the priviledge to work at ECLOF Peru, the slower paced life, the food and the warm culture. However, there are 10 things in particularly that I am REALLY looking forward to once I get back to the U.S. (Of course, this is in addition to the obvious: friends, family, loved ones and white cheddar Pirate Booty popcorn).

1. Public bathrooms with toilet paper, paper towels, toilet seats and running water in the sink. Not to mention not having to worry about whether the toilets flush and whether there will be puddles of ´water´ on the floor.
2. Not having to pull out my air traffic controller flares to get the attention of waiters at restaurants.
3. Not being forced to play games of ´Twister´with strangers trying to get up and out of packed combis.
4. Wearing jewelry and skirts and maybe even dying my hair blonde again.
5. Starbucks runs before work and never having to drink instant Nescafe again.
6. Not having to wake up to the smell of fish flour in the mornings (aka. it is like a pile of dead fish is being dumped on my comforter every morning)
7. Silence....I think y´all know how I feel about the ice cream vendors here. Grrr...
8. Experiencing the four seasons. As much as I have loved not having to wear boots and gloves or carry an umbrella, the two weather choices (cloudy grey skies in the winter and hot sun in the summer) are getting a little old. I miss the autumn colors!
9. Not being bombarded with questions about my martial status or what I think of Peruvian food EVERY time I get into a cab.
10. Being able to throw TP in the toilet.

Yes, my list started and ended with things relating to a toilet, but those of you who have spent any time in South America will understand.

I love visitors!!!

2011-06-11T12:16:00.001-05:00

I love visitors! In the past two months, I have had six different sets of visitors. The staff at the hotel by my house where I put people up seriously think that I work for a travel agency. All the waiters at my favorite Peruvian restaurant, José Antonio´s, recognize me and I am sure that I am eligible for some sort of frequent visitor pass at the Circuito Mágico del Agua at the Parque de la Reserva. Hee hee. My cupboards are nice and stocked with all my favorite Trader Joe´s goodies and my heart is happy after seeing so many familiar faces and loved ones.

Last month (May), my dear friend, Irene, and her boyfriend, Arin, came to Peru and we traveled to Arequipa and Colca Canyon together. We had a blast!

In Arequipa, we visited ¨Juanita- the Ice Princess,¨ an Inca girl tightly wrapped in textiles who was ritually sacrificed and buried on the peak of Ampato mountain over 500 years ago. She was discovered in 1995 and it was very cool (and a little creepy) to see her body.

We took a stroll around the main plaza and the toured a beautiful monastery.

(I now know how I want to paint my future house some day!)

After touring Arequipa, we loaded on a bus and spent a day and a half in the Colca Canyon. We saw llamas, alpacas and tons of beautiful flowers and scenary. We also took a dip in some natural hot springs (no photos of that haha!)!!

It was beautiful. Irene and I are convinced that Colca Canyon is where the smurfs live. Don´t these look like Smurfette´s shoes??

One morning, we woke up at the crack of dawn one morning to drive out to see the condors. We saw about 10 of them!! They are so majestic! My bird-watching grandpa would have loved this...

If you get a chance to make it down south, I highly recommend Colca Canyon!

Five Talents Visit to Huancavelica

2011-06-09T10:38:00.027-05:00

Last week, the President/CEO of Five Talents, Craig Cole, came down to Peru to visit with ECLOF-Peru.

The trip went really well and it was re-energizing for all of us. We spent time at ECLOF´s central office in Pueblo Libre (where I am based) for a briefing on ECLOF-Peru´s current activities and plans for rural expansion. We visited clients in our southern Lima office and spent time at the Anglican diocese office to talk to Bishop Godfrey, Bishop Chapman and other diocesen representatives who have been involved in our spiritual trainings. It was a very productive meeting and resulted in some new ideas for how we can continue to work in partnership to acheive our common vision for holistic transformation in poor communities in Peru.

After our meetings in Lima, we made our way to Huancavelica. We left Lima on Thursday night and on an overnight bus to Huancayo. The curvy mountain roads and high altitude passes kept me from sleeping much, but at least the seats were comfortable and noone was snoring. From Huancayo, we stuffed five of us into a taxi for a 2.5 hour ride up and down mountain passes to Huancavelica.

Huancavelica is beautiful (I love the sierra!), but the high altitude and cold nights (no heating!) is always difficult for me.

Being in a rural environment, our clients in Huancavelica are much more affected by climate shifts (rain, frost, drought etc.) than our urban clients (Lima). Most of them have several income generating activities to sustain themselves during different cycles within the year. During the rainy season and times of frost, they depend on their textiles and weavings to support themselves. When it is time to harvest, they put their textiles aside and focus on cultivating and selling their agricultural and animal products (milk, cheese, grains, potatoes etc.) and of course, guinea pigs.

When we arrived to town, most of our clients were just finishing harvesting and so we were talking to them about starting a new loan cycle to provide them with funds to support their textile and hand-woven products. Below is a photo of us in a client meeting in Ucchus with the loan officer, Percy.

Our clients were eager to show off their products and were asking for help in identify new markets. Being isolated in a rural area, they have limited access to venues to sell their goods. Normally, they take them down to Huancavelica or Yauli to sell them at a local fair. Some clients will go to Lima to sell their goods, but not all of them have the resources to do so.

They decked me out in their products...hats, scarves, hair accessories. I think they were hoping that I would promote the products back in the US. In this photo, I felt a bit like a decorated alpaca.

Bishop Chapman really liked the designs and was placing an order for a customized stole.

While Craig understands some spanish, he doesn´t speak it, so I spent a lot of time translating. Below is a photo of a common scenario: the client speaking to Percy in quecha, Percy translating it to me in spanish and me translating it to Craig in english. It was like a complex version of the game, ´operator.´

We also spent some time traveling to some rural areas outside of Huancavelica city to view some potential areas for new rural office. One such area was Antacchocha where the communities are dispursed and there are not is not a single bank or microcredit lending organization present.

Before we left Huancavelica, we had lunch with the Huancavelica staff and celebrated the 23rd birthday of one of our loan officers, Sacha. They said that there is a tradition of smashing the birthday boy´s face into the cake after he blows out the candles. Nice form, Daisy.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was a bit nervous to travel to Huancavelica because we were going on election weekend and I was concerned about congested highways due to people traveling back home to vote and pre-election protests and road blockages. Luckily, we had no problems and made it there and back safe and sound …and on time!

For more reflections on the trip, check out Craig Cole´s blogpost.

Ollanta Humala wins Peru´s presidential election

2011-06-06T17:13:00.008-05:00

I arrived into Lima yesterday (Sunday June 5, 2011) at 6am after an overnight bus ride through the Andes up and down curvy mountain passes that ranged from 10,000 to 15,000 feet. At 15,000 ipods stop working and you find yourself gasping for breath. Not a fun feeling.

Election Day always falls on a Sunday here and so I was eager to get home to check out the news. Initial exit polls showed Humala in the lead and his supporters were gathered in the Plaza Dos de Mayo; decked out in red Gana Perú t-shirts, headbands and painted faces. They were dancing around, chanting and waving flags with excitement. Outside Hotel Bolívar, Keiko´s supporters were numerous in a sea of orange Fuerza 2011 paraphernalia, but much more subdued. Everyone was anxious to hear the results from ONPE (La Oficina Nacional de Procesos Electorales) which overseas the election process and tallies up the votes.

Aside from that, the streets were dead (at least by my house) and many small businesses were closed. A lot of people had to travel to the provinces to vote yesterday so they were taking the day off.

As of this afternoon (June 6, 2011), the results from ONPE show Ollanta Humala (Gana Perú) having won 51.4% of the votes and Keiko Fujimori (Fuerza 2011) with 48.6% of the votes. (A candidate needs over 50% to win.) Humala´s votes came predominately from the south, east and central part of the country while Keiko received her votes from the north of the country, Lima, as well as from Peruvians living overseas.

This afternoon Keiko acknowledged Humala´s win and wished him well as Peru´s new president. Rumor has it she will run again in 2016.

With such a tight election, I expected to see people out on the streets contesting it, but Peruvians that I have spoken with say that this probably would have been the case if Keiko would have won. While I am sensitive that to the fact that I am a visitor in Peru and it is not my place to say how I think Peru should run its country, I am nervous for its future. Peru has experienced an unprecedented amount of growth over the past 10 years and I am worried that the candidate that over half of the population voted for- a leftist, nationalist, populist, retired Army officer with ties to Chavez - will reject the current economic model that has driven this growth and will drive the country into a drastic U-turn.

Ollanta Humala will be sworn in on July 28 as 94th President of Peru and will serve a term of five years.

I´m home from Huancavelica !

2011-06-05T17:07:00.004-05:00

Over the past 2.5 days, I spent 24 hours in a bus, combi or taxi. Six of those hours included soaring up and down windy mountain roads in a taxi with 5 other people (including the driver). Being the smallest and shortest in the group, I was in the front seat with a Peruvian bishop sitting on my lap. I´m not kidding. Luckily, he was a small guy and didn´t weigh much. While he told me stories about living through terrorism in the 80s and 90s and the left side of my body fell into a deep sleep. And then we proceeded to dodge a horse, an alpaca and several sheep walking towards our front bumper. Being in the front seat, I shuddered as I thought about the fuzz burn I would have experienced had our driver not swerved in time. I thought that my paintball welt during a Monday morning during a meeting with my African colleagues years back was hard to explain, but hoof tracks on my face? Mmm. I was nervous about traveling to the provinces during election weekend (the second round of the presidential elections were on Sunday), but everything was calm and peaceful in Huancayo and Huancavelica. Aside from increased police checkpoints (nope, they didn´t say anything about the bishop smashing the gringa in the front seat), the highway traffic was normal and we made it back to Lima safe and sound. I´ll be writing more about my trip soon. Until then, stay tuned for my next blogpost about the presidential elections.

The things that make you go ´Hmmm...´

2011-05-23T12:39:00.013-05:00

I have been living in Lima for almost two years. There is a lot that I have come to really appreciate about the culture here and that I know that I will miss when I leave in August. However, there are still a lot of things that I will never understand.

Here are a few...

1. Why do they give you Halls cough drops instead of regular hard candies with your bill at a restaurant?

2. How it can be legal to make a left turn from the far right lane at an intersection?

3. Why-- instead of letting the stoplight do its job-- police officers stand in the middle of the intersection and direct traffic with glowing light sabers (red or pink)?

4. How can Peruvians stand eating rice EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.?

5. How can the sound of the horn from the D´Anafria ice cream guy biking down the street evoke such deep ´warm and fuzzy´ feelings to Peruvians? To me, it sounds like a duck dying. Screaming VERY loudly and then dying.

6. Why are they so obsessed with guinea pigs? OK, I admit that I have also developed a slightly unhealthy obsession with the furry creatures since moving here, but Peruvians have me beat. They eat them for dinner and put them on t-shirts. Recently, I learned that they also use their fuzzy faces to sell credit cards at banks...

...and promote candidates during elections.

Oh Peru, you gotta love this place...

ECLOF-Peru Launches New Insurance Product!

2011-05-23T12:00:00.008-05:00

The results from a client survey that I conducted last year showed a strong interest in insurance. After showing my boss, Carlos, the results of the survey, he tasked me with launching the new product. ECLOF-Peru has never offered insurance to its clients, so I was excited about the opportunity (and the challenge!) After many months of market research, talking to insurance companies and discussing operational procedures with the staff across our six offices, for the first time ever, earlier this year, we launched the product!

Unlike traditional insurance policies, the coverage of ´micro´ insurance is smaller and it is more inclusive in whom it covers. Payment options are structured to accommodate irregular cash flows.

The micro insurance policy that we are selling offers protection in the case of an accident.

There is not a strong tradition of insurance among low-income populations here, so our loan officers and staff have had to do a lot of work in educating them about the product and how it works. It has been quite a learning process trying to get all the bugs worked out, but I am working with some fantastic and dedicated folks here at ECLOF and so that has made the process easier for me.

I hope and pray that this new product will bless our clients by providing them with a resource to protect their families if they get into an accident. Since microinsurance is still fairly new to the microfinance sector, I am developing primers to share with Five Talents´ and ECLOF International´s partners so that they can introduce the product to their clients.

Congratulations to ECLOF-Peru for being a pioneer in introducing this fantastic new product!!

Women everywhere love chocolate!!

2011-05-23T11:47:00.005-05:00

One of the projects that I have been working on this year is to help the directors of our six offices to develop new client trainings. The trainings vary from business trainings on how to increase sales and develop accounting systems to more technical new product workshops on how to make yogurt or Christmas ornaments. We also offer personal development trainings on self-esteem, family relations, leadership and faith.

Here are some photos from a recent training in Juliaca on how to make chocolates. Yum!

After the trainings, each participant receives a certificate.

The latest on Peru´s presidental elections...

2011-05-11T15:24:00.000-05:00

The second round in Peru´s presidential elections will be taking place on June 5th. The race is between Ollanta Humala and Keiko Fujimori. Recent polls show Ollanta with a slight lead over Keiko. Many are nervous about his ties to Chavez and his nationalist rhetoric. A recent (May 10, 2011) WSJ article by Mary Anastasia O´Grady takes a closer look at Ollanta and the implications of his win on the future of Peru.

Peru: The Leftist Threat to Prosperity – by Mary Anastasia O’Grady

Presidential candidate Ollanta Humala’s party platform talks of nationalizing strategic ‘activities’ and ‘revising’ trade agreements.

If national socialist Ollanta Humala defeats center-right populist Keiko Fujimori in Peru’s presidential runoff election on June 5, Brazil’s Workers’ Party will deserve much of the credit. The implications for the region are alarming.

Mr. Humala is by no means a shoo-in. In the days just after his first-round victory with 30% of the vote, his numbers surged. But last week an Ipsos Apoyo poll showed his backing had dropped to 39% from 42%. Ms. Fujimori’s support rose to 38% from 36%. With 10% undecided, the race is now a statistical dead heat.

Even so Mr. Humala’s strong showing in a country with Peru’s improving economic profile requires an explanation. It can be found in Brazil.

The PT—as the Workers’ Party is known in Brazil because of its Portuguese initials—has spent more than two decades cultivating, organizing and orchestrating diverse sectors of Latin America’s extreme left. It is the founder of the São Paulo Forum, a conglomeration of nationalists, socialists and communists from around the region who, having watched the Berlin Wall come down, have banded together to work toward the revival of their totalitarian ideals.

Over the years fellow travelers have included Cuba, the Colombian terrorist group FARC and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. Now key party members are toiling behind the scenes in Peru to make Mr. Humala that country’s next president.

Peru is an urgent matter on the revolutionary radar screen because the circumstances for the poor there have been improving dramatically. Starting with the presidency of Keiko’s father, Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), successive governments have supported a more open economy and a stable currency. All sectors of society have benefited. Jaime de Althaus, Peruvian journalist and author of “The Capitalist Revolution in Peru” (2008, available in Spanish only), noted in an April 15 column in the Peruvian daily El Commercio that poverty has been cut in half in the last 20 years. He also observed that in the last decade income for the poorest Peruvians has gone up almost twice as fast as for the richest.

Corruption is one explanation for discontent with the status quo. Yet Mr. Humala hardly seems the antidote. As an army officer in 2000 he led a military uprising against Mr. Fujimori and claimed he did it because the president was dictatorial and corrupt. Others who were close to the situation doubt those lofty motives. One skeptic is Marco Miyashiro, who was a high-ranking national policeman at the time. In April he called the attempted coup of 2000 nothing but a “show” designed to create a distraction so that spy chief Vladimir Montesinos could slip out of the country to evade prosecution for misdeeds.

In 2005, Mr. Humala was the Peruvian military attaché to Korea when his brother Antauro tried another coup, this time against president Alejandro Toledo. From Seoul, Mr. Ollanta phoned in to a radio station in Lima to say that he supported his brother’s actions. Four policemen were killed.

This erratic and violent past is not the only problem. His party’s 198-page nationalist platform (dated December 2010) calls economic liberalism “predatory” and proposes to nationalize strategic “activities.” It says that “the exploitation [of natural resources], taken advantage of generally by a foreign economic minority, cannot continue.” It also pledges to “revise” free trade agreements that “oppose the exercise of our sovereign will.” In short, Mr. Humala dislikes the policies that have served Peru well in recent years.

Those views, along with Mr. Humala’s links to Hugo Chávez, meant that the candidate needed an image makeover if he hoped to get elected. Enter the PT. Acting on its advice, he now claims Brazilian PT president Lula da Silva as his role model.

The trouble is, wrote Peruvian journalist Enrique Chavez in the April 7 issue of the weekly Caretas, Mr. da Silva was not the one “designated” by the PT to advise Mr. Humala. That job, Mr. Chavez explained, belongs to Valter Pomar, a director of the São Paulo Forum and a man known as “hard left” inside the PT.

The journalist noted it was Mr. Pomar who appeared beside Mr. Humala early this year to pronounce the PT’s support for his candidacy. What is more, Mr. Pomar “was key in installing the ‘Brazilian command’ in the campaign, and offering important recommendations to purify the image of the comandante.” Mr. Humala now wears a tie, talks of “love” for Peru, and is photographed holding rosary beads.

So what does Mr. Pomar have in mind for Peru? Mr. Chavez cites a March 2010 interview with the “left-wing website Alerta Perú” in which the Brazilian laments that Venezuela has not had a real revolution. “Our countries continue suffering external interference and the resistance of local elites which are very powerful.” He continued: “In many countries we have not yet achieved victory: this is the case in Colombia, Mexico and of course Peru. If in those three countries, that are so important, there are no leftist, progressive or nationalist governments, there will not be a complete change.”

Peruvians are forewarned.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Visiting the 'Paris' of South America

2011-05-10T17:58:00.025-05:00

In the fall of 1997, I took my first Latin American politics class with Prof. Lear the University of Puget Sound. I vividly recall watching the movie, La historia oficial, about the people who disappeared (desaparecidos) during the "Dirty War" from 1970-1983. Fast forward to 2001 when I moved to DC and worked for 8 years with Argentines including Alejandro Chafuen of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. I went out on dates with Argentines, drank Argentine wine and enjoyed Argentine parilladas. A few months ago, I even took my first tango class (with a very handsome partner I may add!).

Well, on April 14th, I had the chance to finally go there! I was attending the regional meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in Buenos Aires to discuss "The Populist Challenge to Latin American Liberty."

My dad and brother, Marc, came down to explore the city with me!

I was absolutely enchanted by the city with its European feel and beautiful parks and cafes!

Here are some highlights from my visit to Buenos Aires...

Meeting Mario Vargas Llosa. He was one of the keynote speakers at the meetings and we had the opportunity to spend the day in the countryside with him the day after the conference.

Seeing traditional dancing. (My brother thought one of the dancers looked like Captain Morgan.)

Watching ´gauchos´ demonstrate their horseback riding skills.

Dancing with tango dancers in "Caminito," in the district of LaBoca.

Visting the Recoleta cementary where Evita is buried.

Touring the Casa Rosada and having my own ´Evita moment´ under the balcony where she addressed large crowds...

Walking around the Plaza de Mayo. Since 1977, Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have congregated with signs and pictures of desaparecidos, their children, who were subject to forced disappearance by the Argentine military in the Dirty War. After studying this extensively in college, it was pretty powerful for me to be there in person.

Visiting the excavation of the ´Athletic Club´ where thousands of alledged ´subversives´ were tortured and killed during the ´Dirty War.´

Eating beef and drinking red wine...yum!

Watching a ballet at the historic Teatro Colon.

And of course, being silly and enjoying a few days off with my family!

Peruvian culture hits small town America

2011-05-09T12:04:00.003-05:00

As I start thinking about transitioning back to the United States at the end of August, I often wonder what aspects of Peruvian culture I will carry with me and try to incorporate into my life in America.

PromPeru just released a promotional video that shows what happens when Peru´s culture is introduced into small town Peru, Nebraska. It features Javier Wong making ceviche in front of city hall, Gonzalo Torres starting a backyard Pachamanca and Dina Paucar leading a huayno jam session. It is great promotional piece to introduce people to the wonderful country of Peru. I laughed so hard that I was crying.

Those of you who have spent some time in Peru will appreciate it.

Celebrating with William and Kate!

2011-04-29T15:41:00.005-05:00

The ladies of the Anglican diocese of Peru got together for brunch this morning to share about our ministries. In honor of the Royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, our wonderful hostess, Polly, insisted that everyone wear a fancy hat! We viewed some clips of their vows while enjoying coffee and quishe. Of course, we gushed over Kate´s dress, the music and the beautiful church. Seriously, this stuff is like the Superbowl for ladies...too bad it only happens every 30 years. For my single gal pals, in case you haven´t googled it yet, there are still some eligible princes out there. Click here.

¿Dónde está el baño?

2011-04-28T16:17:00.008-05:00

We have all been there. You are on a long bus ride in a foreign country. You wash your hands with sanitizer, eat food that has been boiled or peeled, you stay away from ´mystery meats´ and stuff that looks like your childhood guinea pig, Fluffy. You think you are all good. You get on the bus and settling in for a night-time ride to your destination. As they close the doors, your tummy starts to gurgle and turn. More often that not, your bus does not come with servicios higiénicos or if they do they are for going ¨number 1¨ only.

Ah, travel sickness. I think most of you can relate.

I just got back from a fantastic trip to Argentina (photos and stories coming soon) with my Dad and brother and each of us had some tummy problems. I thought I would pass along a hilarious and helpful blogpost from my friends Audrey and Dan about how to handle those travel bugs.

For my globe-trekking friends, this is a useful read!

Check out their blogpost, ¨ Poo, Pills and Parasites: Around the World Travel Health Tips.¨

(Note: In case you are curious, the photo is a a eco-friendly toilet that I visited during a trip to Chincha to see the rebuilding efforts after the 2007 earthquake. Don't worry, I wasn't following some random girl into the bathroom. Honestly, I needed to justify keeping this photo in my iphoto for so many months so I'm using it in the post. Plus, given this topic, any other photo probably would have been something really gross and I don't want you guys to stop reading.)

Peru votes for President on Sunday!

2011-04-06T18:30:00.004-05:00

Despite living in Washington, D.C. for so many years, I wouldn’t describe myself as a political junkie. However, I had the opportunity to be there during the 2008 U.S. presidential elections and now I find myself in Lima during Peru´s presidential elections and I am absolutely soaking it up! Every lampost, wall and billboard are covered with political propaganda and the streets are filled with dancing guinea pigs, cars blaring music with campaigners hanging out the windows and people walking up and down the streets in t-shirts plastered with smiling faces of their candidates.

Peru´s general elections will be taking place this Sunday, April 10th, and Peruvians will be voting for their new president, 130 members of the Peruvian Congress as well as 5 members of the Andean Parliament. The winners will be sworn in on July 28, 2011. The winner of this election will become the 94th president of Peru and will rule the country for the next five years. Each candidate has his own Vice-president, and the future president will choose the Prime minister. It is very unlikely that a candidate will win more than 50 percent of votes in the first round, so a runoff will most likely be taking place between the two leading candidates on June 5^th.

Voting is mandatory here and if you don’t vote, you are fined. Beginning the Friday before Election Day until polls close, it is illegal to sell alcohol in public places. Public gatherings of any sort, including church services, are prohibited while the polls are open.

The Presidential election is very close and there are five candidates leading in the polls. The current front runner is the only left-winger in the race, Ollanta Humala, a retired army officer with ties to Hugo Chavez and very populistic rhetoric. Humala nearly won the 2006 presidential race on an ultranationalist platform endorsed by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. Three others candidates, Toledo, Kuczynski and Keiko, are tied for second place. Former Peruvian president (2001-2006), Alejandro Toledo has been hounded by accusations of substance abuse and scandals over a party lifestyle as well as his reluctance to recognize a daughter born outside marriage. Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a former World Bank economist and finance minister has been criticized for his dual U.S. and Peruvian citizenship. Kuczynski, also known as PPK, has caught my attention because he has a huge guinea pig (called ´cuy´ in spanish) as his mascot. The guinea pig goes by ´PPKuy´ and I´ve been dying to get a photo with it (with a fork and knife in my hand). Haha.

At 35, Keiko Fujimori is the youngest candidate and critics say her main aim is to secure a pardon for her father, the former President, Alberto Fujimori who is currently in jail for human rights violations committed during 1990-2000. The fifth candidate is Luis Castañeda, who served two terms as mayor of the Peruvian capital, Lima, from 2003-2010, and has been criticized for over-spending and infrastructure projects that were poorly executed.

My friends here tell me that the polls are not accurate predictors of who will end up winning the election, but that they do still cause significant ripples within the country. For example, Humala´s rise in the polls have been blamed for the largest fall in Peru´s currency since June 2009, the drop in the local stock market and significant jitters among foreign investors. Critics worry that if he wins, he will move Peru towards a more populist and authoritarian direction and reverse two decades of free-market policies that have contributed to Peru´s economic growth. If elected, Humala says that he will impose new taxes on the multinational mining companies operating in Peru (a key component to Peru´s economy) and renegotiate natural oil and gas contracts not to mention nationalizing the media. Yikes!!

I will be praying for the best for Sunday´s elections and will be anxiously waiting to see who makes it the second round.

Reflections on Poverty

2011-03-24T22:24:00.002-05:00

To read the full article, click here.

Remembering Guido...

2011-03-24T09:59:00.010-05:00

I am fascinated by entrepreneurship here. I see people selling the most random stuff. Until now, my favorite entrepreneur was the guy on the corner of Salaverry and Pershing who tried to sell me a wall-sized world map when I was out on a run. Where would I PUT the map? In my sock?. Oh and then there was the guy in Barranco who was walking around with a stack of books (I think that they were encyclopedias). Why anyone would choose to sell something so heavy?? That gave me a good chuckle.

However, this past week, I saw something that topped my list: a big random plastic ball. For the past few days, I have walked passed this gigantic ball that was being sold outside of a motorcycle shop across the street from my office. They bring it out every morning and then take it back in at night.

I knew you would ask, so I gave it a nice poke. It is squooshy, not hard. What the heck is it?!?!? I have no clue. It looks like something David Copperfield would try to escape from or a huge version of the plastic exercise ball that my college roomie, Cathy, would put her rat ¨Guido¨in when he needed a break from his cage. (If you are wondering why she had a pet rat, ¨Guido¨ was saved from an early death after her psych ´rat lab´ course).

Regardless of what it is, it is one of the many things that keeps me amused here. Maybe tomorrow, I´ll inquire about the going rate for the plastic ball.... maybe I could use it to do my ab exercises??

Tsunami in Lima

2011-03-14T13:42:00.015-05:00

Last Friday morning, I woke up at 6:45am and the air was thick with ocean smells. It reminded me of the early morning thick stench of the ´Tacoma aroma´ when I was a student at University of Puget Sound, but a bit ´fishier.´ I turned off the alarm on my phone and saw that there was a text from a friend saying that there had been a major earthquake in Japan.

When I got to work, the news of the earthquake was the buzz around the office. Shortly after I arrived, we received the news that Peru was under a tsunami warning.

There were alerts for ports all down the coast, including Talara, Pimentel, Chimbote and La Punta. Having received similiar alerts after the earthquake in Chile earlier this year, this was not my first tsunami warning. I live in Jesús María, which borders Magdalena del Mar and is a bit inland from the coast, so fortunately, I was not in any danger.

My co-worker, Rosi, however, lives near the port of Callao in the La Punta district. The local news said that the tsunami would reach La Punta sometime between 7-9pm on Friday evening. Rosi lives with her father who is very ill and not able to take care of himself and so before work, she took him to a relative´s house in Lima. She has lived in La Punta for years and is accustomed such warnings and knows all of the nearby shelters.

At 4pm that day, they closed off the major highway that passes by all the beaches from San Miguel to Chorrillos.

Rosi said that 90% of the residents of La Punta left their houses. As it turns out, the first waves of the tsunami ended up only being 25 centimeters (a quarter meter). There was water across the highway down the coast in Lima, but nothing major.

Rosi and her dad were able to return to their house shortly after midnight on Friday night.

While I am grateful that we were spared any tsunami damage here in Lima and Callao, my thoughts and prayers are going out to my friends in Japan and their countrymen who were not as fortunate.

A video tour of ECLOF´s work in Lima

2011-02-22T13:26:00.011-05:00

As I described in this post, being a loan officer is hard work. It is always one of the most important jobs in any microfinance organization as their performance determines whether a microfinance organization succeeds or fails. They are responsible for identifying clients, putting together healthy loan groups and making sure loans are paid back. If they put together poor-performing groups and give loans to clients how cannot pay them back, the organization’s portfolio suffers.

In the first few minutes of this video from ECLOF International, you can take a combi ride with ECLOF-Peru loan officer, Yesenia, as she visits a client in San Juan de Miraflores (Lima) and talks about the impact of ECLOF´s loans on its clients and their families. The video gives a nice introduction to the work of ECLOF-Peru and its parent organization, ECLOF International.

You can also view the video by clicking here.

Exporting Client Products!

2011-02-19T16:51:00.016-05:00

One part of my job that I love is assessing the needs of our clients and then identifying solutions to meet those needs. This requires me to be constantly come up with new ideas for products and services. (One thing that came out of these assessments was the need for microinsurance, which we are launching this month.)

When I´m talking to clients, I like to ask them about their hopes and dreams for their businesses so that I can get a sense of their vision for how they want to grow in their entrepreneurial pursuits. In addition to expanding their product base, one of the most common responses that I receive is a strong desire to export their products overseas. (I have a passion for international trade and commerce, so of course, I was thrilled with this response!) While not all of our clients have businesses mature enough to start exporting or products that are marketable in the U.S., some of them are well-positioned to take this next step.

As I started looking into exportation options, I was connected with an American NGO called Threads of Hope, which is already working with artisans in Lima through the Anglican diocese. They import handcrafted textiles to the U.S. and sell them through volunteers across the country. By utilizing volunteers, this allows them to send 90% of the proceeds from the sales to back to the artist in Peru.

The director of Threads of Hope, Cinde Rawn, and some of her colleagues spent a day visiting our clients last November in San Juan de Miraflores (Lima south). In the weeks that followed, we exchanged emails with a variety of different products from our six offices to see if there would be anything that may fit their product line.

Cinde was particularly interested in the work of Nelly (pictured below with her ECLOF loan officer, Leidy). Nelly has been making colorful ´arpilleras,´ (3-D embroidery) for 24 years.

Each piece that she makes tells a different story. This piece depicts Adam and Eve in the garden. You should be able to tell which one is Eve (haha).

Nelly also makes the cutest little children´s books. She has all of the American favorites including: The Three Bears, Three Little Pigs, Cinderella and The Ugly Duckling.

Here is one of the pages out of Goldilocks and the Three Bears (the bears and Goldilocks are stuck on with velcro so you can move them around).

Cinde asked Nelly to make some samples based on designs and color schemes that would sell well in the United States.

This past Saturday, I took the director of Threads of Hope, Cinde Rawn, and two of her colleagues to see Nelly again so that they could check out her samples.

Everyone was particularly impressed by Nelly´s creativity in the way she depicted the landscape in this piece and her use of color tones.

Beautiful huh? For my readers in the U.S., what do you think of the design and colors? Would you buy this?

I´ll keep you posted on how things progress with Nelly and Threads of Hope!

Drinking from a firehose!

2011-02-10T10:21:00.013-05:00

I´m back! The last few weeks have been so busy at the office that I have felt like I´ve been drinking from a firehose! Each day has been intense, but I haved loved feeling part of the team here and helping them achieve our ambitious 2011 goals.

The whirlwind started last month, when all the directors of our offices (Lima-southern cone, Lima-northern cone, Ayacucho, Juliaca, Puno and Huancavelica) came to our central office in Pueblo Libre (Lima) for some intense strategic planning to put together our 2011 operational plan. (See photo above) It is the middle of summer here and being squashed together in a small room for 5 days with only a few fans to keep us cool, I looked a bit like a drained rat at the end of each day!

I had the opportunity to present my strategic plan (yes, all in spanish!) for my area of responsibility, non financial services. I discussed business/spiritual trainings, exportation, microinsurance, social and spiritual impacts, client satisfaction and new product development, as well as how to improve our relationships and image with domestic and foreign partners. We ended up talking for 3 hours afterwards about how to work together to achieve these goals. One of the most challenging, but exciting parts of my job is that what I am doing is creating something from nothing; new products, new services, new measurements…I love it!!!

We also had some wonderful times of worship, a thought-provoking reflection from Bishop Godfrey and some very productive brainstorming sessions.

My boss, Carlos, asked me to consider staying at ECLOF-Peru through December to finish out our program cycle. My original plan was to stay through August, so I need to spend some time thinking about this decision. I will keep you posted!

Big Meetings this Week at ECLOF-PERU!

2011-01-16T21:14:00.005-05:00

This week, we will be having strategic planning meetings in Lima with representatives from all six of our offices to discuss our 2011 plan. On Wednesday, I will be presenting my strategic plan for my program (non-financial services) and will be covering my work in putting together new business and spiritual trainings, launching a new microinsurance product, helping our clients export their products overseas and developing new client satisfaction surveys and social indicator assessments. I am working with our two offices in Lima as well as our offices in the provinces (Huancavelica, Juliaca, Puno and Ayacucho) to roll out these new products and services, so I could use your prayers for productive meetings (and spanish fluency for me) with the directors of these offices while they are in town. This is all very exciting!

Ceviche recipe!

2011-01-15T09:59:00.000-05:00

It is summer time in Lima and one of my favorite things to do is go to Barranco or Chorillos and find a restaurant by the water and order a plate of ceviche and listen to the sound of the waves crashing on the shore!

Awhile back, my roommate, Katrina, invited her Peruvian chef friend, Luis Escudero, over to our apartment to teach her how to make ceviche. Eager to learn how to make one of my favorite Peruvian dishes, she invited me to join in (as you can see from the pics, my main contribution was cutting up a few limes and eating haha...)

Visit Katrina´s blog for a recipe and step-by-step guide for making ceviche!! Que rico!!

A Unique Approach to Microfinance: The Triple Bottom Line

2011-01-05T13:49:00.007-05:00

A recent New York Times article, suggests that the pursuit of profits by private microfinace organizations has created a financial crisis which is hurting the very people it was intended to help.

Five Talents International´s Craig Cole, responds to that article by highlighting another type of organization within the microfinance industry which, by focusing on a triple-bottom line, is having very positive impacts in the lives of poor entrepreneurs around the world.

Microcredit and the Triple Bottom Line

by Craig Cole on January 05, 2011

Sayani’s story is not rags to riches but, more importantly, from tragedy to a new life. She is now a confident wife, a mother of two and a businesswoman. She wasn’t like this before joining a Self Help Group that helped her secure a microcredit loan. Living on the island of Pulicat in South India, she and her family survived the terrifying and destructive Tsunami that swept away lives and livelihoods in December 2004. They had to start again with nothing, and it was Sayani who pulled the family together.

With her husband suffering from a stomach illness that eventually required five surgeries, Sayani received her first loan of $126, which she used to start her business – $51 to purchase firewood and $75 to buy rice. She sold door-to-door in her village and says she now has the confidence to face any challenge.

This is not the type of story of hope we are reading from some parts of India recently. Rather another type of tragedy has begun to sweep through the state of Andra Pradesh.

In a Nov. 17 article in the New York Times entitled “India Microcredit Faces Collapse From Defaults.” The author writes: “But microfinance in pursuit of profits has led some microcredit companies around the world to extend loans to poor villagers at exorbitant interest rates and without enough regard for their ability to repay. Some companies have more than doubled their revenues annually.”

There is a battle being waged between two quite distinct types of microfinance practitioners – those that are driven only by a profit motive versus those that are driven by the health and wellbeing of their clients. The realization that the poor are bankable and skilled at micro-business has made the most vulnerable in a society an investment opportunity. It’s quite amazing to witness those who used to think the poor were lazy, ignorant and with little worth, change their thinking within the last decade. The poor have finally been recognized for their talents and skills.

However, with this comes pressure at the grassroots level to concentrate strictly on financial returns leading to excesses that are giving microfinance a less than stellar reputation. Five Talents and other organizations like ours believe that the profits are best left to the families and the communities in which we serve. We seek to provide loan capital but just as important for women like Sayani we build both social and spiritual capital as well. This is called the triple bottom line.

Providing social and spiritual capital is a holistic approach to poverty that understands and addresses the web of lies and misconceptions that traps the poor living in destitute communities on 50 cents or $1 a day. The poor are trapped by geography, living in isolated areas, by lack of the basics like water, housing and services like education and health care. From a biblical worldview, they are also trapped by their lack of self-esteem, and feelings that no one loves them or cares for them. The poor are invisible even to themselves.

A Christian organization has a message of hope and reconciliation that breaks this terrible web of lies and misconceptions, thus liberating the poor and empowering them to see God’s vision for their lives.

At the same time a Christian organization must be professional in its approach. It has to ensure that there is strict financial accountability, good governance and expertise to run microcredit programs all while reaching the poorest families that can access capital. Commercial microfinance reaches a level of poor that is more akin to the lower middle class because they are better credit risks.

We like to take risks. We work in Sudan, Burundi and other areas that have suffered from conflict or natural disasters. We go where commercial microfinance fears to tread. We can also be innovative. For example, we are partnering with another organization in Sudan and Burundi to provide basic literacy training and then Five Talents provides the business training and savings and credit programs.

Five Talents and its overseas partners, including the Anglican church, has one primary focus; transformation of the whole person. Five Talents funding for microcredit and savings programs does not have a profit-motive for the organization or its board of directors. Instead, Five Talents inspires and trains the poor to start and sustain micro business that produce profits that are then used to further grow the business and invest in food, medical care and education for the family.

By providing additional services like business training, literacy, and leadership skills, lives are transformed. By linking with the local Anglican church, there is the opportunity to provide faith development including life skills and even peace and reconciliation workshops where the poor see there is hope in a loving God. The result of building social and spiritual capital is leadership, empowerment and the poor begin to feel God’s presence in their hearts instead of a God who is “in the skies somewhere.”

In short, as Christians, we don’t believe that a poor woman in India, Sudan or Peru is to be viewed as a mere financial transaction but as a human being with God-given abilities and skills.

Sayani’s family recovered from the Tsunami and their lives are better because they received loans, training as well as assistance from an organization established by the local church. Sayani’s daughter, Anushiya, was so inspired by her mother’s work that she wants to become a doctor to help those like her father.

They are beneficiaries of focusing on building financial, social and spiritual capital – the Triple Bottom Line.

How I spent NYE...

2011-01-03T11:31:00.017-05:00

Many years ago, a former colleague of mine, Romulo Lopez, told me that on New Year´s Eve in Ecuador, it is customary to take a spin around the block with an empty suitcase at midnight. It is suppose to bring you new travel opportunities and adventures in the year to come. A travel-lover myself, I thought that was a fantastic tradition and was thrilled to learn that they do the same in Peru.

Last year, I spent New Year´s Eve at the beach (a very popular way to ring in the New Year in Lima) and I completely forgot my suitcase.

This year, decked out in my new yellow undergarments (to bring good luck and happiness in the new year...no pictures, sorry!), I was ready.

Shortly before midnight, we went up to the roof and started the countdown: diez, nueve, ocho, siete, seis, cinco, cuatro, tres, dos, uno...¡Feliz año nuevo!

We launched fireworks from the roof, ate 12 grapes (making wishes with each one), toasted with fruity drinks and kissed each other on the check to welcome in the New Year.

Shortly after midnight, we ran downstairs, grabbed our suitcases and took off down the block.

As we ran down Calle Comandante Jimenez en Magdalena del Mar screaming with excitement, we came across several other people who also had their suitcases. It was hilarious and so much fun!

Other traditional Peruvian NYE customs include dressing up a large doll or effigy (sometimes stuffed with fireworks) with old clothes and burning it on the street. This signifies getting rid of the old, and making a new start. (We didn´t do that.)

We spent the rest of the evening playing games with yellow water balloons and teaching the Peruvians at the party how to play a very popular American card game called ´spoons.´

It was a great night and a fantastic start to the new year!

Feliz año nuevo 2011!

Christmas in Lima!

2010-12-26T19:15:00.027-05:00

My family is spread across the U.S. and is steadily increasing as my siblings get married and have kids, so it can be hard for us to get together. Our tradition is to get together twice a year; on Christmas and once during the summer. Whatever far off corner I have been during the rest of the year, I always make it home to Albuquerque, New Mexico for Christmas. This year, however, due to financial restraints (the joys of being a missionary), I was not able to justify the expense of a plane ticket back home to Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was my first Christmas away from home. So, this easiest reaction would be to throw a pity party, go find a wimpy looking Charlie brown Christmas tree and download ´Home Alone´ off itunes. But, that is not me!

Don´t get me wrong, I missed a lot about not being home. I missed our family tradition of eating tamales and posole with red chile for Christmas Eve dinner. I missed making cookies and dinner with my siblings and having long chats while sitting on the kitchen counters as they baked. I missed my brother´s homemade cinnamon roles, the ´Col and Marc cooking show´ and getting green chile bagels and mochas for breakfast with my sister Juli. I missed being woken up on Christmas morning by a dog tongue licking my face (ok, not really…) and my nephews and niece bouncing on me (or throwing stuffed animals) to try to wake up ´Aunt Col.´ I miss coming down the stairs to my Dad making breakfast (bacon yum!) on the stove and a fire in the fireplace. I missed playing games with my nephews and niece and laughing as the Rizzo the Rat in the Muppet´s Christmas Carol catches on fire. Light the lamp, not the rat, light the lamp, not the rat!

However, not being with my biological family, this Christmas helped me to see what it means to have a ´family in Christ´ and to celebrate Christ´s birth with other Christians here…American and Peruvian style! It was a very special and sweet time with the Lord for me and a time of growth and reflection that I couldn’t have had if I did my normal holiday routine.

For me, Christmas celebrations started on the 23^rd with a gift exchange and food with all the staff from ECLOF-Peru´s three Lima offices.

Each person had to describe their ´amigo secreto´whom they bought for and everyone had to guess who it was before they came up to receive their present.

On the morning of Christmas Eve morning, I went to a Lutheran church in San Juan de Lurigancho (in the shantytowns) where my Canadian friend, Fran, is a pastor. They had recently built their church (it is a very modest room built out of cement bricks with a tin roof) and it was such a joy to worship with them. There was a choir from Minnesota in town and they blessed us with their beautiful voices!

Afterwards, we served hot chocolate and panetón (a traditional holiday fruit bread) and gave gifts out to the kids. It was fun to share about our respective Christmas traditions and it was cracking me up to see the Peruvian teenagers exchanging emails with the young American gals with the hopes that they would ´Facebook friend´ them.

That evening, I went to a candlelight service at an English-speaking church with some American and Peruvian friends and it was neat to sing ´Silent Night´ while passing along the candlelight. It is exactly what we do at our church back in Albuquerque, so that helped to make Christmas Eve feel a bit more familiar.

Afterwards, I invited some friends to my apartment (on the 14^th floor with an amazing view of Lima) to have hot chocolate and panetón. Janet and I used chocolate bars like they do here, but added some marshmellows from Swiss mix.

Panetón...

While fireworks started at around 8:30pm (people shoot them from their balconies, from on the streets, wherever…), at midnight (until around 2am), it looked like the 4^th of July in the United States. There were fireworks going off everywhere and smoke filled the air. It was like nothing I had ever seen before and was absolutely incredible!

The next morning, I went to my friend Claire´s house and we had a traditional American Christmas morning for coffee, quiche, muffins etc and opened stockings. It was special because it was the first Xmas away for all of us and it doesn´t feel like Christmas without a lazy morning in comfy clothes!

That afternoon, I went to my friend Rosana´s house to celebrate with her family (and her relatives, there were close to 40 people there!) over what is called ´pachamanca.´ While pachamanca is a meal cooked by hot stones (sometimes underground) and can include chicken, guinea pig, pork, potatoes and yams.

It was so fun to see how Peruvians celebrate and I felt so included in her family (she is one of 10 kids!).

Before I dropped off to sleep that night, I was able to talk to some of my family back home and open presents in from of them over Skype. Honestly, I felt so blessed to have such a wonderful Christmas here in Lima and it is one that I will always treasure!

Restoring Relationships

2010-12-17T16:59:00.020-05:00

During this season of Advent, I have found myself reflected a lot on relationships. I am definitely one of those ´relational´ people. I need my downtime to catch up on episodes of Glee, but I feel the most joyful, fulfilled and purposeful when I am spending time with friends and investing in relationships. Maybe it is a ¨quadruplet thing¨ and a product of sharing a womb with three others. Who knows.

That being said, one of the hardest parts of my time in Peru has been to be away from good friends and learning how to develop relationships with people that think, act, speak and approach life in a way that is very different from me. While having the opportunity to assimilate into Peruvian culture has been one of the richest parts of my time here, some days I just need someone who can share a chuckle with me when one of my co-worker wears a sweater that makes him look like ´Mr. Rogers´ or who understands what I mean when I use the word ´wuzzle´ (linked here if you were deprived of this childhood memory) when describing an odd jungle animal that I saw in Puerto Maldonado.

However, after reading Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert in the book, When Helping Hurts, recently, I´ve been thinking about relationships in a different way and in the context of poverty alleviation. As a microfinance institute, it would be easy for ECLOF-Peru to just address the physical needs of it clients by providing loans so that they can grow their businesses and have a source of income. However, I´ve been learning that poverty is not just material deprivation, rather the brokenness of the foundational relationships; that is, with God, self, others and creation.

If that is poverty, then I am, like our clients, also in poverty. This is one thing we have in common. Pretty powerful, huh?

While I do believe that the simple act of providing loans to poor Peruvians so that they can develop their businesses and support their families shows God´s love and improves their earthy lives, I have seen how the restoration of relationships can have earthly and eternal impacts.

While it is God that restores relationships, I believe that He uses us as His ambassadors.

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. (2 Cor 5:18-20)

I have seen that restorative process manifested when women from broken homes find support and friendship in a loan group or a loan officer treats a client as more than just another loan recipient.

Part of my job here at ECLOF is to manage our spiritual trainings. Over the past year, we have piloted new curriculum on the topics of business planning, savings, sales and finance that is taught from the perspective of a biblical worldview. I am also working with Bishop Godfrey and Bishop Chapman to coordinate monthly spiritual reflections in 2011 for each office that will include a biblical reflection, the sacraments as well as a time of healing prayer. It has been a powerful experience to see how God has been using these client gatherings to transform the lives of our clients by giving them a sense of dignity, hope and identity. God is restoring lives.

God is revealing to me that despite our many differences, I do have a lot in common with our clients and it centers around HIM and restorative work. As I reflect on the last year, my heart is full of gratitude for the opportunity to spend my time building relationships and working with the poor through ECLOF-Peru. I see this work as not only my heart´s passion, but also a responsibility (Matt 25:31-46).

Each of you who have donated to support my work here in Lima this past year are also part of the work God is doing in the lives of ECLOF-Peru´s clients. I want to say a special THANK YOU for being such loyal donors and for loving the poor and heavy laden in Peru. I hope that you will consider continuing to donate in 2011.

May God's love and peace be with you this Christmas.

Thanksgiving Part II- Jungle-Style!

2010-11-29T15:54:00.045-05:00

My boss Carlos was kind enough to give me Thursday and Friday off for the Thanksgiving holiday and so I was able to join some friends who teach at an international school for a trip to Puerto Maldonado!

Puerto Maldonado. It sounds like a fun tropical resort doesn’t it? Tropical, yes. Resort, no. Fun, absolutely!

Puerto Maldonado is located in the southeast part of Peru on the Madre de Dios river. We flew from Lima to Cusco and then took a 35-minute flight to Puerto Maldonado. After a hour long boat ride and a 1.5 hour trek through the jungle and we arrived at our lodge.

The parents of our guide, Edston, (pictured above in the red shirt) runs the lodge on a natural preserve. We stayed in wooden A-frames in the heart of the jungle. Luckily, this time I slept on a bed and not directly on the floor last my last jungle trip and so I didn´t have to worry about creepy crawly things coming up from the floor board! Although, if you look closely, my sheets have Batman prints on them, which at night, looked like cockroaches! Why didn´t I get the floral sheets like Rosana? ha!

Being the end of the dry season, we didn´t have any rainstorms and the weather was very hot and humid. While I felt like I was in a sauna for most of the trip, it was amazing to see all of the colorful plants with the HUGE leaves!

In the mornings, we would wake up between 4:30-5am for walks through the jungle to look for birds and monkeys. (There was no electricity where we were, just a generator for a few hours while we were eating, so we were in bed by 10pm most nights).

Me attempting to be Jane of the Jungle...

Where is Tarzan?

Funky jungle growths...

On afternoon, we were low on water, so with Edston´s help, we knocked coconuts out of a tree, broke them open with a machete and drank the milk inside. Here is a picture of me hard at work with the machete...

Success!!!

After our coconut adventure, my friend Eden and I went off with Edston into the jungle to look for ‘suri’ for an afternoon jungle snack. Suri (larvae or grub) is a palm weevil commonly found in the jungle. Eden had eaten them before and said that they tasted like creme. Wanting to have a full jungle experience, I went for it. We cracked open the nuts (with machetes, of course. I love the jungle.) and it crawled out onto our hands.

As soon as it crawled out onto my hand, I started to rethink my ´Fear Factor´ish decision. (By this time, Eden had eaten two already and insisted that they tasted like creme.) Not knowing when I would be back to the jungle, I convinced Rosana to be my grub-eating buddy. After a quick ‘ 1, 2, 3…’ I popped it in.

Eeewww... It was so gross. I´m dying in this picture. As I was munching, I looked over to see that Rosana had chickened out and was still holding hers!! What happened to solidarity?? (She did eventually eat it.)

To escape the heat, in the afternoons, we watched monkeys jump between trees while lounging on hammocks in the shade and went for swims in the lake (which may or may not have had piranhas) to cool off.

My favorite day was when we climbed up a lookout tower and saw a beautiful view of the water.

And then watched the sunset (and ´heat´ lightning over the horizon) during an evening swim.

At night, we took canoes out onto the water and helped Edston hunt for fish and ´cayman´ (small alligators). OK, full disclosure our ´help´ consisted of singing, laughing, making ‘ Animal Planet’ videos and basically making his job harder. haha! (Although, Candice and I were on ´snake duty´ and checked the trees with our flashlights before arriving to the shore to make sure none fell on our heads. )

He would use his flashlight to locate a fish swimming near the surface of the water and then he would get really silent and still and then ´WHAP,´ he would chop its head off with his machete and throw the parts into the back of the canoe. It was awesome. In the distance, we could see sets of beaded red eyes looking at us...the cayman!!

He caught one and we all dared each other to hold it (I know, we are such girls! I just held its feet...I couldn´t bring myself to touch its slimy skin.)

Before heading to bed in the evenings, we had our guide do a sweep of our cabin with his flashlight to check for cockroaches, tarantulas and other crawly jungle things. Two of the nights, I slept with a bat hanging right over my bed! I was so surprised by how LOUD it was at night with all the animal noises.

So, did we actually celebrate Thanksgiving dinner while we were there? While the rice, plantains and chicken didn´t hold a candle to turkey, green bean casserole and stuffing, Eden (our amazing trip planner) made and carried a cheesecake all the way from Lima!! We had it on Thanksgiving evening and spent some time sharing what we were thankful for this year.

Never in a million years did I think I would be celebrating Thanksgiving in the jungle! Definitely on of my most memorable holidays yet!

A Peruvian Thanksgiving

2010-11-22T07:13:00.017-05:00

Since I´ll be in the jungle for Thanksgiving and my roommate will be returning to the U.S. for the holidays, we decided to celebrate Thanksgiving early this year.

Unfortunately, we couldn´t find everything that we needed to make a traditional Thanksgiving meal here in Lima, so we had to be a little creative. Cranberries aren´t sold here, so we used ´camu-camu´ (a fruit from the jungle) to make a sauce for the turkey. I couldn´t find crunchy onions to put on top of my greenbean casserole (there was no way I was going to make them), so I used ritz crackers instead.

This was the first Thanksgiving for many of our Peruvian guests and they were quite adventurous in trying foods such as green bean casserole, stuffing and pumpkin pie that sounded a bit odd to them. There was hardly any food left afterwards (and several went back for seconds), so we are taking that as a sign that they liked it!

Katrina, pictured above, and her tasty creations!

Nathan, Libby and I made the pisco sours for a pre-dinner ´brindis´ (toast)!

Tim tackling the bird.

Speaking of the bird, I was determined to show a Peruvian friend about the ´breaking the wish bone tradition.´ After spending 10 minutes digging through the bird looking for it, my American roommate came into the kitchen laughing because I had been digging around in the wrong end of the bird! Ugh! (I did NOT take a photo of this). Unfortunately, after a bit more searching, we found it, but it had already broken. So, I found another bone, called it the ´funny bone,´ and we broke it. I got the bigger piece. I´ll let you interpret what that means!

After the pie and coffee were served, my friend´s mother sang some traditional Peruvian ballads for us!

She sang with so much passion and we clapped with so much gusto that our building guard buzzed up to our apartment to wish us a ´happy birthday.´ Ha!

To all my American friends, have a wonderful Thanksgiving on Thursday! I am grateful for each of you.

Happy 24th Anniversary ECLOF-Peru!

2010-11-20T10:50:00.013-05:00

Last Friday, ECLOF-Peru´s celebrated its 24th anniversary! Staff from our three Lima offices got together in Independencia (the location of our Lima-North office) for a time of reflection and celebration. There was a slideshow of photos of the activities of ECLOF-Peru over the years and then a spiritual reflection by a pastor. The person with the most years at ECLOF, Rosi (10 years, from the central office, pictured below on the left) was asked to give a brief history of ECLOF and then Olga (director of credits, pictured below on the right) and Alejandro (director of finance, also pictured below) both stood up and gave some words of inspiration that I found deeply moving. After lunch, we blew out the candle on the cake... Gave out prizes in a ´sorteo´ (raffle)... Toasted ECLOF-Peru over pisco sours...

(Staff from the central Lima office)

and danced...

Congratulations to ECLOF-Peru for reaching this important milestone!

Being chased by machetes...

2010-11-15T18:41:00.023-05:00

OK, I´ve never actually been chased by someone with a machete, but I now I know people who have!

When were you chased by a man with a machete?

This was the topic of conversation over a breakfast of bean and egg burritos one morning during the Chalmers Center training in Chichicastenango, Guatemala. Several missionaries around the table shared their experiences in a very nonchalant way...as if they were discussing running out of gas while on the highway!

Um... yeah, this is not normal, folks!!! Can you pass the tortillas please?

As we sipped our tasty Guatemalan coffee and I inhaled as many tortillas as my tummy could handle, the conversation quickly turned to car-jackings, robberies on Guatemalan buses, being stalked and other horrible things that can happen while ´in country.´ (Don´t worry-knock on wood- none of this has happened to me!)

(A typical Guatemalan bus)

Wow, and I thought I had it rough in Lima! Honestly, I was so impressed by their courage, their sacrafice and their dedication to their ministries...despite the challenging (and often dangerous) living conditions.

During one of the coffee breaks, I met an Australian participant who had been living in a remote refugee village 10 hours from Chi-Chi for the past 11 years. He and his family were the only missionaries there and were running a school and ministering to the community. They didn´t have an electricity or much contact with the outside world. He hadn´t heard a new music for 5 years. After 11 years, they were still not full accepted in the community. Is that incredible? I could never do it! The depth of his faith and sacrifice for his work was humbling and inspiring.

Over the course of the week, we swaped more stories and worked in small groups, facilitated discussion groups, performed dramas and laughed…a lot!

(Pictured here is David from the Dominican Republic using a drama to show how savings groups and microfinance loans work.)

They main topics of the Chalmers Center CEDI training were:

+ foundations and principles of holistic ministry

+ principles and practices of christian microenterprise development

+ promoting church-based savings associations

+ partnering with microfinance institutions

+ training low-income people in small business principles.

(Me and Américo, the only other Peruvian in the group. We bonded quickly! There were also participants from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Honduras, Bolivia, Guatemala and Ecuador)

(After 9 days of wearing my jacket day and night (literally, I wore it to bed), I was so sick of it that I was ready to throw it into the fireplace!)

I learned a lot over the course of the training and met some wonderful new friends. Many times, I feel like the lone ranger as the only American missionary at my job at ECLOF, so being around other missionaries working in a similiar capacity was refreshing and rejuvenating!

(Pictured here is the Chalmers Center Global Fellowship of Trainings team who faciliated the training in Chi-Chi.)

Largest market in Central America!

2010-11-15T17:46:00.010-05:00

Every Thursday and Sunday throughout the year Chi-Chi holds an open air market, the largest of its kind in all of Guatemala and Central America -- and definitely the most colorful!!

Chi-Chi Boom Boom!

2010-11-15T13:45:00.005-05:00

Boom! Boom! BOOM! Snuggled under my blanket trying to stay warm in 40-degree weather (with no indoor heating) in my hotel room, I rolled over to look at the clock on my cell phone. 4:39am. What the heck was that noise? It was my third night in Chichicastenango (‘Chi-Chi’), Guatemala, and it sounded like canons were going off outside my room.

Little did I know that the sound of fireworks and loud booms (which we named ‘Chi-Chi Boom Booms’) would continue throughout the day and night during our 9-day stay in Chichicastenango.

Animism is very prevalent among Mayans in this part of Guatemala and the booms were part of their rituals ward of evil spirits. From the balcony of our conference room, we regularly saw smoke coming up from over the hills where shamans were making sacrifices to their gods. In the markets, you could find special candles (for wisdom, love etc.) as well as items for voodoo.

A Guatemalan participant told us that last May a major road was washed out by heavy rains and so the shamans thought that the gods must be mad at them. In response, they made several sacrifices, including a human sacrifice!

Throughout the week, as a group of Christian missionaries in a very spiritually hostile environment, we were all very aware of the spiritual warfare taking place against us and the numerous missionaries working in the surrounding villages. Many of us (including myself) had horrible nightmares. My nightmare was frightening and I woke up with a terrifying sense of ‘darkness’ and spent the next hour in prayer and reading scripture. ‘Spiritual warfare’ is something I hardly ever think about while in the U.S., but this past week it was very alive and it made our morning worship and bible studies all that more powerful and gave me a deeper sense of the importance and seriousness of the work Christians are doing in Chi-Chi.

Thanks for all of your prayers during my time in Guatemala!

“I’m sorry, senorita, we are going to have to call immigration in Lima.”

2010-11-15T08:43:00.003-05:00

Not the words you want to hear when trying to board a plane in Guatemala City.

Feeling energized after finishing up a training on Christian economic development and enjoying deep conversation and laughs with new friendships with other missionaries and pastors working in Latin America, I arrived to the Guatemala City airport on Saturday morning in good spirits.

I stepped up the Copa airlines check-in desk and after presenting my passport, the attendant tagged my bag and started printing out my boarding pass. As my mind starting wondering and thinking about the Subway sandwich I would enjoy before getting on the plane, he asked me for my return ticket back to the U.S. Huh? Having a valid visa to enter Peru, I didn’t think to bring a copy of my ticket back to the U.S.

What? I don’t have that!!, I said. I’m sorry, you need it to fly, he told me, and took my printed boarding passes off the counter and put them into a drawer and out of my reach.

Argh. So close.

My heart quickly sank. I take it for granted how easy it has been for me to travel in and around the Americas and checking in at Copa airlines was a reminder that I am a foreigner in a foreign land and they don’t have to let me out if they don’t want to!

Security is tight in Guatemala and according to the check-in attendant at Copa Airlines, I was legally required to provide the confirmation number of my ticket from Lima back to the United States.

Time was ticking away and the departure time for my flight was quickly approaching.

Thinking I had a ticket on either American or Spirit, I ran up to the Copa office with the check-in guy and tried to get into my Gmail account. Of course, Gmail was blocked on their computers (but not yahoo or hotmail, go figure!). I pulled out all of my tricks in trying to sweeten up the check-in guy (sharing how much I enjoyed his country, complimenting him on the friendliness of Guatemalans and how yummy the food is –all of which is all true) but he would not budge. Ugh, that ALWAYS works in Peru. OK, Plan B.

I went downstairs to try to find my flight on my colleague, Mark Bowers’ Blackberry, but he had to run to catch his flight. After unsuccessful attempts to log-into the Wi-fi in the food court, I returned to the ticket counter with my Ecuadorian colleague, Tannia, while mentally figuring out a Plan C if I missed my flight and had to find a place to stay in Guatemala City.

A great negotiator, Tannia (my hero!) explained to them that I had a valid visa to enter Peru and questioned why they needed my flight if Peru had already approved my re-entry into the country.

At that point, they called immigration in Lima. On a Saturday morning, I doubted anyone would pick up. Finally, after a long wait, they came back saying that the only reason they would let me on the plane was because I was a ‘volunteer.’ Whew. I was never so relived to get on a plane.

Upon arriving into Lima, they must have flagged my name, because I was drilled with questions at immigration. They wanted to know how long I had been in the country, where ECLOF was located, how many clients we have, the average size of the loan, what type of businesses they had etc. He seemed satisfied with my answers and stamped my passport. Whew.

On the cab ride home, a cab behind us (my drivers’ colleague) had its window broken into by a robber (a block from ECLOF’s office actually on La Marina and Sucre). Oh geez, could this day get any worse?

At around 11:30pm on Saturday, I finally reached my apartment and was so relieved to be back.

More on the training in Guatemala coming soon…

Chichicastenango, here I come!

2010-11-03T11:40:00.005-05:00

In the wee hours of the morning on Thursday (I have to leave for the airport at 2:30am!), I´ll be making my way to Chichicastenango, Guatemala! Nestled in the Guatemalan highlands, Chichicastenango is about 140 km (87 miles) northwest of Guatemala City and home to one of the most colorful native markets in North and Central America.

I will be participating in a Christian Economic Development Institute (CEDI) training with the Chalmers Center in Chichicastenango. The focus of this conference is to equip church and ministry leaders to minister to the poor through Christian microfinance and microenterprise development. The event will be in spanish and is being organized by Missions Frontier.

I am really excited for the training and to meet others working in Latin America (not to mention a bit of fresh mountain air and a break from the craziness of Lima!)

Stay tuned for more info when I return (November 13^th).

Magdaleña Market Treasures

2010-10-27T11:40:00.017-05:00

One of the things I love about Lima is all the little markets. You can find ANYTHING that you may need and at prices that are much lower than the supermarket. A few weeks ago, we hopped on the yellow bus #148 to the Magdaleña market (Galvez and Bolognesi, just west of Sucre). Huge corn (´choclo´) Freeze- dried potatoes (´chuño´) Eggs in a bag. I also saw random stuff like snails (not for eating, rather to use them as a special lotion). And of course, there is plenty of recently butchered meat hanging around in non-refrigerated counters with animal parts and blood all over (Hmm...sanitary...) My roommate went to get a chicken chopped up for arroz con pollo, so we found a butcher that was recommened by her co-worker (¨Go to the third stall on the left pass the big vegetable stand and you´ll see three young butchers.¨) In the ´meat´ section of the market, there were tons of butchers, so who knows if we found the right stall. When we walked up, one of the butchers was washing down the blood and guts on the stall wall, so I guess that was a good sign. I was curious to see how they chopped a chicken (yes, its head and feet where still on). I was OK when he chopped the head off and the feet. As he took out the innards (heart, lungs etc.), I started getting a little queasy. When a stray feather flew across the chopping board, I was ready to lose my cookies, so I wander around the rest of the market. (My roommate is from rural Minnesota, so she didn´t blink an eye at this. In fact, she saved the innards and put them in our freezer for Thanksgiving. I made a mental note to move my frozen chicken patties to another part of the refrig.) Unfortunately, the next thing I saw didn´t help with the queasiness. Cow stomachs (and other innards). Gross huh? Ah, Mercado Magdaleña, you never know what you are going to find!

Smokin´ Combis!

2010-10-14T11:42:00.006-05:00

I ride combis (small gutted-out vans) all the time. Folks that have come to visit me know that I am fascinated by them.

They are cheap (I pay $0.36 to get to work), numerous, and will pick you up and drop you off anywhere you want (legally, they are not supposed to, but…). I love that I can pay ´china´ (50 centavos, $.13) for short routes, like the short 5 minute ride from my office to Plaza San Miguel to grab lunch or pick up some groceries for dinner.

However, they can also be dangerous. They don’t follow traffic rules (ok, that is not just combis…), are hot spots for pickpockets and thieves, are so packed that you usually have to stand hunched over someone, barely coming to a rolling stop before they push you out, and usually smell like gasoline. (I took one on La Marina to the airport and it actually had smoke coming up from the floorboards!)

Think of Mr. Toad´s Wildride at Disneyland, except with pictures of saints or beloved family members on the dashboard and rosaries, fuzzy stuffed animals or flags hanging from the rearview mirror.

So, I´ve been trying to take more buses. However, (surprise surprise), there are no bus maps here. Living in Washington, D.C. for many years, I was spoiled by the web-based metro and bus transit information system (http://www.wmata.com/) that would tell me exactly how to get to my destination.

Luckily, after riding buses all across Lima, a Dutch ex-pat has recently put together a bus route map.

For my limeños friends and gringo visitors, a free low-resolution version is available at http://www.rutasrecomendables.com/blog/2010/09/high-res-map/. High-resolution versions are $5.

I took at look at the map and have found it to be useful. One of my favorite buses is called ´Alleluya.´ It takes me right to the office and the tickets come with bible verses printed on the back!

How to make perfect rice!

2010-10-14T11:27:00.009-05:00

You wouldn´t think so, but in the land of 2,500 varieties of potatoes, Peruvians really like rice. Most eat it once (if not twice) a day and it is an integral part of many popular dishes such as chaufa, arroz con pollo, seco de res and carapulcra.

My rice always comes out of my rice cooker super soggy or super crunchy, so I was eager to learn how Peruvians make it!

A few weekends ago, while learning how to make lomo saltado with my roommate, our cleaning lady, Pilar (pictured below), showed us a special trick! (It has nothing to do with avocados this time!)

According to Pilar, here is the recipe for perfect rice:

Start by putting a layer of vegetable oil and a dash of salt (a bit of garlic, if you like your rice peruvian-style) to the bottom of your rice maker. Wash your rice until the water comes out clear. Pour the rice into the rice maker and add water.

Here is the trick: To determine how much water to add, stick a fork in the rice. If the fork falls over, you must add more water. If you keep adding water and inserting a fork into the middle of the rice cooker, it will eventually stand on end when the rice-to-water combination is perfect!

Once you have added the water, put the lid on the rice cooker, and let it cook until it turns itself off. At this point, add about 1 1/2 tsp of oil (more or less) over the top of the rice, and slowly stir the rice with a fork. (Don’t mix the rice too much, or you will make it sticky)

We tried it out while making lomo saltado and it worked well for us! Yum!

Teaching Business Skills through Telenovelas!

2010-10-13T12:45:00.016-05:00

When they are not watching popular television shows such as Al Fondo Hay Sitio, El Gran Show or MagalyTeVe, Peruvians love watching ´telenovelas´ (soap operas). Whenever I turn them on, there is always someone crying over a sick relative/boyfriend/girlfriend/lover in a hospital bed and then some lover´s quarrel about an affair with fake tears streaming down heavily-made up faces.

However, yesterday, I saw a Peruvian telenovela that had a different message: how to balance roles as a wife, mother and small business owner. This telenovela was part of a 3 hour training called ´Proyecto Salta,´ whose aim was to train Peruvian female entrepreneurs in business development, communication, marketing and account while also addressing how to navigate work, personal and family issues.

In El Gran Salto: La historia de Vicky, una emprendedora como muchas, we followed the life of Peruvian entrepreneur ´Vicky,´ the owner of a bodega in La Victoria. Below is a trailer (in english). If you the english subtitles are cut off, click here for a link to the YouTube video.

Myself and staff (see picture below) from our Lima north (Independencia) office spent the evening in Los Olivos with hundreds of other women (and a few men) going through basic business skills exercises as well as sharing best practices, business dreams and lots of laughs!

Proyecto SALTA is a component of the umbrella project, “Strengthening Women Entrepreneurship in Perú,” which is a collaborative effort of Mibanco, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Australian government (via AusAID), Goldman Sachs (via their 10,000 women Initiative) and Thunderbird University (via their Thunderbird for Good program). I learned about this project last June via my connection with Thunderbird University.

It was inspiring and energizing to hear about the experiences of entrepreneurs working in the outskirts of Lima and their dreams for themselves and their families. I learned a lot of new (and fun!) ways to teach adults valuable skills that they can apply to their businesses and their personal lives. A great event indeed!

Step aside, Julia Child...

2010-10-06T09:43:00.012-05:00

In the movie ´Julie & Julia,´ Julie Powell (Amy Adams), inspired by Julia Child (Meryl Streep), embarks on a year-long quest to make all 524 recipes from Child´s "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

After seeing the movie a couple of weeks ago, my roommate and fantastic cook, Katrina (who carries an American passport, but is 100% Peruana), was inspired to do the same…Peruvian style!

Each weekend (with the help of her Peruvian boyfriend and sous-chef, Oswaldo), she will be trying out a new Peruvian dish; beginning with the easiest dishes and gradually tackling the more complicated recipes. Here first creation was causa rellena con atun (a tuna potato dish).

Oswaldo and I were taste testers. Yum! Next Saturday is lomo saltado. Did I luck out with this roommate or what?

After cooking the dish, she had half an avocado (palta) leftover. In Peru, they say if you cut open the avocado, remove the pit, and place the pit in a glass of cold tap water, the avocado won´t turn brown.

We didn´t believe it, so we put it to the test.

We left the avocado in a tupperware on the kitchen counter and didn’t put anything on it (no lime/lemon juice, salt or anything else commonly used to preserve the green color of the avocado).

Saturday Afternoon 3:30pm

Saturday at 8pm (4.5 hours later)

The next morning, Sunday at 10:30am.

Sunday 3:30pm (exactly 24 hours later)

It worked! Anyone want to try it from the U.S. with American avocados? Let me know if it works!

This weekend: no booze, no guns, no church...

2010-09-30T11:37:00.018-05:00

Yup, no sipping pisco sours in Larcomar or carrying weapons (not that I do that anyway...)

Oh and I and can forget about any bible-thumping at church on Sunday also.

Why? Because it is election time in Peru.

On Sunday, millions of Peruvians across the country will be going to the polls to vote in Peru´s regional and municipal elections.

To ensure smooth elections, in advance of the voting, several restrictions and bans have been put into place.

No Booze: Starting mid-day today (October 1) through noon on Monday (October 4) the sale of alcohol beverages is prohibited. Under the ´ Ley Seca´ establishments that sell booze during this period will be slapped with a fine of up to 1,650 soles (approx. $592 USD). My understanding is that bars and clubs have been closed to prevent any election disruptions and to keep people sober and ´clear minded´ for when they go to the polls.

No Public Meetings: Starting this morning, any public meetings of a political nature are prohibited. Tomorrow, all types of political propaganda must be suspended.

No Guns: Voters are prohibited from carry arms beginning tomorrow through noon on Tuesday (October 5).

No Religious Events: While the polls are open on Sunday, religious events are prohibited.

No Bathing: Just kidding.

Oh and if you don´t vote, you are fined.

Good times…

The weeks leading up to Sunday´s election have been...well... loud and chaotic.

You know it is election season in Peru when the number of public works projects (obras) increases so much that traffic comes to a virtual standstill. Nearly every block has been torn up by construction projects. Not uncommon during election times, visible projects—like the construction of an electric train and bus system in Lima—are displays of what the government has done for its people, and are often used as a form of propaganda by candidates running in incumbent seats. Closely following the Latin American tradition of populismo, incumbent candidates appeal to the masses through these obras.

And then there is the party propoganda...it is everywhere! Practically every street corner has a huge sign with the smiling face of the candidate with their party symbol prominently displaced. Over the past couple of months, Lima's neighborhoods have been crawling with people dressed up in political party garb handing out propaganda and the streets have been cluddered with caravans of cars blaring music and parades with people campaigning over loud speakers.

Here in Lima, the race for mayor is led decisively by two candidates, Susana Villarán of the Fuerza Social (below on the left) and Lourdes Flores (below on the right) of the Partido Popular Cristiano, PPC.

While, obviously, I am not eligible to vote in the elections on Sunday, after living and breathing politics in Washington, D.C. for eight years, I find it fascinating to be an observer and to see how politics play out in Latin America. This is just a taste...Presidential elections take place next April 10th!

Father of Microfinance, Muhammad Yunus, Visits Peru!

2010-09-28T10:51:00.010-05:00

Yesterday, my boss and I went to the Centro Comercial Plaza Norte in Independencia (at the base of Lima´s shanty towns) to hear Muhammad Yunus speak. A Bangladeshi bank, economist and founder of Grameen Bank, Yunus pioneered microcredit, the innovative banking program that provides poor people––mainly women––with small loans they use to launch businesses and lift their families out of poverty. In 2006, Yunus and the bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.¨

The event was supposed to begun at 2pm, but at 1:55pm, there were still thousands of people in line to get through security and event staff were still setting up the stage and the screens. A little after 2pm, music began and there were dancers and performers on stilts handing out promotional materials.

Around 3:15pm, one of the TV screen stands fell down. Luckily, there was only one minor injury (one of the performers on stilts...what a loonnngg way to fall).

At 4pm, Dr.Yunus and former Peruvian president, Alejandro Toledo, arrived.

They were accompanied by other leaders in the microfinance field from banks and leading microfinance institutions. There were 5,000 people in the audience, including a former president of Guatemala.

In his talk, Yunus described how when he started Grameen, he had no intention of focusing on women´s issues. Rather, he was protesting against the banks that did not offer loans to women (less than 1% of bank loans were to women). In the beginning, he distributed the loans equally amount men and women. However, he quickly discovered that women were better stewards of the money than the men. The women were using their earnings to provide for their children and to build better futures for their families. He changed his policies and now the bank works predominantly with women (97% of its loans are to women).

The Grameen Bank currently has 8.30 million loans recipients and since its inception, has disbursed US $ 9.67 billion in loans.

The children of the loan recipients are being educated and many have received education loans from the Grameen Bank. Yet, they complain about the lack of jobs in the Bangladesh. Yunus has been encouraging them to be job creators instead of job seekers and to learn from experience of their mothers and start businesses.

He ended his talk by encouraging entrepreneurs in the audience by saying that they have the same talents and capabilities as others, they just need for them to be realized.

Quick Facts about Grameen Bank

Began in the village of Jobra, Bangladesh, in 1976.
In 1983, it was transformed into a formal bank under a special law passed for its creation.
It is owned by the poor borrowers of the bank who are mostly women.
Borrowers of Grameen Bank at present own 95 percent of the total equity of the bank. The remaining 5 per cent is owned by the government.
Total number of borrowers is 8.30 million, 97 % of them are women.
Grameen Bank has 2,564 branches. It works in 81,371 villages.
Total amount of loan disbursed by Grameen Bank, since inception, is US $ 9.67 billion. Out of this, US $ 8.57 billion has been repaid. Current amount of outstanding loans stands at US $ 909.64 million.

Eating Ceviche with President Alan Garcia!

2010-09-13T17:26:00.021-05:00

Ok, so we didn't actually share a plate of ceviche with Peru's president, but we were at the same place on Saturday, Mistura 2010! Mistura is the largest food festival on the continent and this year´s event attracted 200,000 people and featured traditional food from across the country. Thanks to my friend Becca Waskey´s co-worker, we were able to get tickets to the sold-out event!! (Becca and I used to work togther at Atlas and she was in Lima on business with her company, Microrate).

It was held at Parque de la Exposición and featured some of the best chefs in Peru and around the world, including Gastón Acurio.

We ate, danced and met vendors from across the country selling exotic foods, coffee, pisco, herbal remedies and our favorite…aguaje popsicles from the Amazon (yum!)

Eating..

A pig in a pot dancing…

Unfortunately, the fun and games didn't last for long for Pig.

Pig roasted...

And Pig flattened...

Poor Pig.

Gringas dancing…(Can you spot us?)

A very tall 'lady' with skinny legs celebrating along with us…(She almost accidently took me out with her bum because she couldn´t see me...it was hilarious!)

Parades...

We also walked by an exhibit displaying 450 of the 2,500 varieties of potatoes in Peru.

Mmm tasty...

This year, they also had a tent highlighting some of the best chocolate candy makers in the nation! Photos of this have not been included so as to not make you jealous of the tasty chocolates we consumed. (Did I mention that there was a chocolate fountain and chocolate covered strawberries?)

According to El Comercio, over the course of the six-day fair, 220,000 plates were served (including 30,000 portions of pig and 13 tons of potatoes!).

We definitely ate our fair share and seven hours after arriving to the festival, we rolled ourselves into a cab with some really happy bellies!

My first speaking engagement in spanish!

2010-09-10T10:41:00.013-05:00

I must say, my time in Lima continues to be filled with unexpected opportunities to stretch myself and grow in ways that I could not do in the United States.

Last Wednesday night, I had one of those opportunities: giving a 40 minute presentation at a business conference at a major university in Lima…all in spanish!

How did this come about?

Well, on May 3, 2010, as part of a Five Talents visit to Lima, Craig Cole, Jeff Johnson and I met with Fernando A. D´Alessio and Percy Marquina Feldman of CENTRUM Centro de Negocios at the Universidad de Católica. Jeff, an active alumnus of George Mason University (Arlington, VA) whose business school has a growing strategic partnership with CENTRUM, brokered this meeting. Having also attended GMU (MA, International Commerce and Policy ´07), I was eager to learn more about this connection and learn about the work of the center in the area of Peruvian microfinance and entrepreneurship.

This meeting resulted in an invitation to speak at their upcoming four day conference discussing the challenges facing businesses in Latin America and new trends in business management and entrepreneurship.

The event attracted hundreds of business students and leaders from across Perú.

I shared a panel with three others and I spoke on the topic of corporate social responsibility and sustainability as it related to low-income entrepreneurs (highlighting ECLOF-Perú clients, of course!). I spoke for 40 minutes and had some good questions afterwards regarding interest rates, regional areas of focus for ECLOF and competition among microfinance entities in Perú.

Being my first professional speaking engagement in Spanish, I was nervous when I arrived to CENTRUM, but felt at ease and comfortable once it was my time to speak. Praise God for that!

Looks like all of those 8am Spanish classes during my freshman year at the University of Puget Sound are paying off!

I appreciate all of your prayers and encouragement as I prepared for this event and a big thanks to Jeff Johnson for connecting me with CENTRUM!