After breakfast, the four of us started hiking for the bus to the Maldonado home. Providentially, Chris saw someone on the street, another artisan, whom he knew. Carlos was pleased to drive us to our destination, and on the way, Chris was able to discuss a packing problem that Carlos had with the "Panama" hats he makes.
I'll just remind you of the hats' interesting story. They are--and have always been--made in Ecuador. The grass, pajatoquilla (PA-ha-toe-KEE-ya), grows near the western coast of Ecuador. When the international team of scientists came here to map the exact location of the equator, they bought the hats and some of them later went to Panama to help build the Canal. Others bought them as they were very useful in the hot sun, and people assumed the hats they saw had come from Panama. (Another version is that Teddy Roosevelt saw the Canal workers wearing them and mislabeled them Panama hats.)
Whatever really happened, Minga sells hundreds of these nearly indestructible and quite fashionable straw hats made by Carlos and his team. Carlos and Chris spent the ride up into the countryside discussing packing options.
We arrived at the home of Luis and Maria Maldonado, were warmly greeted by them and a very young couple, their daughter Alicia and husband Oscar and their small child. It seems that the five of them live in this house with perhaps some others who were introduced as visiting or not introduced at all. Maria invited us into her home and found four kindergarten size stools for us to occupy while Luis and she related their story. They have been knitting sweaters for dogs for about 18 years. The designs are their own. Fifteen years ago, they approached a U.S. company which began marketing their designs in the U.S. and beyond. All went well for several years until their go-between's brother died. This necessitated his moving out of the area, and they had to find another interpreter. They both speak Quichua and limited Spanish.
A couple from the U.S. approached them and signed them up to make the sweaters for another company (to remain nameless). The couple's names were D and L. The abuses began then. First of all, they never had a contract with this company. The Maldonados would fulfill an order and then wait up to four weeks for payment. When we met with them, they were desperate. They had not been paid since they delivered their last order to D and L's company which was June, 2014--seven months! They had not received any further orders. Furthermore, D and L were patenting for themselves the designs the Maldonados had worked on for many months. They were nearly in tears telling this story and it obviously brought them down to recall it. The poverty of our surroundings began to make sense to us. They had next to no furniture, the room we met in had no light bulb until Chris borrowed one from the main room. Romel told us they had said to him they would have to go looking for work tomorrow, as they had next to nothing left. The walls were rough cinder block, the floor bare cement, with only two grass mats at the door to keep out the mud.
After a while of talking, the daughter demonstrated using a spinning wheel and yarn frame standing just inside the front door to demonstrate how she wound a handful of yarn onto a spool. It gave me such a strange feeling to see the exact same equipment and process I had seen with silk in Laos and cotton in Guatemala!
They invited Vincent to come in and take photos of their workshop. It nearly broke his heart, and mine, too, when I heard about it. It was a small room with several hand knitting machines such as we had seen used to make the pieces for the animal hats. There was no yarn at all in the room, no supplies, completely empty except for the machines.
While this was going on, Chris was talking to Luis about how to get going in production again. They belong to a neighborhood co-op that might give them a loan if they had an order, or so I surmised. So in order to connect to the internet, Luis drove us all in his pickup back to our hotel in Otavalo.
When we were able to connect to the internet, we looked up the company for whom they had worked and found several of their designs being offered for sale. That necessitated that they come up with some new designs to avoid any potential conflict--even though the designs were their own. We think they came up with some good ideas, and they will be sending photos of samples with different colors by internet (which their daughter has access to) to Minga. Orders will come from that, we hope, and the samples will be included in the next shipment from Ecuador and paid for at that time.
The more we talked and Chris explained the procedures employed by Minga, the lighter their faces and spirits seemed to become. Just before they left to go home, Vincent had Chris translate for them the sentiments of all of us--that we hoped and prayed things would get better for them, that they would have enough work, and that their beautiful designs would get a wide audience. Every single one of us was in tears at the end of that session.
This, after all, is the reason we sometimes get up at 1, 2, or 3 a.m. to get ready for a sales event, selling fair trade crafts. Yes, there are other artisans working who are not in such dire straits. However, many of them HAVE been in this situation, where they do not know from where the next meal is coming, and we are so blessed to have the opportunity to help them change their and their children's circumstances. You only have to look at the before and after pictures to understand our joy.
After lunch, Hector Guevara brought some samples of children's cotton summer dresses to the restaurant where we were eating. Chris gave him some feedback about how to change the samples to make them more saleable and we rushed back to the hotel, since we were late for the next artisan meeting.
We met with Martha Constante, who works with knitters to make wool sweaters and mittens. She brought one sample which I thought was quite ingenious. She had designed a cable pattern that was incorporated at the neckline, looking like a row of calla lilies all around the neck of the sweater. It was not attached, but a part of the sweater. We connected to the internet, albeit slowly, and were able to see the feedback from the U.S. about how her samples had sold at the latest show and what the office staff thought of each one. Her group's work is very fine, the wool very soft and not at all scratchy, as I am used to wool being. The designs are quite attractive, I think. This was the first time we had an introduction into how Chris determines prices--it's a back and forth negotiation, and Martha was a fine sparring partner for him.
Vincent asked her how many women worked for her, and she replied, "mil quinientos" or 1,500. We could not believe it and went into an extensive discussion of how she figures this. She has a list of 1,500 women she has worked with over the years. She can call on them when she has an order. They do not all work at once, but she has a network of leaders in several villages. Each leader manages up to forty women. She learns from Martha how to make the sweater and then teaches those in her group. Through the leaders, Martha has an idea of the skills of each group, so she assigns various ones to different groups, depending upon their skills. We simply marveled at the consistent high quality of their work, with so many different groups working on the same things. Martha has to be not only a skilled negotiator but an indefatigable organizer. She visits dozens of homes each week out in the countryside.
Vincent also asked her what inspired her to create new designs. Her face lit up and she said that anything can inspire her--a piece of fabric, something she saw in a magazine. It is her favorite part of the work. She loves to create new designs.
Chris gave her an order for samples before she left, and suddenly she did not look as tired and worn to me as she had when she came in.
It was dark when Martha returned to her home. Fernando and Yolanda, the clothing designers, had invited Chris to a meal at a friend's home, and Vincent and I tagged along. After the stark home of the Maldonados, this one was overwhelming. Although it was simply furnished, it was massive, with whitewashed walls and pine log rafters and beautiful tile floors. Peruvian wool wallhangings decorated several walls, and the lamps were sculpted clay, pierced and polished coconut shells and other amazing things. This home was in an enclave of Americans, Canadians and Europeans similar to a gated community back home, sans gate, but wayyyyyyy back in the countryside. When the lights came on we could see three towns spread out on the hills around us, Cotacachi among them. Fields of corn surrounded the complex.
The contrast between the beginning of the day and the end of it was inescapable. It truly is a world full of stark contrasts and some definite inequalities. Still, I was so blessed to be present as the Maldonados were given back their hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment