So this past week I attended the long awaited artisan fair with two representatives from my town. The fair was held at the U.S. embassy and was meant to be not only a fair to sell products but more of a learning experience in general. It was a two day event, with the first full of workshops on customer service and commercialization of their products. In the case of my artisans that would be ceramics. They have been making ceramics since 2007 at a workshop provided by the municipality. The idea behind the initiative was to teach some marketable skills to people in the community and provide another source of income. It apparently was very popular to start out and there were about 25 students that would show up to learn some techniques. When I arrived to my site they were down to 6… so I suppose it lost some of its popularity but nonetheless the ones that remain have picked up some pretty good skills and I think they have a lot of potential, just lack a little organization.
Being that they lacked the organization they also lacked to resources to travel to the fair. The peace corps was able to provide a portion of the costs but for the other costs we had to petition the municipality for some help. After some formalities and multiple conversations I got the municipality to donate their bus tickets to and from Lima. So after some last minute finishing of pottery and packing we got on the bus headed for Lima about 10 pm and arrived next morning at around 9 am. Overnight busses are pretty common here being that the airports aren’t available or affordable to most of the citizens. After the not so comfortable ride we got to the Peace Corps headquarters and dropped off our stuff, relaxed a little bit and then headed over to the embassy for our afternoon of various presentations. The presentations were put on by present and past volunteers mostly to illustrate some of the basic concepts to selling. Overall they were well done and I hope that my artisans learned something from it. After the presentations I went with some other volunteers to share an important cultural element with our artisans, Papa John’s. Now I’ve had some pizza in the next town from my site but nothing quite compares to an Xtra large from the Papa. Afterwards we went to the hostal to reunite with some other volunteers and to get some much needed rest.
We awoke early in the morning on Friday to get the embassy to set up our stand. Everyone was working feverishly to get all their products situated just right and to make all the last minute preparations. In our preparations back at our site we had forgotten to bring bags so another volunteer and I went out on a search and got back just as the fair was starting. Overall the fair was a success; the employees from the embassy came in generally during their lunch break to do some shopping for themselves or friends. It was pretty slow for my group at first and I could see the look of disappointment on their faces. However, a couple of hours in someone came along and liked what they saw and bought 4 pieces at once and little by little they sold some other works. As the fair was winding down another gentleman came along and bought a smaller piece, a turtle for 8 soles. As he was awaiting his change he then started looking at one of the other pieces, and began pondering another purchase. The piece he was looking at was a 3 foot tall pot with the giant face of an owl, something I was even skeptical about them trying to bring. After some deliberation and convincing on our part he bought it for 220 soles, (and doubling their sales for the day). Shortly after we packed up the remaining pieces and I helped them get back to the bus station and helped send them off.
Overall I think it was a success. My artisans may have not sold quite as much as they had envisioned but I’m convinced there will be some positives from the event. For example they realized they have to have various sized pieces and make more things that could be packed into a suitcase and survive a trip in an overhead storage bin. Apart from that I think they just need to work out some new designs including making their products more functional rather than ornamental.
Afterwards I decided to stay an extra night and re-unite with some fellow volunteers to celebrate my birthday. We went out to a bar in Barranco and enjoyed ourselves after some hard work getting our artisans ready and through the fair. On Saturday we hung out in a district in Lima called Miraflores and got our commercialism fix (including a lunch at Chili’s complete with a birthday dessert) before boarding our overnight busses back to our sites that night.
