Estoy decepcionada

Wednesday I had class with my girls in Xela. They of course made a million earrings perfectly. At the same time there was that craft market that Lupe was wanting to start. We brought in 5 women from Espunpuja (some of my former students) and a million weavings from them. We also had bags from the sewing project here and some little knitted scarves that i-can't-remember-which community made a year or two ago as a different project with AMA, as well as a couple earrings that Kim left behind two years ago. It rained. the only thing we sold were the same earrings from Kim that I wore to school a little while back, to Olga, the director, who saw them on me. It was a little disappointing. Afterwards Hugh went to school and I read for a while. Then around 5 I went to the market and got a million vegetables for soup. I made two pots full! Half a cabbage, two carrots, a pound of tomatoes, 1/3 pound potatoes, an onion, green beans, rosemary and consomme. I fed the whole family, and still had a pot left over for today. Stomach warming stuff for this dreary weather.

Today I went to Xeavaj, and I left with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Marta is manipulating me!

The plan was, and will be from now on I think, that I go there in the morning for my usual jewelry class, it ends at 11, they cook lunch, I bring mine, and then they teach me how to weave in the afternoon. While this is going on, Hilda is visiting 1-2 other communities close to Xeavaj, and then she and Gonzalo come back to pick me up.

We get there in the middle of a cloud, and it's raining. The town went from amazingly beautiful and open on the top of a mountain to the closest form of claustrophobic. We set up in a room, one of the first ones I taught in that's big and open, but unlit, and I wait for my students to show up. It's so hard for me to communicate. I just don't understand anything. Marta never gives up, which is nice on the one hand, because my students in Xela kind of have and it's depressing for me, but bad on the other because I've kind of figured out that she gets answers out of me that she holds when I don't know what I've answered for. For the first time I actually see men in the village. Before now I've only seen women and children. There's a young guy in the room with us that Marta only calls "Chico!" (boy!) so I don't know what his name is. He's sitting by the stove warming himself and talking to Marta most the time. Eventually he asks her where I'm from, she says the U.S., he asks me where exactly, I say near D.C., and I'm pretty sure that he asked if he could marry me.

(I should write in an aside,here, that hugh's sister has also already been proposed to from afar. This guy in the park approached him, for asking for 7Q for the bus, then for his sister's hand in marriage so he could go to the states, then for 2,000Q so he could get his visa.... uhhh... Hugh gave him none of it.)

I didn't exactly understand at first.. the word for marry tends to bounce off my head, for some reason it's just never stuck in my vocabulary. I thought he just wanted come back with me, then Marta said "you'd have to get rid of your boyfriend first!" at which point I figured it out with a friendly "um, no thanks!" He spent the next hour sizing me up, asking me how old I was, asking where my boyfriend was "in xela! here! close!" etc. After a while of talking about Hugh, he gave it up. I would like to stress that he at no point made me feel uncomfortable, put upon, or threatened. He was just very businesslike about it, much like Marta with everything. I'm slowly figuring out that everything for her is a business. It might be that way for all the women I work with and she's just the mouthpiece, or maybe it's just her since I'm fairly sure she has a college education in business management. There's also the fact that they are often salesmen of their weavings and other products, so they know how to put on the hard sell. Used car salesmen in the states just have no idea how to do it compared to them.

So class goes on, Marta and Chico and I make friendly conversation more or less. She mentions, very forcefully, that she wants me to bring beads and chain and wire, you know, just the stuff I have lying around, so that they can make earrings for themselves.. Because they don't have any.. I shrugged it off saying that I don't have any control of materials, talk to Hilda. She acted disappointed. After 11, they put a backstrap loom on me and started teaching me how to weave with that. It only lasted maybe an hour. It was really cool though. Completely befuddling. I have no idea how it works still. Maria was weaving a huipil,with an incredibly complicated pickup design, and she put it on me and guided me where to pick up. Then one stick came out, I (or she?) lifted another stick, a different one slid through, I beat down the string, something else happened. A lot of pulling on my hands while Marta explained a little. The pattern was so intense. I'm used to pick-up patterns from my own double weave scarves, but those have usually around 8-10 color changes, when these had hundreds. And she either remembers the pattern or has another piece (the other side of the huipil-already made) that she references for the millions of changes. My neck started to hurt very quickly, which they laughed at me for. It was a "better get used to it" situation.

I had been learning for maybe 10 minutes when Marta started in again. This time, though I didn't understand much, but tried to repeat to her what I figured out, which she okayed, she said "So now you know how to weave (I'm trying, I don't really understand, but I want to learn) no, you know how to weave now. So are you going to go back to the states and teach people how to do this? (I don't know. Maybe. I'd like to. It's a possibility. But I don't know.) Well when you go back and you're teaching people how to weave like us, you need to show people the things we've woven and our pictures, so that they'll want to buy all of it. But really what you need to do is buy lots of thread, and bring it to us so we can weave it and sell it and make money."

Here's the story, which I've accumulated from an exasperated Lupe, about the weaving projects we've had with Xeavaj. I'm starting to understand them now. I'm also going to include a little bit of the philosophical mission of the Highland Support Project/AMA which makes a lot of sense to me, and I hope to everyone, but the story will only sound mean if I don't explain this first.

HSP/AMA works incredibly hard to provide people with the means to support themselves. They do NOT give out handouts, they do NOT collect clothing or food from the states, they do NOT throw money at people. There are hundreds of examples around here of missions that have established dependency rather than support, but AMA is not one of them. We provide the materials, they do the work, when the product is finished, we pay them for their time, and when the product sells they get more. We teach skills and techniques, or let them use the ones they already know, so that if they like it and they're good at it, they can continue with it. The goal is to help them set up their own small business. If they don't have the money to buy the upstart materials, we can provide that, and then we can provide multiple venues to sell them that they wouldn't have access to on their own. If it all takes off, they get quite a bit of revenue, and there are a lot of instances where it's worked like that. Hilda communicates with them what they want to do, facilitates it, and then advises them on how to maintain the business. If they don't want to do something, they don't have to do it (Espunpuja for example) and if AMA is not receiving what it needs to survive to be able to provide the materials, they have the right to not give them away anymore.

The first problem with Xeavaj was a couple years ago, they really wanted to weave with a large loom. Something they could make bigger things with quicker. So AMA did it. They communicated the desire, AMA found a loom and people to teach them, then provided the materials to start. After a long time, nothing happened with it. The things they made were still only of practice quality, and they insisted to AMA that loom-weaving was not their thing, they wanted to stick to backstrap weaving. So the whole project was scrapped. Lately, they were making scarves that were being sold at AlterNatives. There's another problem here where when they figured out they were going to get paid for what they made, whether they were of good quality or not, they just didn't bother making good quality. I don't mean to sound cynical or to make these people (who I love and have a lot of respect for) sound petty, but it's kind of they way business works around the world. I got paid just as much to read a book at Silvertime as I did to clean and organize... do I want to organize? no! The women of Xeavaj are just as savvy and smart (or more) than most the business people you know in the states, trust me. So Lupe (and she's shown me the examples of inexcusable bad quality) decided that the project wasn't working, they couldn't continue to give materials when the products they were making weren't sellable. How many times have I mentioned this is a business? So the next weaving project with them was scrapped.

Apparently, here, Marta is trying to work around Hilda, who is the quality control manager and bringer of the goods. Marta thinks that I can become the provider and start it up again without a hitch. She's a tricky one, she is. The best I could tell her was that I'll talk to Hilda, and I will. What I'd like to do is yes, get the project started again, but with different products, ones that they are more comfortable with, using designs they already know (which unfortunately is what the second scarf project was exactly. One more try?)

Also, what was mostly disturbing to me today was what I saw with the jewelry techniques. It's kind of just like the scarf projects. They make and make and make with a weaver's determination, but with very little improvement or respect for their craftsmanship. If they get it, and many of them do perfectly, there's no problems. But then there's Marta, who's incredibly stubborn, and clearly of the opinion that she's going to make money off this whether it looks good or not. I had the silver in my backpack, ready to go, Pascuala was totally ready for it. Maria too. Marta, no. Francisca and Anna, no. And it's not going to be possible for one person to make the real thing while the other 3 watch. It's the whole group or nothing. It's getting out of my control and I hate it.

And then at some point I might have agreed to buy the incredibly expensive (worth it but really hard for me, I'm not as rich as they think I am) huipil that I had a hand in making. Somewhere along the line I went from teacher/student to tourist. It hurt my feelings. Marta kept asking for my camera because she wanted to take pictures of herself and this little boy and Maria.. and then when she was done, she basically ordered prints. "I want two of these, and two of these, and two of the ones of Maria... and also that one you took two weeks ago."

In one hand, I have some respect for the woman who has been the passive subject of tourist photos (I'm guilty) to actually take advantage of the situation. It's the fact that it was included in the other long list of demands that makes it problematic for me. This is not the kind of relationship I want to have. It's only going to get worse. This little man, right as I was leaving, was selling me the huipil and trying to get me to get a corte to match, as well as stay there for a full week to learn. I only understand bits and pieces, and they're all coming at me like fast talking salesmen. "You want to learn? Come for a week. That's the only way it's possible. You want this huipil right? it's going to be $100. Do you want to learn how to make this? how about this? You can only do that if you come a week. (I can't do that, I have other classes) Then just one or two days (Yeah.. every thursday..) Later you will buy this huipil. It will look good on you (what??)" Hilda I guess decided that I had talked to them about all this stuff so she left me to deal with it. Help! Save me! I can't come here for a week! Help me say no! I don't understand what's going on! Finally, after her translating that I was expected to buy the huipil, and me acting really confused about it, and was like "we'll go back and I'll talk to Hugh and he can translate for you. This is too confusing." I don't know if that was just a way of getting me out of there, or if she was serious. My look of confusion was because I didn't really think I had ever expressed interest in buying a huipil, not that I didn't understand that they wanted me to.

It all just kind of hurts my feelings. I thought I was getting to the point with them where I could become more of a partner than a customer. I'm the gringa. When gringas come here they spend money, take pictures, and give things away. Now I'm the one with the stigma to rise above. I really am that person though, the one that treats it like an amusement park and buys the souvenirs. I don't have a problem spending money to support these women, in fact I think it would be the coolest thing in the world to own the huipil that I helped to make. I just didn't want to be treated like that person. Oh well. I've got an ego on me and all kinds of expectations that I'm working through, so I'll just leave it at that.

One last thing, though, that I want everyone to understand. Never at any point (except for maybe that boy half-jokingly asking me to marry him) did anyone ask for something for free. The earrings, maybe, but with the amount of beads and wire I bring every time, I'm sure they think I've got mountains of it behind me. Everything was hard work for money. If you do this for me, I'll do this for you. And that's they way it should be. They keep their respect that way. And they're not like what the "adopt a child for $3 a month" commercials make developing countries look like. They have pride, they can provide for themselves. There are always ways we can help, throwing money at someone doesn't help them. Or rarely does. I can't help but think that it doesn't.