Cantel y Xela

Hugh and I left to go to Bake Shop, so I took a break. Now to talk about my other classes.

The last three weeks I've just been sending materials home with the girls to make in their houses and bring back. It seems to be working well, and smoothly, but the problem is that I've noticed little improvement. My new designs are much harder than my old ones, and take getting used to and practice to understand the nature of the wire they're working with. I taught how to do it, and they steadily got better with the wire, and actually, that part is usually perfect when the earrings come back. The problem is that they're not looking at the earrings after they finish them. They put the pieces together, throw them in the bag, and send them back. I was really mad with my Xela group because there was just stupid stuff wrong with them. Connections weren't closed, or one didn't look like the other. It made me a little upset, so I wrote a note saying what was wrong with them and sent almost all of them back. Sylvia told me the next day that they were coming at their normal class time so I could teach them some more, since they didn't think they could finish them on their own. I was kind of expecting them to be frustrated or maybe even a little mad with having to mess with them again, but they ended up coming in like puppies, and pulled out their earrings saying "I know these are so ugly, I'm really sorry, how can I fix them?" I think I made a lot of progress just in the hour they were here, and I hope I don't get any more like the other ones. I'm now worried about the girls in Cantel. Olga looked like she did the same thing, not paying attention to the finished product, and Juana, well Juana has problems even when I'm there, and I expect has a hard time doing them on her own. The problem with Juana is that I don't think she can see what's wrong with them. She does get better, it's like a battle with her hands. She's used to some very hard labor, running that house with all those little kids. We made a lot of progress in the first few months, doing the simple techniques, but now that it's harder, and the designs take finesse and a hard eye, she's just not handling it well. And she wants to do it soooo bad. I'm going to keep on working with her till I go, but after I leave I don't know if she'd be able to keep up with it. Hopefully she'll gain some more skills in that time. Olga I think just needs the same note my class in Xela got, and another hour of practice.

Next is my ongoing quest to make sure this thing keeps running when I leave. Making the little bags of materials is no big deal, volunteers can do it, and tallying up who's made what earrings is no big deal either, the girls can do that themselves when they return their products. What I'm worried about is the quality control, and what's going to continue to persuade the girls to turn in good earrings after I leave and am not here to send home little angry notes. What I think we're going to do is work with Dilma, my best student from Cantel, who is now also the MAP project coordinator. In my first entries I went on and on about how Dilma was a teacher and I wanted her to work with me and I thought she'd be great with kids and all this. In my second class with her after Hilda told me she went to school to be a teacher, I told her she'd be good to run MAP (the Maya Arts Program.) Serendipitously, they hired her about a week ago for it. She goes to something like 4 or 5 schools throughout the area, once a week, and teaches art lessons with mayan themes. It's meant to at one time be both a way to preserve their dying culture as well as teaching new methods of creative understanding that most schools in the area lack. So she works here in the office now 5 days a week, and is very busy, but I'm hoping she'll take on this small job with me too. Lupe talked to her about it, and said she was ready for me to start training her as soon as she has time. Also, the other thing is that the system has to change a little bit, where Dilma doesn't make earrings anymore, just checks them and repairs them, and for every pair of earrings she checks she gets a small amount of money. If she has to repair any, we have to take that amount of money off of what we're paying the girl who made them. I think it's a good idea to keep quality up with the girls at home, too.

Also, Lupe just took every pair of earrings we've made, 150 of them. It was kind of sad to watch them go! So.. Check AlterNatives in the next few weeks. If you saw the ones that were there back in June, you will be surprised. I'm really happy with the new designs, and proud of them, and go buy some! If people buy them quickly we can start paying the girls more, and I really really want that.