Giving a Living to a Life in the Rainforests of Peru

Breaking the scenic but monotonous 40-minute boat ride that usually accompanies our return trip from Chipaota, Lucia (a Peruvian who has been of invaluable help to both us and our partner Rainforest Partnership) enlightened us a bit on how our work here will be sustainable.  Our discussion was exciting, and I will try to summarize some of it here.

First off, what are we doing here?

The native inhabitants of Chipaota (and the surrounding area, including Chazuta) are classified as living in extreme poverty, a classification that is largely measured by economic means.  The work ethic is striking here because despite their situation, never once was I accosted for a direct handout.  Instead, people sell what they can, from opening bodegas with meager supplies to selling you cardboard for a sol or two to pad your motorcycle.

Chipaota’s ethic is no different, and so we are here to give the native inhabitants tools for a new livelihood.  Specifically, we are helping two groups improve their respective businesses.  One group is the “Piassaba broom-making group;” the more established of the two, they’ve already begun work setting up the business and creating plans for management, accounting, and growth.  The other “artisan group” makes baskets and other crafts out of reeds, natural dyes, and other materials.  Much less far along, this group has still made good progress in their planning stages.  For now, I’ll discuss the former further.

What is the Piassaba broom-making group?

Traditionally, the Chipaota inhabitants have either sold meager profits from their farms and perhaps harvested Piassaba fibers from the forest trees and sold them by the kilogram wholesale, the latter being an illegal practice in Peru without proper documentation.  Adding the costs of boat fares for the fibers, land transportation, and paying off police to let them pass, the inhabitants are left with little of their revenue, and so they do it all over again.

The broom-making project is different.  About 40 inhabitants in Chipaota created the broom-making company within the last few years to try and sell their brooms.  Each broom is made with a wooden handle called the “palo”, a wooden “taco” at the bottom, and piassaba bristles.  While bristles come from the fibers of the piassaba tree, the Peruvian government regulates such products differently because they are products with “added value,” meaning effort changed them into something functional, aesthetically pleasing, etc. 

And what of the wooden parts? The question is complicated.  It is not our intention to give a business to the inhabitants so they can deforest their home in a few years.  However, we got a clue as to how the whole system can be sustainable.  Traditionally, inhabitants have used a 2-field crop rotation system every 10-15 years to regenerate nutrients in the soil.  Each time they move to the other field of the forest, they must cut down the trees that have re-grown there and plant their crops.  The inhabitants have no tools to truly make use of these trees, and so they often go to waste; instead, we could provide the tools so they can use the trees for the brooms without viciously creating a system of deforestation.  Whether the wood can sustain the company for 15 years is an unanswered question that will need scrutiny.

So how does the company help the community?

The company itself may not seem to benefit the entire community as a whole, but in fact it does.  First off, instead of selling the fibers illegally to other cities in Peru, inhabitants can sell fibers directly to the company.  No middlemen or government bureaucracies are involved, and the people get to keep a higher portion of their revenue.  Secondly, the management plan makes provisions for growth so that people can join the company later and take a share of profits in a dividend-like system. Naturally, more will be demanded of the latecomers to compensate for the work the original founders are putting into the company.  Thirdly, the company will likely bring jobs to the community, and finally, the plan also makes provisions so that a portion of profits comes back to the community towards projects that benefit everyone: better schools, better equipment, and a better lifestyle.  This last part is most exciting because free trade certification requires just that: a community improvement plan.  Such a title would help the business greatly.

Recently, the broom-making group purchased land to start work with a factory, a motorized saw for woodworking, and a machine for broom making, which should be ready this week.  The artisan group has plans to buy a plot of land on Tuesday, and work has begun to plan their building, design a logo and brand name, and create a business strategy.  Things are picking up fast, and more updates will come as we have them!

Main path through Chipaota

Having left for Peru almost a week ago, I'd like to take an opportunity to update everyone on the present situation in Chipaota:

First off, I'm Ben, and I'm new as a volunteer with Nourish on their international project. Four volunteers left in late May for Chipaota, Peru, with our volunteer Jonathan returning now as I arrive. As I slowly acclimate to the life that the other three have called "home" for well over a month, I realize that life is nothing as I expected...

Overlooking the Pacific Ocean from Miraflores

The four cities where I've stayed in the last week have shown me the wide variety of living situations that life in Peru encompasses. Lima, the capital and city with the international airport, is a huge, bustling metropolis atop a cliff with a breath-taking

Another view from Miraflores, a suburb in Lima

view of the Pacific Ocean. For nearly two days I take in sights and grow accustomed to Peruvian culture, walking around my small suburb and watching in amazement at the hundreds gathered downtown to watch the World Cup finals on a massive outdoor TV.

Plaza de Armas in downtown Lima

Main lobby of our hotel in Tarapoto

From Lima, I travel by plane to the closest city to Chipaota with an airport: Tarapoto. The rest of the group graciously meets me here and shows me around the small city full of "bodegas" (convenience stores), "boticas" (pharmacies), small shops and restaurants. They fervently gather "rare" supplies like cereal, spices and produce from the store, foretelling things to come...

Street in Chazuta

From Tarapoto, the drive to the next city, Chazuta, is a challenge. The road is under construction for the majority of the day, and we wait ‘til evening to traverse it. I try to take in gorgeous scenery as we rattle around in the hired driver's small car, dipping through streams and narrowly missing construction vehicles and other cars. Once in Chazuta, I quickly learn that life here will take some adaptation. I learn to forsake amenities and choose from the limited selection in a city with limited internet and frequent power and water outages. Meanwhile, the other volunteers are eager to show me everything about their life: when to wash clothes, where to get water when the tap isn't running, how to save every "sol" (Peruvian currency, about 2.8 per dollar) on dinner...

Boat ride to Chipaota from Chazuta

And then there's Chipaota. Compared to the other three, this one is by far the smallest. Barely a town, the area is really just a home away from home for most; as their "chacras" (farms) are hours away, they come down mostly for educational and social purposes. Accessible from Chazuta via a 40 minute boat ride, Chipaota greets the rare visitor with a steep climb and a beaten path that cuts through the scattered houses. My first day in the community coincides with a day of hard labor; the broom-making work group has recently bought a plot of communal land for their business, and they start work surrounding it with a fence.

Another look at Chipaota, looking towards river

While chopping at the vegetation with a machete, I get a glimpse of how things work in Chipaota. The other volunteers remark that the turnout today is a good day; it is often difficult to gather all the people of a group due to other commitments, etc. And such is life in Chipaota. We've come mainly to help two groups foster in their respective businesses, one in making brooms from Piassaba fibers and another in making artisan crafts like baskets. But as much as we'd like to simply come and tell them the best way to do things, we can't. We struggle to be accepting to the fact that things here go at their own pace; their culture is not one to simply accept drastic changes so quickly. Community members see their life and economy on the farm as first to the communal business, not realizing its economic implications. With less than a month left, we look towards writing realistic objectives and means of accomplishing them, including helping to set up a factory and machine for the broom-making group, creating a business strategy for the artisans, and coordinating some sort of waste disposal to fix the problem of litter strewn on the streets.

If there’s one thing I've learned here in Peru, it’s that life has its challenges. As one of four motivated volunteers ready to meet them, I'm eager to see what awaits us in the coming weeks.

Note: this blog was written about two weeks ago, but I’ve had difficulty in getting it uploaded due to a poor (or sometimes nonexistent) internet connection.

A decade ago, the District of Chazuta, which encompasses the town of Chazuta and many surrounding indigenous villages (including Chipaota), had an economy that thrived on the production and processing of coca leaves, which apparently was/is common knowledge that such is used for the production of cocaine (though many people are not willing to talk about it now). Six years ago, the district made a concerted effort to transition to an economy that relied on the production of cacao (used of course for the production of chocolate, one of the basic necessities of life).The transition to move away from the drug industry appears to have been quite successful, though poverty is still pervasive in the district. [Above statements are based on casual conversations and general observations]

An interesting note on poverty here in Peru: I rarely encounter people simply asking for a handout, such as the homeless people that we so frequently seen on street corners in the states. That is not to say that begging and such does not occur here. What you will commonly find here are poor individuals offering you something to buy (such as pieces of candy or small packages of gum) or offering you some kind of service (such as shining your shoes, playing music or simply covering your motorcycle seat with cardboard so as to protect it from the blazing sun). I could probably count on one hand the number of individuals I’ve seen here that are simply asking for a handout, and such individuals are usually seriously impaired somehow, with blindness or something of the sort. However, as is always the case, sometimes the people resort to doing things that are…how shall I say…destructive and/or harmful, as was the case with drug industry here. I personally encountered a different situation recently when we traveled to Tununtunumba, a nearby indigenous village, for the San Juan festival.

During our stay in Tununtunumba, I was approached by a young man who lives in the community and who was passionately telling me that he has a monkey at his house that a gringo like me would like to buy. I informed him that even if I wanted to buy the animal, I would not be able to do so for obvious legal reasons. Nevertheless, he insisted that I follow him to his house to see this “monkey.” On the way there, we passed a small group of people who had a small pet monkey tied to a string. When we arrived to his home, I discovered that his “monkey” was a cute, tiny, yet terrified squirrel attached to a string as well. I really wanted to just yank the string off the poor lil fella and let him run away, but somehow I found some restraint. The guy offered again for me to buy the animal, but I declined and walked away. Now I must admit that I do not know how prevalent such activity is there in Tununtunumba or simply in the greater District of Chazuta, but upon having had this experience, I felt very glad to be a part of our current project in Chipaota

I feel like our projects in Chipaota will be quite helpful in various ways. For one, by establishing sustainable & environmentally friendly businesses for this community, we are helping to reinforce the transition away from participating in the drug industry. By providing alternative sources for income, we are also helping to prevent situations like I described above, that of collecting and selling animals from the rainforest. These businesses are designed to help these people find more value in keeping their rainforests standing rather than being cut down, so they are serving to protect the rainforests and the abundant biodiversity within them.  Perhaps more importantly, these businesses will simply help provide income for the families in this village, which in turn will allow them to keep their kids in school and will allow them to receive/pay for health care. As I digress, I just feel so glad to be a part of something like this.

As for our involvement with the development of these businesses, the process has been moving along seemingly very slowly, which is apparently quite normal in Peru- especially in indigenous communities. Many of the simple things that we tend to take for granted in the States as being quick-n-easy are now much more time-consuming. Anyhow, things have been moving particularly slow in the community for various reasons. For instance, it took about a week for us to get introduced into the Chipaota and to gain their approval for working within community. Also, meeting up with the members of the broom-making business and of the artisan group has been somewhat challenging.  Furthermore, some of the community members have homes (very primitive homes…nothing like our homes in the States!) within the main village, and then everyone has a “primary” home (also very primitive) on their chakra (i.e. farm), which are located 1-5 hours in walking distance away from the main village. Hence, it is not an easy to task to simply meet up with the 39 members of the broom-making business or the ~15 members that make up the artisan group.

Nevertheless, after having various meetings with both groups, it appears that the pace is about to hasten. We will be working with both of the groups to build tallers (i.e. workshops) for them to do their work. A piece of land was recently purchased for the broom-making workshop, and another piece of land will hopefully be purchased soon for the artisan group’s workshop. The land for the broom workshop already has two buildings on it. We will be meeting with the leaders of the broom-making business soon to plan how we will modify the buildings to make one large building for the workshop. Also, we will be ordering the broom-making machine soon, which will take about two weeks to make.

As I alluded to above, things tend to get done according to Peruvian time down here, which is a much slower pace than we are accustomed to within the States, and such is even more “severe” when working with indigenous communities (as we have been told by others). The leaders of the broom-making business very excited when I asked them if we (the volunteers) could help with the construction of the workshops. We are making a concerted effort to keep this excitement alive so as to encourage significant momentum and drive within these two groups so as to get their workshops fully constructed & functional by the end of this month. We the volunteers are certainly willing and able to do our part to make this task happen, but much is dependent upon the community (i.e. supplying wood, tools, manpower, initiative, etc) as to whether or not we will finish these workshops before our departure in August. Anyhow, we are feeling quite optimistic and are sure we’ll make some significant progress by August. Stay tuned…more updates coming soon!