After the seeds had eventually been sown and began to grow we turned our attention to the formation of the company and the purchasing of the water system. The natural choice was to register our company in Cajamarca. Roger and I sat down together one night to decide upon a name. I suggested we use the name ´Barton´ (the name of the village where my parents live in England) and Roger suggested we use the name Caxamarca. So we simply decided upon the grand sounding name of Barton Caxamarca Corporation (or BarcaCorp for short).
Although I was only in Peru on a temporary tourist visa, officially registering our company wasn´t too much of a problem. Roger did most o the work anyway, for me it simply meant waiting around at the offices of various notaries and lawyers. Legally I don´t think I was doing anything wrong. Although in Britain, of course, a foreigner doing what I did would certainly be illegal. But as far as I know it is acceptable for a foreigner to do business in Peru on a temporary tourist visa. Added to that immigration laws are far more relaxed and poorly enforced in the third world. Partly because they don´t have the resources to do it and partly because they want to encourage foreigners to enter and stay in the country. Foreigners are much more likely to spend (or lose) ther money in Peru than to commit crime or take advantage of the system. And anyway, I don´t think the authorities could reasonably expect anyone to come in and do what I did in Peru.
Next, Roger and I opened two business bank accounts in the name of BarcaCorp. Foreigners are not allowed to open personal accounts, but because this was a business account in a joint venture with a Peruvian this was apparently legal. In one account we would keep 1000 soles (300 dollars) registered capital and the other account we planned to use for paying for the water system and later to put in revenues from the Alfalfa.
jueves, 20 de septiembre de 2007
Simultaneous to this CPeru was being replaced by Inca Wasi. Paul, Marco, Roger Susanne and Marge agreed to be knew trustees. Emma and the previous organisers were all frozen out, they were back in Europe at that time and I don´t believe that either of them have returned to Cajamarca since then. I think though that the redoubtable Paul was the one who was really driving the project forward. He has a passionate commitment to Inca Wasi and to helping those kids.
As I remember him he was 25 years old, tall with strawberry-blonde hair. He undeniably has an eccentric personality but is also immensely kind-hearted and generous. He loves a good joke and can laugh at himself. He called me Tommy Boy and we often socialised together and discussed different projects with one another. We had a good laugh and formed a good friendship over the months also talking about frivolous topics such as football ( like a few other friends he is a committed Tottenham Hotspurs supporter) or about some recent sexual excapade. To my mind some of the others involved in Inca Wasi were rather disinterested at the start, but were turned round by Paul´s enthusiasm. I credit him with organising the charity and with keeping it going despite some of the obvious mistakes he made.
Kieran is also a big hit with women. One female volunteer from England fell madly with love with him during her time at Inca Wasi. She left a couple of love letters in his bed telling him how she felt. She maybe was not confident enough to tell him in person. Nobody else suspected anything, she didn´t appear to act strangely around him. I only know because Paul showed me the notes. He also spent a night with a Canadian volunteer although I dodn´t think that led to anything more. He also found a serious girlfriend from Cajamarca, Betty. She was 26 at the time I think but she appeared to be younger. She is tall and slim with long hair and long legs. She is a lawyer by training and of course she is very attractive. They are a lovely couple, I know that Paul is very into her, she seems to be very loyal and patient and puts up with Paul´s occassional excesses.
They are now a married couple and living and working happily in Ireland. Betty is learning English and trying to settle into a career there. But they both make regular visits back to Cajamarca to see Betty´s family and check on the process of Inca Wasi.
As I remember him he was 25 years old, tall with strawberry-blonde hair. He undeniably has an eccentric personality but is also immensely kind-hearted and generous. He loves a good joke and can laugh at himself. He called me Tommy Boy and we often socialised together and discussed different projects with one another. We had a good laugh and formed a good friendship over the months also talking about frivolous topics such as football ( like a few other friends he is a committed Tottenham Hotspurs supporter) or about some recent sexual excapade. To my mind some of the others involved in Inca Wasi were rather disinterested at the start, but were turned round by Paul´s enthusiasm. I credit him with organising the charity and with keeping it going despite some of the obvious mistakes he made.
Kieran is also a big hit with women. One female volunteer from England fell madly with love with him during her time at Inca Wasi. She left a couple of love letters in his bed telling him how she felt. She maybe was not confident enough to tell him in person. Nobody else suspected anything, she didn´t appear to act strangely around him. I only know because Paul showed me the notes. He also spent a night with a Canadian volunteer although I dodn´t think that led to anything more. He also found a serious girlfriend from Cajamarca, Betty. She was 26 at the time I think but she appeared to be younger. She is tall and slim with long hair and long legs. She is a lawyer by training and of course she is very attractive. They are a lovely couple, I know that Paul is very into her, she seems to be very loyal and patient and puts up with Paul´s occassional excesses.
They are now a married couple and living and working happily in Ireland. Betty is learning English and trying to settle into a career there. But they both make regular visits back to Cajamarca to see Betty´s family and check on the process of Inca Wasi.
During my days living at the hotel Roger used to come to pick me up in his orange truck every morning. Then we would travel over to Huacariz to talk to Malaneo and the workers, then go off to buy supplies or do some other talk so we could get indoors before the rain began in the early afternoon. The process of ploughing and planting was done in a very ad hoc and informal way. We bought supplies at local hardware and agrultural stores. We always got receipts for what we bought but they were never filed away, I didn´t even have a file to keep them in. I just looked at them and then tossed them away.
We didn´t even have an office to work in. I was living in hostal rooms. Roger was living in his dad´s large house, when we had some paperwork to do we would just set up a computer on the large living room table, spread some paperwork around and use that as our office. Roger produced some spreadsheets of the costs involved to set up the project. We also used translation software to communicate with each other sometimes. It helped us that Roger´s father was often away in Lima and the house was empty most of the time apart from Roger and the housekeeper.
Although we had a very good friendship and a great rapport together, Roger´s English was not good. He had forgotten a lot I think because he used to speak very well. And I was still trying to pick up Spanish at that time so we had a few communicacion problems. The transation programme helped me to understand better some of the details. However, within a few months we didn´t need the translation program as we could hold all our conversations in Spanish and now I speak Spanish to a pretty good level.
We didn´t even have an office to work in. I was living in hostal rooms. Roger was living in his dad´s large house, when we had some paperwork to do we would just set up a computer on the large living room table, spread some paperwork around and use that as our office. Roger produced some spreadsheets of the costs involved to set up the project. We also used translation software to communicate with each other sometimes. It helped us that Roger´s father was often away in Lima and the house was empty most of the time apart from Roger and the housekeeper.
Although we had a very good friendship and a great rapport together, Roger´s English was not good. He had forgotten a lot I think because he used to speak very well. And I was still trying to pick up Spanish at that time so we had a few communicacion problems. The transation programme helped me to understand better some of the details. However, within a few months we didn´t need the translation program as we could hold all our conversations in Spanish and now I speak Spanish to a pretty good level.
domingo, 19 de agosto de 2007
As well as fertilizer Alflafa plants need a considerable amount of water to sustain it´s fast growth. When the plants are strong enough they can be cut every thirty five days. Our plan at Huacariz was to rely on the rains to provide the Alfalfa plants with water until the pump and watering system was installed in May. Alfalfa plants stop growing and then die during the dry season in the Cajamarca valley without a good source of water. The price of Alfal
fa goes up considerably during this time. Our water system used a powerful industrial pump to pump water out of a well and through a system of rotating sprinkers to water an area of over five acres. The pump we planned on using was very powerful and capable of feeding up to six sprinklers at a time at a distance of 200 yards away. Although the price of Alfalfa per kilo is very low we planned to make our proft by producing it in bulk. Cattle rearing for milk production is a major industy in countries like Peru. Roger believed he could use his family´s contacts to find a regular buyer for our Alfalfa amongst the big commercial ranches that supplied milk for corporations such as Nestlé.
I was told by Roger quite clearly that we would register a company, in our names, in Cajamarca, but that this particular project would only last for four years. After which the Huacariz property would probably be sold by Roger´s family. The Diaz family far at Huacariz is apparently worth a lot of money, around $2 million by all accounts. It´s a big property and only about fifteen minutes out of the centre of town by truck. We would then move on to other projects and retain the pump and other equipment paid for by me. Roger will eventually make a lot of money when Huacariz is sold. He could happily live on his share of that money for the rest of his life if he wanted to. He wouldn´t have to work ever again if he stayed in Peru, married a beautiful girl and had a family etc. But at that time he was considerably more ambitious , he wanted to build a big company, and to gain wealth and power from it. Other people too have noticed his drive and ambition, but also his preoccupation not so say love of money. As I'll discuss later on, we had a number of other business ideas but they got shelved because of a lack of time and money which itself was due to the ever more protracted problems developing at Huacariz.
fa goes up considerably during this time. Our water system used a powerful industrial pump to pump water out of a well and through a system of rotating sprinkers to water an area of over five acres. The pump we planned on using was very powerful and capable of feeding up to six sprinklers at a time at a distance of 200 yards away. Although the price of Alfalfa per kilo is very low we planned to make our proft by producing it in bulk. Cattle rearing for milk production is a major industy in countries like Peru. Roger believed he could use his family´s contacts to find a regular buyer for our Alfalfa amongst the big commercial ranches that supplied milk for corporations such as Nestlé.I was told by Roger quite clearly that we would register a company, in our names, in Cajamarca, but that this particular project would only last for four years. After which the Huacariz property would probably be sold by Roger´s family. The Diaz family far at Huacariz is apparently worth a lot of money, around $2 million by all accounts. It´s a big property and only about fifteen minutes out of the centre of town by truck. We would then move on to other projects and retain the pump and other equipment paid for by me. Roger will eventually make a lot of money when Huacariz is sold. He could happily live on his share of that money for the rest of his life if he wanted to. He wouldn´t have to work ever again if he stayed in Peru, married a beautiful girl and had a family etc. But at that time he was considerably more ambitious , he wanted to build a big company, and to gain wealth and power from it. Other people too have noticed his drive and ambition, but also his preoccupation not so say love of money. As I'll discuss later on, we had a number of other business ideas but they got shelved because of a lack of time and money which itself was due to the ever more protracted problems developing at Huacariz.
jueves, 16 de agosto de 2007
More problems.
When we realised that we had to replough the fields I was livid. Roger admitted his mistake and apologised to me but I didn´t feel any better. I had already begun to think tat there was some sort of celestial conspiracy, a force from above working against the project. I was feeling tired and very negative about the situation, and that perhaps I had taken on too much and the whole thing would be end up a disaster. We had to overcome obstacles to make even small pieces of progress. Things were certainly not going as I had hoped.
During this time the rainy season was still in full swing. The rain comes down very hard in that part of the world and the people of Cajamarca get wet ofen. Every year in late January or early February they hold a week long carnival with large scale water and paint fights on the city streets. People throw buckets of water and water balloons at their friends or at strangers and passers by. Water is thrown constantly and spontaneously and nobody is safe. Of course boys get the girls wet and all the girls target the boys. Tourists also get it and apparently some of them find it too much and leave town early. Tthere is also much drinking, dancing eating and dressing up in fancy costumes for a large and very colourful parade throught the historical centre and the old barrios of the city. It´s reputed to be the best carnival in Peru.
October roughly through until March is the rainy season with December until Match being the worst (or, depending on your perspective) the best time for rain. Strangely the rain always starts at about the same time of day. The morning is always sunny, at lunch time the dark clouds roll over into the valley and at about 1.30pm the rain starts and continues until early evening. The water comes down off the high surrounding mountains and quickly forms muddy rivers running down the sloping narrow streets of Cajamarca. In a spare afternoon it´s entertaining to watch people in the rain walking home from school or from work trying not to get too wet. The rushing water is often quite deep and people get wet shoes and socks and ankles crossing the road. The blocks in the town centre are small and you probably have to cross a street four or five times in a ten minute walk. Not only that but the roads are dotted with pot holes and cracks. You have to be very careful when walking on the pavement not to get splashed by a car running through a water filled pot hole. if a car goes to fast pedestrians on both sides get covered. It´s always very funny to see someone get splashed by a car.
During this time the rainy season was still in full swing. The rain comes down very hard in that part of the world and the people of Cajamarca get wet ofen. Every year in late January or early February they hold a week long carnival with large scale water and paint fights on the city streets. People throw buckets of water and water balloons at their friends or at strangers and passers by. Water is thrown constantly and spontaneously and nobody is safe. Of course boys get the girls wet and all the girls target the boys. Tourists also get it and apparently some of them find it too much and leave town early. Tthere is also much drinking, dancing eating and dressing up in fancy costumes for a large and very colourful parade throught the historical centre and the old barrios of the city. It´s reputed to be the best carnival in Peru.
October roughly through until March is the rainy season with December until Match being the worst (or, depending on your perspective) the best time for rain. Strangely the rain always starts at about the same time of day. The morning is always sunny, at lunch time the dark clouds roll over into the valley and at about 1.30pm the rain starts and continues until early evening. The water comes down off the high surrounding mountains and quickly forms muddy rivers running down the sloping narrow streets of Cajamarca. In a spare afternoon it´s entertaining to watch people in the rain walking home from school or from work trying not to get too wet. The rushing water is often quite deep and people get wet shoes and socks and ankles crossing the road. The blocks in the town centre are small and you probably have to cross a street four or five times in a ten minute walk. Not only that but the roads are dotted with pot holes and cracks. You have to be very careful when walking on the pavement not to get splashed by a car running through a water filled pot hole. if a car goes to fast pedestrians on both sides get covered. It´s always very funny to see someone get splashed by a car.
Next we bought two hundred sacks of guano to spread on the fields. I imagine that the sacks came to about three or four tonnes in total. We picked up a couple of rough looking labourers from a group of them who hung around in the centre of town. Anybody who wanted some temporary labour knew where to find them. We also bought nitrate chemical fertilizer pellets and stupidly Roger and I spent an afternoon spreading fertilizer ourselves on the fields with no gloves, masks or any kind of protective clothing at all. Neither of us really knew what kind of chemicals we were exposing ourselves to. I think it was another example of me engaging in activities without really understanding what I was doing or knowing what I was letting myself in for and being unaware of the possible consequences. I think that at other times I was aware of the possible consequences but I just didn´t care and went right on ahead anyway.
Our work was constantly being delayed because of one problem or another. At one point Roger was ill for two weeks after eating seafood and all work had to be stopped while he got better. The sowing of the seed was delayed for almost three weeks. We agreed to start on a Saturday but Roger decided to stay in bed with Susanne instead. Then on Sunday it was the birthday party of Roger´s uncle which we both had to attend instead of going to work. Roger told me not to worry, we could start sowing the seed on Monday. But on Monday it started raining heavily when previously the weather had been dry. It rained for a whole week
Our work was constantly being delayed because of one problem or another. At one point Roger was ill for two weeks after eating seafood and all work had to be stopped while he got better. The sowing of the seed was delayed for almost three weeks. We agreed to start on a Saturday but Roger decided to stay in bed with Susanne instead. Then on Sunday it was the birthday party of Roger´s uncle which we both had to attend instead of going to work. Roger told me not to worry, we could start sowing the seed on Monday. But on Monday it started raining heavily when previously the weather had been dry. It rained for a whole week
viernes, 27 de julio de 2007
Working the fields
The hotel I went to after I left Inca Wasi is owned by a aunt of Roger´s. I paid five dollars a night for a pretty nice en-suite room with television right in the city centre on Apurimac street near the main market. It was comfortable and clean, but the street outside was dangerous at night.
At Huacariz we started off by hiring labourers to dig up all the weeds which covered the fields where we wanted to sow our Alfalfa. We only paid them ten soles (about three U.S dollars) a day to do this. Although ten soles is a typical wage in Peru I still feel bad about doing that because it´s clearly exploitative. Even in such a poor area three dollars doesn´t buy much, it´s not a proper wage. But many businesses cannot afford to pay any more than that and still make a profit. Ironically Inca Wasi only paid it´s staff ten soles a day also. Charity doesn´t extend to the local adult staff, only to the children.
We began to encounter out first problems quite early in the process. The ploughing of the fields was delayed as we tried to find someone able to do it. The local University has a large agricultural department and we were able to hire a tractor, plough and someone to drive it for us. But the guy wasn´t available to work until the following week but he was working on another job. Then unexpected bad weather forced us to wait another few days and we found ourselves behind schedule. But this was typical of the type of frustating problems and delays which we encountered during the project. The rickety old tractor (which must have been about fifty years old I would say) eventually came along and finished the job of ploughing the fields (much to our relief).
Next we bought a large amount of industrial chemical fertilizer. Roger, myself, Mallaneo and a farmhand spread the fertilizer on the fields with our bear hands, stupidly without wearing any gloves. It was hard work on a very hot day though. I got badly sunburnt on my face and neck after I left my sombrero at home.
I think that my oversized sombrero made me one of Cajamarca´s most eccentric residents at that time. The only other people who wore sombreros were Quechua speaking peasants (campesinos) who travelled into town to sell their produce at the markets. The women in particular look wonderful in their distictive brightly coloured clothing (luminous pink, yellow or turqoise skirts with white blouses and green or brown skirts and a sombrero on top). But people who lived in the city all wore western style clothing most people wore jeans, lawyers and businessmen wore suits etc. They thought that sombreros were only for poor uneducated peasants who worked in the fields all day. I was the only person to combine the campesino style and the western style. In truth I probably looked ridiculous. But the sombrero did a good job of protecting me from the harsh sun, and got me a lot of attention which I enjoyed a lot. èrhaps my look also caused people to let their guard down around me and to dismiss me as a harmless eccentric instead of questioning me more deeply on what I was doing in Cajamarca and why I spent so much time out in Huacariz with Roger. My appearance allowed me to ´get away with it´on occasions.
At Huacariz we started off by hiring labourers to dig up all the weeds which covered the fields where we wanted to sow our Alfalfa. We only paid them ten soles (about three U.S dollars) a day to do this. Although ten soles is a typical wage in Peru I still feel bad about doing that because it´s clearly exploitative. Even in such a poor area three dollars doesn´t buy much, it´s not a proper wage. But many businesses cannot afford to pay any more than that and still make a profit. Ironically Inca Wasi only paid it´s staff ten soles a day also. Charity doesn´t extend to the local adult staff, only to the children.
We began to encounter out first problems quite early in the process. The ploughing of the fields was delayed as we tried to find someone able to do it. The local University has a large agricultural department and we were able to hire a tractor, plough and someone to drive it for us. But the guy wasn´t available to work until the following week but he was working on another job. Then unexpected bad weather forced us to wait another few days and we found ourselves behind schedule. But this was typical of the type of frustating problems and delays which we encountered during the project. The rickety old tractor (which must have been about fifty years old I would say) eventually came along and finished the job of ploughing the fields (much to our relief).
Next we bought a large amount of industrial chemical fertilizer. Roger, myself, Mallaneo and a farmhand spread the fertilizer on the fields with our bear hands, stupidly without wearing any gloves. It was hard work on a very hot day though. I got badly sunburnt on my face and neck after I left my sombrero at home.
I think that my oversized sombrero made me one of Cajamarca´s most eccentric residents at that time. The only other people who wore sombreros were Quechua speaking peasants (campesinos) who travelled into town to sell their produce at the markets. The women in particular look wonderful in their distictive brightly coloured clothing (luminous pink, yellow or turqoise skirts with white blouses and green or brown skirts and a sombrero on top). But people who lived in the city all wore western style clothing most people wore jeans, lawyers and businessmen wore suits etc. They thought that sombreros were only for poor uneducated peasants who worked in the fields all day. I was the only person to combine the campesino style and the western style. In truth I probably looked ridiculous. But the sombrero did a good job of protecting me from the harsh sun, and got me a lot of attention which I enjoyed a lot. èrhaps my look also caused people to let their guard down around me and to dismiss me as a harmless eccentric instead of questioning me more deeply on what I was doing in Cajamarca and why I spent so much time out in Huacariz with Roger. My appearance allowed me to ´get away with it´on occasions.
jueves, 5 de julio de 2007
I left CPeru very shortly afterwards to live in a hotel, Heather and Megan also left to go travelling. I never saw Heather again (a pity because I liked her), but Megan later returned to Cajamarca to be with her boyfriend Yuri. Yuri is a talented folk musician and a native of the narby town of Celendin. He frequently brought his guitar along to volunteer parties to provide entertainment. Songs which people could sing along to, accompanied by Marco striking out a rythym on a wooden box.
As for Carla and her son, I´ve never seen or heard from them since. My suspicion is that none of us know the full story about her and why she acted the way she did. When I knew her before she was so kind to the kids, but at CPeru she didn´t help the kids in any way. My own pet theory is that she was encouraged to steal the money and destroy the organisation by Bruce Thornton the founder of Bruce Peru and that she went back to work for him again afterwards. Bruce was paranoid and nefarious and I wouldn´t put it past the man to do something so nasty. And if it were true that Carla did it on Bruce´s orders, it wouls still be one of the least far fetched stories told here.
The Tuesday after Carla was sacked a new volunteer coordinator from Ireland called Paul arrived. Paul arrived too late to save CPeru, but he went on to play a pivotal role in the formation of a new charity in it´s place, now called Inca Wasi. He is also involved in many of the sub-plots of this story. Paul is a tall, slim ginger-haired and energetic lad from Dublin. He´s a kind, good natured and exceedingly patient man which is a very necessary atribute to live in Peru. However he also a bit of a dreamer I think and although he had many successful ideas at Inca Wasi he also had a few too many pie-in-the-sky ideas which had little chance of ever succeeding.
While I was still at Inca Wasi, and feeling pretty miserable about the situation, I decided to get drunk on my own one Thursday evening. I knew that on Thursday evenings people often gathered in the main square to drink, dance, play guitar and sing together. I sat on a concrete bench in the plaza until the small hours drinking a bottle of pre-mixed vodka and lemon. Disgusting stuff but it´s a chap way to get drunk. I walked back to the centre to go to bed but I couldn´t get in with my key beause the bolt in the lock was too stiff. Stupidly, instead of knocking on the door to get let in I decided to take a drunken walk to see the city at night. It ws about 2am or 3am and I found the streets deserted until I encountered a group of transvestite prostitutes hanging around on a street corner. As I turned the corner on the opposite side one of them approached me and offered sex. I said no and turned to walk away but he folloed me and then grabbed me in an embrace. I was so drunk I thought he was just a woman with a husky voice. He had long curly hair, make-up, breasts and dressed like a woman, I suppose the adam´s apple should have given it away sooner though. But I had no idea what was going on. Eventually he turned and walked away, but then in a hearbeat my survival instinct kicked in. I realised he had taken my wallet with all my cards in, everything except my passport. As he walked away I followed him and managed to take my wallet back but he grabbed me in a strangle hold and choked me. I tried to shout out for help but I couldn´t draw breath. His friends toook my wallet off me again. They ripped it open took the cash out (only about 8 dollars) and tore the watch off my wrist. But then they laughed, said thank-you and walked off. I had a lucky escape I suppose. There was nobody else around, they could have kidknapped me and forced me to withdraw money from an ATM with my bank card for example. I was really stupid to be walking around the streets on my own late at night carrying all my cards and cash on me. But I learned to be more careful in future.
I was a bit shaken up but unhurt. I walked back to Inca Wasi and luckily Heather was up to let me in. I recounted the story to her and then went to bed, still a little bit in shock. Over the proceeding few months I saw the transvestite on the street several times (although always in daylight hours. I was also robbed again twice and assaulted a further time into the bargain during my time in Cajamarca. All this despite my learning a harsh lesson at the hands of the transvestites. I tryed to stay away from trouble but sometimes it just found me.
To Paul´s great credit things began to improve at the centre almost from the moment he arrived. I felt that he took charge of the situation very early on and that the others (Marge, Susanne, Roger and Marco) all followed his lead. I think that if it wasn´t for his enthusiasm and leadership the centre would have shut down permanently. I also believe that Paul deserves the majority of the credit for forming the new charity which emerged out of the charred ruins of CPeru. One of Paul´s first tasks was to meet with an official from the ministry of labour, but that was already a lost cause and CPeru were forced to pay Carla a large compensation fee for employing her then sacking her without a proper contract of employment in place. Later that day the volunteers plus Marco and Roger had a highly-charged meeting where they decided to set up a new charity in place of CPeru. Paul, Marge, Susanne, Roger and Marco would be the trustees of the new charity and they decided to call it IncaWasi.
I was fed-up and disillusioned with the whole thing and I decided that I wanted no part of it. Also I wanted to concentrate on our Alfalfa. I counselled Roger against becaoming too involved with IncaWasi. He promised me he wouldn´t and to be fair he kept his word on that. Despite the ups and downs IncaWasi has become a well established charity and very successful at helping some of the poor people in the barrio. Paul, Roger and all the others did a fine job and made something beautiful out of a very ugly situation.
As for Carla and her son, I´ve never seen or heard from them since. My suspicion is that none of us know the full story about her and why she acted the way she did. When I knew her before she was so kind to the kids, but at CPeru she didn´t help the kids in any way. My own pet theory is that she was encouraged to steal the money and destroy the organisation by Bruce Thornton the founder of Bruce Peru and that she went back to work for him again afterwards. Bruce was paranoid and nefarious and I wouldn´t put it past the man to do something so nasty. And if it were true that Carla did it on Bruce´s orders, it wouls still be one of the least far fetched stories told here.
The Tuesday after Carla was sacked a new volunteer coordinator from Ireland called Paul arrived. Paul arrived too late to save CPeru, but he went on to play a pivotal role in the formation of a new charity in it´s place, now called Inca Wasi. He is also involved in many of the sub-plots of this story. Paul is a tall, slim ginger-haired and energetic lad from Dublin. He´s a kind, good natured and exceedingly patient man which is a very necessary atribute to live in Peru. However he also a bit of a dreamer I think and although he had many successful ideas at Inca Wasi he also had a few too many pie-in-the-sky ideas which had little chance of ever succeeding.
While I was still at Inca Wasi, and feeling pretty miserable about the situation, I decided to get drunk on my own one Thursday evening. I knew that on Thursday evenings people often gathered in the main square to drink, dance, play guitar and sing together. I sat on a concrete bench in the plaza until the small hours drinking a bottle of pre-mixed vodka and lemon. Disgusting stuff but it´s a chap way to get drunk. I walked back to the centre to go to bed but I couldn´t get in with my key beause the bolt in the lock was too stiff. Stupidly, instead of knocking on the door to get let in I decided to take a drunken walk to see the city at night. It ws about 2am or 3am and I found the streets deserted until I encountered a group of transvestite prostitutes hanging around on a street corner. As I turned the corner on the opposite side one of them approached me and offered sex. I said no and turned to walk away but he folloed me and then grabbed me in an embrace. I was so drunk I thought he was just a woman with a husky voice. He had long curly hair, make-up, breasts and dressed like a woman, I suppose the adam´s apple should have given it away sooner though. But I had no idea what was going on. Eventually he turned and walked away, but then in a hearbeat my survival instinct kicked in. I realised he had taken my wallet with all my cards in, everything except my passport. As he walked away I followed him and managed to take my wallet back but he grabbed me in a strangle hold and choked me. I tried to shout out for help but I couldn´t draw breath. His friends toook my wallet off me again. They ripped it open took the cash out (only about 8 dollars) and tore the watch off my wrist. But then they laughed, said thank-you and walked off. I had a lucky escape I suppose. There was nobody else around, they could have kidknapped me and forced me to withdraw money from an ATM with my bank card for example. I was really stupid to be walking around the streets on my own late at night carrying all my cards and cash on me. But I learned to be more careful in future.
I was a bit shaken up but unhurt. I walked back to Inca Wasi and luckily Heather was up to let me in. I recounted the story to her and then went to bed, still a little bit in shock. Over the proceeding few months I saw the transvestite on the street several times (although always in daylight hours. I was also robbed again twice and assaulted a further time into the bargain during my time in Cajamarca. All this despite my learning a harsh lesson at the hands of the transvestites. I tryed to stay away from trouble but sometimes it just found me.
To Paul´s great credit things began to improve at the centre almost from the moment he arrived. I felt that he took charge of the situation very early on and that the others (Marge, Susanne, Roger and Marco) all followed his lead. I think that if it wasn´t for his enthusiasm and leadership the centre would have shut down permanently. I also believe that Paul deserves the majority of the credit for forming the new charity which emerged out of the charred ruins of CPeru. One of Paul´s first tasks was to meet with an official from the ministry of labour, but that was already a lost cause and CPeru were forced to pay Carla a large compensation fee for employing her then sacking her without a proper contract of employment in place. Later that day the volunteers plus Marco and Roger had a highly-charged meeting where they decided to set up a new charity in place of CPeru. Paul, Marge, Susanne, Roger and Marco would be the trustees of the new charity and they decided to call it IncaWasi.
I was fed-up and disillusioned with the whole thing and I decided that I wanted no part of it. Also I wanted to concentrate on our Alfalfa. I counselled Roger against becaoming too involved with IncaWasi. He promised me he wouldn´t and to be fair he kept his word on that. Despite the ups and downs IncaWasi has become a well established charity and very successful at helping some of the poor people in the barrio. Paul, Roger and all the others did a fine job and made something beautiful out of a very ugly situation.
jueves, 21 de junio de 2007
After about a week that I was there the volunteers began to openly voice their concerns about the social worker, Carla. She was supposed to be in charge of running the whole centre in addition to her duties as social worker. But she was doing no work at all. The centre was in absolute chaos. Now I think the girls were too concerned about helping the kids to leave outright. I also had paid my $250 for the month and wanted to at least get my money´s worth.
On the Thursday of the second week Susanne and Marge looked at receipts which Carla had written out and realised that she had been stealing money from the CPeru accounts by writing out receipts for non-existent expenses and overstating the cost of other expenses occurred. For example she wrote out a receipt for a birthday party for some children, but there had never been any party. She got caught because she filed away copies of the fraudulent receipts instead of just writing out new receipts which tallied with the expenses that volunteers new had been incurred. There was no way that the supposed managers of the charity could check the accounts or the receipts, they merely relied on Carla´s word on it. Carla got away with it for almost two months after the charity was first formed because the volunteers all assumed that the organization was better run than it actually was. All the volunteers were new and did not know how the organisation was supposed to function. The only people who perhaps could have realised sooner were Roger and Marco. But they considered Carla to be a good friend and for that reason, I think, they just ignored the evidence in front of them.
Marge voiced her concers to the other volunteers and to two of the overseas ´managers´of CPeru, Bart and Emma. On Sunday evening we had a series of meetings to discuss the proble punctuated by telephone conversations between Bart and Marge, Susanne and Carla. After two hours Carla was ´sacked´over the phone. She defended herself to us tearfully and convincingly. I believe they were real tears, perhaps tears of shame, or perhaps just tears at being caught. She denied stealing the money, she looked and sounded very convincing, but the evidence was over whelmingly aganst her. She stayed a night more then packed her bags during the day with her tearful son by her side. She left that evening and cried as she hugged me goodbye.
That evening I talked to Roger and Marco in Roger´s front room (turned into a temporary office for our project) about CPeru closing down. Roger was very angry, he wanted to evict CPeru from his family´s property and have it closed down. It turned out that CPeru was neither registered as a charity in Peru nor in Europe. So they had employed Carla illegally and put all the volunteers in danger. The accounts they used were in the name of Emma (who is not even a Peruvian citizen but Irish), and I don´t think the founders had any way of being able to monitor the accounts from back in Europe. Marco is a lawyer by trade and he helped Carlato report CPeru at the employment ministry and gain a substantial amount of compensation. I don´t know how much, I would only be guessing, nor do I know if Marco received a fee for his services.
Overall it was a difficult experience for me. I had a rotten time in CPeru and I wasted my $250. I was put in considerable danger not only with the conditions in the centre but with Carla. She could have decided to ´wreak revenge´on the volunteers for denouncing her or put up a fuss about leaving and turned violent. Anything could have happened. I´m angry with Carla for taking advantage of the situation and also with Marco for helping her and then later pretending that he wasn´t involved. But I´m most angry with Bart, Emma and the other founders of CPeru. They screwed us all over big time. I´m amazed that they invested so much money in it, but so little time establishing a systems of organisation, accountability and guidelines. The Peruvian staff had no idea of their responsibilities, they had never been told what to do or what was expected of them. So it was not thair fault that they didn´t do their jobs properly.
I agreed to volunteer again at the new organisation assuming that it was well run, on a sound legal footing and thinking that the new managers would learn from the mistakes made by Bruce. I thought that they would be more caring of volunteers and more professional and competant in their approach. I was wrong. I feel cheated because they failed to tell me the state of things on the ground, that the charity was unregistered, that they had only just taken it over and that they did not have guidelines or any sort of guiding philosophy in place. They just signed the papers with Bruce, set up a bank account and pretty much left straight away. Perhaps in thinking that they could manage and run a charity in Peru, by themselves, they were as stupid as I was in thinking I could set up and run a successful business venture in Peru. But at least I didn´t try to do it from thousands of miles away and at least I didn´t put anyone else in danger. I only put my money on the line, if one of the kids had been hurt by that falling water tank, or if one of the volunteers had become severely ill the consequences could have been tragic.
On the Thursday of the second week Susanne and Marge looked at receipts which Carla had written out and realised that she had been stealing money from the CPeru accounts by writing out receipts for non-existent expenses and overstating the cost of other expenses occurred. For example she wrote out a receipt for a birthday party for some children, but there had never been any party. She got caught because she filed away copies of the fraudulent receipts instead of just writing out new receipts which tallied with the expenses that volunteers new had been incurred. There was no way that the supposed managers of the charity could check the accounts or the receipts, they merely relied on Carla´s word on it. Carla got away with it for almost two months after the charity was first formed because the volunteers all assumed that the organization was better run than it actually was. All the volunteers were new and did not know how the organisation was supposed to function. The only people who perhaps could have realised sooner were Roger and Marco. But they considered Carla to be a good friend and for that reason, I think, they just ignored the evidence in front of them.
Marge voiced her concers to the other volunteers and to two of the overseas ´managers´of CPeru, Bart and Emma. On Sunday evening we had a series of meetings to discuss the proble punctuated by telephone conversations between Bart and Marge, Susanne and Carla. After two hours Carla was ´sacked´over the phone. She defended herself to us tearfully and convincingly. I believe they were real tears, perhaps tears of shame, or perhaps just tears at being caught. She denied stealing the money, she looked and sounded very convincing, but the evidence was over whelmingly aganst her. She stayed a night more then packed her bags during the day with her tearful son by her side. She left that evening and cried as she hugged me goodbye.
That evening I talked to Roger and Marco in Roger´s front room (turned into a temporary office for our project) about CPeru closing down. Roger was very angry, he wanted to evict CPeru from his family´s property and have it closed down. It turned out that CPeru was neither registered as a charity in Peru nor in Europe. So they had employed Carla illegally and put all the volunteers in danger. The accounts they used were in the name of Emma (who is not even a Peruvian citizen but Irish), and I don´t think the founders had any way of being able to monitor the accounts from back in Europe. Marco is a lawyer by trade and he helped Carlato report CPeru at the employment ministry and gain a substantial amount of compensation. I don´t know how much, I would only be guessing, nor do I know if Marco received a fee for his services.
Overall it was a difficult experience for me. I had a rotten time in CPeru and I wasted my $250. I was put in considerable danger not only with the conditions in the centre but with Carla. She could have decided to ´wreak revenge´on the volunteers for denouncing her or put up a fuss about leaving and turned violent. Anything could have happened. I´m angry with Carla for taking advantage of the situation and also with Marco for helping her and then later pretending that he wasn´t involved. But I´m most angry with Bart, Emma and the other founders of CPeru. They screwed us all over big time. I´m amazed that they invested so much money in it, but so little time establishing a systems of organisation, accountability and guidelines. The Peruvian staff had no idea of their responsibilities, they had never been told what to do or what was expected of them. So it was not thair fault that they didn´t do their jobs properly.
I agreed to volunteer again at the new organisation assuming that it was well run, on a sound legal footing and thinking that the new managers would learn from the mistakes made by Bruce. I thought that they would be more caring of volunteers and more professional and competant in their approach. I was wrong. I feel cheated because they failed to tell me the state of things on the ground, that the charity was unregistered, that they had only just taken it over and that they did not have guidelines or any sort of guiding philosophy in place. They just signed the papers with Bruce, set up a bank account and pretty much left straight away. Perhaps in thinking that they could manage and run a charity in Peru, by themselves, they were as stupid as I was in thinking I could set up and run a successful business venture in Peru. But at least I didn´t try to do it from thousands of miles away and at least I didn´t put anyone else in danger. I only put my money on the line, if one of the kids had been hurt by that falling water tank, or if one of the volunteers had become severely ill the consequences could have been tragic.
lunes, 11 de junio de 2007
So I quit my job at the supermarket, said goodbye to my family and took a flight from London to Lima in early February 2005. I was met by Roger at the airport and we stayed overnight at his Aunt´s house in San Borja. The next day we set off by bus to Cajamarca arriving early the next morning. I had decided to stay at the old charity centre again. I planned to work casually as a volunteer and do just enough work to be able to stay. Then spend the rest of my time working on the project at Huacariz farm with Roger. So when we arrived in Cajamarca and met the other volunteers. Alongside Carla the social worker there was Susanne, Marge a chirpy girl of about 25 from Cork in Ireland, Megan, a pleasant 18 year old girl from Wales who is very tall and stands out like a sore thumb walking the streets of Cajamarca and Heather a very kind and amiable girl from Austin, Texas.
The centre had recently changed hands. Bruce had been a terrible leader and most of the volunteers had had problems with him. In December of 2004 Bruce had agreed to allow four volunteers to take over the general running of the school and had handed the books over to them. But when I arrived there were clearly many problems with the way the centre was being run. Firstly, none of the volunteers who had agreed to take over the running of the centre stayed to actually manage it. They all went back to Europe to study or work and left Carla in charge of the accounts and of the day to day running of the centre. They also employed a new cook, an acid tongued secretary called Estella and a cleaner (a nephew of Mallaneo´s) called Moreno, a boy of 16 or 17 and not much older than the kids themselves.
It took me two or three days to realise something was very wrong. For starters the place just wasn´t being cleaned properly. The walls of the corner of the kitchen where the stove was had acquired a think layer of soot. At first I didn´t think too much of it, I just thought it was supposed to be like that. But the cook was using the orange flame of the gas ring to cook and she never cleaned the kitchen. The food itself was absolutely atrocious, she never bought proper meat, always chicken scraps. We had chicken feet soup a few times. When we asked her about this it turned out she was given very little money by Carla to buy food with even though there should have been plenty of money available. There was nobody to sort this out, or tell the cook what to do because the Carla wasn´t doing her job and because she wasn´t accountable to anyone. The volunteers all ate out in restaurants at lunch time instead, unluckily for the kids they didn´t have that option. Added to that Moreno couldn´t clean or do his job properly because he didn´t have any proper cleaning equipment, there was not even any floor detergent or even, I believe, a mop.
Looking back it was lucky nobody ended up dead or in hospital. Conditions in the centre were unhygenic and there were other safety hazards. In one incident a hot water tank fell off the wall on the same spot where just a few minutes before the kids were washing their hands before going home. Somebody could easily have been seriously hurt of killed if the tank had hit them. The place wasn´t being maintained and kept properly. Added to that all the volunteers were ill, I was violently sick for a couple of days, probably because I tried some of the awful food. I was even sick on my bed and my sleeping bag. But there was nobody there to help me, no support system in place for volunteers.
The centre had recently changed hands. Bruce had been a terrible leader and most of the volunteers had had problems with him. In December of 2004 Bruce had agreed to allow four volunteers to take over the general running of the school and had handed the books over to them. But when I arrived there were clearly many problems with the way the centre was being run. Firstly, none of the volunteers who had agreed to take over the running of the centre stayed to actually manage it. They all went back to Europe to study or work and left Carla in charge of the accounts and of the day to day running of the centre. They also employed a new cook, an acid tongued secretary called Estella and a cleaner (a nephew of Mallaneo´s) called Moreno, a boy of 16 or 17 and not much older than the kids themselves.
It took me two or three days to realise something was very wrong. For starters the place just wasn´t being cleaned properly. The walls of the corner of the kitchen where the stove was had acquired a think layer of soot. At first I didn´t think too much of it, I just thought it was supposed to be like that. But the cook was using the orange flame of the gas ring to cook and she never cleaned the kitchen. The food itself was absolutely atrocious, she never bought proper meat, always chicken scraps. We had chicken feet soup a few times. When we asked her about this it turned out she was given very little money by Carla to buy food with even though there should have been plenty of money available. There was nobody to sort this out, or tell the cook what to do because the Carla wasn´t doing her job and because she wasn´t accountable to anyone. The volunteers all ate out in restaurants at lunch time instead, unluckily for the kids they didn´t have that option. Added to that Moreno couldn´t clean or do his job properly because he didn´t have any proper cleaning equipment, there was not even any floor detergent or even, I believe, a mop.
Looking back it was lucky nobody ended up dead or in hospital. Conditions in the centre were unhygenic and there were other safety hazards. In one incident a hot water tank fell off the wall on the same spot where just a few minutes before the kids were washing their hands before going home. Somebody could easily have been seriously hurt of killed if the tank had hit them. The place wasn´t being maintained and kept properly. Added to that all the volunteers were ill, I was violently sick for a couple of days, probably because I tried some of the awful food. I was even sick on my bed and my sleeping bag. But there was nobody there to help me, no support system in place for volunteers.
I expect that the incredulous reader is now wondering why I did it. Didn´t I think about the risks? Didn´t I realise that it was probably all just a scam? Didn´t I realise that if I didn´t end up getting killed I would lose all my money? Didn´t I think that not having any kind of business experience, or understanding of agriculture, engineering or even a reasonable knowledge of Spanish would make thinks very difficult for me? The answer to these questions is that I simply didn´t dwell too much on the obvious risks involved. The idea of going to Peru to do this tapped into my juvenile desire to do something exciting, adventurous and glamourous. The idea that I could possibly make some money from this too was interesting to me also, because if I did it would be a triumph, something nobody else in my position had really done before. Going to Peru to do this was a more enticing option than simply staying back in Britain. Although it obviously sounds crazy I thought that trying to build a successful company in Peru might have been the way to fulfil all my desires. After all my prospects at home seemed pretty poor. I thought that if the project worked out I would have 'cheated the system'. I would have done something different, original and 'outside the box'. I thought it would be a huge acheivement and I also thought that it was one worth pursuing. And if it didn´t work out, I reasoned, well at least I tried! I don´t know if all this sounds at all rational to the reader, but these really were my thoughts a tthe time.
I kept what I was doing a secret from everyone. My family and my friends still no absolutely nothing about it. I told them that I was going travelling in South America with my friends. And that´s what they all think I was doing between February and October of 2005. This is actually the first attempt I have ever made to fully explain what I did and what happened. Roger also has not told his family or his wife (then girlfriend) about what we did. So the whole thing was carried out pretty much in secret from all our family and friends. Although I´m sure some of the volunteers at the children´s centre suspected something, nobody ever asked us any direct questions about it, we were mainly left to our own nefarious devices.
I kept what I was doing a secret from everyone. My family and my friends still no absolutely nothing about it. I told them that I was going travelling in South America with my friends. And that´s what they all think I was doing between February and October of 2005. This is actually the first attempt I have ever made to fully explain what I did and what happened. Roger also has not told his family or his wife (then girlfriend) about what we did. So the whole thing was carried out pretty much in secret from all our family and friends. Although I´m sure some of the volunteers at the children´s centre suspected something, nobody ever asked us any direct questions about it, we were mainly left to our own nefarious devices.
Decision
During this time I was correponding by email with Roger. In late November 2004 he mentioned a few projects he was considering. One involved buying a property in the city of Cajamarca and turning it into a hotel. Another was to build up a herd of cattle and sell the milk to Nestle (Nestle does in fact by milk in Peru). Another far more ambitious project we talked about was growing and processing Tara (Peru is a major exporter of this product apparently used in the leather industry). But this would have required expensve heavy machinery and other high costs. We didn´t have the capital for that one.
After thinking about it back in England, and seriously wondering if I was crazy for even contemplating this I came to an agreement with Roger. The option we decided upon was growing a crop called Alfalfa. The English term for it is Medic, but I will refer to it in the Spanish, Alfalfa. I had never heard of it before so I did a google search on it and found out it´s a crop which is grown all over the world but is especially fast growing in tropical regions and is used as cattle and animal feed. Although it´s a very cheap crop so we would have to produce it in bulk. Alfalfa requires a lot of water to grow properly. Now, because it only rains seven or eight months a year in Cajamarca our project involved buying a pump and sprinkler system to water the Alfalfa plants from a well during the dry months. I would invest the money to buy the equipment whilst we would use Roger´s land on which to grow the Alfalfa. However, we would only use the land for four years, after this the pump and the equipment could be used in a different project somewhere else and the land would be sold off. I would travel to Cajamarca to live, and we would execute the project together. Roger was able to recruit Yessenia, the secretary at Bruce Peru at the time, to come and work with us and eventually to manage the day-to-day running of the project when we were gone.
After thinking about it back in England, and seriously wondering if I was crazy for even contemplating this I came to an agreement with Roger. The option we decided upon was growing a crop called Alfalfa. The English term for it is Medic, but I will refer to it in the Spanish, Alfalfa. I had never heard of it before so I did a google search on it and found out it´s a crop which is grown all over the world but is especially fast growing in tropical regions and is used as cattle and animal feed. Although it´s a very cheap crop so we would have to produce it in bulk. Alfalfa requires a lot of water to grow properly. Now, because it only rains seven or eight months a year in Cajamarca our project involved buying a pump and sprinkler system to water the Alfalfa plants from a well during the dry months. I would invest the money to buy the equipment whilst we would use Roger´s land on which to grow the Alfalfa. However, we would only use the land for four years, after this the pump and the equipment could be used in a different project somewhere else and the land would be sold off. I would travel to Cajamarca to live, and we would execute the project together. Roger was able to recruit Yessenia, the secretary at Bruce Peru at the time, to come and work with us and eventually to manage the day-to-day running of the project when we were gone.
domingo, 10 de junio de 2007
I went back to Britian in September. I had only been away for three months but I experienced quite a deep reverse culture shock, I felt lost and completely blown away. I thought that I was starting out again back home with a blank canvas. But in reality I had no real ideas, no contacts, little money and a lot of problems. I was living back with my parents near Stratford upon Avon in Warwickshire. The family moved there originally just a couple of months before I started out at university, so I dont have any roots or any friends there. I felt isolated and lonely even with my family around me. My attempts to get a job in a Fair Trade shop all failed, the best I could do was a volunteer position at a shop in a village half an hour away from Bangor in North Wales where I went to university. I was left totally disheartened. The only paid job I could get was working on the tills at a supermarket.
To cap it off my parents house is quite away outside town. its a fifteen minute walk to the nearest village, and from there you have to rely on the buses to get to Stratford (unless you drive, which I couldnt). My parents tried their best to help. They always try their best for me, but it was no good. It is an unnerving feeling that you want to be away from your family even though you love them and they love you.
Part of the reason why I was inspired to travel abroad was my dislike of where I am from. Stratford upon Avon is a great place to visit, but living there is quite different. I found the banal middle class lifestyle to be suffocating and depressing. I am deathly afraid of ending up a boring, middle aged old man living somewhere in middle England. A man like this has a good salary or maybe owns his own business. He lives in a pretty cottage in an expensive village miles from anywhere. He has an ugly wife and two teenage children with very expensive tastes. From the outside he seems to be successful but inside he is desperately unhappy, unfulfilled and spiritually vacuous. He is rude and arrogant and has an often patronising manner. His attitude is materialistic, his outlook on life is characterised by a sense of false optimism, fake smiles and false dawns. He enjoys going to the pub to drink real ale and talk to other boring men about football, or about how stupid American people are, or about house prices. Men like my neighbours, my old boss at the supermarket, my barber or the local solicitor. If you are English you will know exactly the type of man I am talking about, you may even be that type of man yourself. Well, subconciously I think I have have always been motivated to avoid becoming that type of person. To do something exciting and exotic instead of just wasting away in a boring old English suburb.
To cap it off my parents house is quite away outside town. its a fifteen minute walk to the nearest village, and from there you have to rely on the buses to get to Stratford (unless you drive, which I couldnt). My parents tried their best to help. They always try their best for me, but it was no good. It is an unnerving feeling that you want to be away from your family even though you love them and they love you.
Part of the reason why I was inspired to travel abroad was my dislike of where I am from. Stratford upon Avon is a great place to visit, but living there is quite different. I found the banal middle class lifestyle to be suffocating and depressing. I am deathly afraid of ending up a boring, middle aged old man living somewhere in middle England. A man like this has a good salary or maybe owns his own business. He lives in a pretty cottage in an expensive village miles from anywhere. He has an ugly wife and two teenage children with very expensive tastes. From the outside he seems to be successful but inside he is desperately unhappy, unfulfilled and spiritually vacuous. He is rude and arrogant and has an often patronising manner. His attitude is materialistic, his outlook on life is characterised by a sense of false optimism, fake smiles and false dawns. He enjoys going to the pub to drink real ale and talk to other boring men about football, or about how stupid American people are, or about house prices. Men like my neighbours, my old boss at the supermarket, my barber or the local solicitor. If you are English you will know exactly the type of man I am talking about, you may even be that type of man yourself. Well, subconciously I think I have have always been motivated to avoid becoming that type of person. To do something exciting and exotic instead of just wasting away in a boring old English suburb.
sábado, 9 de junio de 2007
Plans
Roger and I got on very well and we became good friends. One day we got talking about about some business ideas that he had. His degree is Economics from the national University of Lima. His father also owns several businesses, a number of farms I believe, a trucking business and a few other interests. He is an entrepenuer I suppose and Roger wanted to follow suit. Roger had been brought up as a priveledged and confident person with a great future ahead of him in business. He was at that time very ambitious and he wanted to eventually strike out on his own and not always be so reliant on his familys money. His father and his uncles had built up the family wealth from scratch, Rogers father (the family patriarch) had worked hard his whole life. Indeed he is still working now even though he must be a sectogenarian I guess. Out of the two of us Roger has by far the most ability, of course he also had a good knowledge of the business we eventually undertook whereas I had none. I think he wanted to work with me initially because I had some money (he didnt want to borrow from his father), because he wrongly thought I had access to low interest credit abroad, and I think also because he thought he could trust me.
Anyway, I had a dream of my own. My idea was to go back to Britain and build towards setting up my own shop selling Fair Trade goods from abroad which I then envisaged I could grow into a big business. Of course it was a total Pie in the Sky idea with absolutely no chance of actually happening. But at the time I was foolish enough to really believe it could be done. I was an idiot. On the other hand many people (not just children but otherwise sane adults also) have crazy dreams. For example to be a famous pop star, or actor, or writer, or set up their own successful business and be rich. But these dreams are often impossible to fulfill. My dream was to save the planet through Fair Trade and make a lot of money in the process. But Rogers ideas seemed sound to me so before I left to Britain I gave him $500 to invest for me in the hope of receiving $800 in three months time. Was I crazy to give this guy I met in Peru $500 to invest in shares? Yes I was! That was just the beginning though. Although I have ended up losing about half my money I invested I have not been scammed. I believe also that Roger has always been honest with me, although I could be wrong I suppose. After all he has lied to many people before, for example lied to his family and to Susanne extensively about the project we undertook together. But back then I trusted him, and for the most part I still do.
You have to understand that I was just 21 years old at this point and that I was a real head in the clouds dreamer. I was a delusional person who wanted to do exciting things with my life, but was not sure how to start.
Anyway, I had a dream of my own. My idea was to go back to Britain and build towards setting up my own shop selling Fair Trade goods from abroad which I then envisaged I could grow into a big business. Of course it was a total Pie in the Sky idea with absolutely no chance of actually happening. But at the time I was foolish enough to really believe it could be done. I was an idiot. On the other hand many people (not just children but otherwise sane adults also) have crazy dreams. For example to be a famous pop star, or actor, or writer, or set up their own successful business and be rich. But these dreams are often impossible to fulfill. My dream was to save the planet through Fair Trade and make a lot of money in the process. But Rogers ideas seemed sound to me so before I left to Britain I gave him $500 to invest for me in the hope of receiving $800 in three months time. Was I crazy to give this guy I met in Peru $500 to invest in shares? Yes I was! That was just the beginning though. Although I have ended up losing about half my money I invested I have not been scammed. I believe also that Roger has always been honest with me, although I could be wrong I suppose. After all he has lied to many people before, for example lied to his family and to Susanne extensively about the project we undertook together. But back then I trusted him, and for the most part I still do.
You have to understand that I was just 21 years old at this point and that I was a real head in the clouds dreamer. I was a delusional person who wanted to do exciting things with my life, but was not sure how to start.
The charity
At the time I was working at the charity I had just graduated from university. Looking back at myself and what I was like at the time I realise that I was still very naive about the world and about other people. I probably still am. I had no idea about women and I foolishly fell for the caprices of another volunteer at the centre. It was easily done I suppose because we were all working, socialising and living with each other pretty much 24 hours a day. Her name was Diana, very pretty and good fun of Peruvian Japanese decent and about my own age. Apparently many Japanese emigrated to Latin America at the start of the last century and there are sizable Japanese communities in places like Lima and Sao Paulo. All the Peruvian Japanese girls I have ever met have been utterly stunning, its a good racial mix I think. Her skin was a rich choclatey brown, like most Japanese girls she was svelt and slim. She always had a smile on her face and was unfailingly kind to all the kids at the centre and to all the other volunteers. She still is, I think, one of the most genuinely kind generous people I have ever met. She was also coquettish, which I think was a bit lost to me at the time. So I became infatuated with her and I was pretty devasted at the time when she left the centre. So were the kids, most of them broke down wailing on her last day and all the other volunteers and staff had tears in their eyes. The kids felt loved by her and attracted towards her and perhaps felt a bit rejected and lost when she left.
Although I know that the children really enjoyed going to the centre. They were well fed which they needed to supplement their diet at home, and they received some education and help with homework etc. Most of all I think they enjoyed the attention of volunteers who cared for them, I suspect many of them werent cared for too well or loved too much at home. Volunteers came to work there for a few short months only so they usually gave their all into helping the kids and making them feel special. The volunteers were often idealistic and very passionate about helping poor street children. As a result the kids received a lot of love and attention, but perhaps not too much actual help. Volunteers were constantly coming and going, each with their own new ideas about how to change and improve the organisation of the centre. So much so that good ideas and projects were often lost when a new group of volunteers arrived and initiated their own ideas. Also, unfairly in my view, volunteers often developed strong relationships with the kids (i.e Diana and others) only for the volunteer to leave after a few months and the child to feel very down about that and perhaps subsequently leave the centre. Those kids are vulnerable and perhaps need a relationship with an adult who will always be there for them.
Although I know that the children really enjoyed going to the centre. They were well fed which they needed to supplement their diet at home, and they received some education and help with homework etc. Most of all I think they enjoyed the attention of volunteers who cared for them, I suspect many of them werent cared for too well or loved too much at home. Volunteers came to work there for a few short months only so they usually gave their all into helping the kids and making them feel special. The volunteers were often idealistic and very passionate about helping poor street children. As a result the kids received a lot of love and attention, but perhaps not too much actual help. Volunteers were constantly coming and going, each with their own new ideas about how to change and improve the organisation of the centre. So much so that good ideas and projects were often lost when a new group of volunteers arrived and initiated their own ideas. Also, unfairly in my view, volunteers often developed strong relationships with the kids (i.e Diana and others) only for the volunteer to leave after a few months and the child to feel very down about that and perhaps subsequently leave the centre. Those kids are vulnerable and perhaps need a relationship with an adult who will always be there for them.
The Start
This whole saga started three years ago in summer 2004 really whilst I was working as a volunteer with poor street children in the city of Cajamarca in the Andean mountain range of northern Peru which is the main location for my story. Children working (and sometimes living) on the street is one of the great social problems of Latin America, and is something I have always believed is a terrible and preventable tragedy. Although to tell the truth the organisation I worked for did very little to help anyone out. I personally was able to contribute very little to helping the kids because my Spanish was so bad. But I met some really lovely people there, the kids were very lively and I loved watching them play and invent little games amongst themselves. The Peruvian volunteers and other international were hard working and good fun also. But no doubt the Peruvian men who frequented the centre were all after the blonde volunteers from Sweden and the U.S as an exotic sexual conquest, all under the sad delusion that they were available.
It was here where I met Roger Diaz Guerra, the man who plays such an integral part of this story. He lived next door to the centre, in fact the centre was rented from his family. His father was usually away in Lima on business and his mother had recently died. At 25 years old he lived a bit of a playboy lifestyle on an allowance from his father I think. The house where he lived back then is very large and right in the centre of Cajamarca, close to many restaurants, bars and diskotecs. So he went to parties, either with the volunteers or with other friends, every night. If he ever wanted something like a discounted meal or a free room for a night in another city, or advice he always had his family´s vast number of contacts to help him out (the kind of contacts that I´ve never had for some reason). He is a talented and well educated man who seems to understand everything and, at that time, seemed to have everything come so easily and naturally to him. Most of all he was very very charming, gregarious and fun to be with. He took the volunteers regularly in his truck to the family ranch at Huacariz to play football and have barbecues etc. He took us once up to the mountains above Cajamarca at night to see a spectacular view of the city. He seemed very comfortable and at ease in social situations. So it was sometimes difficult not to envy him a little bit, he seemed to have everything right there on a plate for him.
For some reason he has always preferred white skinned, blonde western women to women of his own race. He was one of the few Peruvian men (infamous for their macho, possessive attitudes) I knew who was able to impress the female volunteers. When I asked him why that was he told me it was because he was tired of Peruvian girls. But I don´t believe him. To my knowledge the only serious girlfriends he has ever been with have been European. His friend from universty Miguel told me later on that Roger had only dated one girl whist at university in Lima, a Swede (I don´t know her name). Despite the urgings of his friends he refused to try other girls (the consumate womaniser Miguel was incredulous that Roger did that). He had fallen madly in love with her, but she later chose to return permanently to Sweden without him. I think he may have had his heart broken, although I have never broached this subject with Roger.
Roger later dated (and eventually married) a German girl Susanne. When he was staying with her in Germany in late 2005 he proposed a scheme to me whereby he would pay for me to travel to Gothenburg Sweden to secretly help him track down and drop in unexpected to surprise his ex girlfriend. He needed my help because he doesn´t speak a word of Swedish and he thought he needed my English skills to help him navigate his way around the city. Now I don´t know how much Susanne knows about the ex girlfriend from Sweden, but I´m sure that deep down Roger still pines for her (even though I´m sure he is in love with Susanne). Talk about a passionate Latin lover!!
It was here where I met Roger Diaz Guerra, the man who plays such an integral part of this story. He lived next door to the centre, in fact the centre was rented from his family. His father was usually away in Lima on business and his mother had recently died. At 25 years old he lived a bit of a playboy lifestyle on an allowance from his father I think. The house where he lived back then is very large and right in the centre of Cajamarca, close to many restaurants, bars and diskotecs. So he went to parties, either with the volunteers or with other friends, every night. If he ever wanted something like a discounted meal or a free room for a night in another city, or advice he always had his family´s vast number of contacts to help him out (the kind of contacts that I´ve never had for some reason). He is a talented and well educated man who seems to understand everything and, at that time, seemed to have everything come so easily and naturally to him. Most of all he was very very charming, gregarious and fun to be with. He took the volunteers regularly in his truck to the family ranch at Huacariz to play football and have barbecues etc. He took us once up to the mountains above Cajamarca at night to see a spectacular view of the city. He seemed very comfortable and at ease in social situations. So it was sometimes difficult not to envy him a little bit, he seemed to have everything right there on a plate for him.
For some reason he has always preferred white skinned, blonde western women to women of his own race. He was one of the few Peruvian men (infamous for their macho, possessive attitudes) I knew who was able to impress the female volunteers. When I asked him why that was he told me it was because he was tired of Peruvian girls. But I don´t believe him. To my knowledge the only serious girlfriends he has ever been with have been European. His friend from universty Miguel told me later on that Roger had only dated one girl whist at university in Lima, a Swede (I don´t know her name). Despite the urgings of his friends he refused to try other girls (the consumate womaniser Miguel was incredulous that Roger did that). He had fallen madly in love with her, but she later chose to return permanently to Sweden without him. I think he may have had his heart broken, although I have never broached this subject with Roger.
Roger later dated (and eventually married) a German girl Susanne. When he was staying with her in Germany in late 2005 he proposed a scheme to me whereby he would pay for me to travel to Gothenburg Sweden to secretly help him track down and drop in unexpected to surprise his ex girlfriend. He needed my help because he doesn´t speak a word of Swedish and he thought he needed my English skills to help him navigate his way around the city. Now I don´t know how much Susanne knows about the ex girlfriend from Sweden, but I´m sure that deep down Roger still pines for her (even though I´m sure he is in love with Susanne). Talk about a passionate Latin lover!!
domingo, 4 de marzo de 2007
Daylight Robbery.
We sat down together´on stools next to the hut and after an earnest discussion agreed on a price of $4000. $600 for Roger to pay back Susanne and $3,400 for me. Roger and I initially wanted a much higher figure, 7 or $8000 but Malleaneo had realised the amount of problems that were there and was only willing to pay $4000 and was quite insistent about it. We shook hands on the deal, it was the best we could get under the circumstances, and walked half a mile up to Malleaneo´s house. Under a bed he had $3000 in rolls of notes $100 and $20 bills wrapped in elastic bands. He would pay me the last $1000 in a couple of months. We counted the money, put it into an envelope and Roger stuffed it deep into his pocket.
I decided to change my money into travellers cheques. An altogether safer and cheaper way of carrying large amounts of money around Peru. So we went back to Cajamarca, and stopped over at my hostal to pick up my passport. We arrived a few minutes after an armed robbery had occurred right outside the hostal. Apparently the bank employees were filling up the cash machine there, strangely with no police and minimal or no security around when they were threatened at gunpoint by a gang who stole all the cash. 100,000 soles or more than $30, 000 by all accounts. The robbery happened in broad daylight on a busy street and was surely seen by many families and young children. There must have been at least 50 witnesses to the crime, tourists out shopping for souvineers and handicrafts for carnival. Roger made the point that it was clealy a well planned and carefully timed raid because of the lack of security. Absolutely incredible. I was stunned, tired from my journey and still nervous about the deal I had just made.
We went to a (different) bank branch and I bought the cheques with Roger´s help and sealed them up in an envelope. I decided to give it to Roger for safe keeping in his house. We went for lunch and then later we went drinking. We got throught a crate and a half with Malleanio and some of the campesinos at Huacariz. Then later we went back to someones house for more beer and food provided by the women. I threw up outside but we managed to get back to the city centre ok where we engaged in more drinking and I made a complete fool of myself before retiring to bed exhausted at 3am. Luckily the woman on duty a the hostal was Sonia, a kindly and reliable lady who had been working since I last stayed there 18 months before, ´upgraded` me to a nicer single room downstairs.
It was a day that I don´t think I´ll ever forget and it was the end of a turbulent saga for me which I will attempt to describe in much more detail in my later blogs. I tried to write a book about it while I was working in South Korea last year, but I could only write about 40 pages. I will however try to use what I wrote as a basis for these blogs. I am not a good writer at all, but I htink I have an interesting story to tell which will hopefully come out of what I write.
Tom
I decided to change my money into travellers cheques. An altogether safer and cheaper way of carrying large amounts of money around Peru. So we went back to Cajamarca, and stopped over at my hostal to pick up my passport. We arrived a few minutes after an armed robbery had occurred right outside the hostal. Apparently the bank employees were filling up the cash machine there, strangely with no police and minimal or no security around when they were threatened at gunpoint by a gang who stole all the cash. 100,000 soles or more than $30, 000 by all accounts. The robbery happened in broad daylight on a busy street and was surely seen by many families and young children. There must have been at least 50 witnesses to the crime, tourists out shopping for souvineers and handicrafts for carnival. Roger made the point that it was clealy a well planned and carefully timed raid because of the lack of security. Absolutely incredible. I was stunned, tired from my journey and still nervous about the deal I had just made.
We went to a (different) bank branch and I bought the cheques with Roger´s help and sealed them up in an envelope. I decided to give it to Roger for safe keeping in his house. We went for lunch and then later we went drinking. We got throught a crate and a half with Malleanio and some of the campesinos at Huacariz. Then later we went back to someones house for more beer and food provided by the women. I threw up outside but we managed to get back to the city centre ok where we engaged in more drinking and I made a complete fool of myself before retiring to bed exhausted at 3am. Luckily the woman on duty a the hostal was Sonia, a kindly and reliable lady who had been working since I last stayed there 18 months before, ´upgraded` me to a nicer single room downstairs.
It was a day that I don´t think I´ll ever forget and it was the end of a turbulent saga for me which I will attempt to describe in much more detail in my later blogs. I tried to write a book about it while I was working in South Korea last year, but I could only write about 40 pages. I will however try to use what I wrote as a basis for these blogs. I am not a good writer at all, but I htink I have an interesting story to tell which will hopefully come out of what I write.
Tom
jueves, 1 de marzo de 2007
first blog
Well, this is the first of many travel blogs I am planning to write concerning my time in South America. I´m staying at Samay Wasi Hostal in Miraflores, Lima now. Nice place and I reccommend it. So during the next few days I will tell you about my last month in Peru and over the next few weeks hopefully I will be able to describe some of my previous visits to this great country and what happened to me.
Two weeks ago I arrived on the overnight bus in Cajamarca, Peru. I paid 110 soles ($30) for my one-way ticket which is expensive here to say the very least. I took a taxi into the centre of town to a friend´s house. He wasn´t home, but there was plenty of activity in the school for street children next door. In there I met Susanne who proudly showed me around Inca Wasi school, the place has changed considerably since I was last there. A second storey is being added to the building, the school is expanding and they are building extra classrooms and a library for the kids with donated money from abroad. Instead of graduating children at 11 years old like before they are educating them up to the age of 16 and those street children with the ability to go to university will be helped to do that. A real success story although small children I remember from three years ago who left before Susanne and others arrived are now selling bottles of Coca-Cola or cheap alcohol on the city streets, or washing the windscreens of cars as they wait at traffic lights.
After forty-five minutes Roger and Mallenio arrived by motorbike. Roger is Susanne´s Peruvian fiance, a stocky confident man of 28, he´s an excellent friend of mine and someone who features very heavily of the story of my time here. Mallenio is a slim man of 32, but he looks a lot older. The palms of his hands are as tough and as coarse as old leather after years of working on farms, and he speaks an almost unintelligible rural Spanish dialect which Roger needs to translate for me. It is a warm reunion for us as I´ve been away for well over a year. So they help me carry my bags over to Hospedaje Belen where I was planning to stay.
After dumping my bags with the rather unpleasant Señorita who was working there we traveled by taxi to Huacariz, Roger´s family farm about a couple of miles outside Cajamarca city. There Malleanio´s family were busy digging up weeds in the fields where the alfalfa grew with trowels. Old men women and I believe children also were helping out. Lunch was cooking on the fire inside an adobe hut nearby and the toddlers were playing with the dogs and the cats in the dirt. Mallenio then showed us the broken pipes or the irrigation system for the fields and complained loudly that he would have t o spend a lot of his hard earned money to fix them. He seemed agitated and full of worry about it all.
Well, someone else wants the computer in the hostal now. I´ll write again tomorrow.
Two weeks ago I arrived on the overnight bus in Cajamarca, Peru. I paid 110 soles ($30) for my one-way ticket which is expensive here to say the very least. I took a taxi into the centre of town to a friend´s house. He wasn´t home, but there was plenty of activity in the school for street children next door. In there I met Susanne who proudly showed me around Inca Wasi school, the place has changed considerably since I was last there. A second storey is being added to the building, the school is expanding and they are building extra classrooms and a library for the kids with donated money from abroad. Instead of graduating children at 11 years old like before they are educating them up to the age of 16 and those street children with the ability to go to university will be helped to do that. A real success story although small children I remember from three years ago who left before Susanne and others arrived are now selling bottles of Coca-Cola or cheap alcohol on the city streets, or washing the windscreens of cars as they wait at traffic lights.
After forty-five minutes Roger and Mallenio arrived by motorbike. Roger is Susanne´s Peruvian fiance, a stocky confident man of 28, he´s an excellent friend of mine and someone who features very heavily of the story of my time here. Mallenio is a slim man of 32, but he looks a lot older. The palms of his hands are as tough and as coarse as old leather after years of working on farms, and he speaks an almost unintelligible rural Spanish dialect which Roger needs to translate for me. It is a warm reunion for us as I´ve been away for well over a year. So they help me carry my bags over to Hospedaje Belen where I was planning to stay.
After dumping my bags with the rather unpleasant Señorita who was working there we traveled by taxi to Huacariz, Roger´s family farm about a couple of miles outside Cajamarca city. There Malleanio´s family were busy digging up weeds in the fields where the alfalfa grew with trowels. Old men women and I believe children also were helping out. Lunch was cooking on the fire inside an adobe hut nearby and the toddlers were playing with the dogs and the cats in the dirt. Mallenio then showed us the broken pipes or the irrigation system for the fields and complained loudly that he would have t o spend a lot of his hard earned money to fix them. He seemed agitated and full of worry about it all.
Well, someone else wants the computer in the hostal now. I´ll write again tomorrow.
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