Monday, May 30, 2011

Legends from Teotitlán del Valle by Naomi Harper

Here are some legends I collected from my sixth grade English students in Teotitlán del Valle. Their assignment was to ask an older person in the community to tell them a story, myth, legend, or historical anecdote from Teotitlán. I collected the legends the kids turned in, combined some of them, edited some of them, and translated them to English. Then I put together a book of the students' drawings and legends in English, Spanish, and Zapotec. Here are the legends I chose to include in the book along with some of my favorite drawings. (Note that in most cases I edited the legends lightly, but tried to maintain, for the most part, the spirit of the language used by the children. If, for instance, some events seem disconnected, or if a meter and a half doesn't seem to you like an "enormous" height for a human being, please suspend your disbelief.)


Full story at http://harpernaomi.blogspot.com/p/legends-from-teotitlan.html

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Thinking Globally Makes Local Tourism a Heartfelt Choice

By Susan Bean Aycock

Sometimes it takes a global village to help the one just down the road.   

For Fundación En Vía of Oaxaca, Mexico, that means not only reaching out to touch the lives of a nearby community through microfinancing loans and free English classes, but sharing the experience  with people from all over the world who would rather be travelers than tourists. 

Everyone comes out richer: the women with small business seed money they could never secure on their own, and the travelers who would never have the opportunity to make such intimate contact with the local culture. Which is, after all, the goal of local travel.

 

“Local travel involves being very conscious of getting local products and services from the source in any country or village,” says En Vía Executive Director Carlos Hernandez Topete. “It means trying to get more money to the local people of the area, and respecting the environment, not just the ecological one but the social environment: being respectful of customs and how things are done.”  

Hernandez Topete, also co-director of the Instituto Cultural de Oaxaca (ICO) language school where the tours are based, launched the nonprofit organization’s first tour in June of 2008. In the remaining months of that first year, 12 women received loans. In 2010, 100 women were able to fund their business dreams with En Vía seed money. First loans are 1300 Mexican pesos, or about $100 -- representing several weeks’ work and an amount none of the women could secure on their own. That loan provides a  concrete way to fund business dreams by buying yarn and dye to weave rugs, ingredients to make tortillas, corn to feed chickens or seedlings to grow into a fruit orchard.

En Vía follows a classic microfinancing model of putting loan recipients into groups of three to provide accountability as well as peer support; interest-free loans are given incrementally once they prove they’re able to fund their projects and repay the money. After the first loan, borrowers have a week to buy supplies to put their plan into action. Repayment is130 pesos a week (about $10) for 10 weeks, and after repaying the first loan, they’re eligible to apply for a second loan of 2,000 pesos. A third loan pushes the amount to 3,000 pesos.

 

What’s so special about Teotitlán del Valle? Located in the foothills of the Sierra Juárez mountains, where it was one of the first villages founded by the Zapotecs around 1465, it’s famous for its woven textiles, orlaadi in the local language. Rug designs are passed from parent to

child and many all-natural  colors come from various shades of wool or dyes made from plants and insects. The beautiful crimson red of many of the rugs comes from cochineal, made from crushing a parasitic insect that lives on cactus, which the Spanish conquistadors traded briskly at a price per kilo more than silver.

About 70% of the population in this town of about 5,000 makes their living weaving, with a loom taking up a sizeable portion of each home – and some of the more prosperous families owning several, eachabout the size of a small car. Weaving in this village dates  back to about 500 B.C., although it was the Spaniards who introduced the modern-day pedal loom,  replacing traditional Zapotec back-strap looms.

Many people travel to Oaxaca, and especially to Teotitán del Valle, to buy rugs that they’ll hang in homes all over the world. But not everyone has been a guest in the cinderblock home and workshop of an artist who can not only explain the meaning of the intricate designs, but who can tell you exactly how a $100 loan has changed her life.

Mother and daughter Juana and Enedina are master weavers whoused their loan money to buy wool, which they still spin on a wheel, and raw ingredients to make their own natural dyes. Enedina’s 20-year-old daughter Yanet, an accounting student at the University of Oaxaca, has also received a loan to make beaded earrings on the hour-long bus ride from home to the city. 

Though her university tuition is free, her family’s earnings make it possible for her to pay transportation,
books and other fees she couldn’t otherwise afford for the incredible opportunity to attend college. 

Rosalía used her first two En Vía loans to make tortillas, but with the profits was able to fix her broken sewing machine and fulfill her  real business dream of making traditional clothing, which she’s been doing since November of 2009.  “This is a really clear example of howmicrofinancing impacts the life of one person,” says En Vía Managing Director Emily Berens, a 33-year-old former Bostonian who has helped grow the fledgling nonprofit since its inception in 2008.

“Rosalía had a talent to make clothes, but she had no money to get the business started,” says Berens. “She never finished high school,and thought she couldn’t afford the books and uniforms to send her daughter to high school. In the past year she’s grown her business to the point where she teaches and hires other women to do some of the sewing. But even more importantly, her profits have been enough to send her daughter to her first year of high school. She credits the En Vía microfinancing program directly with being able to educate her daughter.”

“Rosalía had a talent to make clothes, but she had no money to get the business started,” says Berens. “She never finished high school,and thought she couldn’t afford the books and uniforms to send her daughter to high school. In the past year she’s grown her business to the point where she teaches and hires other women to do some of the sewing. But even more importantly, her profits have been enough to send her daughter to her first year of high school. She credits the En Vía microfinancing program directly with being able to educate her daughter.”

Minerva, a single mother, traveled north to the state of Sonora where she learned how to make flour tortillas – a departure from the traditional corn tortillas of Teotitlán. Her mentor, also a single mother, agreed to teach her but only with the promise that Minerva would start a business to support her daughter and start saving for her education. To give her community a taste of the unfamiliar tortillas, Minerva gave out samples, then began to sell them in the local market. Her tortillas are now sold not only in Teotitlán but at the language school cafeteria in Oaxaca, and her vision is to start a tortilla-making cooperative that would employ other single mothers in the village.

“En Via goes to a deep level to connect visitors to the local culture in a meaningful and unusual way,” says Berens. “There are benefits for both the local people and the people on our tours, and we can magnify the impact of our dollars by tying tourism to a sustainable economic development model.”

“Our goal is to give local communities a concrete way to be proud of who they are and what they do,” adds Executive Director Hernandez Topete, “and to provide funds that can help them accomplish that.”

The southern Mexican village of Teotitlán del Valle is a cultural treasure with a rich heritage and more than atwo-thousand-year-old tradition of weaving beautiful textiles. You could pick any number of “artisan” tours,most of which go only to the largest shops on the main road to town. Or you could nto only meet the weavers and other entrepreneurs of the village, but help them achieve financial independence and the once impossible dream of educating their children.


L
ocal travel makes a difference. Ask Juana, Enedina or Yanet. Or Rosalía and Minerva. Because they’ve not just gotten a loan from a local travel experience; they’ve gotten a chance for a better life.
 

Fundación En Vía Supports The Local Travel Movement

For more information on the Local Travel Movement visit http://www.localtravelmovement.com/

 

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Top Ten Myths (or are they…?) of the Oaxaca Valley Pueblos

Preciosa_sangre_de_cristo_iglesia_teo_photo_duncansmith

10.  The common cold is generally caused by going barefoot or drinking cold beverages.

 

9.  Physical ailments ranging from a stomachache to a pulled muscle can be treated with some combination of chamomile tea, Vapor-rub, Alka seltzer, and/or lime juice. 

 

8.  If you feel inexplicably out of sorts, you might have an evil spirit inside you.  To get it out, have someone rub a whole raw egg all over your body, then crack it into a glass of water and bury the contents in the yard.


7.  If you admire a cute baby but don’t touch or kiss it, your gaze will stick to it (you’ll “give it eye”), and it will be cranky later.

 

6.  Never get married or engaged on a Tuesday.  

 

5.  To ward off lightening, throw two machetes down in the yard in the form of a cross.

 

4.  If you swim or bathe without getting your head wet, you’ll get a fever. 

 

3. To repel flies, hang a plastic bag full of water from the ceiling, or place lime halves stuck with cloves on the table. 

 

2. To repel witches, place an open scissor on the floor in front of each entrance to your house, or keep a black dog on the premises. 

 

1.  If someone is roasting a rat, and you think it smells good but you’re too proud to taste it, your teeth will start falling out. The only cure?  Eat some roasted rat.

 

Article by Teresa Ponikvar.

Photo by Duncan Smith.

 

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Big Ambition Coupled with Small Steps

Business_class_with_shelley

By Shelley Tennyson, Volunteer Program Manager 

A few weeks ago, I shared with all of you the experience and incredible success of our first Business Training Program class through the post “Let’s Get Down to Business.” If you can recall, we were filled with excitement for the next few weeks to come and could not stop smiling on the bus ride back from our first meeting. While our enthusiasm and excitement has remained, our smiles have changed to a more pensive and concerned look…

We started out with lots of eagerness on the part of the women, with lots of desire to share what they are doing and the difficulties they run into as well as their pride in their work.  However, by the third meeting, reality set in. There were church meetings and festivals getting in the way of the schedule, and attendance dropped dramatically, to the point where we felt it was necessary to start again.  We decided to reach out to the women and create a more formal commitment; Lucy, a volunteer helping to run the business training, and the Director, Carlos went to the usual Tuesday collection meeting to see who wanted to participate, and 15 women made a solid commitment to come to 5 sessions.

Twelve women came to the first session, which talked about how to track income and expenses.  None of the women there had been doing this, and there was agreement among all that this is a very important first step.  Their homework was to set up a “cash book” in order to start tracking their income and expenses.  The next week, only 7 of the 12 showed up, and the first one to show was 20 minutes late.  None of them had done their cashbooks.  Thus, all we were able to accomplish was to have each woman set up a cashbook for the week from memory.

The next week there were two women, with a third showing up at the end of the meeting.  Granted, it was the beginning of Semana Santa (Easter week), but all had agreed the week before that the meeting day and time would be fine.  We decided to go ahead with lesson 2 on profits and losses, mostly to see if it would benefit the two in attendance.  It did, and we decided to carry on with those two in order to test the remaining lessons.

The problem?  There are lots of ideas surrounding the attendance of our business class.  First, these women are already stretched to the limit, working incredibly long hours for very little money.  Second, we are asking them to do something very foreign to them: write down what they make and what they spend.  They’ve been operating for generations without tracking anything, and asking them to change is not easy.  The third problem is that even though they’ve made a commitment to the classes, there are many competing community events drawing their attention.

The solution? Part of what we are trying to do here is to give the women a much better understanding of their businesses so that they can maximize their profits, earn more money, and be successful entrepreneurs. We decided that the benefits of such a program are invaluable and therefore should be mandatory. Any women applying for a second loan from us will now be required to attend and complete our 3 week Business Training Program. 

Probably the more difficult part will be to get the women to start tracking their income and expenses, and looking at their actual profits and losses. It’s probably a lot like people who go to Weight Watchers with great intentions, but who don’t really want to follow the diet after years of eating what they want.  Stay tuned for my next post, and we’ll see whether or not we are experiencing more success.

 

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Big Ambition Coupled with Small Steps

Business_class_with_shelley

Big Ambition Coupled with Small Steps

 

By Shelley Tennyson, Volunteer Program Manager

 

A few weeks ago, I shared with all of you the experience and incredible success of our first Business Training Program class through the post “Let’s Get Down to Business.” If you can recall, we were filled with excitement for the next few weeks to come and could not stop smiling on the bus ride back from our first meeting. While our enthusiasm and excitement has remained, our smiles have changed to a more pensive and concerned look…

 

We started out with lots of eagerness on the part of the women, with lots of desire to share what they are doing and the difficulties they run into as well as their pride in their work.  However, by the third meeting, reality set in. There were church meetings and festivals getting in the way of the schedule, and attendance dropped dramatically, to the point where we felt it was necessary to start again.  We decided to reach out to the women and create a more formal commitment; Lucy, a volunteer helping to run the business training, and the Director, Carlos went to the usual Tuesday collection meeting to see who wanted to participate, and 15 women made a solid commitment to come to 5 sessions.

 

Twelve women came to the first session, which talked about how to track income and expenses.  None of the women there had been doing this, and there was agreement among all that this is a very important first step.  Their homework was to set up a “cash book” in order to start tracking their income and expenses.  The next week, only 7 of the 12 showed up, and the first one to show was 20 minutes late.  None of them had done their cashbooks.  Thus, all we were able to accomplish was to have each woman set up a cashbook for the week from memory.

 

The next week there were two women, with a third showing up at the end of the meeting.  Granted, it was the beginning of Semana Santa (Easter week), but all had agreed the week before that the meeting day and time would be fine.  We decided to go ahead with lesson 2 on profits and losses, mostly to see if it would benefit the two in attendance.  It did, and we decided to carry on with those two in order to test the remaining lessons.

 

The problem?  There are lots of ideas surrounding the attendance of our business class.  First, these women are already stretched to the limit, working incredibly long hours for very little money.  Second, we are asking them to do something very foreign to them: write down what they make and what they spend.  They’ve been operating for generations without tracking anything, and asking them to change is not easy.  The third problem is that even though they’ve made a commitment to the classes, there are many competing community events drawing their attention.

 

The solution? Part of what we are trying to do here is to give the women a much better understanding of their businesses so that they can maximize their profits, earn more money, and be successful entrepreneurs. We decided that the benefits of such a program are invaluable and therefore should be mandatory. Any women applying for a second loan from us will now be required to attend and complete our 3 week Business Training Program. 

 

Probably the more difficult part will be to get the women to start tracking their income and expenses, and looking at their actual profits and losses. It’s probably a lot like people who go to Weight Watchers with great intentions, but who don’t really want to follow the diet after years of eating what they want.  Stay tuned for my next post, and we’ll see whether or not we are experiencing more success.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Getting More for Your Money

By Susan Bean Aycock, English Program Volunteer

This week, $50 bought me not quite all of a pair of shoes in Dallas. Last week, the same amount provided me the opportunity to buy into the hopes and dreams of half a dozen women in rural Mexico.

I had signed up for a tour by En Vía to its new locale, Diaz Ordáz. We were three women: Cynthia from the US, Junko from Japan, and myself. All of us had already spent some time in Mexico and weren’t new to the idea of microfinancing, but none of us had ever been to this little town. We were going to meet the women who had requested loans and hear their business proposals.

Our tour group of Cynthia, me and Junko with
prospective borrower Estella and her son
Even in April, it was already hot at 10 a.m. when we got to the house of the first prospective borrower, Estella. Mother of a nine-year-old son who stood shyly in the doorway, she told us that she had learned to embroider last year in a state-run course and now made napkin and tortilla basket covers to sell locally. She buys the printed cloths and thread at a close by market, Tlacalulo, and thus far she makes a profit margin of just a few pesos per napkin, but is she excited to be creating her own income for her family.

Raquel making bread in her family’s bakery.
Then it was on to Raquel’s, whose family has been baking bread for two decades, she has recently learned decorative cake making and wants to expand the family facility to include a vapor oven that can cook more specialty breads. The family sells its wares door to door, changing the selection daily.

Evailda’s house was next, a small ranchito where we found her husband, son and assorted animals, but not Evailda herself. Her husband jumped into his mototaxi to go get her – it turns out her mother had died that week and the funeral procession we had seen coming into town was for her. The family stood graciously in their yard and explained the process of buying chicks to resell as cut chicken meat: a profit margin of pesos per chick, hoping that none die in the holding period.

We finished the tour at Sandra and Zenaida’s tiny store, where locals buy staples such as soap, detergent and chicken feed. They would like to buy more inventory (and maybe sell one of the seven jars of Dippity-Do under the counter), plus stay open longer hours.

Evailda with her son and husband, discussing
plans to sell chickens.
Then we were solemnly invited to drink hot chocolate (a local specialty) and sweet bread at a large home gathering, which turned out to be a funeral reception for Evailda’s mother. We ate, drank and had a long conversation about the burial customs overlaid by Spanish conquistadors on the indigenous culture. We were strangers made friends, welcomed into the open arms of a grieving community.

For $50, I got to buy into the hopes and dreams of a group of women I will never see again, but my day’s experience will become part of the fabric of their lives because it will help fund their dreams. And unlike the shoes, it’s something I’ll have forever.