Ribbon End

Our 2nd to last class of the year: Ribbon Designs on Pillowcases. Something you might find in a craft fair. Church basement. In a chest in a closet somewhere. Since our first pillowcase course last month, pillowcase have become the new favorite thing. What the women make I personally wouldn't use in my bedroom, but it is the high fashion here. When I do a mini-evaluation at the end of each class I try to get an idea about what the women learned and how they will use what they learned. They usually tell me they will try and sell it and make their new craft a business. Today their teacher pushed them to use it as a business. "Don't take this pillowcase and put it in your house where no one will see. Exhibit it. Sell it. Make more." I hope her push does push some of our women into business.

On the business note - I experienced the worst customer service today (well, almost everyday I experience bad customer service in Peru, but today was especially bad). I wanted to find out if this little corner store had envelopes.
"Yes."
"Can you show me the sizes?"
"No."
"You can't show me the sizes of envelopes you have?"
"You have to bring in a model of the size of paper you want to use for the envelope."
"But, I don't have the exact size, actually I want to see the sizes of the envelopes so that I can tailor my paper to the size you have."
"I am not going to take out all of my envelopes to show you. I have too many."

This conversation was repeated about 3 times. Can you believe that? I would think a business owener would want to sell her products, thus show them to her customers. I never got to see the size of the envelopes. We got a long way to go to improve businesses in Cajamarca outside of DiscoverHope Fund's reach.