by Helen Osborn, Mysmallhelp Volunteer December 2010, Peru
Our day started bright and early on Christmas eve, Leander and I dashed down to the market at 7am in the usual last minute Peruvian panic type way! We arrived at the market to find most people had been there since four in the morning and had already set up their stalls. We on the other hand weren’t even quite sure where our men for constructing our stall were! Luckily we stumbled upon them quite quickly! Luckily, the day before Leander and Abel had managed to find a company in Cusco that hired tents, chairs and tables. Lurdes is a young disabled girl that Mysmallhelp has been supporting since May. Lurdes suffers from osteogenesis imperfecta, and had previously been locked away in her house in Rumira just outside Ollantaytambo for nearly 18 years. Before Mysmallhelp helped to find her a wheel chair she had no way of moving independently. Her life has changed significantly over the past 2 months has recently started to learn to read and write with a private government teacher that Mysmallhelp helped organize to visit her at her home. Lurdes has also recently been given training in jewellery making with a Cuscenan jewellery teacher named Cristian. Cristian is delighted to have the privelige of teaching Lurdes and has said that he will be the happiest man alive if he has the opportunity to help another 20 Lurdes!!
Mysmallhelp decided to pay for a stand at the Christmas market in Cusco to help Lurdes to sell the jewellery that she made in November and December. Designer, Abel Torres also helped by donating 10% of the sales of his designer clothes to Mysmallhelp to support Lurdes and other disabled young people.
The men set about constructing the stall with a plastic tarpaulin to prevent the rain from running the products and Leander went to find the tables and chairs. Cristian and Nelly arrived at about 8.30am ahead of Lurdes and Abel to help us work out the display for the products. Cristian has a lot of experience in this and therefore knows the best way to display products so that they are eye catching, but not set out in such an elaborate way that people are scared to touch them. Lurdes and Abel arrived about an hour later; shortly after the market quickly fell into full swing. The Plaza was packed with handicraft products and typical Peruvian Christmas food stalls. The place was literally bursting at the seams with Alpaca and Panetone!!!!-this however was very much to our advantage. Of course no one can ever deny the sheer beauty of the artisan products of Peru, a lot of the stalls were selling the same products, Abel’s and Lurdes products on the other handed offered those trawling the plaza something completely different. Lurdes products were very beautiful and, as I said, very different to the other jewellery products. Her price was very fair and she had a good selection of products ranging from the real “I love it” pieces, to bracelets that caught the impulse buyers as well as those really looking. Abel´s products were major eye catchers, especially his hand made printed pieces. I had assumed that the target audience for Abel´s clothes would have been foreigners, because the clothes carry a definite rave style. However in the end the main buyers turned out to be Peruvians. The great thing about the range of clothes Abel was selling was that as well as the printed pieces he also had a rail of more simply stylish clothes that appealed greatly to girls between 18-30 years old. We did have to concede on the prices slightly and of course make some deals (we are in major bargaining territory after all!) but he still sold a good amount for a good price.
The morning went very smoothly, but the thought hanging over everyone’s head was: “ and what time can we expect the rain?” and sure enough without fail it came, and wow.. it rained! Although we did have plastic covering our stall, the water still managed to get instead, and Leander had warned us how the year before the force of the rain had brought tents down. We covered every inch that we could with plastic, and regularly pushed the rain off the roof of the tent with a stick. It had been in January 2010 when the rain was so strong that it caused the river in the sacred to flood and thousands of people’s homes were destroyed. Luckily this year the rain was not as strong, and so all we had to do was wait for it stop, however that did take a good two hours! All in all it was felt that the Christmas market was a success in terms of sales and advertising for Abel, Lurdes and MySmallHelp. The Christmas market itself was lovely! During the whole of December there had been a distinct lack of Christmas spirit, however on the 24th of December in Plaza de Armas, Cuzco it suddenly sprang to life!
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