DAY 1

ARRIVAL

Friday, November 8, 2013

The plane was starting the landing and all that I could see was desert. When it was about to land, I saw near the airport dozens of poor houses made out of wood. The powerty was there.

Piura is in the North of Perú, near to Ecuador. It has 400,000 inhabitants and it is an hour away from the coast and the mountains and just a step away from a desert of dusty land.

Two people of CIPCA were waiting for me at the airport, Vitucho and Jorge. They gave me a ride around the city and we had dinner at a mall. The traffic was crazy, and the cars were old, but the mall was very similar to those in Europe. It is the conjunction of the 1^st world and a developing country. There are 3-wheels-motorbikes that you can jump on and travel a couple kilometres paying less than $1 but I was advised to negotiate the fare in advance. I had heard some stories about unsafety in the city and to be honest I felt hard times were coming.

Vitucho told me he was going with his mate Wilmer Bermejo to the mountains to a little village to have a meeting with the inhabitants of Tambochico. As I knew no one in Piura, I decided to ask for permission to join them and they told me to be ready at 5am because in those villages in the mountains, they wait with a whip in the hand so that the visitors are not late. I was a bit scared…

ARRIVAL

Friday, November 8, 2013

6pm. The plane was starting the landing and all that I could see was desert. When it was about to land, I saw near the airport dozens of poor houses made out of wood. The poverty was right there. Piura is in the North of Perú, near to Ecuador. It has 400,000 inhabitants and it is an hour away from the coast and the mountains and just a step away from a desert of dusty land. Two people of CIPCA were waiting for me at the airport, Vitucho and Jorge. They gave me a ride around the city and we had dinner at a mall. The traffic was crazy, and the cars were old, but the mall was very similar to those in Europe. It is the conjunction of the 1^st world and a developing country. There are 3-wheels-motorbikes that you can jump on and travel a couple kilometres paying less than $1 but I was advised to negotiate the fare in advance. I had heard some stories about unsafety in the city and to be honest I didn’t feel very comfortable.

I learned that people in Peru don’t have access to the same level of service that we have in Spain. Vitucho’s daughter died of cancer aged only 5. He told me that usually with that kin of cancer in Spain are saved 8 out of 10. However, in Peru are only saved around 3 out of 10. He also told me the story about how he lost his brother and father. When his brother was 4, he got sick and his parents did their best to take care of him. Based on their traditions, they can’t cut the hair to sick people, because it takes out their strength. So after a few weeks feeling sick, his brother felt much better and recovered. Then his father cut his brother’s hair and in two days time his brother died. It was such a terrible thing for his father that he went into deppression and didn’t want to eat anything. His father died a couple of weeks after his brother.

 

Plans

Vitucho told me he was going with his mate Wilmer Bermejo to the mountains to a little village to have a meeting with the inhabitants of Tambochico. As I knew nobody in Piura, I decided to ask for permission to join them and they told me to be ready at 5am because in those villages in the mountains, they wait with a whip in the hand so that the visitors are not late. I was a bit scared…

Intro

Thursday, November 7, 2013

After enrolling in the International “Deusto MBA” back in April 2013, now the time has come to do my “Service Learning”. The classes at Deusto University in Bilbao and the electives at Fordham University in New York City have ended. The assignments, the exams and the days without sleeping too. Now I am going to travel to Perú. I have been anxiously waiting for this to come. It is an incredible opportunity to know a different culture and help the NGOs and the communities they work with.

Back in July, a couple of NGOs presented the students different projects where we could apply our newly learned knowledge and skills. In my case, I selected Peru’s fundraising project in Piura, offered to us through Bilbao’s NGO “Alboan” and Peru’s association “CIPCA”. During the presentation I learned that CIPCA offers loans to entrepreneurship women with low-income.

Alboan is a jesuit NGO that is established in the Basque Country and focuses its efforts on cooperation and education while participates in networks that affect the life of excluded groups of the South. My main contact in Alboan has been Leire Morquecho who is in charge of international projects.

CIPCA stands for Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado, which can be translated as Centre for Research and Promotion of Farmers. It is an NGO promoted by the Society of Jesus and it is based on Piura. Manuel Alburquerque, CIPCA’s director, has personally informed me about the place where I am going to stay and other details about my trip.

In mid-September, Manuel sent me a report that CIPCA’s Unidad de Servicios Financieros (USF, Financial Services Department) had done to study the loan market in Piura’s region. It had been done to decide whether to offer loan services in more areas than they do by now or not. The report shows the different players in the loan market as well as different factors that can affect the decision.

Next Monday I will start my job at CIPCA and I hope I can help them to do whatever they need.