[Cue Dolly Parton music] Workin' 9 to 5... well, more like 9ish to 6ish

MEDA has a few projects going on in Peru; but I am part of Techno-Links (TL), which is a brand spanking new project in Lima. Unlike some other projects which are more focused on specific sectors or regions, TL is broad in the sense that we focus on all of Peru and all of Nicaragua. Let me do a little professional pitch to everyone reading this – so you have a better understanding of what it is we are working on Peru. It’s actually kind of cool- and I say that with no irony or sarcasm!

TL is a “competitive agriculture technology program”, or so our tagline says. We are a program that seeks to expand the agriculture market. In essence we are looking to connect small producers with the technology they need to expand their market, and in turn expand their incomes and better their lives. How do would we do this, you ask? Great question. Well, it’s a competition! Organizations or companies send us applications with their ideas, and we determine if we think it’s something we would like to fund to see develop. We are looking to work with input suppliers, cooperatives, associations, or really anyone in a position to run a project that will have a broad scope. A very basic example: a cooperative may apply and say they intend to purchase machinery that will help them develop their crops faster. The project may consist of purchasing the machinery and training everyone to use it, maintain it etc. I’m not sure if this is a real example, but this was the way I explained it to myself earlier.

Currently we are in the first phase, or the pilot phase, since we are still learning about the sectors we are working in. I can honestly say you can prepare as best you can, but something will always come out of nowhere to surprise you in these introductory phases.

The Office:

We are working in a rather small office on the border of Magdalena and San Isidro here in Lima. If you have been to Lima before you may be familiar with San Isidro- its where a lot of the corporate head offices are located. Its relatively modern and green in comparison to the center of Lima.

Currently, there are 4 of us working here all the time, the project manager, accountant, administrative assistant and myself. However, in about a week and a half we will be joined by another intern. Since it is such a small team, it’s nice to get to know everyone really well. The office ambiance is very low key, which is very comforting when you are new to a country.

The Work:

The work is self-paced, I can do as much as I feel like on a daily basis since I am responsible for certain tasks. At this point, it is a matter of revising what we have done and what we should change or keep the same for the next phase. Personally, I am a bit of an organizational fanatic so revision and organization of things is my forte.

A side project of mine was to create and monitor social media outlets for this project. I figured since most of the organizations we were interested in and some of the companies we had been in contact with had active Facebook and Twitter pages, why not give it a shot for our organization too? Well, we launched it not too long ago, and I think it will serve a lot of purpose in the upcoming stages- we’ve already got some good traffic on the sites. Also, it’s a good way of know what is going on in terms of fairs and expos relating to the industry we are targeting.

Not too long ago I had the opportunity to attend Expo Café Peru 2011, it was Peru’s expo for coffee producers, and input suppliers. I went to go mingle and attend a few presentations… and obviously, for the coffee. The fair was relatively small, but the coffee was delicious! I will post about this expo in a later blog, with pictures! As soon as I find cables to connect my camera to my computer and extract the pictures.

This is where I will leave the brief sales pitch about the program and my surroundings because I am sure as I keep blogging I will fill readers in on more!

Wait! One last shameless sales pitch!

If you are interested in what we do, and get a chance, then check out our website: www.meda.org/technolinks, Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Techno-Links/148566338569091, or Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/TechnoLinks_

The City of Kings

Since I am a bit of a research aficionado and naturally extremely curious-- so I figured it may be a good idea to give anyone reading this a brief, and hopefully interesting, mini- crash course in Lima (courtesy of google, wikipedia, and my own experience- naturally)! So lets stick to point form Q & A. 

Hm, where to start, where to start? Let's start with Pizarro. 

When was Lima founded?
Formally, on January 18, 1535 Francisco Pizarro founded the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru on the banks of the Rimac river. Before Lima was selected, it was between it, and a city named Juaja in the Andes. But Pizarro determined that Juaja was too difficult to get to as Lima has easy access to the ports on the Pacific.

What was Lima's original name?
Pizarro re-named Lima, La Cuidad de los Reyes, or the City of Kings. But soon it returned to its previous name. The name Lima is said to have risen from one of two sources: from Aymara, lima-limaq meaning yellow flower. Or two, from the Quechua rimaq, the name of the river. You see, like the Japanese, in Quechua 'r' and 'l' are interchangeable. So really rimaq, would have sounded like Limac. And from there, getting to Lima is pretty straight forward. 

If I were to give Lima a name, what would it be?

The city of traffic! I have never seen so much grid lock, from 7am-10pm there is traffic anywhere and everywhere. And the transit system is a mystery all in itself. And that particular topic deserves a blog post all to its self. 

Where in Peru is Lima located?

Lima spans along the coast of central Peru. The center of Lima is not located on the coast, it is located on the Rimac river (as previously mentioned). When Pizarro established Lima, he also established the "Callao" which was the main port in South America at the time. 

It mostly desert, and basically has two seasons- winter and summer. Winter (mid-April to mid-November) is 15C overcast, extremely humid and generally pretty depressing (weather-wise). Summer (late-November to April) on the other hand is 25C, less humid, and pure sun. Although, one should not mistake pure sun with blue skies. Oh no, Lima for the most part is very polluted so a clear day will have blue-grey skies. 

What is historic Lima known for?

Its Balconies. If you were to drive around the city you will see a lot of the old building have these balconies. Recently, the city has tried to have companies "adopt" them and renovate them. 

In my opinion, what is Lima really known for?

Its food. 

Limenos (people from Lima) truly have a liking for food. In particular they like super, sweet, super satly, and super spicy. Indulgence is most definetly a sin one will repeat time, and time again here. So far my favourites are Lomo Saltado- sliced and sauteed steak with red onion, tomato, and peppers served on a bed of steak cut fries and white rice, Alfajores- two biscuits (similar to short bread) with manjar blanco in between, Anticuchos- cow heart kebabs and picarones- what I will refer to as the Peruvian Donut since it is a fried batter in the shape of a ring served with a syrup. 

Delicious. 

And here are a few more random snap shots of some Lima-ness! The old post office (the pink building), the remains of older buildings in the center of lima, and finally in the Lima central market- where you can pretty find anything your heart may desire. 

"fee-fy-fo-fum, I can see over the heads of Peruviums"

As the doors opened up on Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima, I breathed in the thick polluted air thinking 'this is the beginning of a new chapter of my life. I've never felt so ...tall! '.  

When the doors opened up on the airplane on a rather cold Friday evening, I thought to myself this is it, from this moment on, I am a citizen of the world and I will put all of my North American tendencies and expectations on the back burner and be open to anything that happens. After all, its all about the journey, right? As it turns out this was a lot harder than originally anticipated for the first hour and a half of my internship.

When I first got to customs, I was pleasantly surprised that there was no line so I was excited that for once in my life I would be able to get my bags and be out of the airport within a reasonable amount of time. So, as I practically skipped toward the customs officer, and showed him my passport with a grin that spanned my entire face, he looked at me in all seriousness and asked why I was going to be staying so long in Lima. When I began to talk, it was like someone had turned on the faucet and I couldn't stop talking. I told him about the internship, and how it was such a good opportunity for me since it was a difficult field to get into especially right out of school. Then I began to tell him about how I was happy about being able to miss Canadian winter, but that I was going to miss my family and friends- even though I had family in Lima as well. At this point the customs officer looked at me with a half-smile, pushed my passport towards me a bit more and told me I could go now. Clearly, 7-hour flights in silence do not settle well with me. 

After this abrupt end to my life's story, I was a little embarrassed and decided that it was time to make my way toward the baggage claim. When I got there I realized that the belt hadn't even begun to move yet, so I knew I was there for the long haul. 20 minutes later, I threw my bags onto my cart with a wonky wheel and diagonally made my way towards the exit. So close, I could almost taste the freedom from my travels.

When I reached the final check point to exit the airport security zone, I handed the security guard my white customs paper, and pressed the final button for clearance. There is only two options, red or green. Red means you belong to the airport for the next 2 hours of your life, and green means you are off to- well, greener pastures per say.

"Hallelujah"

It came out green. Green means go, green meant for me what America meant to the Irish in the 1880s- maybe a little less dramatic but still- green meant I was a free woman in an exotic new land. And just as I pushed my cart forward to skip on down the passage, a tiny woman stepped out in front of the cart, looked at me and said "para alla" which means "go over there", and in this case, "there" was a giant x-ray machine. I didn't really have anything out of the ordinary in there, so I thought I have nothing to hide and proudly placed my extremely heavy bags on the belt and watched them go through. After about 2 minutes the gentleman conducting the scans said, you have 2 laptops, please re-enter the baggage area, and see claims.


Crap, so close. 


As I waited I witnessed a hand-full of people who looked as though they had tried to fit the entire contents of best buy or the Gap in their luggage, and as a result were being forced to document every item and pay duties on them.
I went up to the window and said, "listen I was told to come here and just pay a fine for the netbook I have since I have two laptops, is there a reason I have to wait here?"  The girl looked up at me and looked back down, "someone will be with you shortly."

As I looked at her, and the woman beside her, they were both watching tele-novelas (soap operas) on TV. I asked again, "can you please just print out the receipts, its really not that big of a deal, no bags need to be checked, you can ask the security at the x-ray machines."

Silence. 


-"Is there someone who isn't watching TV that can help me out please"
- "No."

What do you mean, no?! Clearly you are being paid to do something, so DO SOMETHING... Relax, Alicia, relax. One, one-thousand. Two- one thousand. Three, one-thousand. 


- "Where is the manager's office located? And what is her name."
- "Over there. It's Sofia"

As I walked over to Sophia, out of the corner of my eye I saw the girl scramble to sit up and start typing. So, as I knocked and explained to Sofia that no one was willing to help me out, she said she would go talk to them and it would get figured out.

Needless to say, the girl who had refused to help me out before, was more than willing to help me out now. And as I walked away I heard Sofia talk quietly but sternly to the girl indicating that she was not paid to watch TV. And it only took 40 minutes of back and forth corrections to my information, authorizations, stamps, signatures and typing on a what had to have been a printer borrowed from a museum.

Finally, I saw the outside world. And two things hit me right away- number one, wow was the air thick and polluted. Almost felt like I was short of breath and got a head ache instantly. Number two, for the first time in my life, I was semi-tall! I was able to see over people. I was able to see the tops of other people's heads!
In this new life I would no longer be the tiny one out of the crowd- being only 5'2" on a good day, for most Canadians I was Polly Pocket sized- I was sort of tall in Lima. I figured most women were around 5' tall at best...with high heels on.

...This was going to be interesting.