Artisan fair at the US Embassy to Home Cooking 101

Peace Corps and the US Embassy, located in Lima, once a year put on an artisan fair where each business volunteer can bring a few artisans to sell their products to the US Embassy employees. What a great way for the artisans to see different products from throughout the country and learn more about different business concepts- pricing, sales techniques, tailoring products to the market, etc! This opportunity is obviously pretty fun for both the volunteers and the artisans, many who rarely travel. Lima is a long trek and a completely different world from where we live! Airplane? Nah, I enjoy my two day trip via bus. In fact, Lima is 21 hours of actual travel time from where we live to but takes two full days for the crew from Arequipa to reach with bus changes and waiting time. I remember back when time was valuable…not so much anymore!

Back to the meat of the story…My artisan, Jesus, and his wife have a stand to sell their embroidered products to passing tourists in my town. He also works as a guide and speaks some English so we work together a fair amount on tourism opportunities here, his artisan work and practicing English as well. He’s great to work with and reliable so naturally I invited him to accompany me to this unique opportunity. The first day we attended a conference at the US Embassy with a few guest speakers and then the second day was the actual fair. It’s my understanding that attendance was somewhat down this year so Jesus and I didn’t reach our sales goals but we overall had a great experience. I can’t wait for next year! And, of course, it was also great to spend time with all the other volunteers, enjoy being in a city and just catch up.

On a different note, two days after getting home from the nicest part of Lima and still in the process of readjusting to my little, humble village, I woke up, peaked out my window at the weather and saw my sister and my mom hovered what was clearly a dead carcass. I guessed it was a sheep but turned out to be a pig. My first thought was “How did I sleep through THAT?” followed immediately by “I wonder what I’ll have to eat now…” We fried this little piggy up and it was became chicharrón, fried pork I suppose in English. I’m not a big fried food eater, nor a big meat eater, but it was pretty tasty. But the best part of this story isn’t the killing of the pig…it’s the NEXT day when I came home to find the pig’s head on the kitchen table and my mom going to town on sawing that thing in half. I just thought it was kind of funny so I took a shot of the pig's head next to the saw next to the knife next to the food next to my coffee cup....mmmm.... An artisan fair in Lima doesn’t sound or feel like what you’d picture Peace Corps to be but a pig’s head on the kitchen table just made me feel like a real Peace Corps volunteer again!