Twenty years ago, artisans from Esperanza on the Tahuayo River were riding high selling thousands of chambira baskets to the U.S. Challenges with quality control, unsustainable harvest, coordinating production with artisans from multiple communities, changing markets and needing to send their products by air freight instead of ship almost wiped out the enterprise.
Amazon Ecology is now working with the remaining core of their artisans to give them a second chance. They don't have Chino's reliable flow of tourist visitors, but their talented artisans are willing to learn to make new crafts like bird and insect ornaments with us.
Marianela and I arrived in Esperanza on late Thursday and settled into the hostel next to the central soccer field designated by its wooden pole goals. We had a simple dinner of fried eggs, rice and fried bananas at the house of Erica who has been the artisan leader through good and tough times. Decorations in village homes are often sparce, but it was touching to see a framed photo of her father and faded image of a baby on her wall.
After dinner I was grateful that our boat driver Jairo gave me a vigorous and soothing massage of my sore back with some Vicks Vaporub. I love seeing these little tins because my father worked for the company that makes this iconic product for 33 years. Jairo unfortunately had to end his session just before 7:30 pm because residents who arrive late for mandatory community meetings have to pay a stiff fine.
I slept reasonably well in my bed with a mosquito net tightly draped overhead. We returned to Erica's house for a quick breakfast of fried eggs and carefully walked over the slippery sidewalk to a house to meet the artisans.
I selected a few baskets laid out on benches and placed an order for elegant two-color models. Lindy reported good progress making lady bug ornaments and planned to attend our artisan facilitator training. We were happy the group looked forward to hosting a bird-making workshop in July with artisans from 3 Tahuayo communities.
Andrea spent months working with this designer and four artisans to make dozens of colorful balsa wood birds and giant chambira butterflies. The birds included an egret, tiger heron, toucan, macaws and a kingfisher. When we stopped at the mall after visiting the aquarium, I loved seeing these creatures twirl around in a mild breeze.
I was most happy to hear the Chino artisans wanted to resume attending our bird ornament workshops. Half of them have made some birds based on what they learned five years ago, but they were eager to improve the quality of these woven animals they could sell to their visitors and have secure sales to us.
When I started attending their annual meetings in different parts of the US, I knew I had found an important new tribe. Many of these enterprises were started by former Peace Corp volunteers, mission oriented people from churches and others like me who had had a life-changing experience meeting traditional artisans.
