Week 2

After getting an e-mail from our research coordinator asking us how we were doing and if we had some field notes we wanted to send her, we decided to buckle down and start trying to make contact with moneylenders. We had a person in our office call the first three moneylender listings from the newspaper, and after three refusals to meet with us, decided it was best if we tried calling instead. With this we got relatively better responses. It seems as though people feel more comfortable talking to foreign students than stranger Peruvians (who may be trying to get them in trouble) about their business. We have called several and a few agreed to meet sometime in the coming week. I imagine its going to be harder to get an actual time to meet with them, but its encouraging that they didn't just hang up on us.

One of the people that we actually did meet with told us that he didn't have time for an interview, but if we explained what we were doing to him, he could ask his "head moneylender" boss if it would be ok to meet with us. We're hoping to hear from him by tomorrow. We also called and met with this very nice lender who gave us great insight into how his moneylending business operates. The first day we met with him he had to leave after 30 minutes, but agreed to meet the next day. We went up to a touristy site and brought some food to munch on while talking to him. He seems very friendly and could be very helpful in contacting other lenders as well.

We also went to 2 different markets hoping that some of the people selling things in the market would help us find some lenders. Though a lot of people were very helpful and informative, they all seemed to think that moneylenders came by at different times, so we weren't able to meet with any. We plan to go back to the markets to try to gain contacts from there.

This past weekend was good though. We made dinner on Friday and Saturday night at friends apartments and just hung out. Also Saturday afternoon, we met with a moneylender at Sacsaywaman, a ruins site, but didn't get to go in b/c we hadn't boughten a boleto turistico. It was still pretty from afar. On Sunday we took a bus up to Pisaq, ate some dinner and enjoyed the market. It was a very nice market, the most touristy I've seen here, with some nice alpaca gear and lots of silver jewlery. We're going to go back to the Pisaq market to do some "work" when Mike's here.

Yesterday was slightly less successful. We had to buy bedding for our rooms, which ended up being more of a hassle then we expected it to be. It takes small things like needing a blanket and not knowing where to go that reminds you that you are indeed a foreigner. We're hoping to get a few calls tonight from the local MFI we're working with regarding setting up interviews this week.

Here are a few photos from Sacsaywaman...the highly requested llama photo and one from the ruins (from the outside, since we couldn't go in...)