On hoop jumping.

It’s 4:31 pm. One minute after the building should have closed.

Still, we’re huddled around the engineer’s computer screen while she scrolls through the bylaws of Pushaq Warmi.

I hear some men pace quickly down the hallway, one angrily mumbling under his breath as he passes the open door of the Small Business Office which has only recently been crammed into a vacancy at the Ministry of Produce and Fishing.

It may not make much sense, but it’s in a better position than the Center for the Defense Against Female and Familial Violence on the third floor of the public fish market where the stairs are slick and slimy and the smell is unforgettable.

Even though the sun has already begun to set, the air in the second story office is still muggy and warm enough that everyone is glinting with sweat.

I’ve lost track of two things: how many times we’ve visited this office and what it is the young pregnant woman sitting across from us is an engineer of—they only ever refer to her as La Inginiera.

My hot, sticky mood wants to say that she’s shown a remarkable talent for engineering red tape…but in reality she’s done a lot to help us through the process of formalizing Pushaq Warmi into a legally recognized association.

La Inginiera’s growing stomach has helped mark the time. I remember our first meeting when the slimmer version had to shut and lock the office door behind us as a crowd of fishermen began forming ominously in the lobby. The large plate glass window in the stairwell, spider webbed with cracks from a baseball sized projectile makes it clear the popularity of the Ministry of Produce and Fishing is touch-and-go at best. Unless the projectile was directed at La Inginiera, but as she sits with one hand on the mouse and the other protectively resting on her now sizeable stomach, I find that hard to believe.

Sandra, the group’s president sits unfazed. She’s worked too long and too hard to worry about anything other than the approval stamp.

Pushaq Warmi (poo-shack war-mi) is Quechua, an indigenous language, which roughly translates to “Woman Guide,” and was chosen as the name of the group I work with through Women’s Global Connection.
            Right now there are ten women in Pushaq Warmi: three teachers, two nurses, a vendor, a natural healer, a handicraft maker, a cafeteria owner and a woman who runs a small gym. All of them, mothers. They came together through a three year leadership course at an institution called La Casa de la Mujer or the House of the Woman. With the help of Women’s Global Connection, they’ve been able to create a group that is dedicated to helping women throughout Chimbote better themselves through workshops on various topics.

“Today is going to be the day,” I think to myself as La Inginiera shuffles through some of the paperwork that Teo, a maternity nurse and the treasurer of the group, has handed her.

            Pushaq Warmi has been working relentlessly towards becoming a formalized group recognized as an Association by the Peruvian government. Until they are, even the name Pushaq Warmi is up for grabs. Sandra won’t stop until it’s written in bureaucratic stone.

            La Inginiera points out some corrections that need to be made.

            The clock ticks audibly as Sandra asks if they can make the changes now.

            Her secretary leads us to another office where a man allows Sandra and Genoveva, the professor of the group, to quickly make the changes.

            4:40 p.m.  

Already the guard is shutting the steel gate. 

The man at the computer turns out not only to be an employee of the Ministry of Production and Fishing, but also a part of the Small Business approval process.

 I’m still not sure how it all works, but we’ll need his signature at some point.

            Genoveva asks if there is any way they can finalize the process then and there.

            “Well…it’s very late,” he answers her, looking at his watch. “We closed at 4:30,” he says as he gestures to the clock on the wall behind him with his thumb.

“Come back tomorrow.”

I can see in their faces that, at this point, their frustration has been replaced by determination.
            Oh, they’ll be back tomorrow alright. 

 

Here is a video I made for Pushaq Warmi a while ago to show at their first workshop in Cambio Puente.