A day in the life of a CMI student…

It’s Monday morning, 6: 30 A.M. and you’ve just weaved your way through the maze of mototaxis, tricitaxis, women setting up their street stands, and the man who incessantly tries to sell you a Quechua language book (he obviously doesn’t understand that you’re still working on your Spanish), until you’ve finally made it to the combis terminal in Puno. Each successive combis fills up immediately from the crowds who are impatiently waiting to make it to Juliaca to begin their work week. You push into a combis with the other CMI members, all 8 of you just barely making it in. You squeeze your legs behind the seat in front of you, made for someone much smaller, and hold on tight for the bumpy 45-minute ride to Juliaca. Upon arrival at Prisma, you find that the meeting you had rushed to get to is not at 8 AM, but rather 9 AM, so you spend an hour preparing for the day.


When 9 AM rolls around, you make your way into one of the loan meetings, explain in broken Spanish that you are conducting an interview for Prisma, and you get as many women as possible to answer your questions. You hear from some women that they have to hide their loans from their husbands. Others work 16-hour days to provide for their families. All are trying to improve their lives with a small loan from Prisma. You then reunite with the rest of the CMI group to discuss your impressions and you begin to realize that your original questionnaire needs editing and rework. You spend the rest of the morning tweaking the questions until you are satisfied with the new version of the interview.


At 1 PM it is time for a 2-hour lunch break while Prisma is closed. You go to a nearby restaurant where you order the menú del dia- a cheap combination of platters including tripe soup. When the bill comes, you realize that you have in no way fooled the waiter that you might be from Peru and he has overcharged you for your meal. So, like many times in the past, you send your Colombian CMI member to point out and reconcile this unfortunate mistake. The rest of your lunch break is spent making copies of the survey and perhaps grabbing a snack at the Ricos Pan bakery to get that tripe out of your mind. The afternoon brings more meetings and client surveys; some women are ready to talk your ear off, others are indifferent and still others, who are illiterate, require extra attention. The afternoon flies by as you frantically collect as many surveys and client stories as possible while publicizing the business charla (chat) that you will give that week, all while trying not to interrupt the loan meetings too much. You have to keep in mind that any time the clients are at Prisma, they are losing money by not attending to their respective businesses.

Around 5 PM you make another fearful trip in the combis back to Puno, take a break for dinner and some internet time, then meet back at Ricos Pan (which has inevitably become your favorite place in Peru) to tie up loose ends and finish some work over a steaming cup of chocolate con leche. By midnight you are ready to escape the cold of your unheated apartment and so you dive under a pile of blankets to catch some much needed rest before you see what excitement Tuesday might bring.

-Emily