Everyone Wants to be an Entrepreneur

Dearest Rachel –

It isn’t something that I expected when I started in on my class regarding budgeting (well, more like record-keeping, because how do you create a budget when you don’t know what you spent on things to begin with?), but once the kids started asking questions, so many of them had to do with hypotheticals (or maybe not so hypothetical as all that) having to do with having and running their own businesses. It would seem that everyone wants to be an entrepreneur down here.

To be fair, I suppose a lot of people in the States would prefer to be their own boss, as opposed to laboring under one. For me, personally, I didn’t aspire toward that – since I knew that, as a boss, even of myself, I would be too slack-palmed to be successful – but I can certainly understand the desire to get out from under the thumb of a bad boss, at the very least. But this desire on various students’ parts to get their diplomas and go right into running their own businesses, as opposed to working for one that has already been established first is rather amazing to me – and a bit terrifying. I wouldn’t have the courage to set out on my own like that.

To be sure, it would seem that their elders are modeling the behavior; so many of them have literal “cottage industries” of their own. Earlier this week, our group was advised of a student’s father who was selling home-canned jellies and jams. I’d have taken a picture of one of the jars, had I thought about it at the time, as they were very professionally labeled (both on a paper wrapper and on the jars themselves), but I confess that the varieties on offer – mango and habanero, or pineapple and jalapeño, for instance – didn’t exactly appeal to me. Mixing fruit and spicy peppers just… isn’t my jam, if you’ll pardon the expression. To be honest, I think I still have more than half a jar of that spiced cranberry and white chocolate mixture from Kona; a little of that goes a long way, as far as I’m concerned.

No need to worry for him due to my preferences, though; the rest of the group apparently bought out what stock he had (and I assume he made a fair number of sales from the groups that were here over the past few weeks, as well).

Meanwhile, there are the various ‘cultural experiences’ we are sent on. Most of them happen to be businesses run out of people’s homes, like Dona Brenda and her tortillas … or, in this case Cindy’s mother (I don’t know if I even caught her name) and her tamales.

She makes it look easy, but when I give it a try, I make the mistake of using the whole cupful of batter. As a result, when I fold it in half, everything tries to escape out the sides, and it only gets worse when I try to shepherd everything back into the banana leaf.

In a given day, she can turn out between 150 and 200 of these, which she sells for the equivalent of a dollar apiece, often on a pre-order basis from neighbors and the wider community. She only does this every other week, but even then, this compares favorably with those who pick beans in the coffee fields. Each bucket of beans nets them the equivalent of two dollars; the strongest ones with the most stamina can make up to ten dollars a day. But in two weeks, that’s no more than $140 at full strength; this mother can make more than that on a relatively slow day. On a good day, she might very well clear that as profit, for all I know (I don’t know what the raw ingredients tend to cost here).

When you look at it that way, it’s no wonder everyone wants to run their own business. It apparently doesn’t take the sort of bureaucratic effort to start up, and the bar to clear – that of picking coffee beans – is a low one. Still, part of the point of Just One is to give kids an education that will allow them to earn that much more in professional jobs, especially after making it through high school and college.

Honestly, I’m amazed at the effort put into everything they make and sell, and hope they do well. I also (with maybe a slight touch of ego) find myself hoping they remember to use the ledger books to keep track of what they’re making and spending on their materials, so they can determine if and how much profit they’re making.

In any event, they need your eye on them more than I do at the moment, so if you could spare them one, it would be appreciated. Thanks, honey, and I’ll talk to you later.