Visiting my Panama weavers on All Soul's Day

Sometimes it seems that I can do so little in the face of so much need in rural Andean communities and yet when I visit them they are so grateful for the trade which I bring and the extra money I put into various projects. It was the Ist of the month and so all of the elderly weavers were arriving to collect their small pensions. I agreed to extend the pension provision to a further 10 weavers whose situation is particularly precarious and gave all of the elderly weavers in the association an All Soul's Day bonus. They were obviously so grateful for the financial gift that some of them were in tears and they called me 'the Queen of all the Saints'! It really is very humbling to see how much difference a small amount of money can make to their lives.

Not only do my weavers receive good remuneration for their skills, but I provide a monthly wage for the director of the association so that she no longer has to tend to cows at 4am to earn extra income. The additional income generated provides a medical and funeral fund and I also contribute to capital expenditure such as new hat blocks. The extra income from the sale of Pachacuti's panama hats has been used to buy land to build a grocery store which will be built in 2007 in order to improve levels of nutrition within the community.