Duo brings trade to Mexican village
WAKING UP IN A FLOOD last year flustered Nancy Spada and Roger Gee, but it didn’t dampen their enthusiasm for traveling in Mexico.
A van that was stolen from them in Mexico a few months ago cost them time, money and plenty of aggravation, but they bought another so they could keep traveling. That van broke down, but Mexican ingenuity repaired it in half the time and at a 10th the price of most American garages.
“Doing what we do, we’re going to break down,” Nancy says in her home overlooking Hauser Lake. “We have to expect it and handle it.”
Nancy and Roger travel as easily and with as much determination as water over rocks to keep their promises to Mexican craftspeople and artists. The Hauser Lake pair buys handmade baskets, pottery, jewelry, masks and more at fair market prices to bring back to the United States and sell. They call their business Singing Shaman Traders.
Nancy is a psychotherapist trying to ease out of her stressful career. Roger is a former journalist in search of the perfect life. The two discovered a mutual interest in Mexico when Roger was teaching Nancy to sail her sailboat four years ago. Nancy loved Mexican arts and crafts. Roger loved the Mexican lifestyle and weather.
They decided to head south and buy Mata Ortiz pottery. The ancient art requires a technique a Mata Ortiz villager was able to recreate. He taught his entire village the art. Nancy was awed by the pottery, but even more struck by the adobe houses, dirt streets and humble lives in Mata Ortiz. She bought $1,500 worth of pottery and had no trouble selling the beautiful vessels when she returned home.
A shopkeeper in Leavenworth, Wash., told Nancy about fair trade — business practices that protect producers — after she returned from her second trip to Mata Ortiz. Members of the Fair Trade Federation pay fair wages by local standards, support healthy and safe working conditions and promote equal opportunities for all people.
Nancy understood the need. She’d seen people so desperate for money in Mata Ortiz that they sold their wares far below cost rather than lose a sale. Nancy joined the Fair Trade Federation, which tells her customers she’s the only middleman between them and the producers of the wares she sells.
She and Roger fell into a comfortable pattern. Nancy reduced her therapy schedule to two days a week. Four times a year, she flew to Mexico and met Roger, who drove a van to carry home their purchases. Between buying trips, they looked for fair-market stores, including art museum gift shops throughout the United States interested in buying their Mexican arts and crafts. They also sold at select fair-market fairs, mostly on the West Coast.
Last year, a buyer for the Seattle Art Museum’s gift shop asked Nancy and Roger for seven dozen baskets in addition to pottery and beadwork. The businessperson inside Nancy assured the buyer baskets were no problem. But she had no source.
“We said, ‘Oh my gosh, what have we done?’ ” Nancy says, chuckling.
Her travels in Mexico had acquainted her with the Tarahumara, Mexico’s second largest Indian tribe. Tarahumara are peaceful people who live in caves, under cliffs and in wood or stone cabins in northwest Mexico’s Copper Canyon. Nancy and Roger hooked up with a children’s health mission to meet the tribe, find basketmakers and buy crafts. They returned a few months later to buy more and took a friend’s advice to drive a scenic route into a nearby canyon.
They took along a Tarahumara couple who needed a ride to the hospital. The dirt road was narrow and had no guard rails.
“It was so steep, we could smell the brakes,” Roger says. “We had to pull in our mirrors when cars passed the other direction. We were trying not to act scared for our passengers.”
After six hours, Roger and Nancy were exhausted. They decided to camp in a warm rain by a river. Nancy awoke as water pushed against the floor of their waterproof tent. They managed to scramble away with their equipment from the rising water and take refuge in their van. But water demolished the road on both sides of them.
In the morning, Mexican drivers stopped at the spot and hopped from their cars to rebuild the road enough for them to pass the damage. Women and children walked as men drove their high-clearance cars over scattered rocks. Roger’s van didn’t have enough clearance. He finally hired some young men who lived nearby to help by clearing rocks as the van forged ahead. It took them nine hours to reach a town 28 miles away.
“We don’t look back at this as negative,” Nancy says. “It was an adventure. We knew someone knew we were there and had the resources to help.”
They learned to add an extra day to their travel schedules for emergencies, but none hit for another year. Parts on their van died, but Mexican locals fixed their vehicle quickly and inexpensively. Nancy and Roger finally realized the Mexican roads had beaten their van to death. They replaced it, and someone in Mazatlan stole the new one.
The van was full of baskets, tools, bicycles, pottery and their personal items. Roger heard the van start and watched from his apartment window as it drove casually away.
Roger and Nancy called the cops, but got no help. Their Mexican auto insurance eventually helped them file a report four days later. They didn’t want to fly home because Roger traveled with their little dog, Chiquita. Planes were full anyway for spring break. They finally rented a car they had to leave in a town with no car rental drop. That cost them $600 for two days. Then, they had to hire someone to take them across the border to Arizona.
Mexican authorities wanted them to pay $4,600 for their missing van. Nancy and Roger produced paperwork stating the van had been stolen, but authorities insisted they couldn’t prove they hadn’t sold it. The Hauser pair finally walked away from the problem and went to Phoenix. But Roger can no longer drive in Mexico.
“I’m an outlaw now,” he says, grinning. “The stolen van was in my name.”
Roger and Nancy had to reassess their business plan after the van’s theft, but it didn’t take them long. The faces of the people from whom they’d bought wares at fair prices never faded from their minds. They knew their business improved lives.
“We made commitments. Tarahumara were waiting. Customers were waiting,” Nancy says.
“We had to bite the bullet and start over,” Roger says.
They picked up an old van in Phoenix and registered it in Nancy’s name. It’s had problems, but the Mexican mechanics have fixed it right up. Auto insurance and homeowners insurance finally reimbursed Nancy and Roger for most of their loss. Their commitment to the fair trade business is as strong as ever.
“The longer I’m in it, the stronger I feel,” Nancy says. “You feel so impotent in so many other ways, but this is the one way you feel like you’re making a difference. And I wouldn’t trade the travel and experiences for anything.”
Roger figures he’s leapt from writing about people’s woes to helping solve the problems.
“I’m involved in other people’s lives,” Roger says. “There’s no other way some of them could get their stuff to market.”
Still, Roger and Nancy are combining their summer and fall trips south into one this year, and it has nothing to do with their travel experiences.
“It’s because of gas prices,” Nancy says. “But we’ll bring back just as much stuff in a trailer and two cartop carriers.”