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Fernanda Jung Thomé (Panajachel, Guatemala)
112 Plays10 months ago
On this episode we welcome Fernanda Jung Thomé (Fern), originally from Brazil, who is Design Director for an organization called Mercado Global and has been working with indigenous weavers from the regions around Lake Atitlan in Guatemala for the past 4 1/2 years.
Tune in for a conversation about this Mayan tradition, how to support (not exploit) another culture's craft, the value of community, and the beauty in making things by hand, with heart.
Instagram: @fernandajung
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Transcript
Introduction to Why Dye Buy Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Why Dye Buy, a podcast where we bring guests from all around the world to talk about artisanship, authenticity and craftsmanship for the modern consumer.
Vernanda Yung Domay on Indigenous Weaving
00:00:16
Speaker
On today's episode, I am so excited to welcome Vernanda Yung Domay, who is design director for an organization called Mercado Global and has been working with indigenous weavers in the regions around Lake Atitlan in Guatemala for the past four and
Bridging Ancient Crafts with Modern Markets
00:00:31
Speaker
a half years.
00:00:31
Speaker
I am so excited to welcome her to YDI by not only because of her super interesting experience working in sustainable design, social innovation and regenerative agriculture, but also because she has been a mentor of mine for years and I cannot wait for you to meet her.
00:00:48
Speaker
This was a really challenging but really compelling conversation for both of us as we navigate through how to discuss expressions of cultures which belong to neither of us. I've invited Fern to the podcast because I think her perspective as a designer is a really interesting way to think about the relationship between the ancient craft being practiced and its place in the modern market.
00:01:12
Speaker
but she and I both want to be very clear that her voice is not meant to be a replacement for those of the indigenous weavers themselves. Fern has lived among and has been working with Guatemalan weavers for years now, but just like all of us, her perspective is always evolving and I think her story provides some interesting nuance to this topic of indigenous craft, which I am excited to continue unpacking in future episodes and I look forward to continuing to bring
00:01:38
Speaker
diverse voices to Wide Eye Buy.
Follow Us on Instagram for Updates
00:01:40
Speaker
Thank you so much to everyone who continues to support this podcast and make sure to give it a follow on Instagram at Wide Eye Buy podcast where I'll be posting updates on future episodes and accepting suggestions for future guests.
Exploring Panahachel and Mercado Global's Mission
00:01:53
Speaker
So without further ado, I hope you enjoy the episode. Hello Fern, welcome to Wide Eye Buy.
00:02:03
Speaker
Hi, Lulu. So nice to see you. It's been so long. I'm so excited to have you here, and I'm so excited for our listeners to hear a little bit about what you do and learn a lot about what's going on in the Atitlan region. So I kind of would like to start with where. I know you're in Brazil right now, but can you tell us about where Mercado Global is located and what happens around where you work?
00:02:29
Speaker
Absolutely. So Mercado Globao, it's also where I live. It's called Panahachow. It's a small rural village in the highlands of Guatemala. It's just such an impressive place. It has this mix of cultures. I like to say it's where cultures meet. You have a lot of huge Mayan culture presence, but then you also have visitors coming from all over the place.
00:02:56
Speaker
and also expats living there. So it's really interesting to see all these cultures coming together. Yeah. And what's the vibe among the different groups of people who are living there? Is it cohesive? And I know that there are lots of different towns around the lake. So how is that ecosystem kind of work? Yeah, it's very interesting. It feels like each different town has
00:03:16
Speaker
its own identity. So Pana is this one place where you will see things kind of like working seamlessly together. Everyone accepts the different cultures that are present, the different religions, the different backgrounds. And then you will have other towns that have, you know, more of a spiritual background to it, towns that have
00:03:41
Speaker
a focus more on ceramics or natural guys. And Pana, Pana is like how we call it the short way. To me, it's this place where just everyone comes together. It's like the hub of Lake Atitlan. Is it the largest town? Actually, no, it's not the largest. The largest one is called Santiago Atitlan.
Empowering Women Through Education and Weaving
00:04:00
Speaker
It's where we have the biggest amount of indigenous population. But Pana is definitely the place where everyone kind of needs to get to and then
00:04:11
Speaker
spread to the other towns. And that's because it has the largest marketplace? Yes, it does have the largest marketplace. All the handcrafts are there. Most of the business people are there too. And the other towns are more like the small, small artisans selling their products. So what is Mercado Global's role within that business ecosystem?
00:04:34
Speaker
So Mercatigal Bao is a nonprofit for those who are not aware of what the business is. We are a nonprofit. We are focused on supporting rural and indigenous women from Guatemala. And the objective is to support women to get financial independence through education and access to the global market. So what we do in Pana and all the villages, not just around Lake Atitlan, but around Guatemala in general,
00:05:01
Speaker
is to find a woman who didn't have the accessibility to go to school to have basic education and then we take them through a one-year program where they get the chance to study basic economics, basic
00:05:16
Speaker
ideas of how to save money, women rights, indigenous rights, and then they also get the chance to choose technical backgrounds so they can choose if they would like to learn how
Marketing Strategies and Craft Preservation
00:05:28
Speaker
to weave. And from there, we'll take them through this course where they will learn how to practice these technical skills, how to be an entrepreneur within these market, and get the chance to access the foreigner market.
00:05:45
Speaker
not only the foreigner market, but we also have this extra bit of a program which is called Mercado Locale, where they can be entrepreneurs within their own communities. And then they learn how to sell their products within Guatemala, which is a very different market, right, than the US. Right. And how are they different in your approach to those models similarly? Yeah, it's very different. So the program where we teach them entrepreneurship for the local market,
00:06:14
Speaker
We teach them things from the very basics. So they get to learn all about marketing. They learn how to identify what are the products that their market needs, how to identify the customers from Guatemala. The people who would be buying from them are very different people than the ones that they would get access from the international market. People usually from rural areas that have different needs.
00:06:40
Speaker
the sense of like trends and fashion, the connection that they have with fashion is very different. It's much more traditional, much more linked to their mind and culture. So they get much more in-depth learning through this local market program. And with the international market program, they don't get to learn all the marketing background because
00:07:02
Speaker
Mercado Global does that for them, and they only learn more about the weaving techniques, the design, and the production side
Weaving's Cultural Roots and Historical Importance
00:07:10
Speaker
of it. So a lot of the women who you said that you work with, some of them are already artisans, and they already weave, or they knit, or they do other handcrafts, and some don't already.
00:07:20
Speaker
We have had all sorts of women and all sorts of background. We definitely had moments where we had bigger grants and then we were able to focus on women who had no background. They just had a lot of ganas, a lot of like wish and desire to learn from the beginning, from scratch. Usually in Guatemala, most
00:07:43
Speaker
families will have some sort of background even if they don't know anything their mothers did so they have that connection and they're trying almost to regain that connection that their family had and they kind of lost it over the years. You're talking about weaving and knitting as this kind of way that you make relationships with the artisans that Mercado Global takes on to their team. What is it about the handcrafts that Mercado Global does with its artisans
00:08:11
Speaker
that is this catalyst for the other kinds of social work that it's trying to accomplish. Weaving in Guatemala goes back so, so long ago. So the history of weaving in Guatemala goes back to 2,500 before Christ. So it's very ingrained in the culture of the people in Guatemala, not only Guatemala, I guess, all the countries who had traces of
00:08:40
Speaker
indigenous Mayan people. So not that long ago, when was it? Last year, I got the chance to talk to this incredible man who worked for this nonprofit I worked for.
Balancing Tradition with Market Demands
00:08:53
Speaker
He's called Diego. And he was explaining to me how deep this connection that the woman have with weaving in such a beautiful way that even the tools that they use
00:09:10
Speaker
for when they are weaving, it's called the backstrap loom. That's the traditional loom they use when they're weaving. The tools for that loom are named after a woman's body, are named after a human body, and that is
00:09:25
Speaker
just how tight it is with the culture of them. So when Mercado decides to work with fabrics, with these types of handcrafts, that's where we are going. We're trying to rescue not only Mercado, all the nonprofits, all the designers who are now working with indigenous craft there in some ways, trying to rescue these traditions and bring them back to life to rescue the values, the principles,
00:09:54
Speaker
that once kind of rule Mayan culture. When you visit Pana, when you visit Lake Atitlan and all of the towns that surround it, you go to the marketplaces and you see these woven goods. You see bags or you see tapestries or rugs or things like that. What is the difference between those things and the items produced by the women you work with? The products that we do with Mercado, we are selling them to the foreigner market. That means that we need to adopt those products to, you know,
00:10:23
Speaker
the US market, the European market, even the Asian market. That market can be very different than the market that the artisans are used to sell to, which is the small tourist or the rural indigenous women. The needs are very different. So when we are working with the artisans, what we are trying to do is to understand their techniques, understand where they come from, the stories, the colors that they use, the designs that they use,
00:10:53
Speaker
and innovate that in a way that doesn't appropriate their culture, but inspires them to do it in a way that goes and ties back to what we are seeing is going to work better for the foreign market. So we sit with them. We do our trend research.
00:11:13
Speaker
And then we developed with them a whole new set of products, taking into account those techniques that they already know. So nothing is really new. They might feel like it's new because, you know, the colors are used in a very different way. The patterns look different than their patterns. But at the end of the day, it's just using the formula in a different way. So that's how we do it for the foreigner market. And then the way they do it for the local market is the way they have been doing for years and years and years.
00:11:43
Speaker
That's where you can see the tradition of Guatemala, where you can see how those fabrics truly are in that culture, and we don't want to take away from them. That's theirs. And what kind of styles would you expect to see from what is theirs? Could you explain a little bit more about what that is and what the traditional patterns and techniques are? Yeah, of course.
00:12:09
Speaker
I think the first thing amazed me the first time I got to know is that they're weaving self stories. So when you see a pattern or when you see a fabric, you can usually tell that there is a story that they're trying to represent through those patterns. So they're always saying, different communities have different opinions, of course, we were talking about culture that
00:12:33
Speaker
belongs to a community and not an individual so there's always different opinions around how that goes but you shouldn't really you know take the fabric and then cut it because you're kind of cutting a part of the story out so when you look at their traditional clothing you will see a lot of symbols you will see a lot of colors usually different towns or at least in the past that is kind of
00:12:57
Speaker
being lost now, but different towns will have the different colors that represent them. And when you are walking Guatemala, even in the Lake Atitlan, because it's such a small place, you can tell like, oh, that woman just came from San Antonio because she's wearing like very vibrant purples. And she has this very specific weave that is wrapping her hair. So colors, the designs are different.
00:13:22
Speaker
You will see also some difference in the pattern of the clothing. The closer you go to the forest, to Tikal area, you will see that the skirts become a bit more fluid. They're not so tight because it's very hot. They need to breathe. They need a bit more movement. So it's very interesting to see.
00:13:46
Speaker
how the culture of the people, the colors are translated, the colors, they usually mean different things for different communities, the patterns as well. And then also how the environment affect how they are getting dressed, just like for us, right? Right now I'm wearing this tiny dress for summer and you're all bundled up.
00:14:10
Speaker
And it's so interesting because I remember I saw such a similar thing in a Mayan community when I visited southern Mexico a long time ago, whereas that same thing, you see the patterns on the blouse, which they call weepios, where I could never tell the difference because I'm not part of that culture or that community, haven't spent a lot of time there.
00:14:27
Speaker
but just one glance from the artisan and they can tell the region, the neighborhood, perhaps even the family, which is a really interesting part of a visual storytelling. And you said earlier that it was something that has been a little lost in some ways. Can you speak to that and why you think maybe it needs to have new life breathed into it?
Respecting Indigenous Creative Capital
00:14:48
Speaker
It's been happening for many years now. Globalization has been taking over so many different cultures. And with that,
00:14:58
Speaker
It's just so much easier, for example, for the women in Guatemala to just go to a thrift shop. The US is the main exporter of thrift clothes to Guatemala. So there's this huge market of thrift clothes in Guatemala, which on one hand is super nice because it gives access to people who otherwise wouldn't have money to buy new clothes. They get the chance to do that. On the other hand,
00:15:26
Speaker
It creates this accessibility that they didn't have before, and it encourages them to stop using their traditional tres or their traditional clothing because it's so much easier. Why would they spend three months weaving a fabric to put on when they can just go on a trip shop and buy it for much cheaper?
00:15:49
Speaker
That's with the drift shops, but we can even go deeper with new businesses, industries, factories that are now producing their traditional clothing, but now made in buying machines. It's very, very impactful when you go buy fabrics in a store in Guatemala City and you see those same patterns, the same colors, but now made by a machine and you can tell the difference, but the difference in price is absurd. So with that,
00:16:19
Speaker
The culture is just being lost because they are moving away from their traditions to new traditions that are more affordable. They saved a time that now they need for other parts of their lives.
00:16:33
Speaker
Right. You mentioned something earlier that I wanted to touch on about appropriation. Can you speak from your experience as a designer and your role in trying to balance respecting the creative capital of the communities with which you collaborate while also introducing, you know, the aesthetic demands of our modern market?
Empowering Artisans in Design Choices
00:16:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's complicated. Like I said before, when we talk about the identity of
00:17:02
Speaker
a culture that belongs to a community, everyone will have different opinions, right? You can say like, this is wrong or this is right. So here I'm just sharing different things that I've heard before. When we are talking about as designers, when we are designing a new handbag or a new fabric, we really need to take care of where we are getting this inspiration and how we are translating this inspiration to
00:17:32
Speaker
something new, who collaborated in that process, and how we are acknowledging where that inspiration came from. So all these things need to be taken into account when putting something out there that you don't have 100% of the rights of it, right, as a designer in general.
00:17:52
Speaker
we will look at the patterns that they have and we will do our best to really not copy that while taking into account, right? Like, does this pattern mean something? I think is the first thing to note. Does this mean something? Can I change that without changing a story? Without maybe, you know, you change a pattern and now this cross becomes an X and
00:18:19
Speaker
maybe that other symbol also belongs to their culture. And then now it means something completely different. And you might also be telling the wrong story. So when you are getting inspired by another culture's designs, you need to be collaborating with the person, with someone from that community. That's why at Mercado and in a lot of other companies, we really move away from that and give this space for the artisans.
00:18:48
Speaker
to continue doing their own craft for their local market, or even, you know, giving the chance for them to also sell in the international market in their own ways, but not with our names behind, because their craft is not ours. Right. And that seems like the goal of any organization focused on empowerment, right? Trying to create a platform for artisans to create their art on their own terms and not telling them how to do it, right?
00:19:15
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Of course, you need to also discuss with them and kind of show the reality. A lot of times the artisans will not
00:19:28
Speaker
have the visibility that we have that the international market works in a different way. So of course, you show them, you show them how it works outside, you show them what sells, what not sells, give them all the tools and the information they need and they get to choose like, do I want to sell my art the way that I already do? Or would I like to change it a little bit? And both works. I'm sure, you know, like with marketing nowadays, you can make both work, you just need to know
00:19:58
Speaker
where to sell and how to sell and how to tell that story. Right. And that's a really important conversation to have because you can't assume that all artisans want to sell on a grand scale and you can't assume that all artisans who have already successful business want to scale up or scale down.
Celebrating Latin American Culture's Unique Pace
00:20:17
Speaker
When we talk about scaling up is always a very interesting topic because usually Latin American culture moves in a much slower pace. Don't say that. I don't say that in a judge way. I just say that because it truly is. And I love Latin America for that. I love that we are the ones raising the sign of slow living and being like, hey, no.
00:20:45
Speaker
Not everything needs to be massively produced and handcrafts can only be handcrafts because they are produced in a much smaller scale. Otherwise, you lose the
00:20:58
Speaker
identity, you lose what's beautiful in them, you even lose the tiny little bit of errors. That is what makes them handmade. Yeah. And that's so interesting. And it leads me into wanting to know a little bit more. I know you, you've been at Mercado and you've been in Panahacha for a while. And you mentioned that you form this relationship that really showed you the beauty of
00:21:19
Speaker
not just wanting to make craft because craft is interesting and nice, but also culturally this connection between artisans and the craft that they make with their hands through weaving. Can you tell us more about the kind of research you've been doing to learn more about that and really what your interest in weaving, hand weaving specifically, is through your work?
Fern's Familial Influence on Handmade Art
00:21:40
Speaker
Yeah, I come from this family that is just like
00:21:48
Speaker
men and women are deeply connected with the art of making. No one in my family really lives off of art. But my dad, for example, he is a mechanical engineer, and he's always building new things. And he's a very creative mind, and he always is working with his hands. And most of the women in my family, they either paint, or they weave, or they knit, or embroider. My house is full of handmade things.
00:22:17
Speaker
So I guess it was very natural to me to just grow up seeking that connection with what is made by hand for me is a way to reconnect with my roots in a lot of ways and learn to express my identity in a very intuitive way, connect with my senses. You know, we are so used with hearing and seeing and talking, but how much we really like learn about like touching things and, uh,
00:22:47
Speaker
in a very intuitive way, without thinking here, without thinking with the head, just thinking from the
Cultural Connections Through Indigenous Crafts
00:22:52
Speaker
heart. So I guess that's how I became very interested in handcrafts in general. And then fashion, my mom likes to say that it was because she just gave me too much freedom. When I was a kid, she would let me dress the way I wanted. And she truly thinks just because of that, that I became really interested into fabrics.
00:23:16
Speaker
you know, there's this metaphor of like how you weave your life and in a weave, you get to tell stories and you get to change the weave in every weft that you put on the loom. So I guess that is the beauty of it for me is the chance to always be changing, always be improving the texture, making thicker or lighter according to your journey, kind of like a metaphor. And how have you deepened that learning since you've been in Guatemala?
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's been it's been really nice, not only in Guatemala, but in the past nine years, I got the opportunity, you know, to go to the Amazon forest and see how the indigenous people work with craft there and how they weave different things that don't necessarily work with yarns. Rather, they use bark or other materials that come from the forest to weave. I guess it was there in the Amazon forest that like
00:24:14
Speaker
this spark really came up and I was like, Oh my God, I really want to connect with cultures that understand how impactful it is for your self knowledge to learn about making things intuitively with your hands. So since I've been in Guatemala, the biggest question for me has been, how do I, how do I share these things that I've been learning from
00:24:43
Speaker
indigenous from the indigenous craft with others in a way that teaches them how beautiful it is this connection with nature. I guess a few of these learnings have been so far beyond just this fear of fashion and weaving. The biggest thing for me is I, not just me, no one is able to
00:25:10
Speaker
truly learn, understand, and communicate with others, especially people who take up life in such a different way than
Weaving as a Metaphor for Life and Community
00:25:22
Speaker
us. If we enter this conversation with our Eastern mindset, we really need to enter these conversations and these interactions with much more than an open-minded. We need to go into it with our heart. Really not
00:25:37
Speaker
listening from the mind, listening from the heart, and understanding that the way they live in a lot of ways is very different than ours, and it has so much beauty in it. And from there, I got to see the magic of weaving and how weaving and textiles can teach you so much about life, can teach you how to communicate with others, how to use your creativity to build new things.
00:26:07
Speaker
Diego's sad, and it impressed me a lot that he said once how weaving or textiles for Guatemalans are connected into every single piece of their lives. It's connected to life and death. It's connected to their agriculture, their calendars. Everything is around weaving.
00:26:30
Speaker
And I'm still trying to grasp that concept because it's like with my mindset, it's just like, how? But I know that, you know, talking with him and having more and more of those interactions where I'm trying to listen with my heart, I'll fully be able to grasp that concept of interconnection.
00:26:51
Speaker
Yeah, I remember he said something, I believe he said Tejalas es la vida, to weave his life, which is so interesting that he really sees this connection and lives this connection between what you're describing, which is this art of making something with your hands being this greater metaphor for life and connectedness and community. And then he goes on to say that the waft of the fabric is the food.
00:27:21
Speaker
because you are feeding the loom with the weft. And they call it in the language that he speaks in the Mayan language. But the word for it is tortilla, which is a food. So he says that when you are weaving, you are feeding life. Isn't that just, it blows my mind. It's just so beautiful.
00:27:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's beautiful. And for our listeners who are unfamiliar with looms and how they work, you line your loom with the warp, which is the parts that go up and down, basically. And then you are the one who is adding the weft. You're creating the design as you go. That's what makes the over and under of a fabric. So he's basically saying, you take something that's just unconnected strings and you feed the food into it and you create a tapestry, basically.
00:28:14
Speaker
Yes,
Community's Role in Cultural Craft Preservation
00:28:15
Speaker
exactly. Just such a beautiful metaphor to see life and your journey. That's amazing. And I would love to have Diego's own voice on this podcast, but unfortunately, language barrier, that would be a little bit of a challenge. So given that Diego is someone who is so embedded in this weaving community, because it's what he grew up in, and it's his life's work,
00:28:41
Speaker
He has shared a lot of that with you. What do you think has been the most meaningful or the most interesting thing that he has taught you? The power of community.
00:28:53
Speaker
Every time we talked, he would constantly bring back the importance of community, which is, you know, so many times I thought in my life that I had learned that lesson, but every time I would go back talking to him, he would explain it again in different ways. You know, when he said,
00:29:14
Speaker
You can't be pinpointing what's cultural appropriation, for example, because the culture belongs to a community. The community makes decisions together. And when you're going to work with something that belongs to a community, you know, they really need
Marketing Challenges Amid Globalization
00:29:31
Speaker
to get together. And that's, that's how his school runs.
00:29:34
Speaker
Everyone makes decisions together. Everyone gets the chance to speak. The money is split between everyone. Things run in a very different way. To me, it was an impressive lesson to see life through his eyes and understand and even try to more and more practice.
00:29:58
Speaker
true community in my life, you know, just not just that community of friends, but actually know like bringing them into my life decisions, living in community, working in community, looking more into the needs of others and not just my individual ones.
00:30:16
Speaker
I would love to know what kind of challenges exist for the weavers who are trying to pick up this craft or weave independently. I would say marketing nowadays is probably the biggest challenge they have.
00:30:30
Speaker
Now, if for us, with all the information we have, all the understanding of technology we have and of the foreign market, it's already difficult and tough. For people who come from a rural area that a lot of times don't have access to the internet, don't speak the language, understanding all of those challenges of how to properly set up your sales,
00:30:57
Speaker
in a successful way, it's really hard. So I think the more we can as individuals, as designers, as marketers or sales women's, where we can try to show and teach, I don't think we should do it for them. I think it's the more we can, we should teach others and learn from them rather than just do it.
00:31:24
Speaker
because we want to make everyone independent so that no one is just depending on others for their businesses. So marketing society is really not ready to fully embrace and give the proper value to their craft. So they should really learn more about marketing, storytelling, how to sell their products so that they are valued out there and
00:31:53
Speaker
this world where there are so many products and it's so easy nowadays to just copy what they do and very, very, you know, ways that you can really not tell if what is a handcraft and what is not.
Evolving Perspectives on Artisan Crafts
00:32:08
Speaker
Right. Being able to tell a story to explain to your consumer, what is the value behind this handmade thing? Why should I buy it? Which is exactly the purpose of this podcast to talk about why should I buy this thing that was handmade and artfully made over some, you know,
00:32:27
Speaker
maybe mass-produced or artificially made or something that doesn't have heart in it, right? Exactly. Now, every product that comes from Guatemala will have so much heart, so much community, and it's really beautiful. How would you say that your perspective or your opinion on artisan and handmade crafts has changed since you've been working in Bana?
00:32:49
Speaker
a big sense of grounding and reality. On one hand, it increase my perspective of how much potential there is within these scraps, how much desire there is to continue doing that from the artisans and to put it out there and the love they have for doing it. It's really beautiful to see. On the other hand, it's been making me see how tough it is really out there when you're trying to sell your product
00:33:19
Speaker
in the midst of all of the other products that are already there with a much cheaper price. So I think professionally right now I'm in the middle of this hard moment where I'm like, okay, what do we do now? We have a lot of desire in a very tough market. How can we give access to knowledge to these women in a way that serves them and teaches
00:33:46
Speaker
the consumers, the values of those products.
Encouragement to Explore Local Crafts
00:33:50
Speaker
That's interesting. To wrap it up a little bit, what would you like to be the takeaway from what you want to share about your work with artisans in PATA?
00:33:59
Speaker
I guess be curious, you know, there is so much you can learn when you look around. And if you understand what is, you know, the social biodiversity of where you are right now, go back to their roots. What was their, you know,
00:34:17
Speaker
decades ago, centuries ago. What is the plants that are there? What can you do with those plants? Can you naturally dye something? Can you take the bark? Can you paint with the dirt that is in that area? What are the skills of the people around there? Most of the times you will find that those people are still there and very, very often they are struggling. They're trying to keep alive that culture and by exercising your curiosity,
00:34:47
Speaker
you can help them with the knowledge that you have and learn from them with the knowledge that they have. Yeah, that's so interesting because I know I've found in my travels and you've definitely found in your experience and your travels as well, everywhere you go, somebody is making something that is in conversation with the environment, in conversation with their history and with their culture. And if you just look a little deeper, you'll be able to find it, right? And that's sometimes they're in tourist markets and sometimes they're not.
00:35:14
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And we know when, when you're curious, you kind of allow the space for learning with others, for innovating what's already there and bringing, bringing together, you know, innovation and tradition. And that's what we want, right? We, I'm not here to say everything needs to stay the same and the craft needs to stay the same. I think there is a lot of beauty into understanding how we worked in the past and how it can work now.
00:35:41
Speaker
without taking away from what it was. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you very much, Fern, for being on the show. Thank you so much, Lulu. It was great to have a chance to speak of all these things that I work with every day but don't really get a chance to put the words out there.
00:36:01
Speaker
Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing your story and telling us all about Mercado Global. And I hope our listeners learned a little something. And I hope that they'll start to be a little curious. Yes. If you're curious, don't miss out. You can definitely hit us up. And there is so much more information that we could share. Amazing. Thank you so much, Fern. Thank you. I'll see you soon.