Friday starts off with a catastrophe. The night before my laptop’s hard drive had died and now I’m under extreme pressure. At noon I am scheduled to present to the new German embassador in Lima and in the afternoon, I am meeting with the head of a newspaper. Even though the situation seems bleak, I offer it up to God.
A good friend and myself head off to Lima in the morning. Not much later and all our hopes have evaporated; nobody can fix my hard drive or lend us a laptop.
I am thinking that today I will probably spending most of my time shaking hands rather than showing pictures of the Diospi Suyana hospital. A day of missed opportunities.
My Peruvian companion is leafing through the Yellow Pages. there seems to be a company that rents laptops. We are on our way.
“What guarantees can you offer us?” the store owner asks. I am showing him my papers, the article about my family in the Peruvian magazine “Somos” and hold my breath. $33 for the day, and one of the employees will accompany us to the Embassy to ensure this is where we are actually going.
12:15pm: I am kicking off my presentation for the German ambassador Dr Christoph Mueller. Immediately I know that he has an open ear for our project, and in fact he gives us some good advice during the following conversation. Feeling much better, I head into the second half of the day.
1:30pm: I am checking my email at our guest house. There is one message from “Cedec Alto Andino” “We want to donate the steel beams for the hospital roofs.” I am excited, knowing that this actually means a donation worth between $30 – 50,000. Another email that makes my heart beat faster: A German weekly wants do a four-page spread on Diospi Suyana.
4pm: I am sitting in front of Luciano C. Deliot who is smoking a cigarette. He is the publisher and editor-in-chief of “Mundo Minero,” the publication of the Peruvian Miners Union. He asks many questions during my presentation and is obviously in a hurry. “I’ll need a synopsis by tomorrow and many high res images, then I could still put the article in our next issue.” This is significant. A positive article in this publication will make business people talk about us. I say thank you. “You are more passionate than a Peruvian.” says an employee of the magazine and encouragingly shakes my hand.
5:15pm: The circle becomes complete. I am back in the store, where we rented the laptop. One last deed. I do the presentation for the owner and his employees. They are fascinated, all callers are told “We’ll call back!”
“I would like to pay the rental fee.” I say and pull out my wallet. “No, no, we want to make a contribution to your project.” says the owner Alberto Lostao, who is thinking about what else he could do for us. One of the co-workers has an idea: “One of my friends works at a radio station here in Lima. I told them about you and they want to interview you.”
This evening I am dead tired but happy. Once more I realized that God can turn losses into victories. Did you know that?
Klaus-Dieter John
