Where to begin? After a few weeks of taking it slow and a week of not doing much real work because I couldn’t wear shoes (I’ll explain in a moment), I dove back into it today. Started the morning off with interviews and then to the school with plans to sew seeds with two classes, I usually only work with one in a day. The interviews suck. The people don’t want to invite me in, so I stand in the sweltering sun, which is fine, but they also don’t seem to think that there are any problems here that need solving. Aside from trying to explain diseases they have and the complications involved with them… none of which I can understand, they don’t seem to think life can get any better. Sure they want jobs, but so far no one has any real ideas on what kind of work they could do.
So then I went to school and planted watermelon, chard, and peas with the fifth graders. It was pretty cool. They are a wild bunch, but I think I laid down the law pretty firm. I don’t get much help from that particular teacher. However, today was supposed to be the day for the third graders. The fifth graders only planted as a kind of make-up day. They kids all showed up with water bottles with glorious holes poked in the top… more than I expected and also more functional than I anticipated. Anyway, the teacher didn’t show up, and since he was the only one who didn’t loose his seeds right of the bat, I didn’t bring any. Hence I had to deliver the bad news to about 30 semi-soaked children (water bottles with holes make fabulous ghetto super-soakers) who had been looking forward to this all afternoon yesterday and all morning today.
On to the bare feet, about a week ago my host mom told me I had to make lunch for the family since she had to go to Quito. So after working at the school I rushed home and threw a chicken in the pressure cooker. I’ve never actually used a pressure cooker before, so I didn’t know and only briefly considered the possibility that opening it when it was still hot might be a problem. I’m not 100% sure if water under pressure can get hotter than water just boiled in the open but my skin sure thinks so. Needless to say there was an explosion and my arm and feet were burned. So as to not tear of the fragile blisters on my toes I’ve been sans shoes and therefore out of the dirt.
I’ve sort of got my finger in a lot of pots right now, still trying to figure out where to really begin work. On the table right now is: continue working on the gardens in the school but try to take a step back so they manage them themselves, continue to work in the community garden and try to figure out how to get the community interested/involved in some way, try to get involved somehow at the high school, nutrition classes for parents of small children, cooking classes for everyone in the community (really they just want to learn my cookie recipe), figuring out how to start the native tree nursery, possibly a potable water project and or waste management, and finally creating an association to produce and sell jams.
I am confident that this community assessment/interview process is going to help determine where to start.
Can’t think of much else to report or a more humorous way to report it. Sorry.
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