A typical day in the field...

Since I have been slacking a bit on the blogs this week – mostly because I’ve been busy with ‘field trips’ to the schools here in Managua – I thought I would write a quick post before I leave for the weekend about what, exactly, I do when I visit the classes.

So, I started the morning walking to the school nearest to our house. I like going to this school, because it’s only 10 minutes away, on the paved road, and the cook there is fantastic. Today, I was going there because I needed, rather urgently, to talk to this cook to create some recipes for the pilot program next week. I arrived and, in typical Nica fashion, she wasn’t there because she had a doctor’s appointment. It wasn’t really her fault because she didn’t know I was coming – but she didn’t know I was coming because so few people here have good phone reception, access to the internet, etc. so communication is always a challenge.

Since Kathia wasn’t at the first school, I decided to leave for the second school. Normally, I would either walk (though it’s a grueling mile plus walk, up hill, on a dirt road in 90 degree heat) or take one of the moto taxis (which I love!). However, today, it just so happened that the Fabretto bus was passing and, since I know the driver, I decided to hop a ride. What a nightmare! The bus was completely full – two to a seat, people standing in the aisles, and people standing on the stairs. I made my way as far as the spot next to the driver and then hung on for my life. I was basically holding on to the device that is used to open the door, so every time we stopped to pick up more people (yes, there were still MORE kids to pick up), I had to find something else to hold on to besides this moving target. It was a free ride, but I think it cost me a few years off my life.

Once I got to the next school, I talked to one of the mothers to try to get some recipes. Again in typical Nica fashion, the ‘details’ she gave me for this recipe were pretty vague. I was rushing to try to write down everything she was saying in Spanish, and most of the instructions were things like “add enough water”, “salt to taste”, “make a sauce”, etc. I’ll have some work to do to turn that into a working recipe.

After this school, I walked up to the farm. On my way, I almost fell down the hill about three times since I was, stupidly, wearing flip flops, and by the end I was completely dirty. Another shower wasted.

At the farm, I tried to get information about the agricultural calendar in Nicaragua because we want to try to be somewhat strategic about when we buy various fruits and veggies. The price of tomatoes, for example, can change almost 3x over the course of the year depending on the rain, cultivation, etc. Unfortunately, this was another case of me struggling with my Spanish and trying to get more details than “It costs more in the dry season than the wet season.” I was largely unsuccessful, so I moved on.

The next stop was a third school where I was going to drop off the updated menu. Since there was no moto taxi in sight, I walked about half of the way and got yet another sunburn.

After a successful drop-off, I decided to stop for a snack – a frozen banana with chocolate, or chocobanano. The kids love these, and I know why, because it was delicious and only cost $0.05. I also got chocolate milk, which I spilled all over myself just to make sure I REALLY looked like a disaster by the time I got back to the office.

After all this back and forth, I finally met up with a co-worker who was going to give me a ride back. However, what was supposed to be a ride getting me back around 2 instead, AGAIN in typical Nica fashion, got me back here by 4. So, I’ve been rushing around all afternoon to finish work before the truck leaves and I lose my internet connection till Monday. Sigh. As you can tell, it was another crazy day!

Gracias a dios – hoy es viernes! (or TGIF, more or less) Have a great weekend!