Challenge of the Week - Lunch in Rural Cusmapa

While it may not have been apparent from the frequent blog postings this week, I’ve been in the mountains (or mountains-ish) since Tuesday. I stopped in our schools in Esteli and Somoto heading up north to check on the lunch programs there, and then yesterday I finally got to Cusmapa where the real work still needs to be done. The rural communities of Cusmapa are the last schools where we need to implement the new menu, and we really saved the best, and probably toughest for last.

As I’ve learned throughout this process, each of the schools we have is a little different, and each has its own special circumstances. For that reason, when I get to a new school now, I generally just try to figure out what the challenges will be rather than being surprised by their existence. I also knew coming up to Cusmapa that it would be one of our most challenging sets of schools, running almost even with the dump in terms of special needs.

Cusmapa is unique because the outlying communities of the main school we serve have 36 different schools in all. They are all quite difficult to reach, requiring passage on rough mountain roads, generally by truck. As I learned yesterday, we also have a few schools that you can’t even reach by truck…and I learned this the hard way because we had to carry books and furniture to one of these schools as part of our rounds. As always, I assumed I was a lot stronger than reality and offered to carry an awkward medium sized box of books that probably weighed 40 pounds. I made this offer before I realized that to get to the school, we needed to walk about a quarter mile on a downward sloping, rocky mountain path and also across a river in 90 degree heat…and I realized mistake a bit too late. I got about 100 yards and basically gave up. Thankfully, the much stronger man behind me offered to trade me the books for a big bookcase (which was lighter and less awkward), so I was able to make it. Barely. When I got to the end of this journey, I realized that this was the same path that all my menu ingredients needed to take each week…absolutely crazy.

Another big challenge in these schools is the fact that there is no electricity. That means no lights and no fridges, which would also mean no chicken if it weren’t for the fact that we’ll be able to have them just make the chicken on the day of delivery. There is also no gas, so everything is cooked on a fire. Finally, and perhaps most challenging of all, all of the cooking is done by volunteer mothers – generally two of them per day. There is no constant, paid cook like at the other schools, which will make training on this new menu quite challenging. I’m still working out exactly how we will spread the learning to all those volunteers, but that’s a project for another day. Another day soon, I suppose, since we’re going to try to do the training next week.

Overall, I’m really excited about the implementation of the new menu in these schools because I think it has the potential to make the greatest impact over the current meals. Next week will probably be a challenge, but we have a good group of people from Cusmapa to help with the implementation, and I think everyone is pretty excited.

One other fun aspect of my trip to the mountains was that I got to stay at the big guest house with a group of high school students that were volunteering for the week. While I was, at first, pretty nervous to relive the awkwardness of high school, it was also really cool to see a bunch of other young people up here helping out. I think visiting the mountains for a week with a bunch of your classmates would be a really awesome experience.

If my narrative has not sufficiently captured the interesting reality that is Cusmapa, don’t worry – I’ll post some pictures soon.