After 4 days in Managua

My Spanish conversational skills are increasing dramatically. When they say you are going to be taking an intensive Spanish course, they mean INTENSIVE. I feel like I've spoken more Spanish in the last 4 days than in my entire life, and that's after living 9 years in Watsonville. After talking with my teachers and a lot of the people that I meet at the Spanish school about CAN and my project I've regained a lot of my ambition. They all seem to be genuinely interested in what I’m doing with the coffee cooperative. My teachers are wonderful; and having one on one instruction with somebody who will focus on your weaknesses is incredible. Right now I'm a level II speaker, but by the end of two weeks they've said that I will probably excel past level III. The school also offers a lot of activities that they guide you on. They are really concerned with our safety, and will even accompany us to the supermarket if they think it might be even the slightest bit dangerous. After being too nervous to wander around my neighborhood too much, I finally went to the grocery store today with one of the employees from the school, and got to buy Q tips at last, which was a relief. I didn't bring any toiletries other than a toothbrush, and a tiny bit of toothpaste. I have been showering for the past few days only using shampoo from an almost empty bottle that I found in my bathroom. So, it was in everyone’s best interest that I go to the grocery store. I was also able to finally buy mosquito repellent. I didn’t have it before, and the mosquitoes have been having a feast. Apparently my sweet foreign blood is a delicacy for Nicaraguan Mosquitoes.

I went on one of the activities that the school offers with a couple of other students from the School. We went to a little town called Catarina, which is about a 40 minute bus ride from the city. In Catarina we visited a ceramicist, and watched him throw a pot on a wheel right in front of us. It was really neat, and I ended up buying two small souvenirs from the place for 5 dollars. We then went to the main attraction of the city which is an amazing view of a giant lake surrounded by a mass of the most vivid green trees. It was beautiful, and a necessary change from the crowded dirty city. Afterward, we went to a small stand and bought some refresco de pitalla, which is a delicious ruby red fruit drink. On the taxi ride back from Catarina one of the other students told me an interesting story. On the first day they were here some older man came onto the bus they were on and started robbing people with a machete, taking their jewelry and such. They said everyone started screaming and running out of the bus until some guys pushed the old man off. Apparently, this student also has to keep a blog of their trip but refused to post this story, which I think, is silly.

My host family is really amiable. I get three meals a day, a large room with a fan, and my own bathroom. They let me keep to myself, but they are always welcoming when I decide to be social. I have also noticed that they give me the largest portions, and they don’t let me wash my dishes (although, sometimes I do when they aren’t looking). Every night my host mom, my host brother Ernesto, and I all sit together to watch Spanish wheel of fortune. Although I’m never able to guess the phrases on the show, it’s still really nice.

Tomorrow I will be taking a trip to Granada. I’m excited to get out of this city again. So far I have liked everyone that I have met in Managua, but the city itself is awful. Coming up, I’m going to go on another activity to climb some volcano, and also on Saturday I am going to a nature reserve called El Chocoyero. Overall, I’m feeling a lot better than when I first arrived. My spirits are higher, and during the day when I’m able to distract myself with everything that’s going on, I don’t feel as sad or anxious (even though it does creep up here and there). It’s really at night when I’m alone and have time to dwell that I get really despondent and I miss my ex the most. I know that if I could be sharing these experiences with her they would be even greater and meaningful.

-Levi Sharpe

fter 4 days in Managua

First day in Managua

After an uncomfortable flight having been sat next to a hulk of man who could have easily taken up a seat and a half on his own, a three hour layover in Huston, and an even longer sleepless flight, I finally made it to Managua. As soon as I walked out of the plane into the airport I could feel the humidity creeping in from outside. I was immediately drenched in sweat. This would be my state for the rest of the day. I got my luggage and found the taxi driver that was waiting to take me to the host family that was assigned to me by the Spanish school that I will be attending for two weeks. I hopped in his cab, which luckily had no seat belt, because I was about to be taken on one of the most nerve racking cab rides of my life. The traffic in Managua is a controlled chaos where everyone is tacitly playing a game of chicken with everyone else. The soothing sounds of car horns fills the air and semi trucks come so close to you that you can practically give the driver a high five. I chatted with the taxi driver to take my mind off of his (and the entire city’s) driving habits. He asked me how I was doing, and I told him that I was tired and a bit depressed. I explained to him that I had to end a relationship before coming to Nicaragua. He told me not to worry because there were plenty of beautiful women in Nicaragua, and that I would soon forget about this other girl. I replied that I wasn’t really looking for finding a beautiful woman in Nicaragua and that I didn’t want to forget her. Him and his girlfriend who was in the front seat just laughed. He then told me about the importance of learning the obscenities in Spanish, and going to discotheques.

Upon arriving at my host family’s house, I was fed immediately. The food was decent: some fish, some avocado, and some rice with peas. I finished my plate and accepted seconds, because that’s how I was raised. After a while of relaxing, playing banjo, and contacting people to let them know that I was safe, they drove me to the Spanish school. I talked to the Spanish school’s director and was put though various tests. He said that I was some kind of anomaly who has advanced Spanish understanding and conversational skills, but a very poor basic foundation. I will have an 8:00am-12:00pm intensive Spanish course daily for two weeks. The rest of the day was spent running errands with my host family, having beans and rice for dinner, and watching Nicaraguan wheel of fortune.

As I’m sitting here writing this blog there are a variety of wild noises outside my room ranging from something clawing at my roof, to that thing that was clawing at my roof falling off the roof with a loud screech and thud, to howling, to stomping, to the continuous revving of car engines. There are also perpetual random downpours which strike hard and fast. They happen more at night, but I experienced this earlier as I was walking back home from the Spanish school and had gotten lost for a bit (there are no street signs, and everything looks the same) sometime in the afternoon. Just as I was getting really flustered and annoyed at my self, the sky suddenly opened up and I was drenched; but, instead of making things worse, in this humidity it was welcome. Although, because there are parts of the street that are full of trash, the rain can make it smell like a dump, which as you can imagine is not very pleasant

As of right now I’m feeling lonesome, sleep deprived, and disheartened. I have left the country three times prior to this, but never before had I been more reluctant to leave than this time. Being forced to prematurely end my relationship has indeed crushed some of my ambition for my project, especially when it was at the cost of something so precious to me. It was extremely difficult for me to tear myself away from her to walk through the doors of the SFO airport a lonely dejected mess, not knowing how long it would be before I would be able to see her again, or how communication would continue. I am hopeful that I will soon be able to muster up some drive and fight the apathy that has overcome me. I have decided the best thing to do is to focus completely on my tasks at hand, making sure that my social networking project doesn’t fall through (something that has been a constant worry of mine), and also doing well in my intensive Spanish course. Overall, given the circumstances I consider today to have been a very good day, and there is definitely a part of me that is excited to see how the rest of this trip pans out, especially when I begin working on my main project with the UCA San Ramon Coffee Cooperative in Matagalpa.

I know Kerry wanted the interns to write down some expectations, but I’d rather just keep an open mind to whatever comes at me. However, the definite expectation that I had about not being able to have a warm shower has been confirmed.

p.s. I apologize if this entry has been very disorganized, I’ve never written a blog before and I haven’t slept in a day.

-Levi Sharpe

All in all in: Brie in La Reyna, Nicaragua.

Now that it’s my fifth day and I feel a bit more settled in here, I have arrived at a more complete understanding of this place and my research, so I can finally write about it. Yet, as I sit down to write this email, I can tell you that the little black bugs that eat biodegrading foliage are still flying and dying, and piling up on the floors all around me. The little lizards are chasing after their dinner, running back and forth on the cement walls, and I am good and tired. Today, I woke up at 6:45 (actually initially at 5:30 to the sound of my host mother Eliza [pronounced “Ay-lees-ah”] the family’s clothing, but I was able to get back to sleep) and began preparing for a day full of tourist activities. The community here takes tourism very, very seriously, and they have become accustomed to putting everything else in their lives on hold to host tourists and show them the best parts of their pueblito (beloved town). I think hosting tourists really gives them a sense of pride and honor that someone chose to come to their very rural town of Monte Grande in San Ramon. There isn’t even a paved road to get here, and people are coming to see Nicaragua, here in their little town! Many of them have to walk on senderos (footpaths) for 20 minutes until they even get to the dirt road that leads to San Ramon, which is such a small town that it doesn’t even have a Mercado (market). Perhaps the real town with doctors and a market is in Matagalpa, about 20 minutes away by bus or car, although really, Matagalpa is not a city by US standards.

So, there. I have located myself: about 30 minutes drive to the nearest “city,” 10 minutes of which are on a dirt road, and the last bit is up a trail. I’m lucky, though, because I’m not one of people in this community have to trek 25 minutes on foot paths up and down hills under the hot sun to get to the road. I visited communities like this when I was in India, but I never really thought about the logistics of living here. 99% of people don’t have cars. From what I’ve gathered so far, I think teachers are paid about $1.50 a day, and a mechanic’s assistant makes $2.50 a day when he works from 7am until 8 or 9pm. This is barely enough money to scrape by on when a bus ride into town is $.25, and eggs are about $.10 each. The bus is always so full you can barely breath – your butt is smashed up in someone’s face, and a mother with a baby in one hand is essentially embracing you in an attempt to get her other hand onto a railing. In my community, many of these people are paying off their very modest 3 room cement houses, which were built for them by a succession of religiously affiliated NGO’s with loans they took out from the coffee cooperatives to which they belong.

They live amongst fruit trees I have probably never seen before, and perhaps would have never known existed, like guanabana, anona (noni), jocote (a bland sort of fruit with almost the consistency of an apple but a pit like an avocado), guava, mango, lemon, avocado, papaya, plantain, banana, cashew and the list goes on. Many of the plants have medicinal properties, too. These trees are all here specifically to provide shade to what I have actually realized is a coffee farm. Interwoven amongst the fruit trees are coffee plants. Once I learned to recognize them, I realized that they are everywhere I look. According to my first impression, I though I was just in the jungle. I did not realize until later that this is actually a very carefully planned farm designed to feed its residents and supplement their income.

I love seeing the connections between people, places, organizations, and the rest of the world unravel before me. I think it helps that everything is so new. I’m not used to so many fruit trees, but they’re for food and to give shade to the café. I don’t think I’ve seen so many chickens since I was in Tanzania, but they’re here so the community members can have free eggs. The idea of communally owned and farmed land is so new to me, that I literally had to walk up the footpath and into the coffee plantations. Even then, I literally had to stumble upon a branch full of green little beans hanging out into the path to realize that most of the plants around me (except for the tall ones above me) were coffee plants. Bit by bit, I’m assembling a sense of where I am.

Today, I spent the day with a group of New Mexico University tourists trying to piece it all together – the connections between people and places and institutions. We are oblivious tourists, but only because everything is so new. It took me several days to realize that the 10 houses of people whom I walk by on my way to the road are not just strangers, they are all Eliza’s family members. In the US, the concept of knowing one’s neighbors seems to have grown out-dated, like tape decks and living in the same town as your parents. And half of these houses I walk by either have wear one of two colors of paint, dark green or blue, and carry a code of letters and numbers. ETV86, CSB62, no one can tell me what they stand for, but these are the several (largely religious) organizations that have come and built dozens of cookie cutter house of cement walls and three rooms. But it works, because often the other houses are made of stick frames and dried mud and a dirt floor. Whatever light the intermittently placed light bulbs throw is swallowed up by the uniform brown of the floor, ceiling and walls. It feels noticeably different, whether it comes down to comfort or cleanliness or the distribution of light, but the simple NGO cookie-cutter houses are definitely an improvement. And I don’t think it’s just me coming to these places completely inundated in my “developed world” standards.

With all these new revelations about different structures and brings me to my research. I live in house number ETV86, and I am very lucky to live here. The other houses in this community of host families don’t offer a separate house to their tourist guest. I have two rooms all to myself, a porch, and my own bathroom and shower. Eliza is one of 6 host mothers (alojadoras) in the community of La Reyna. Each of these six women have gone through trainings and prepared their households for tourists to come. They have been trained on how to cook for us, keep our houses clean and pest free, and keep our sheets smelling clean. They know what will bother us – not having enough fruit in our meals, the smoke from the fire, being left out of family activities, being left without a knowledge of the community. These six host mothers (alojadoras) of the La Reyna community are actually 6 of 40 other host mothers. These alojadoras have been trained by the tourism coordinator at the coffee cooperative I’m working with. These 40 host mothers are spread across 4 different communities: La Reyna (where I live!), La Corona, El Roblar, and La Pita. For my research over the next 9 weeks, I will be going from each tourist household distributing a questionnaire to assess how these host mothers feel about the tourist program. Also, as part of my research, I will finding about 8-10 people from across the 4 different communities and getting their insight on how tourism has affected (both benefitted and detrimented) their communities. These taped interviews will ultimately be on the website of the organization I’m working through (the UCA San Ramon Coffee Cooperative). I will also be reviewing the English (and Spanish) sections of their website to help give them input on how I think it should be organized, and also translating some of the website into English.

This works incredibly well for me because, although I seem to be serving as an intern for this organization, the work I’m doing here fits my research perfectly. My overall project aim was to study “the impacts of tourism on the community: is it really sustainable, and who is really benefitting?” and then make a film about it for my Anthropology thesis. The organization I’ve come through is called the Community Agroecology Network (www.canunite.org), and essentially their goal is to provide researchers with an already established network into the communities where they want to do their research. I was interested in this program because, initially my interest was in agriculture. Specifically, agriculture because it lies at the junction of global networks of commodity exchange, environmental degradation, and increasing monopolies on chemicals and seeds at the hands of incredibly powerful international agrochemical companies. So, I set out to see how so much of the world’s population makes agriculture their livelihood, and how they can build a lifestyle that actually supports them, even when the buyer-driven coffee market and the dominant forms of agricultural production don’t support them. I didn’t come because it would look good that I did a thesis as an undergraduate – I came because I want to understand as much of what’s going on within these systems of agricultural production as possible. But I didn’t come to be a useless mooch either. When some people travel, they do it as a form of selfish learning and self-betterment so they can say “oh, when I was in Nicaragua and I had to walk 10 minutes to the nearest road”… I also want to help, and not just come in and say “you need this type of help” but to come in with the purest intentions and say “How can I help you? Assign me a job to do.”

So, within that context, I will be staying in the house of Elizabeth and Antonio Molino for the next 9 months. Eliza is employed in the tourist business, and I am her tourist. Although it may not be a 9-5 job that she can leave behind when she gets home, I still give her credit. She’s helping host 7am – 7pm events for groups of visiting tourists, often putting everything else on hold. For example, the two feverish children she couldn’t leave home alone had to stick around all day while she tended to the tourists’ programmed events. Or the laundry she’s been trying to do for two days keeps getting rained on or blows off the line into the dirt, so she’s had to rewash the clothes twice. This is a serious job – just as it is a serious job for the other 40 host mothers who participate in the same tourist programs in their own respective communities. But not so serious that being a mother and home-maker, and being an alojadora don’t mix. It’s a difficult line to ride between the benefits and detriments of this tourism project, and neither is it entirely objective. But this is basically what I will be researching this summer, through the questionnaires and the oral histories.

I apologize for the length of this update, but hopefully this'll give a better understanding of where I’m coming from. I have no distractions from my research – my nearest close friends are countries away, I have no music on my computer (what was I thinking?!), and sometimes I need to escape from the land of all-too-quickly spoken Spanish. So, I return to this house, with its simple wooden desk and plastic lawn chair to sit and think about my day and what it means to be here, tangled in the networks of people, places, and organizations that have created this Nicaraguan world I am experiencing. It’s exciting, it’s new, it’s confusing, and it can be a little lonely, but I’m really enjoying it.

Saludos,

Brie

Cepeda week 4...where are you, all you other interns?

Here is what there is a lot of in Cepeda:

Friendly people

Babies

Fiestas

Doctors appointments

Trash

Borrachos

Beautiful people

Teachers not showing up for class

Chickens

Hope

A couple of things:

1. A Sherman Alexie moment. So I go play basketball with the girls when it is the girls´turn to play basket, as they call it. We play half-court four on four and for the next two hours, I feel not even a little bit weird or different or unusual. Like everyone else in the game, all I want is that ball. I accidentally smash the ball into someone´s face and everyone laughs, I say sorry a million times; a couple minutes later, someone smashes the ball in my face and everyone laughs too. We yell in Spanish and Maya. I am in the middle of the Yucatan in the middle of a crazy part of the history of this little town and this people, and I could be playing with my friends in Bellingham or Santa Cruz. The power of el deporte is not to be underestimated.

2. The school…I feel strange just putting my opinions about something I barely am beginning to understand on the internet. I feel like I am not qualified to judge, but I am also being asked for my recommendations and help. Middle school is a hard age. All of the kids are great one on one, but in the classroom some of them are a real challenge! Throwing things—hitting each other—hitting the people trying to pay attention—writing love notes—how do real teachers deal with this stuff? I´m not a teacher, I don´t know. At the same time I can´t blame the kids when their teachers don´t show up for class at least once a day, and in Cepeda there are not a lot of people who have beyond a middle school education or are doing work that requires that, so there aren´t a lot of role models. So I take the naughty kids after class and talk to them and try to make an agreement that the classroom is a place for learning and at the very least they need to let those who want to learn learn. When I ask them why they are in school, the answers I get range from I want to get a good job and make money to I want to learn to There´s nothing better to do. But one on one, they are interested in the project, they ask me all sorts of questions, they teach me Maya, they ask me about the medicinal plants in the garden, they ask me about David and California and where I´m from, they tell me about their grandma who taught them about plants. It´s a powerful age too, if there were only enough good mentors—what kids that age need is someone to work with, someone they respect, like an apprenticeship in a way. They are proud of their Maya and interested in the plants; mostly I think it is the ¨why¨ and ¨how¨ of conservation and agroecology that it is important to teach, el largo plazo, the long run. I have also been teaching poems and songs and games in English in classes where the teachers don´t show, and we learned Head Shoulders Knees and Toes in English and Maya, and the kids for the most part really enjoy it. I´m looking forward to getting some more outdoor lessons developed.

3. The project. Jesse and I are pretty much working together on the entire garden space and curriculum because compost requires a lot of resting, and there are at any given time at least five kids who want to help us, between teachers not coming and kids not going to class. We are making progress; some big challenges are the trash and the leaking septic tank. The difference between organic and inorganic trash has been a big thing to teach, the distinction is not made here, all basura is burnt. Jesse has some great creative ideas and he and the kids have already brightened the space so much. The kids like to paint signs and some of them will pick up trash and collect rocks. The pecuarias class is often killing chickens with a nail to the brain as we work. The biodigestor (pig and chicken manure) worked so well that I need a bigger methane capture tank for the second one and I want to hook up a little simple stove to it so we can cook an egg or something to show that it works. If anyone has done that, please can you email me and tell me how you did it? Thanks! I don´t want to blow up the drum, that would be sincerely stinky.

4. The community is lovely and kind and welcoming. There are a lot of problems—trash, half the men in town falling down drunk at night, general poverty, junk food, kids getting taken out of school for weird bureaucratic reasons, lots of 15, 16 year old moms—but also they have a clinic where people go for very frequent check ups, the women are very organized and have meetings about health education, preventing domestic violence, and school; and they still have a lot of their inherited richness of knowledge, biodiversity, language and culture. The women seem to have a lot of organization and momentum; I would like to see the boys have that sort of role models too. The men work very hard here, but there seems to be less organization and interest in education among them. Or maybe I just talk more with the women, I don´t know. They are at such an interesting time in their history—they still have their language and some Mayan ceremonies although the church is very strong here, and lots of old people seem to know the medicinal and food plants, but in the last two generations much of that seems to have fallen by the wayside. But the kids are interested in it, which is so great; I could definitely see them only wanting to move ¨forward¨ into technology etc, and I could see why, and from Tom´s stories of Tzucacab I was half expecting that. But now is a mix. For instance, for a quinceañera we made relleno negro, with entire turkeys and chickens and burnt chiles and tortillas, and we also made pasta salad with ham, mayonnaise and pineapple. The computacion class is the one that seems to have done a lot of work with David and is interested in medicinal plants. A time in the history of Cepeda with much potential, I think, and I am grateful to be part of it, as well as aware of the huge responsibility of being here for it.

I am wishing I had more time. Ten weeks is very little to understand and to take steps to address things that the community wants to address. Now it is time to get back.

Maálob—Maya for bueno and goodbye—Sarah

Buenos dias from Merida! I have been here almost one week and will go to Cepeda tomorrow. Today I will present my proposal to professors Patricia, Rocio and Hector and maybe some other people, also I was invited to some masters proposal presentations about worms and seeds so I think I will go to those soon.

So far it has been very easy to live here. It is easy to talk to people, which is the first thing--Alfonso does his job very very well. Because of conversations I have had with him, I think it will be much more possible to do well in the work I am attempting. We have talked about the importance of establishing trust, and how to do that, and he has taught me words and phrases in Maya, and he has told me stories of his many years of working with campesinos to acheive stability and sustainability in agriculture. His son Diego has told me about the beautiful things there are in the Yucatan, and about a spirit that lives in the spiny tree, and how to tell by the sound of the hen´s squawking that she has laid an egg. I have told Diego about airplanes and what he will get to see in Santa Cruz, and how not to freeze (everyone asks me ¨no tienes frio?¨ disbelievingly here. I do not think it is cold, it´s maybe 65 or 70 degrees F, but everyone is wearing five sweaters and ¨muriendo del frio.¨ I tell them that when it is hot I am going to melt because I am not accustomed to the hot, I am accustomed to the cold and that is why I am not cold.) I am very happy that Alfonso, Aidi and Diego get to see Santa Cruz in the Intercambio.

But even his family cannot have the same luck. Joanna, his daughter-in-law, must wait for her husband to come back from San Francisco and they do not know when that will happen. Maybe a year, maybe more. I could not bear that. I know that on March 24th I will see my love and I am so relieved for that simple, taken-for-granted fact. At the same time I am torn apart because the injustice of the border and the trade agreements that our government has imposed allow me freedom to see those I love, and prohibit people whose love is no less strong and whose human dignity is neither greater nor less than mine from doing the very same thing.

The education and solidarity that I bring is a drop in the bucket and will not change anything for Joanna or millions of others in her shoes. But it might help some of the kids in the school in Cepeda to choose a career that will allow them to travel and to express their opinions to people of power. It might shine some light on how I could go back to the US and tell the people that matter, we must extend a hand, we must not be so greedy.

I have gotten to meet a lot of Alfonso´s extended family. The other day we piled a lot of us into the car and went to four different houses. A Chayotear means to go eat somewhere for free, as in when PICAns come to a potluck without bringing food, or when you bring eight other people to eat posole at your daughter-in-law´s father´s house. You are a Chayote if you do this, and you are welcome because you are family, or friend of family. (I thought at first that chayotear meant harvest chayote, which is a kind of squash. This provoked much laughter.)

I am anticipating challenges when I go first to the community. Gracias a David, who has laid a very good trail to follow and has endeared himself to the community, I hope that I can live up to the kindness and openness that he as shown and that the people have returned. But I am also anticipating good things--good conversations, ganas de trabajar, songs and dances and much learning on my part. My plan is to work with the teachers and the students to do a compost experiment: try four different compost systems to see which works best while learning the scientific method of experiments and the science of compost and why it is important and if it works well with the way things are in Cepeda.

I am very grateful for the kindness of Alfonso and his family, for staying healthy thus far (may it continue! I do not want to burden the community with sickness) and for my ability to speak Spanish, and for the evenings and mornings when I know that one day is past in a beautiful clouded sunset and another will be beginning in which i have no idea what will happen, but I look to it with much hope.

Al Yucatan me voy

Hola--Sarah here, seeing if this works. Karie said to record some hopes and aspirations, so here goes.

I've been reading two books, Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution by MY AUNT--yes that's right, mi propia tia, Caroline Fraser--and Stones into Schools by Greg Mortensen. The first one is about efforts all over the world to recreate large corridors of habitat for native flora and fauna in hopes of preserving biodiversity and stalling global warming. Some efforts do better than others. Most striking and intuitive to anyone who's studied PAR is that the efforts that involve local people--economically and educationally--succeed. They are locally owned, provide jobs in ecotourism or provide markets for local goods, and educate the children of the place about the importance of the life around them. This is one thing I am going to remember if people ask me questions about what I am doing for the environment, or what they can do for it.

The second book is a follow-up to Three Cups of Tea and tells the stories of the schools that Greg Mortensen, in partnership with a Central Asian staff crew and every community he works in, has helped build in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. Here is a quote that I am going to take with me and remember in my work:

"When you take the time to actually listen, with humility, to what people have to say, it's amazing what you can learn. Especially if the people who are doing the talking also happen to be children."

Listening is the most important thing, which is good for me. I don't always have something to say, I don't have solutions to all the problems I will see, and I know that at times I may feel powerless, I may feel as though my country is the root of all evil and I can't pull that out of myself, and I still have quite a lot of self-doubt to overcome. But I can listen.

I have a great opportunity to listen to children. Oh, I will teach too--I have the Rodale composting book and diagrams of food webs and the nitrogen cycle, and songs and poems a-coming--but I will make plenty of time for listening. I will ask kids what they want to do when they grow up, and use silly check in questions, and ask them to teach me songs to share with the kids at my mom's school, and teach them some of the songs I know. So that if those kids ever meet, they will have songs to share, some from each.

Jesse, Karie and I watched a documentary about Yucatecan immigrants in San Francisco. It was mostly discouraging. Afterwards Jesse and I talked about it and sort of agreed that we don't want to say to people we meet "No, don't come to the US" because that would be sort of dishonest--yet we kind of felt that we are supposed to somehow imply that. But we're coming back here because we love our home and it's wrong not to want to share that, right? I've been thinking about this a lot. I have concluded that it's not my job to persuade or dissuade anyone from making the choices they make.

My job is to be kind, to be in solidarity, to give what I can, to respond to what people tell me they need, and to learn. My job is to make sure I give back to the community as much as it gives to me, to have fun, be fun, create happiness, to love. As silly as it may sound, only with love will work reach its full potential. My job is to separate the good and the nasty parts of privelege, to separate human rights from unjust excess, and try to represent myself and my communities as honestly as I can. My job is to keep on keepin' on. My job is to listen.

So, hopes and aspirations--I hope I can do all that and leave knowing that years from now, I will still be friends with the people with whom I worked.

Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto...
Con ganas de trabajar,
Sarah