Planting peanuts!

*ba ba ba-da da, da da!* Good Morning!
arghehnmhm

Hello All! My name is Lucy, and Teo and I are today’s Lider’s Del Dia! This is how the crew woke up at 4:30am this morning, and wow were they pleasant! I personally woke up at 4:00 am this morning to a very cold shower, in order to get everybody up in time for today’s activities! With a few quick knocks on doors, and a few grumpy “go away, we’re up!” responses, everybody was up and loaded on the bus shortly after 5:00, and we were on our way to La Canavalia! Once arrived, we rolled off the bus, and were welcomed by misty and muggy air, and more smiling faces to meet! We all headed down to our breakfast location, where we ate gallo pinto, eggs, ham, avocado, and to our joy, Coffee and Nicaraguan Hot Chocolate! After a wonderful meal to give us the fuel needed, our speakers enlightened us about their all organic farm work, and the energy and love put into the meal we just ate. We then split into groups, and my group walked down through the thick and slippery mud towards a construction site where we were put to work! Note, the clothes we wore were meant to get dirty, but oh boy were we in for a shock! My job was to slather walls in this thick mud, and layer the side of the soon-to-be one family home. Excited to get to work, we shoved our hands in, and quickly learned this wasn’t mud anymore, it was cow manure. Yes, we washed our hands millions of times, and it still smells! We helped build a house with cow manure, when else can we say that? I’m going to hand off to Teo, there is an interesting group conversation going on 🙂

Aliyah and Rylan intensely searching for the right coffee seed

Brittany gets back up after falling and still smiling!

Mae!

Likha: working hard or hardly working?

Teo here! The group I worked in was one of two that rotated between two important tasks: planting peanuts for the farm’s rabbits and picking ripe coffee beans. It took some adjusting, but our group got plenty dirty in the fertile soil that we planted the baby peanuts in. The coffee bean picking proved a cleaner endeavor, but we quickly realized that we were sharing the space with plenty of creepy crawlers! We couldn’t help but jump at each progressively larger bug we discovered treading the trees.

After about four hours of work, we took the long bus ride back to the hostel, where we profusely cleaned ourselves. Lunch, consisting of chicken, rice and tortillas, was served by our kind hosts, and afterwards we had some free time to spend. A seminar for the Community Action Project (CAP) was then organized, where we discussed ways to help a local organization, Las Hormiguitas. Las Hormiguitas helped provide some education to children that would otherwise not have access. We came up with a lot of ideas about their facilities that need repair, and will start budgeting and executing our designs in the days to come!

During our reflection, we thought about the impact global businesses can have on local communities. It was interesting to think about because La Canavalia was not only organic, but focused upon sustainability and the local impact their work and products would have. We really started thinking about what kind of work goes into the products we consume and how wasteful we can be sometimes!

Our view from the hostel, perfect for dinner time!

Signing off,
Lucy and Teo!

P.S. To my parents, I love you all, and tomorrow is free day so expect some calls home! See you in 8 days! -Lucy

P.P.S. Mom, Nana, Papa, I’ll help you with the dishwasher first thing when I get home! -Teo