Today we woke up in a classroom, literally. We spend the night at the local school. La China is a small farmer community, approximately 100 households. In the morning, Owen, Michael and I decided to do a mental mapping exercise while walking around the town. Very quickly we realized that our exploration might be limited to the central part only. The reason – all three roads, leading to this part of the town, involved crossing the river without bridges. At one crossing we observed a woman pick up her little boy, place him over her shoulders and try to cross over stones that she found along the way. At another, a teenager picked up his bicycle and carried it over. Cars and animals would just go into the water. I couldn’t help but thinking how isolated this part of the town becomes when it rains heavily.
Next we all got together, and visited the sprawling moon bean business of our host family. Nearby, four women started worm composting with the assistance of a local NGO. We spent some time with them talking about their achievements. We also heard about the local baseball game taking place between La China and the other small town and decided to stop by. It was an interesting community event. Mostly men of all ages were present and the elders in the community were clearly mentoring the young players. Unfortunately we had to leave somewhere in the middle, but as we could see La China’s team was winning. Trip to Matagalpa was very short. As soon as we arrived it started to rain heavily. Rest of the afternoon we had free time to catch up on journaling, blogging and so on.
