Rain

I think the old saying “when it rains, it pours” only portends to life situations. There has been many cases here when it only drizzles and then the sun comes out. Life lately seems to be pouring. And not the good kind of water that you really want when your thirsty. Our tour has slowed down significantly which is OK because the guys definitely need a break. We knew it would happen as this is the lowest season right now but not having a tour for a week at a time is has not been the norm. Chocolate sales are doing alright as we are expanding our market with chocolate to eat which is great, but we now have the local cacao co-op breathing down our necks because not only do they have new competition, they are not getting as many cacao beans because we are selling them directly to consumers instead of the co-op. Our artisan group has already heard the rumblings of their displeasure and if it wasn't for Salomon, the group would have already given up in fear that the co-op would hand down some type of penalty. As people started talking about it in our group Salomon quickly pointed to the wall where we have all of our documents and said “let them come... this is our land and we owe them nothing”. Fact is that we have our chocolate making business registered with the correct government office here, and have our own type of organic certification for our chocolate products. I do get the feeling that even with all this, they are going to tell people that if they sell their cacao beans to our artisan group then they won't be able to sell them to the big co-op.

MORE RAIN

I came home from the island the other day to a somber mood. I didn't really notice it was somber until Salomon let me in on what had happened. Apparently my neighbor, who was pregnant, and whom I visit all the time because they are practically one good leap from my house, went to the hospital to have her baby and it didn't go so well. As the father told me, her water broke, she went to the hospital to have the baby and when she started delivering the baby no one was in the room for the entire thing. IN A HOSPITAL NO ONE WAS IN THE ROOM. She tried yelling for a nurse and nothing. The baby strangled itself on the way out with the umbilical chord and died. Now, I have heard of this happening but I have never heard of this happening this way. Of course with technology and good doctors even when the umbilical chord wraps around the baby's neck things can be done. The point of this story is that she went in, the baby was alive when it was inside her, and because the nurses weren't paying attention she lost her baby. This isn't the first time the exact same thing has happened at this hospital either. I've been told others have had the same problem and there is pretty much nothing they can do. My neighbor said he is in the process of writing a letter to some council members but I can tell you right now what good that will do. Nothing.

Funny Stuff

My other neighbors hen keeps jumping onto my porch, jumping into a cardboard box I have on the porch, and then sitting there for all day sometimes. I've tried kicking it out about 10 times but one day it did lay an egg which I soon made breakfast with so I stopped complaining.

Its been hotter and wetter than ever here. It seems like if it is not raining really hard lately, it is blazing hot. Many people here have told me that it is unusual for this time of year. Can't wait until it goes one way or the other.

My health is pretty good. My brother brought me down some pro biotics and some grape seed extract so I've been taking those with just rain water and I've been on the OK side. Still a little queezy every once in awhile but I can handle it now. Also received a generous package from the Armstrong family back home with a whole bunch of goodies from Trader Joes. One item in particular was great to share with my community. It was the Wasabi Peas that are little on the hot side. If you didn't know, the natives here don't like spicy hot food. Everyone always wants to try new things and they usually just put their hands out when you are eating something so I went around my community eating the peas in front of them. When they put their hands out I graciously handed some out. Most had the same reaction of spitting them out and making a terrible face, but a few select people did like them.

I will be home in exactly 3 and one half months. It is pretty crazy to think about. It will be just over a year since I left. I do have to say that I think I will be receiving some culture shock. I really don't want to stay for too long as I don't want to loose touch with the real world or what I call the real world now. Here.....

Chiggers and Chocolate

A lot has happened since my last post. My brother came, we climbed a mountain, went to a cock fight that might have scarred me permanently, went to another volunteers site that was just white sandy beaches and blue water, and visited many people in my community. It was fun and of course there was work mixed in with all of that.

This week has been a little strange in my site. Twice I found turtles. Well my brother found one walking across the walking path. I've never seen a turtle here unless it was already boiled and on a plate. Apparently they don't eat these ones which is good for him. We still moved him out of harms way. I've also had two large bugs in my food. The first was when my brother was visiting. I made him a fresh steaming hot bowl of what they call “Crema” which is just cream of wheat. We were enjoying our delicious meal when I chewed into something hard. I took two more chews and knew something was wrong. Immediately I spit out the contents of my mouth onto the floor to reveal that I had been eating a giant cockroach. The other bug was a giant beetle that decided to land in my soup tonight and ruin it. I would say I hope the chickens eat the bug that ruined my soup, but I would rather have the chickens starve for the simple fact that they wake me up at about 5 every morning.

On to chocolate. We just got out of a meeting where we talked about the numbers we did last month and our projections for the current. At one point I couldn't get my mouth to close. Me and a couple others thought that we heard wrong when Salomon stated that we sold $600 worth of chocolate last month. To put that into perspective, I'm pretty sure they sold around $200 total all last year. Part of this is because we have upped the price by about 4 times and that we are averaging about 24 tourists a month whom are buying the stuff up. If that is not economic development then I don't know what is. We have people coming out of the woodworks that want cacao and chocolate and a lot of my work lately has been trying to get a clear idea if we can do any volume sales and if it would even be worth it. At this point it seems that the value added work we have been doing is working well and the people here are already complaining about the workload.

An update on the production: To make cacao Nibs the women need to roast, shell, and then individually break each cacao seed, then package which includes writing an insane amount of information on each bag. It is all value added work and they are gaining a lot by doing just another days work, but it is starting to be too much. After doing some analysis of what part of the business needs the most help we decided that this part needs it. I've been searching for months of ways to quicken the process with less manual labor and after visiting a local gringo cacao farm that does tours as well I found the solution. They use a grinder to break the cacao along with a fan to blow the shells away. Genius. The same day I came across this method, I met a local Panamanian Engineer that has been working at a local hostel for the past couple years. He agreed to investigate the process and did. After visiting once and talking with my people we decided to go ahead with plans for a large wooden machine type thing that would separate the cacao after smashing it and then blow the shells off. The main point of this would be to get to a point where we could sell the Nibs, and to use these nibs to grind the cacao easier. The smaller pieces without the shells are much easier to grind than the whole beans. He comes back tomorrow so we will see.

Things seem to be going smoothly with the tour and we had 40 visitors last month which was our second month of operation. I would say that is a success. We aren't going to change much on the tour in the future and I've almost separated myself completely from it to see how it goes. We have our review trip adviser and the plan is for people to rate us and give comments to automaticly update things and attract more people. Its been hard get them to do simple things now as many people in the Artisan Group don't have much time. I've been talking about having a box where people could put comments into for about 2 months now. Well, we finally got it made and it is sitting in the corner of the room unlabeled. I really do believe just having this one box where people can put comments is going to prove to be invaluable. Having the words come straight from the tourists mouth means a lot to them and should give them incentive to do make the tour better constantly. Now getting them to read the comments may be another thing.

My health has been ok. I got Ascaris not too long ago which is a pretty large worm. I also got a stomach virus today but I'm doing good now. I've got chigger bites everywhere and I mean everywhere. They love to bury into the underwear line. Just think of a really hard mosquito bite that wont go away for 5 days. Now think of that on your private parts. It's not fun. I've been told they only like gringos and babies and that the older locals aren't affected by them anymore. Sucks for me. I can't think of anything else I can do to stop them short of rubbing insect repellant on my underwear. One option is just not to wear under garments but that's not too comfortable in jeans when I'm working. If you look back at some of my first posts from when I arrived here, I thought it was allergies in my underwear line. Well I guess not. Just going to have to deal with them and take a benadril to sleep without scratching.

My foot hurt a little on the hike with my brother but I'm convinced it was my shoes. The hike pretty much blew my legs out and they have been slowly trying to recover. Seeing my brother reminds me of how much weight I have lost over the last 9 months. I'm hoping I can start getting some of that back again. Especially for my trip back to the states in late Aug....