Along The Path

To Joy:
These multiple e-mails give me a chance to say, multiple times, ‘I love you’. I like that.
I have pictures but not many yet. I do not like to show my ‘stuff’. Not because of fear but these people are so simple it seems, even without showing what I have ……well it is quite a contrast.

I don’t know where to start, I have so much to share with you.
Right now I am in an internet cafe in a town called Ocotal, the closest one to the ‘Campos’ (small, loosenit communities). There may be a small house that sells beer or, may be Fanta and water but I do not go in them. So, anything I need or want has to be from here, a twenty minute ride on the local bus @ $0.35 per trip It is a small town, kind of like the ones outside of Oaxaca we would visit. Anyway, this cafe is hot, no doors or windows open. It is good technically but is lacking in comfort. I will look for another the next time. At least I can charge up my computer (only one small solar cell at the ‘house’) and chat. And I will have to do a lot of net research for the project.

The community, Sabana Grande, is over 2000 ft in very green mountains. All around where I stay (which is 30 minutes walk from the highway (where to Collective is, including Centro de Solar and where you catch a bus) and mostly accessible by foot. Believe me! I am getting in my walking!
It is so beautiful, fresh, too much to explain by words. So many different birds! All the trees and plants are different. A volcano looms off in the distance and often shrouded by clouds. Storms drift through but none severe, as yet, just a refreshing rain now and then. This is just what you are looking for….the dirt is wonderful. Fruit trees are everywhere, natural and planted.

The man (about 27), ‘Amilka’ has been showing me around their place. It is very hilly. They work every day in the fields (the men). They are planting beans now, using bulls to pull the plow, they have two. They have many different kinds of fruit trees, coffee and I don’t know what else. I went to bed at sundown yesterday but had these beans and rice with tortillas for breakfast, that I had help shell yesterday. No one there speaks English so I am learning. They have a room, la cocina, with a wood fired stove. A brick oven outside and the grandmother, Ramona, will be baking bread one day this
week. I have my order in already. They have a rock well that the family dug and placed the stones many years ago and it is a good one. I think they still drink bottled water (the big blue ones). Amilka has offered to walk with me up into the mountain at 3:00 this afternoon. I will have to take my
camera then.

So much more but I will go for now,
Remember, I love you.
Steve