Rice, this is war.

That´s my ridgeline. They farm the sides.

I suppose I can say that things hace been calming down for me here emotionally. I wake up in the morning with less anxiety about the day to come. And if I have nothing to do, I resign myself to reading, studying Ngabere, or sewing my Nagwa. I worry a little less about ¨not doing enough¨. Food is still a stressor and a source of guilt. I feel listless and anemic, even though I eat more with my family than most people in the community. None the less, three bowls of white rice do not a balanced meal make.

Things still set me of, making me angry or sad, or both: The dying plants in my various gardens, the kids who demand, ¨Hey gringa, give me money!¨, the dirty kitten with two dislocated back legs that scoots around covered in it´s own filth because some guy ¨booted¨it, the kids who sit smooshed against me on the truck ride up to my site and literally burn me with their raging, perpetual fevers, my host siblings getting in my bed when I am not at home leaving muddy footprints on my blanket (and maybe lice?)

But things are funny too. Like yesterday, for example. I was literally going to wash my hands of my garden, where one by one plants die or just disapear. I walked to the cement basin to wash my hands and staring up at me from inbetween a crack in the concrete, growing from years of filth and old coffee grounds, was an eight-inch bean stock, sprouted from some dinner weeks past. Apparently I´m just planting in the wrong place. But my host mom and I got a good laugh out of it. so now when she asks me if i think cabbage will grow here, I say, ¨Well, maybe... if we plant it behind the kitchen sink.¨

I´ve made friends and they invite me to husk rice and eat their food. They like to ask me questions like, ¨Do you wash your clothes?¨ ¨What do you wear under your pants?¨ ¨Do you eat bananas?¨ ¨In the states if you need money you just go to that building where they make it, right?¨ ¨Does money really grow on trees there?¨ ¨what did you do to your hair?¨ Most questions make me laugh. some dont. ¨Do babies die in the USA?¨

I continue to be daunted by my role as an agricultural volunteer. Planting here is like planting on the moon. Everything has to come from far away, even soil. On the flip side, sometimes I can give a guy a list of compost ingredients and they appear from seemingly nowhere.

Someone told me the other day that if the land gives the way it should, 35lbs of rice comes from one hectar. (1000m2). This blew my mind. On average families eat 5 lbs of rice a day. that means that one hectar feeds a family for only a week. Countless hours go into this one hectar, and for many people they only have on hectar of land to farm. The rice must be planted (7 seeds per hole, 6¨ apart. ) the rice must be weeded with machete, which is no small feat with the bunches so close together, and esentially planted on a cliff. They usually weed each plot twice. Then the rice is harvested, toasted or dried and husked. every step of the way is tedious and back breaking. for a week. This makes me hate those three bowls of belly-expanding, un-nourishing, empty white rice even more. To all my fellow volunteers who eat nothing but boiled green bananas: I´ll trade you!