Everyday here is like a pub crawl—with coffee instead of alcohol.

Daily, I walk to some sort of community meeting in a town anywhere from 30 mins-1.5 hours hike up a hill. However, we always leave an hour earlier than we need to because we stop at each house along the way to chat. Inevitably, at every house I am offered coffee, fresh juice, or some food. So, by the time I arrive at the meeting I could have already had 4 cups of coffee from different houses (because you don’t refuse free coffee). I woke up at 6am today for a 9am meeting that didn’t start until 10am. It’s nice to meet so many people but is definitely a tiring experience. One thing is for sure: I will never go hungry or be thirsty.

Today my morning consisted of visiting my 3rd community that I had yet to see; La Jagua. La Jagua is far away, to put it lightly, probably an hour and 20 minute hike up and down hills. Luckily, we caught a free ride on a truck half the way so only had to walk for 40 minutes. I attended a community meeting arranged for me to meet the town leaders. I also had the privilege of meeting a local contact of a NGO called Naturaleza, which is actually a German organization working on reforestation and organic farming in my region. I explained to the town what I will be doing for the next few years, and it seems that our community work will focus around organic farming (in conjunction with Naturaleza)! Pretty exciting! Unfortunately, the village told me they also need a water system and asked me if I could help getting funding/build it. It breaks my heart to have to say “no”, but water projects are immensely complicated and expensive... I am merely a health volunteer, not an engineer! The importance of my hygiene classes seemingly pale in comparison to the need of water in the area…oh well.

My three communities have each taken shape in their needs. It appears that El Guayabo, my home base, will do very well with my youth sex ed class, women’s reproductive health class and economic development. My work in La Jagua will consist of organic family farms, nutrition classes and latrine building. Los Ramones will probably benefit from a healthy homes class and possible animal projects. It will definitely be a busy two years.