We got up very late this morning--9:30! Not surprising for me, and Vincent had spent a good part of last evening playing basketball with the Flores family (while I devoted hours of painstakingly evacuating every part of my food processing plant), so he was very tired, too.
Today has been one of typing up loose ends, literally. We finished our report for Minga for this week (and the second half of last week), tying together the many parts of our interview(s) with Juanita and Andrés, and now Vincent has gone to bed and I am pulling together the last bits of our blog. Another beautiful, sunny and pleasantly cool day here. Juanita and I made an "ensalada" for lunch today. I have never had a part hot, part cold salad before. My contribution was to chop carrots, green and red peppers, cilantro, broccoli, celery, Bermuda onion (called cebolla colorada here) and other vegetables. Juanita cooked the carrots, peas (fresh ones!), broccoli, soaked the peppers, cilantro and onion in lime juice and added salt, white vinegar and avocado oil (yum!) to the mix and tossed it. It was delicious. She had made a soup especially for my poor, violated stomach, with rice and potatoes and a tiny bit of cilantro, which was very soothing, so I dared take two bites of the salad. It was really, really tasty.
Afterwards, we worked some more on our reports, and Juanita helped Emily with her homework. At four, we four adults drove to the shop at Mitad del Mundo and wound up our series of interviews asking questions which covered some of the gaps in their story. We noted how difficult it is with a natural product like tagua (which is a seed hardened to the consistency of wood) to achieve any kind of uniformity. The pink tube beads, especially, did not match the light pink interstitial beads. They had been bought at different times and contrasted too much. Rosita had been putting them together with white elastic as well, and black works better, as it doesn't show dirt as much. She grumbled (cheerfully) about having to redo them and made jokes about how she just wanted to go home and forget about her day. The place was packed with tourists, and Juanita and Andrés were kept pretty busy engraving names on tagua plaque bracelets for them. (At $1 each, it was a steal!)
While we were asking questions of the Flores, we watched Juanita making some changes to some of the samples we saw two weeks ago. It was amazing to see how much improvement there was. I am hoping they will sell very, very well for them and be new products they can be proud of.
Everyone was in a cheerful, relaxed mood, and we wound up the evening with a merienda (or what Juanita calls a cafecito) of tea, bread and peach marmalade. For the past five hours, we've been processing the experiences and conversations of this week. I am so grateful to feel better from my purgation!
One thing is crystal clear to me--health is by far the greatest possession one can have, and when it is lost, it doesn't matter how many other things I have, all I can think of is the suffering. NOTHING else registers. Juanita said a few days ago that every order she finishes is a success. Every item she sells is a success, and that it's important to celebrate all the successes, no matter how small, because it could so easily be otherwise. For me, every day I am healthy is a reason to celebrate with much gratitude. It's easy to forget how great it is to feel well. I vow afresh to remember as often as I can. I am thinking every day about what real wealth is--not what the media say, but being at peace, having meaningful work to do, having loving people around me, being able to touch and taste and smell and see and hear the sounds of joyfully living things. This is living life to the full. I am filled with gratitude and awe for the way Andrés and Juanita have taught me--again--the goodness of being alive.
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