The fact that I'm too brain-dead to write is probably a good sign that I should. An epic day such as this need not go undocumented! It all started with an extended stay at the poop farm…
Let me back up. It started with hot-dog buns and hot chocolate for breakfast. THEN it proceeded to the poop farm. I was standing on the side of the road in one of my favored cell phone spots when a friend drove by in a pick-up truck and informed me that he was going to a cow farm to pick up manure. That stuff is like gold around here, especially to an environmental volunteer who constantly needs it for compost piles, so I happily hopped aboard, gleeful that mounds and mounds of drying dung was in my immediate future.
We got to the farm, upon which sits a beautifully renovated colonial ranch house, and approximately 36 enormous milk cows. If you remember that I had been picked up unprepared on the side of the road, my apparel of tank-top and flip-flops doesn't seem quite so ridiculously inappropriate for the task at hand. Be that as it may, I was ill-equipped, and content to sit and watch as my friends shoveled load after load into old rice sacks.
When they were done filling the sacks, we loaded up the bright green pick-up, prettily perched atop the steep hills of the poop farm, and were preparing to leave, when a turn of the key in the ignition produced a stomach-wrenching "click-click-click". This went on for entirely too long, accompanied by some very uninformed tinkering under the hood, and finally they decided the most intelligent solution was to push the loaded vehicle tail first down a muddy hill, lined on both sides by chicken-wire fencing and grasses taller than me, intended to feed work animals. Everyone, including myself, was surprisingly resigned to this idea, which made precious little sense when you consider other options (anyone ever heard of jumper cables?), and until the truck began rolling as a result of vein-splitting pushes, we were all cheering for motion. When the pick-up finally made it over the mini-manure mounds that stood in its way, however, we all realized our error. Too late to do anything but stand dumbly, jaws agape, as the truck plunged its appropriately poop-filled tail-end through the fence and into the tall grasses. I'm still not sure what happened, maybe the brakes went out or the driver couldn't control it without power-steering, but there it was, butt first into the bushes on a mean slope of cow poo.
The rest of the activities that relate to this event were peripheral. In waiting for the "mechanic" to try to start the truck with jumper cables (so they DO exist here!), I walked down to the house and met the owners, and possibly my future kittens. She had the sweetest litter, and I'm going to have a hard time choosing between the classic orange tabby, and the black and grey tabby with white paws. They're by far the healthiest cats I've seen in this country, as Dominicans tend to think of them as either rat traps or food. Unable to get the vehicle moving, we returned to the community by motorcycle, hereby ending my involvement in the poop-capades.
After returning home famished and caught by the rain, I devoured my late lunch and took a bucket bath, which took ages longer than usual because something is up with our aqueduct that has reduced available water to a trickle. Still, I felt like a new person afterward, and decided to start on a fundraiser for a camp to which I'm taking 2 teens. To raise the money we need in part, we're going to sell bracelets made from recycled plastic bags. I was cutting up the bits on my front porch, and on a whim, sent for Alex, a girlfriend who lives nearby, to help me. Alex arrived alright - and with 10 kids in tow. I took a deep breath and prepared for this activity to turn into yet another in which I feel more like a babysitter than a development worker. At least they cranked out a ton of bracelets!
Energy completely destroyed, I prepared for my 5:30 meeting of Brigada Verde, which actually went surprisingly well. We wrote thank-you cards to the hardware stores that have donated materials, planned fundraisers for the camp (because selling 15 cent bracelets just isn't going to cut it), and played dominoes with painted river rocks. Dragging myself home, tired but content, I was greeted happily by my neighbors. My heart was unexpectedly touched by a father son pair who sat on their front porch working on a faulty moped, the former instructing the latter in mechanics; I'm constantly surprised by the comfort I receive from little things.
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