My First Faena!

I left this morning a little apprehensive. I’ve been working with this small little community of Tanin for a while and their participation has been, well, spotty at best. But, today they really pulled through! We called a “faena” today. A “faena” is basically when they call all members of the community (or, in this case, all parents of students attending the school) to a work day. Today we took a patch of land (maybe 5 x 10 yards?) took out all the rocks (there were a lot of rocks), leveled it (more or less), and planted radish, lettuce, swiss chard, and carrot seeds. Perhaps you are thinking this is an odd combination, well, these are the plants that grow in this region in 2-3 months. This is important because, well, school ends the end of December. We had already discussed this but there was a constant murmuring of, “Where are the beet seeds? Why didn’t she bring the beet seeds?” (PS – Beets take longer than three months to grow, by the way). About twenty parents showed up (15 were missing, I hear) and I brought the snacks of Inca Kola (bubble gum flavored pop, yum!) and bananas (trying to be nutritious since everyone thinks I’m a nutritionist anyway). The first cry was not for soda though, it was for some good ol’ hard alcohol. So the first round was Inca Kola and cañazo and then an hour later the good stuff (as in just soda) came out. The director handed out cookies and when I went around with the fruit everyone said, “Wow! This isn’t a snack, this is lunch!” Hmm, not sure what to make of that.
On the whole, a highly productive day and I’m looking forward to as many faena’s or at least family work days in the future. As the director told me, everyone there knew how to prepared land and plant seeds, it just took a little push (me!) to get them started. Well, that’s what I’m here for…


New Word of the Day:
Akinetopsia: A disease in which you can’t see things when they move. (Brought to you by House, M.D.)