On our second day at Cienaguita, we headed up the mountain again, bright and early. We made another batch of concrete, five wheelbarrows full of sand and five 94 pound bags of cement mixed together by shoveling the mound from the bottom into a new pile and then repeating the process to put the pile back where we started. Then you flatten the mound and add five wheelbarrow loads of gravel. Make a trough in the middle and fill with water. With your shovel begin mixing the ingredients. Then mix it further as you load it into the wheelbarrow to be carried over to the foundation. The day before we had made it in batches of 6 wheelbarrow loads of sand and gravel and six bags of cement, but we only had a small corner to finish so Jaime told us to just do 5. When it was all mixed and poured, Jaime saw that we needed one more round after all. So we loaded up one more wheelbarrow load and got one more sack of cement. By 11:30 we were done and headed down the hill for lunch.
The food was a matter for lots of discussion and disagreement. Luckily, I like most everything and will try pretty much anything. Some of the oddities were amazing, even though the majority of the group will never know since they did not try them, but others were not so great. Josh and I made fun names for the things we were unsure of. I will delve into the food more in another post.
After lunch, which was a very normal meal of fish, salad, rice and beans, the girls and I sat by the road to see if we could drum up business for our Vacation Bible School. Soon there were kids all around and the men joined us in running around and playing with the kids. This always got too rambunctious for my tastes, so I would sit to the side with the calmer kids who wanted a safe place to watch the mayhem, but feel protected. We would laugh and point as the kids stole the hats of our fellow teammates and then chased each other around playing keep away. Eventually, the kids who were on their way home from school wandered on down the trail to go up the mountain towards home. Not one stayed for VBS. The men got their tools together and also headed up the hill. The girls looked at each other and three of them decided it was a good time to relax and headed towards our room. But three of the girls wanted to go up the hill and work some more. I pointed out that the men were headed to a different work site, one we had not gone to before. Our site still had wet concrete, so in order to keep working the men had discussed going to another site much further away. The girls had no idea where they were going. As much as a rest sounded good, I could not in good conscience let these young girls wander off alone so I decided to follow them.
After crossing the bridge we were headed across the field when we ran into the native workers heading back towards the bridge. We asked where Jaime and Rhett were, thinking the guys were going to the different site and we could follow. Maybe it was not up the hill! ( I was silently hoping not to have to scale the cliff!) But they pointed us up the mountain. I figured they were headed back for more supplies. We climbed the mountain and got to our original work site. It was abandoned. So I took the girls to the site where Jaime and I had marked out another house, but once again no Jaime, no Rhett or any other member of our team. Two Ngobi girls that we knew from VBS the day before came by in their school uniforms and asked what we were looking for. When we told them, the oldest one (maybe 10 years old) walked to a nearby hut and asked her mom where Jaime and Rhett were. The mom told her and she came back, promising to take us to the men. As we began to walk, the girl again stopped to talk to an older woman who was out sewing. The woman told the girl the same thing her mom had about the men and the girl now felt positive she knew exactly where we were going. We walked out of the area and turned left down a dirt road. I made a mental note about the green house with white writing on it that said something in Spanish about God so we could find our way back. Then we began what seemed to us an epic journey.
We walked for about 30 minutes down this road, making only one veer off to the left into an overgrown field. We continued on for several more minutes before coming to a small river with a tiny waterfall. The little girls urged us on as they crossed the river by carefully stepping on a few strategically placed rocks. I knew that I would fall if I tried to balance on those rocks so since the river was shallow there, I just stepped in and slogged through. The girls laughed at me. We continued walking up a small hill. When the little girls turned around to motion for us to keep up, my team and I decided we were probably on a wild goose chase. We asked the girls in our broken Spanish if they were sure the men were way out here. They were. We asked how much further because we were getting really tired. One girl said a long way. The other one said we were nearly there, just a minute more. I was ready to go back, but told the girls we would walk 5 more minutes before heading back. I felt good that I knew the way back, growing up hiking and tracking had made me feel ok with that. And for some odd reason I, Mrs. Worry Wart, did not really feel anxious at all. I felt calm and safe in the middle of an unfamiliar jungle. I knew we would feel foolish if we walked all of that way and turned back a few feet short of our destination!!
One of my girls said at least we were getting a good tour of the country. My comment was, “Yes, except I am not sure what country we are in any more! I think we have walked to Costa Rica!” As we walked, it began to get darker, I was not sure if it was the daily afternoon rain setting in or if the jungle was getting thicker. Then we heard hammering. I told the girls that that was either our group or it was the construction site for the new WalMart and we had walked back to Panama City! The hammering stopped and the older girl who was leading us said to quietly wait there. She took a side path to the right and ran off. Her little sister ran after her. That left me and the 3 girls from my group standing in the middle of the jungle an hour away from anything we knew, alone. And we waited. And waited. Just I started to say let’s go back, the girl appeared and said, no they were not there. Great! Then she said to wait one more minute and she ran up the path and down another one to the left. We waited and this time I lost patience quicker and told my girls, “Let’s go!” Just as we turned, here came our group of men up the very same path we had just walked up. Somehow we had not only found the right place, we had beaten the guys there!!
As it turns out they had taken a different path so they could go by and see the one house that was already finished. They had heard at that site that there were four women “lost” looking for them, so they had been concerned for us and Josh, whom Tim had told to take care of me, had gone back to look for us. I waited for our team leader or Rhett to fuss about us striking out on our own. I was ready with a comeback that there was an adult with them (me!) who was just as capable as any of the men on our team. I think the militant look in my eye kept our leader from saying anything and Rhett being Rhett, never really acted like we were in any danger.
At this site they were putting up beams and one at a time the guys “let” us girls put on a hard hat, climb the ladder and put in a bolt and tighten it down. Between working with Tim, building sets and shop class in college this was a breeze. Rhett even commented that it looked like I had done that before. I was a bit put out actually. After one bolt each, we were sort of “dismissed.” Rhett took us over to where a lady was beating rice in what looked like a giant mortar and pestle. She was separating the rice from its shaft. After hours of this hard work, she would transfer the rice to a large, flat, wooden bowl where she would throw the rice in the air and the shaft would blow away while the rice fell back into the bowl. Again a heavy, laborious process. While she was working, the chickens flocked around her feet, picking up the rice that accidentally fell on the ground. She was shy about us watching her. Lucky for her and unlucky for us, none of us had a camera. But when one of her children grabbed a chicken and threw it towards us, the woman laughed! For her day of labor working on this rice, she would only have enough rice done for a couple of days for her large, extended family.
Most of the food these people eat, they have grown themselves. Sometimes they grow enough to sell or share, but for the most part they grow just enough for their own family. I wandered back towards the site just in time for them to realize instead of 12 large bolts they only had 6, so work was done for the day. No one was mad, no one blamed anyone. Work was just done. We could learn a lot from these calm, pleasant people!
We began the long walk back, across the field, through the river, (again I just walked in the water rather than trying to balance on the rocks. And again, everyone including Rhett laughed at me!) down the dirt road, turned right at the green house with the white writing about God and we were back at our original site. It did not seem to take as long going back, but we were in a group and knew where we were headed! (It was still a good 40 minutes!) Then back down the cliff, Jaime holding my arm, and across the bridge, up the rock hill and “home”. Who knew a COLD shower could ever feel so good!
