Day 13: What's Up, Doc? (See you in a week!)

6:30 pm

Today, our last day in San Miguel for a week, we took a field trip... to a CARROT farm! Okay, I know that sounds kind of silly, but it was actually pretty amazing. I never really thought about what a carrot plant looks like above ground, or what happens to it between the ground and the supermarket, but today I found out. We loaded on a school bus with a few of the eccentric older ex-pats who frequent the Center for Global Justice and headed for San Juan de la Vega, a little town to the South of San Miguel that has been there since the 1500s. The ex-pats were fun, though a little clueless; none of them could figure out how to let down the windows of the school bus, and few of them spoke enough Spanish to be taken seriously.

Also on the trip was Gino, Arturo's preteen son. He spent a leg of the bus ride trying to figure out which indegenous tribe each of us is from, which he deduced through some odd reasoning that only he understood. He asked us where each of us were from and used only that information. I guess in some places, it does work to ask where you live and then be able to deduce what you are. But he was having a hard time deducing what kind of indigenous Texan I was. Finally he told me that I looked like an Olmeca, if I didn't have blonde hair. I don't think anyone has ever told me that. I guess that's what happens when your mom is an indigenous Hondureña and your dad is a migration expert. I guess kids will be kids.

Our first stop was at the actual carrot farm, where they were harvesting the carrots. Take a look at this picture before I explain.

First, the guy with the pitchfork loosens up the earth. (Here he is shown just standing around, which they actually don't do that much.) Then other guys come in behind him and yank up the carrots by the plant. See, behind them? That's what carrot plants look like. Fascinating, right? Then, in a fraction of a second, the guy with the handful of carrot plant breaks off the stalks and separates the vegetables into big burlap sacks. Simultaneously, he throws any bad carrots out on the harvested land along with the plant part, which then serves as a kind of compost. Then they load the full bags onto a truck that takes them to be washed. They move so fast; it's amazing. I even got the chance to do it; check it out!

(hehe, At least I'm not in front of a bell tower!)

It was amazing; I peeled one of the carrots with a key and ate it right there! (Don't worry; they told us they hadn't used pesticides in over 6 months, and as long as we didn't eat any peel we were fine. I'm being careful, Mom.) It was the sweetest, juiciest carrot I have ever tasted; it was almost like a fruit. And it was straight out of the Earth.

Then our next stop was at a school, where these two boys gave a presentation on a water filtration system they invented to reuse the water that cleans the carrots up to four times. This would solve a lot of the town's water problems, if they could implement this. The boys won an award in Mexico for this, and are going to Spain this summer to present to some global organization that may also award them something.

Our last stop was at an actual carrot washing operation, where the work almost came to a screeching halt when all of the workers (mostly guys in their mid-20s, it seemed) saw the seven of us young female interns coming (along with all the ex-pats). They were amazed that we spoke Spanish, too, but soon they were rushed back to work so we could see how it all goes.

They dump the bags of carrots straight off the truck into a washer, which rolls them around in the water till all the mud comes off. (This is the step where the boy's invention will help save water.) Then the carrots come out of the washer along a conveyor belt in spurts, where the men stand and separate them by size. As the carrots roll past, the first guy grabs the big ones and bags them, the next guys grab medium-sized carrots and bag them, and so on. Some of these carrots are sold in Mexico, and some are sold in the USA.

As we were leaving, one of the young guys handed me a really big carrot and said something in Spanish along the lines of, "Here, Blondie, something to remember me by." Though I don't think he meant it quite as... um... suggestively as it came off. That warranted lots of giggles from the other interns. He was pretty cute.

My little friends in the alley are multiplying exponentially-- today I met five more little boys and another little girl (who, amazingly enough, all already knew my name) and a three-inch turtle (who may or may not have known my name; I didn't ask him. His name was Francisco, in case you were wondering).

And... tomorrow morning I go to Cieneguilla for a week! I'll be away from the phone and the computer and the running water until next Tuesday, so I won't be writing on this blog or emailing you guys till then! Try not to miss me too much! hehe I know I'll miss you. I'll be thinking of you.

Have an amazing week! I can't wait to hear about it when I get back to civilization! hehe

I love you all