Yes, another birthday on this trip! Today was my birthday and while I missed being home to celebrate, today was the most unique birthday for sure and I definitely had an amazing time spending it with everyone here.
After starting the day with a quick breakfast at the hotel, we packed our bags up before heading out to a local elementary school to do a service project. We helped paint a mural and it was a very special experience to be able to meet the kids and paint with them. I enjoyed getting to talk to them which also helped me practice some Spanish. During our break we did play some soccer with a few of them and it was really fun – the kids were really good and had amazing foot skills! I loved getting the chance to connect with the kids whether it was by painting together or playing soccer with them. The mural looked awesome after it was done.
After lunch, we embarked on a tour at Life Monteverde. There we learned about the stressful lives of Tico farmers. Due to the consistent threat of climate change, they need to find ways to adapt to the ever-changing conditions. Adaptability is a common theme in the life of a Tico farmer. For example, they make their own fertilizer. Typically, the first step is combining corn, rice, water, and molasses. Then, after about a month of fertilization, you add water, milk, and molasses to the solid microorganisms to ferment for another 22 days. From the first two steps of this process we can see how tedious the fertilizer making process is, and due to ever changing environmental conditions such as climate change, Tico farmers have to change their methods to ensure fertilizer continues to be effective and efficient for the crops. The same goes for the fact that the time frame for the dry months only seems to be getting longer because of global warming, so there is less rain. Therefore, Tico farmers need to dedicate more time to manually watering their crops. This all shows how the Tico farmers’ work is tough and requires them to change based on various factors such as weather.
However, being able to produce fresh crops brings joy to the Tico farmers, which in turn benefits the whole community. For example, the lunch that we ate at Cafe Monteverde consisted of foods that were either grown there or locally sourced to provide an authentic taste. If I was the child of a Tico farmer, I think I’d want to dedicate my life to researching and implementing new technologies that benefit those who do the hard manual labor, such as picking the coffee cherries. By finding or creating some type of machine that can run on recycled biofuels, it would not only speed up the manual labor but would be energy efficient.
After we drove the long bus ride back to Heredia, we went out to eat for dinner and we celebrated my birthday. Today was a busy day but definitely very memorable. I can’t believe we are already halfway through the trip!