We spent the last two days in a seemingly sleepy mountain village, which turned out to be an adventure not to far from a natural geographic special.  We wound our way through the mountains on a single lane dirt road.  If the foot deep ruts left from the rainy seasons didn't slow our trucks down, the washouts or herds of cattle on the road did.  But it was one of the most spectacular drives I have ever been on.  The hillside was filled with plots of coffee, banana, and cardamom plants.  Land that has been owned and farmed by these families for years. We drove through a few small villages.  The houses here could better be described as shacks, build with make shift boards or cement with tin roofs to keep the rain out.  Cut outs for windows and doors kept air circulating through the house, which you could look into see the women enjoying some shade from the afternoon sun.   It is late fall here and already 90 and humid.   The smaller children ran to and fro around the houses keeping busy with their afternoon games.  Dogs and cats that looked more like walking skeletons wandered the streets.  Hens and roosters scurried about their business around the house.

We arrived to the village of Los Flores around 2 in the afternoon.  Just in time to catch some of the men on their last leg of the long journey home from the fields they were working that day.  It is so hot in the afternoon sun, that the work day starts at 3 in the morning and lasts until 12.  Well, its either to hot or no one can sleep past 3am when the hundreds of roosters begin their morning calls.  Some of the children from the Children's Villages have come from this region.  Suzanna came to the orphanage about a year ago from this village.  Before they got her, she had been working the fields with the rest of the able bodies in her family.  A victim of some kind of abuse she came to the orphanage and wouldn't speak a word to anyone.  Oscar was saying that is how it is with many of the kids that come in.  It takes time to build the trust in order for the children to risk putting their stories on the table.  Scott's response to this hit me in a new way, 'their is power in the story'.  All hurt has come through relationship and all healing will also come through relationship.  I think that is why on this trip I fell in love with all the beautiful face we came in contact with.  In each face, holds a story.  A story the depths of which I have no idea, but each story is beautiful and significant.  So attached are some photos of faces, faces of some of the beautiful people that we came in contact with on that trip on the mountain.  

That time will always hold a special place in my heart.  The hope of the trip was to meet with some farmers and learn some more on the production side of our business plan.  Word travels fast in a small village like that.  22 farmers came to the meeting that afternoon in a small schoolhouse.  These farmers have been stuck in a vicious cycle of poverty, they expressed their desperation in their words 'they feel like they are getting strangled and have no way out.'  To watch these men's faces as we spoke to them about their hardships and our vision and to see the mix of hope and distrust stirred up in them was a surreal experience.



We found out later that one of the farmers at the meeting has killed a few people.  Only four, but you can see why we would be concerned.  We were invited to sleep at his sisters house that night.  The two have been on bad terms for a while now.  But we heard of some kind of scuffle between the two that ended with 'if you don't give me the keys to the house I will break down the door to get to those gringos.  So when Oscar presented this as an option for the night we politely declined.  This is considered rude in the culture, to refuse someones generosity but we came to the conclusion that it was in our best interest.


We ended up spending the night at the same school house we held the meeting at.  The schoolhouse looked like a sort of building out of Jurassic Park.  Only one way to enter and exit and all of the widows were barred.  Which was perfect place for us with a murderer out to get the gringos.

Even with the aid of ambient I slept very little that night.  It seemed like each time you would fall asleep a noise would come echoing through the tin roofed room.  Millions of dogs barking, a nearby family argument, the snores of Scott and Oscar, the clopping of hoofs doing circles around the buliding, or thousands of roosters starting their morning calls at
3am.  Laying on the cement that night I told myself I would never take for granted the comfort and quite of my own bed ever again.