March 7, 2009 Saturday
6:00AM Flight from Birmingham to Houston took off/landed on time.
8:30AM Flight from Houston took off on time, but a miserable flight.
12:30PM At the Hotel Guijaea. Since the hotel didn’t have the king size bed I requested, I was given a room with a living room, kitchen, and dining area. Good trade! I await arrival of rental car. Have been working on a new system of maintaining accounting records. Having problems sending messages via Knology. Hmmm.
4:30PM Taking cab to dinner. It seems cab fares are going up and getting extravagant!
March 8, 2009 Sunday
6:00AM Late breakfast. Taking notes, record keeping
10:00 Diana Vallie and Hector Martinez McNaught arrived. Mr. McNaught is a Spanish literature professor; he is fluent in English, and he is an accomplished photographer and illustration artist. I explained that I take bad pictures and, since Fernando lives in the area, he sees everything as normal so he takes very few pictures. We need someone that can take good pictures and extract local flavor. He is willing to assist, and his first task will to be to visit each community and school that does not have an attached PowerPoint where the “push pin” appears on the L4L website map. I suggested that he travel to Nacasomi one day next week.
12:30PM Rental car arrived. Drove to Nacasomi.
3:00PM Fernando arrived. This is the hot, dry season (but then, every season is hot) and the straw lean-tos are set up along the riverbed. Children swimming, mothers washing clothes, men washing cars, lots of people sitting under one of many lean-tos drinking beer, eating fried bananas or carniasada and socializing. A great way to spend an idle afternoon.
6:00PM Fernando, some of his friends that joined us at the river and I went to a new open-air backyard restaurant in Nacaomi. Very good bar-b-que, I will go back.