amapola

Malvaceae is the bain of my existence. Well, no, not really, but it is the most challenging family of flowers for me to draw. Not because of the stamens. Not because of infintessimally-small chambers in the ovary or carpels. No. It´s because of the petals.

I had really been hoping to get my three artpieces finished today, but it was not to be. I spent my day first sanding the pieces, then drawing them. The mamón chino was easy. The heliconia was easier than I thought - I think the practice paid off. The amapola took a very long time. Luckily, I plucked a beautiful specimen from the tree - originally, I was under the impression that I was drawing a ¨cerezo¨ because that is what my father told me the tree was called (cherries are in Rosaceae, but then again so are blackberries, even though the name for them is ¨mora¨ and Moraceae is a completely separate family) - spread it out over Juli´s copy of El Alquimista and drew it. Such a lovely flower. It looks like the sort a dancing girl would wear in her hair. Or perhaps like a dancing girl itself.

Yup. No mistaking a Malvaceae. I was very surprised when I flipped though my book and learned that amapola means hibiscus. The beautiful specimen I had been holding delicately in my hand was a hibiscus - the most famous of the Malvaceae.

I ran off to the 4PM afternoon meeting, only to discover I was way ahead of time. Karie was still at the beneficio, so we decided to wait for her before beginning the meeting. An hour later, we convened upstairs and dicussed the reading ¨To Hell with Good Intentions¨. We all agreed that Mr. Illich was over-generalizing in a lot of ways and that also he was intending to guilt-trip his audience. We also thought he made a valid point about the motivations for why many people go (guilt or delusions of grandeur), and concluded that for the most part, those were not the reasons any of us had subscribed to when we first decided to come here.

We then each told Karie about out projects. It wound up being a very interesting discussion. I had no idea that Amanda and Jack were collaborating their projects to take light in Amanda´s culminating project - Amanda is making a cupping lab and supplies box so that future interns can do cuppings with the farmers. She will be doing a cupping at the Cooperative at some point in order to give farmers a chance to try and evaluate their own products. Jack is making a guidebook of all the steps, from the shrub to the cup, of the production of coffee. It will be written in English and Spanish, with diagrams and photos, and once laminated it will be given to a group of kids who are learning how to be tour guides. He will set up the procedure so that the kids will learn how to be tour guides and the tours will go to Roberto´s farm. Roberto will be paid for each tour; that might cause more incentive for the other farmers to do the same. Definite money to be made. Sara will most likely be continuing Julian´s project, as well as working with Roberto or Humberto (or both) in their reforestation efforts. She has been communicating a lot with the Peace Corps, who have been helping her to gauge the level of commitment to make to each of the participants´ ideas.

Sara and Amanda are very set on revamping the program: I didn´t realize that they were so far along. I must admit, I was a little resentful that they just grabbed onto my idea about the questionnaire and didn´t include me in their work on it. I´m happy that they thought it was a good idea, but I would have appreciated a little bit more recognition in the process. I am very glad that Amanda has a role for me in helping to write for her bulletin board. She says she likes my handwriting.

Enough about politics. Back to the amapola...