Day 7

We left Rafeala this morning to drive to San Vicente where we were met by a group of people including my host Guillermo who is a twice a past  governor, a past team leader, and has a very lovely house with action and pool. They had arranged for us a day in the country, in a smaller community  called Margarita that is about twenty minutes down the road. The road was partially paved and then to mud and dirt. We went to the farm of a Rotarian, Diego, who lives in a house that is 120 years old from the immigrant times. He farms 330 hectares, mostly soybean and sorghum now and wheat and barley the other half of the year. diego is also the president of the locality's governing council. Margarita is too small to have a rotary club and so the club of San Vicente is their adopted parents. There were some pigs, some cows, a windmill pumping water, some baby kittens, and a whole gathering of people to celebrate and welcome us. They were cooking locro ( pork, carrots, barley white corn, sausage, and some other vegetable) in a very old iron kettle from the immigrant days over a wood fire. We assembled in the machine barn on long tables to have lunch , the array of desserts was pretty amazing many of them chocolate or dulce de leche based. Bekah and I went to visit a rural, country, school. The school has been around for 70 years, although the teacher, Alejandra, has been here for seven years. It is a school with almost no government support, almost all of the work is done by the parents of the families of the students. They pay a monthly fee of 35 pesos per student. It basically is seven families with 25 students from kinder to 7th grade. Alejandra is the teacher for all and many of the materials were hand made from recycled materials. They do have three computers with Internet access. Students finish here and then go off to San Vicente or Maria Juana on the other side to finish high school. Alejandra is a very committed teacher and very much invested in making this school work for the rural families. Unfortunately they had to suspend the after school classes of English and computer because the state was unwilling to accept the insurance liability for " after school" activities. The school is in need of a bathroom facilities upgrade and a roof over the physical education area so that they can use it in the winter. Part of the reason for taking us there was to encourage the possibility of rotary support for these two projects. I was very much reminded of the school in San Rafael that Trinity has been supporting, although that school is worse off. Alejandra, Diego, and I were in agreement about the role of education, particularly for girls, in combating poverty. Back at the farm, people were hanging out and playing bocce. Wonderfully, they had arranged for Stuart to go dove and quail hunting. We could hear him in the distance and he had a great time, managed to shoot a couple of quail and some doves.
For supper we went to a local restaurant, Pandora, very nice modern design good food with our host families and also another team leader who runs a small battery factory with her husband. They produce about 4,000 auto batteries a month. The use lead that is recycled in Cordoba, and do the remanufacturing here. San Vincente has 4,000 inhabitants and the city is laid out in a regular rectangular pattern. One interesting fact is that when we drove in this morning: there are two traffic lights in town, both bought by the rotary club. They are set up at the intersections in front of each of the two primary schools. This is done for obvious safety reasons, but also so that the kids learn how traffic lights and intersections work. Many of theses children will end up going from this country place to the cities of Rafaela or Santa Fe for further schooling and will benefit from experience with urbanism traffic patterns. The plan is to continue with the traffic light program to include the two secondary schools, the special school for those with disabilities, and the kindergarten.