As I was biking to my girlfriend’s house at 9:30 p.m. last night, I was thinking that a short recount of the day might make a decent post on my ever-reluctant newsfeed. I believe I can confidently say that no one else from back home had a day similar to mine. Of course, the fact that I even thought this shows how out of contact I am with what it means to live in the suburbs of Philly; no one ever has a day similar to mine. Nonetheless, here is a short tale.
For about a week, I had been waiting for a work partner to begin to irrigate his rice field. For my Michigan Tech research, I have to do a series of soil moisture tests on five rice fields. Later, I will harvest 35 m2 by hand to correlate soil moisture to yields. The problem has been that this year has been exceptionally rainy; by late June, the Valley of Comayagua where I live had already received more rain than in all of the previous year. This obviously has caused many changes to my schedule of measurements based on irrigations.
It finally stopped raining about a week ago and Néstor, one of the rice farmers with whom I work, began the process of irrigating the three fields of his that I am using. The unforeseen complication turned out to be that, because of months of rain, the on-field irrigation canals were overgrown with vegetation and he could not irrigate quickly. Friday, after two days of work, only one of the fields had been completed irrigated. I usually perform the tests on all three fields at once but, based on my study proposal, the completion of one field meant that I had to start work Saturday on that one field and wait for him to finish the other two.
I woke up at 6:30 a.m. thinking that I would have about 40 minutes of work, after which I would clean up a few things in another field and head off to my girlfriend’s house to help them decorate for the birthday party of her niece. I woke up to find, however, that it had rained all night and Néstor was not going to irrigate again for a long time. I had to change my schedule and I went to the rice fields in order to test all three.
During the previous round of tests, the rice reached about midway up my leg and my rubber boots kept me comfortably dry. During this round of tests, as the sun shined brightly over me, I emptied out my boots, full of water, more than five times. At times the rain soaked rice reached my chest and the water trickled down saturating my entire body. I left the fields with my new jeans tattered at the knees. I understand that the difficulty level of my research does not compare to sleeping night after night in the forests of Isle Royal Island in Lake Superior while researching wolves and moose, but I left the fields both soaked and parched with a new view of my work.
From there, I went home to a cold shower with muddy water filtered by an old sock tied to the faucet. Before heading off to my girlfriend’s place, I saw that Arsenal had beat Bolton 4-1 and watched Man U squander a 3-1 lead over Everton in extra-time. Where was the Chicharito? These results cheered me.
From about 11:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., I was at Celia’s helping out at the party. There’s not much to say here except that, as many of you would expect, the two year-old birthday girl, Lavina, dressed herself as Tinkerbell, attempted to hit a piñata, and cried because of a clown.
At 7:30 p.m., I had to quickly get home (where I now have internet and cable – never feel sorry for me here) to my fantasy football draft. As I was leaving, the Hernandez’ (Celia’s family) asked me if they could borrow an air mattress for visiting family friends. So I rushed home in the rain, delivered the mattress, and returned home soaking wet for the second time that day.
After live draft, I got a call from Celia saying that one of the visiting family friends wanted to go to party in the community center. So I changed quickly and we headed to the party at 10:00 p.m., where we danced meringue, bachata, oldies, and various other tunes until 1:00 in the morning. It was still raining and I got home at 1:30 a.m. soaking wet yet again.
So that was my day yesterday. I hope that this pacified those of you who had mentioned that I needed to write something again. It’s now time for me to sit down in my hammock and read Los Ríos Profundos, by José María Arguedas. It would have been better if I could continue streaming a Blues radio station and drank a coffee meanwhile, but the power just went off during a burst of rain and I lost my internet connection midway through Sippie Wallace’s “Midwest Blues.” I guess I won’t be able to follow the Eagles’ or post this any time soon.
I can add that a car just past blasting a message for all Floreños that the rice farmers are to go to my office at one o’clock for an emergency meeting. It could mean that the government once again has reneged on the agreed price for rice this year. I have no idea what it could mean for me and my work.
