(A post of this last week is coming, but it is kind of scattered and still needs to be put together. For now, this will have to do.)
Taking a bus on a two track road isn’t necessarily a bad idea. Trying to turn it around on one might be.
We were in a new town today, San Augustin. As it turns out, putting 500 people and 50 answers each is extremely taxing on our Dell Minis. As such, Bret is working magic to make them run faster, but this may take a while. This is okay though, it will be nice to get a smaller city done in a week or less.
However, along with a smaller city comes less traffic and, along with less traffic, comes poorer roads. We pulled in with our school bus and all got out to do recon and picture taking of the city. San Augustin is the one city that really struck me as being particularly impoverished when we came by a few weeks ago, and it was interesting to be back. There aren’t huge differences, but it is immediately evident that the houses are made with homemade bricks and are a little smaller. However, the people here were very welcoming and, although many of them were shy, they generally seemed happy and a little curious to see us.
Since it is a small town, we were done taking pictures in only a few hours. We went to hop on the bus, only to find that it had been stuck in the dirt since a few minutes after we got out. Derek, Alex, Albin, and a few men from the town were around it digging, pushing, prying, and looking like they had been working hard to get it out for at least an hour, which they had. We got about 10 of us on one side of the bus and rocked it sideways to help it get traction. It took all we had, but after a few rocks we moved a few inches and then, after a few more, the bus backed out and we were on our way.
We went and mapped out/took pictures in Las Playas La Igualas after that. It was another small town, and we were able to finish before lunch. We went back to the compound, and I stayed home so that I could get things ready for everybody to come home and code in all of the pictures that we took. Another group went out to a third town and did the same thing as we had done in the morning.
Instead of getting right to work, I went to get a coke with Kelley and Becky. We sat and drank them in the park and chatted for a while. It was a good replacement for the afternoon siesta that I probably would have otherwise taken. I went and bought a pair of cheap shoes, mainly because they were cheap, from Albin.
Then I got down to work preparing all of the survey stuff on the computers for people to code into. This took me most of the afternoon, with Bret’s help. Then people got back and we prepared the cameras and computers and, after dinner and a short break, went to coding.
Coding went much more smoothly than last time but, in its essence, coding is boring, monotonous work. It definitely helped that we had done it once, all of the computers were working right, and there were fewer pictures than last time. It took a couple hours before everybody was done, which brought me to about 10:30. After a long day, it is late and, as always, I am pretty exhausted. So, until next time, adios.
Patrick
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