Managua’s main market – the Eastern market – is the largest in Central America, taking up more than 145 acres in the old city center. Each day 540,000 people shop there, and last Friday I was one of them. I had gone there to buy basic grains for the Genesis Spinning co-op.In early July Genesis came to us and said that after nine months of waiting for their machinery to arrive, they were desperate...are desperate. Family members who have been supporting them economically are now giving ultimatums: “If the machinery doesn’t come soon, I can't keep giving you money.” Things are tough at home and their spirits are low. They asked us for a donation of basic grains to distribute to cooperative members every two weeks until the machinery arrives.
I heard their request and knew that they were right. We had to find a way to get them food. But we have been having a tight year financially, and right now we are in the middle of giving credits to organic cotton farmers for this year’s planting (450 acres!). We didn’t know how we could give Genesis cooperative additional aid on top of the continued financing of construction and legal costs.
But it had to be done. So we thought about it, prayed about it, and started making phone calls. In mid-July we received a donation to give the Genesis co-op basic grains – 300 lbs of rice, 200 lbs of beans, 200 lbs of sugar and 2 buckets of cooking oil – every fortnight. There are some really good people in this world. This trip to Managua’s market is our third, and I’ve come with Erwin and Natalia of the Genesis co-op. While Erwin watches the car (there’s a robbery every 7 minutes in the Market), Natalia walks up the line of guys selling beans and corn out of the back of big trucks, ignoring their shouts of “this one is soft, just like you want them,” accepting their offered beans to chew and spit out in her test for texture, reaching down inside the bags to see how much field trash and rocks are mixed in.
I follow along behind her, dutifully chewing and spitting out beans, frowning when she says “too hard, right?” and nodding when she says “too soft, right? These ones will go bad too fast.” She finally finds a bean she likes and follows its owner over to his pile of sacks. He empties one of his sacks into our sack and when Natalia asks him to weigh it he says “oh, it’s all there” and she replies, “let’s just go see.” He takes us over to the shop next door where he pays its owner C$5 for the privilege of using his scale. He hoists the sack up on a metal hook and hangs it from the scale. 80 pounds. “See?” says Natalia and he hurries off to bring us another 20 pounds of beans to fill the sack. Once our two sacks weigh out at 100 pounds each, he hoists the bags up on his back and carries them over to our car.
Natalia’s been sent by the co-op to guarantee the quality of the beans, and rightly so. The first time I went to the market to buy beans, I went with a man – César, our director of projects– and we made it obvious that between a gringa and a man we didn’t know beans. We had bought the cheaper “frijol chile” and not only was one sack 18 pounds underweight, but when the women tried to cook them, the beans were still hard after five hours on the fire. “I left my daughter at home to cook these,” exclaimed Sara, “can you imagine! We’ll spend more on firewood than we would have on better beans!” This time Natalia – who is in her fifties and spends her early mornings and evenings pounding tortillas to sell – has selected a nice soft red bean that cooks up nicely and also saved us fifteen dollars on the cost. And I think I might even know the difference between a good bean and a bad bean. Not a bad day’s work. – BeccaTo help the CDCA get through this tough year, you can send just $10 to us by clicking here: http://www.jhc-cdca.org/credit.html
