Feb. 7 - Finally a low key day

Today we visited Jambi Kiwa, an association of medicinal plant producers. This association is a coop of local community women who grow medicinal plants and bring them to Jambi Kiwa to have them turned into medicinal teas and medicine. They have done a lot of work with the communities and the women to determine which plants grow best in their town, and have been able to start cultivating previously wild plants. It has been hard getting started, but last year they were able to send 2 crates (about 50,000 boxes of tea containing 15 tea bags each) to France (these boxes, written in French, were my main source of information on the organization, after Tom), and will be sending some to Just Us Coffee soon.

Once we finished meeting with them to find out how things have progressed over the past year, we were taken downstairs for a tour of the factory, then off to their "experimental farm" behind the factory. For hygienic reasons, we had to wear special boots and lab coats, which as I'm sure you can imagine were way too small for me .... but I did look good in a 3/4 length sleeve. In the factory itself we were taken through the process of creating tea bags from the point when the tea comes in the door, through the two drying processes, bagging and then shipping it off to the market (where they would sell the tea for $1 per box) or overseas (where it would sell for upwards of $5 per box).

Since this was a pretty low key day, Scott and Tom went off to do some work, while I just started wandering around Riobamba in search of real coffee....no more Nescafe for me. Sadly my search was in vane, and I also figured out there is not much to do in Riobamba if you are a tourist. It's the type of town you go to in order to go elsewhere. It's a great starting off point for hiking expeditions in the mountains, the crossroads for the coast, mountains and jungle, and the end of the train line.

One thing Riobamba did offer was a lot of interesting people, and dinner tonight was no exception. That evening we headed to dinner with a group of Tom's friends. Spanish was the language of choice, but there were over 6 countries represented among our group, including our host, a nun from Belgium who came down to work with the mission. She had a Bob Marley problem and was quite adamant I had more (strong) sangria and more rabbit stew to eat. Some of the other people there were individuals who had been traveling with us around the countryside, and a man who is working towards helping these communities with alternative energy sources. All in all it was a very interesting evening as many people were willing to translate portions of the conversation that I could not understand ..... after they asked me for my opinion on the subject, of course.