I Think I Need a Weekend

It's Saturday morning, and I've overslept, 7:45. I'm supposed to meet Keeci for breakfast down at her place at 8:30, so I've got enough time. But not enough to write much here, as I had intended.

The past week has been a long one, I know that I have wore myself out. I know my age, to the day, and it may be having a role in my lethargy this morning.

For now, I'll just say that we had a good day on Friday. We met some people from the Borlaug Institute here in Chimaltenango. They have a project going here to work with Guatemalan farmers to improve crop productivity, and marketing. For those of you who don't know about Norman Borlaug, he is the man credited with saving more lives than anyone in the history of mankind. He did it by breeding higher yielding varieties of wheat. When they put them to use in places like southern Asia in the 1950s and 1960s, they doubled, tripled, even quadrupled wheat yields. Millions of people were spared starvation in India and Bangladesh. Borlaug won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, as far as I know, he's still the only person in agriculture to ever do that. He died just last year, at age 95.

Now, the Borlaug Insitute has been set up to run projects around the world in developing countries that have as their goal improving food production. It is run out of Texas A&M University, where Borlaug was a faculty member. One of those projects is right here where I am staying, in Chimaltenango. They are wonderful and dedicated people who run it, and I'll tell you more about it and them, maybe later today.

One of the good things that happened is that, even though the Borlaug Institute project here is only crop based, no livestock, they know of my interest in livestock. So, they've gone out of their way to help me learn more about the goats and cows. On Monday, they're taking me (and Keeci) to a village that sort of specializes in livestock. And, they are trying to find me other contacts here that can help. There is one young Guatemalan they know who is an expert in goats and rabbits and chickens, they gave him a call, and he is coming to meet us on Monday. I'm excited about that. The young people from Memphis, the ones who went home a couple days ago, gave me enough money to buy about 4 goats to give to needy village families, and I want to make that happen.

That's it for now, I'm late for breakfast!