It's a Small World After All

There is a small group of Peace Corps Nicaragua health volunteers that are spearheading a nation-wide study on Coffee-Cutters as a migrant worker population, and their knowledge and behaviors related to HIV. I am lucky enough to live in northern Nicaragua… aka coffee country. So I volunteered to help with the study in any way that I could, knowing my location was an asset. My first task was this week. I had to figure out where the big coffee farms were in San Juan del Rio Coco, another municipality in Madriz.
Our original tactic was to contact the Coffee-Co-ops that work in San Jan del Rio Coco, and see if they had contact info for the larger farm owners. Today I called all 3 co-ops with absolutely no luck. One didn’t answer, the other had changed both of their phone numbers, and the third answered but said they had the day off and nobody that could help me would be in until Monday…. Feeling a little discouraged I talked to another volunteer working on the project. She told me to just start asking around my town and see what I could come up with. I walked out of my room and my host brother was sitting outside. Knowing he had some family in San Juan del Rio Coco, I figured I’d start by talking to him. I asked him if he knew anyone in SJRC that had a large coffee farm with a migrant worker population. He lit up and happily told me “Sí, mi tío”… aka, yeah, my uncle has one. He then continued on to tell me he also had two close friends with large coffee farms and migrant worker populations. He began to call them so that I could go out to meet everyone before doing any work with the study, in order to build some confianza. I couldn’t believe it… and at the same time, I’m not sure why it surprised me. Everyone knows everyone here. It’s really quite amazing.