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Evacuation: Final Blog for the 2007-08 Season

by Sarah Faegre

This final blog tells the story of our evacuation from our flooded field site and sums up some of the seasons high points. Check back soon for current updates of the 2008-09 season of the Blue-throated Macaw Project.

February 17 2008

I am writing to you from the partially flooded city of Trinidad, Bolivia after a complicated 3-day evacuation (by boat) from the field site where we were working most recently to monitor a Blue-throated Macaw nest. Myself and Steve, a co-worker, were camping at an isolated estancia (rural farm) which, under normal conditions can be accessed by a 2-hour horse ride from a different estancia which, until this flood, could be reached by road. Rain was a complicating factor from the day one at Encanta—it rained almost every day for our 3-week stay, leading up to a grand finale of sorts on the night of February 10th when a tremendous 12-hour thunderstorm turned the already-flooded landscape into a more critical situation. During that very long night we were all flooded out of our living quarters, be it tent or house, despite the raised tent platform the family had helped us build a week earlier and despite the piles of dirt and canals surrounding the house. I suppose “flooded out” isn’t quite the right way to describe that night because there was nowhere to go “out” to—no dry land in site— and the tent wasn’t actually underwater. So we simply shivered in damp sleeping bags and hoped our platform wouldn’t float away. The family of 8 meanwhile, all sat on the beds in the kids’ room, which was the least flooded of the 3 rooms in the dirt-floored home. Steve described our experience in the flood quite well in an e-mail that he sent home to friends upon our arrival in Trinidad. He has given me permission to copy it here:



Hello all -- we just returned to Trinidad, Bolivia yesterday Feb 13 –we’ve been trying to get back here for almost a week, after the Blue-throated Macaw nest box we were watching was invaded by wasps, and the 2 eggs there proved to be infertile anyway.

We’ve been dealing with rising water for several weeks. First it was just the inconvenience of having to move the tent to a new place as the patches of dry ground grew smaller, and of having to scout a new route to the nest where the water levels were lower and would not overflow our boots. (Everything is so wet here that the only suitable footwear is rubber boots that come almost to the knees.) Then it was the inconvenience of getting wet to the knees and flooding our boots no matter which way we walked to the nest, and of having the family we are living with move their cooking and eating space from the outdoor kitchen to the outdoor shelter where we had our hammocks. Because of this, during most of the daylight hours there were about 6 kids and 2 other adults crowded nearby and the animals were trying to share the same space too, so that it was difficult to escape the squeal of pigs and the chatter of kids. Finally, the livestock became truly threatened by the lack of dry ground, and it started to become impractical for the people also.

Over the last week this entire province of Bolivia, called the Beni, has turned into a national disaster area due to widespread flooding. Though the rainy season is an annual event, the flooding this year is the greatest that anyone can remember. We were walking through knee-deep water on our last trips to the nest box and then on the night of Feb 10/11 an intense thunderstorm, lasting all night, inundated the entire farmstead where we were living. Our tent was on a raised platform and stayed semi-dry, although the water came within an inch of the floor at the front of the platform and was level with the water at the back. Waking up in the morning we saw no dry ground in sight, water everywhere, and the top of the outside of the tent was covered with spiders, frogs, crickets, and ants that had gone awash in the floodwaters and then crawled onto our tent platform and then kept climbing till they reached the top of the tent. We had already been trying to leave for several days but had been frustrated by poor radio communications. Finally the farmer managed to get through by radio to a small town, where he asked someone to come evacuate his animals, his family, and us, as the situation was starting to get dangerous for the animals (all the baby chickens and pigs had drowned). That afternoon a motorboat came and ferried the pigs to high ground, then evacuated me, Sarah, and the 3 school age kids to a nearby farm.

The next day, the boat evacuated the farmer’s wife and her three youngest children to their tiny orchard island, about 1 km away from their house, and then took the rest of us on to the tiny town of Loreto. In Loreto, virtually the entire population had been displaced by flooding and most people were living in US-supplied tents—military helicopters and cargo planes were much in evidence as international relief poured into the area. That night we were literally refugees, staying in a place for displaced people, and the next day we were able to hire the same boat for the 80-km trip down the winding river systems to the city of Trinidad.

Below: This is a mural in the center of Trinidad, showing a map of the region. I am pointing to the tiny, flooded town of Loreto, where we spent one night, before traveling to Trinidad (symbolized by the large, orange square to the northwest of Loreto).



The spark plugs were faulty and we stopped several times to clean them and change them, and when we finally arrived the owner said he had thought we were not going to make it. I was keeping a mirror handy to signal a helicopter if the motor really had gone out. Also there were issues with finding the way through the flooded landscape and the boat had to turn around several times after not finding a way through a patch of dense forest or other vegetation. When we finally reached the outskirts of the city of Trinidad we were relieved to find that the main highway was not flooded and we could hitch a ride on a truck into the center of town, which was still high and dry and functioning normally. However on the way we passed large areas of temporary tent cities where people from the lower-lying outskirts of town had evacuated to. So, while things seem normal right here in the center of town, all the surrounding area is a disaster zone.

Virtually all available rooms in town had been rented out but the same room we had used in the past happened to be still available, because the roof leaks and so the hostel owner had not rented it out yet. So a leaky roof was our good fortune.

The simple facilities here seem like first-class accommodations now-- any kind of running water in the bathroom, even if unheated and undrinkable, seems like a real luxury. A few days ago I was waiting for a bat to fly out of the hole in the outhouse seat, and watching a toad swimming around in the murk below, and watching Sarah pull a 5-foot anaconda out of the hole in the outhouse seat. For weeks now, as the water level has been slowly rising and the amount of truly dry ground has been constantly shrinking, snakes were becoming more and more abundant. Fortunately we did not see any of the poisonous vipers, only anacondas, although we heard of one fatality in the nearby region due to snakebite while we were listening to radio messages. Likewise armadillos became very abundant—they take shelter in termite mounds to avoid the rising water.

Although we are safe here our thoughts are with the farmer’s wife and three small kids who remained behind, living in a tent in their "chaco" or orchard, where the ground is higher than in the farmstead. They should be safe for the immediate future, as the water levels at the farmstead were starting to fall again when we left. But this is the rainy season and a few more big thunderstorms could change everything for the worse. Due in large part to their inability to bear the expense of feeding so many mouths in the city, and also due to the need to keep an eye on the livestock and corn, the farmer’s wife and the three small children did not evacuate with us. Only the 3 school-age kids came out, who need to spend the next several months in the city attending school. The farmer came out too to see the older children off, but will return to the chaco in the next few days if possible. By boat of course.



Travel arrangements are difficult-- for example after we arrived in Trinidad we found that another member of the Blue-throated Macaw project had just returned from a 3-day boat trip that he organized to evacuate us. While the heavy thunderstorms were pouring down on our tent, he was in the boat out in the open. Due to the poor radio communications, he was not able to advise us of his plans and we were forced to make other arrangements. So, when he finally arrived at the farmstead everyone had already left. His whole trip should have taken only a single day but no one on the boat knew the way and they got lost repeatedly, and also had some engine trouble.

We probably won't stay in Trinidad for more than a couple of days. The city is still under threat from high water and a few big storms could breach the retaining walls and flood the entire city. We are only here because it is the only city with an airport with scheduled
commuter flights in the area. Hopefully, the airport won’t flood soon! We'll fly to another part of Bolivia that is not in the midst of an emergency, travel for about 2 weeks, and then return to the US.

That's all for now.... Steve



So, as Steve said, we are now safe in the center of Trinidad, and the family is safe on their garden island—the only bit of dry land within a kilometer of the house. The city of Trinidad has turned into a tiny, functional, dry center where the well-off people are lucky enough to live, surrounded on all sides by clusters of tent neighborhoods which line the sides of the road, just out of reach of the floodwaters. The water has stopped rising since our arrival in Trinidad on the 13th, but heavy rains are predicted for the next few days and residents fear that the center may flood, as well as displacing, once again, many of the families in the tent neighborhoods.

Back on the topic of macaws, the 2007-08 season of Blue-throated Macaw conservation work has come to an end and I have a lot of incredible stories to tell about the birds and my experiences working with them. It was a good season for the macaws and for our crew. We had a group of dedicated biologists from 7 different countries, working from August through the present, and in great part due to the widespread effort of the volunteers I am happy to announce that the macaws have had their most successful year in the history of the project.

The series of blog entries which have preceded this final update for the 2007-08 season were typed up from sections of my handwritten journal. I hope you have enjoyed my stories about our success with the intensive handfeeding of neglected chicks, my observations of the successful fledging of several macaw chicks, and their activities during the following weeks, as well as the many other stories of my life as a field biologist in rural Bolivia.

I will be retuning to Bolivia again this winter, to participate in the 2008-09 effort of the Blue-throated Macaw Project. Please check back soon for a current update of the 2008-09 season effort!

Below: Evacuating the field site by boat

Posted by Sarah Faegre on 10/23 at 04:35 PM
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Leaving Encanta

by Sarah Faegre

A new turn for the worse give us a final conclusion to the nest of Encanta and allows us to confirm the neither eggs was viable. Now we make the most of our last days with here with the family and try to escape before the flood turns deadly.

February 10th

Today I turn 26. We are stranded in the flooded Bolivian lowlands at the rapidly sinking Encanta, where the family jokes that now they are like armadillos—forced onto the tiny, remaining bits of raised land that are still above water. The galpón is flooded now and the outdoor living area is a tiny bit of raised land next to the pig pen. We have moved the contents of the kitchen outside, since the water in the kitchen is too deep now, and are using the top rail of the pig pen as a counter.

The BTM project finally has a conclusion—yesterday the nest box was invaded by wasps and probably the wasps will have success where the macaws didn’t, creating little wasplings and perpetuating their species. Steve suited up in several layers of clothes and a mosquito net over his head and braved the angry wasps to retrieve the still-intact egg, which we knew was certainly dead since it had been without incubation for over 24 hours.



Last night we opened the egg and got a confirmation for what we had already expected: the egg was infertile, or had died in the early days of incubation, just like the other eggs. The macaws had spent more than 3 weeks incubating 2 infertile eggs, only to have their nest cavity usurped by a colony of wasps. I suppose it would have been much sadder had the wasps taken over a nest with live eggs or chicks. Still, the pair is very distressed and hanging around the vicinity, crying over their loss. It is interesting to note that the last bird to give up on the nest was the male, who Steve saw enter the nest yesterday morning and stay for 40 minutes despite the colony of wasps which carpeted the entrance and the inside of the nest box.

Last night there was a tremendous lightening storm around 1:30 a.m. which pelted us with rain and incredible gusts of wind for 2 or 3 hours before I got back to sleep. It was raining and blowing so hard that I was getting wet, even with the double rainfly-tarp system. But at least the platform held up and the water in the tent was minimal. One of the rooms in the family’s house has water in it, but it is only the food storage room and the food is up on platforms. The two rooms in which they sleep are still dry—but for how much longer?

No word from John since yesterday, when the price of the boat he had contracted to come and get us jumped from 700 to 2000 Bs (about 250 USD). I said yes, despite the price, because I am really in no position to barter. “If someone will come here to Encanta in a boat and get us out, I will pay the price,” I said. John said he would have to see if the boat was willing to come all the way to Encanta and would confirm with me at 3:00 pm. At 3:00—nothing. At 7:00—nothing. Rolando was appalled when he came back from the chaco and learned that I had agreed to pay 2000 Bs. for a boat. He has other, more affordable plans to get out, but since his last plan did not work out and the new one is just as uncertain, I will agree to whichever plan I can confirm first.



February 11th

It has been storming for over 12 hours—the dark, ominous front moved over the already flooded Encanta and opened fire with rain and 30 mph cold wind. At 11:30 pm the strobe-light lightening began. Fat drops of rain began to fall, and soon the thunder was cracking straight overhead with such ear-splitting force that I startled and plugged my ears and cowered deeper into my sleeping bag. As the hours wore on I slept fitfully and the water rose higher and higher around the tent, splashing in through the mesh underneath the rainfly.

Now it is noon the next day and the storm continues with cold wind and rain blowing constantly from the south. The water is level with our tent platform and the bottom ¼ of the tent is soaked. The family’s house is flooded with 1 foot of water and there is not a dry patch of land in sight. We are nothing but a few flimsy structures in the middle of a river which is now running with a forceful current. Animals are dying and there is no way to make a fire to cook food. The situation has become critical: we must get all the people and animals out today or as soon as possible.

Loreto is entirely flooded. Trini is flooding, just from the rain, but the water is coming with such force from the river that there is fear that the retaining wall, which encircles the city, might break. This would be utterly disastrous for the tens of thousands of families living in the center and also for us, as we would loose all of our belongings (currently stored in Hostal Las Palmas, in the center of Trini). If the retaining wall breaks, Trinidad, the capital of El Beni, will become a flooded wasteland with a flooded airport and no way out (except by boat). We are in the middle of it all, a tiny spec among tens of thousands of desperate people and a lot of water.

Already pigs and chickens and one horse have died. Any belonging that falls or is dropped becomes lost in the current. The wind is shaking the tent and blowing so hard that it sounds like we’re on a beach near the pounding surf. Don Basco is on his way from Loreto to rescue us and the animals. John never came through and we haven’t had any contact with him since he said he would confirm our boat trip two days ago.

In theory, Don Basco will arrive any moment with the boat and they will begin taking animals to the chaco (the tiny, garden/island a few kilometers away from the house). If all goes as hoped, all the animals, people and important belongings will be out of Encanta by the end of the day.



8:00 pm

We’re out of Encanta—Steve and I, the family and the remaining pigs and chickens rescued by Don Basco and 2 others guys who helped Rolando move the pigs to the chaco and took us out to Esperanza. So, at the moment we are lying in a wet, broken tent that we just spent half an hour patching together after a horse stepped on it.

The family is spending their last night in the flooded house at Encanta, hoping the earth walls don’t collapse on them in the night. The pigs are probably contentedly munching on the corn and chasing away the capybaras…(or will the capybaras chase away the pigs?) in the chaco. Really, there’s not much of an “away” for any person or animal to go to from the chaco, which is an island of about 300 meters diameter amid a vast, flooded wetlands that is now truly traversable by boat alone.

Tomorrow Don Basco will go back with the boat and move the family and all their belongings to the chaco, and then help Rolando swim all 20 horses to Esperanza. The 3 school-age kids will come to Esperanza in the boat with Don Basco so that they can join on our eventual voyage to Trini, where they will live with family members and attend school (assuming the center of Trini doesn’t flood). John was due to arrive in Loreto today, though we don’t know if he will arrive with the 2000 Bs. rented boat, or simply as a passenger on another boat.

Outside Esperanza things sound pretty grim. It rained for 15 hours straight last night (and into the morning) and Loreto is entirely flooded except for one street and half the church. Trini’s retaining wall has broken in 2 places. Trini, which is the capital of the Beni Province, houses nearly 100,000 people and is slowly going underwater despite the peoples’ efforts to keep the water out with sandbags and pumps. I was told today that Trini is actually lower in elevation than Loreto and up until now has always been protected by the combination of pumps and its circular retaining wall.

The current news is the airport is already partly flooded and we may not be able to leave Trini. We have no idea how bad it will be when we arrive. Will the hostel where our baggage is stored be flooded with water? We can only wait and see.

Posted by Sarah Faegre on 10/07 at 04:04 PM
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A Sad End for the Eggs of Encanta

by Sarah Faegre

We discover that the macaws have been incubating dead eggs for the past three weeks and this sad news brings our work at Encanta to a close.

February 4th

Our time here at Encanta is wrapping up with 99% certainty that the nest is a failure. Two dead eggs. That is what the macaws have been carefully incubating and caring for during the past month. After noticing that one of the eggs was smelling rotten and getting lighter and turning a dark, rotten opaque color, I removed and opened it, expecting to find a dead embryo inside. Putrid, greenish liquid exploded all over me when I put a bit of pressure on the eggshell. Either it was laid infertile or the embryo died after only a few days of incubation.

We will leave the remaining egg of course, because we are not 100% sure that the egg is dead, although even if we were sure, it is probably best to let the macaws finish their nesting cycle naturally. It would also be interesting to know how long the female would continue to incubate a dead egg, though chances are that she’ll still be incubating it when we leave Encanta and no one will know how much longer she stays. I wonder how common it is for Blue-throated Macaws to lay a clutch of infertile eggs, or for young embryos to die during the first few days of incubation. Perhaps inexperienced parents do not always attend their eggs as consistently as necessary. Yet, shouldn’t they be able to tell that something has gone wrong when the eggs fail to hatch?

All we can do at this point is take advantage of our remaining days at Encanta by getting the best photos possible of this pair. The photos will be compared with past BTM photos and also used in future years of the project to track the activities of this particular pair. This is a sad way to end my time with the Blue-throated Macaws, but it is also a reality check—the vast majority of nests fail during incubation, whether that is from predation, flooding, inattentive parents, or a doomed start with infertile eggs.


February 7th

Such complications! Yesterday the boat finally came, bringing the family their long-overdue and much needed food supply. As I climbed the nest one last time, I heard the motor approaching. I candled the remaining egg for the last time and was overcome by a sudden uncertainty. My experience candling parrot eggs was minimal and many years past. What if I was wrong? Could it be that the translucent, rosy pink color I was interpreting as a lack of life was actually a chick, filling the space within and nearly ready to hatch? With this sudden feeling of absolute uncertainty I had to rush back from the nest, through waist deep water, in the broiling heat of the mid-day sun to arrive at Encanta just as the boat arrived. This was our chance to get out, as least as far as Esperanza. “Be ready in 15 minutes,” one of the men told me.

Steve and I took down the tent and readied our bags as fast as we could. With all the rushing, the heat, and my sudden uncertainty about the egg, I was feeling sad and unprepared to leave. I sat at the kitchen table with Lurdes, Rolando and 2 of the 3 guys who came on the boat: El Gordo, Don Basco, and Rolando’s brother. I asked them about getting to Trini from Esperanza.

“Oh, it’s extremely complicated right now,” Don Basco told me. “You have to get to the river, but there is no transportation passing on the road (1 km from Esperanza) because it is entirely flooded, and yet it is not the best route for boats coming from Loreto.” I told them that I could pay them to take us to the river from Esperanza, if they had the time to do so in the next few days. “Not enough gas to get to the river,” I am told. And there is no gas for sale in Loreto right now.

“When might more gas arrive in Loreto?” I asked. My question was met with much laughter. “Maybe August.”
“So, can we get to the river by horse?” I asked.
“Yes, yes, that can be done,” they told me.
“How deep is the water,” I ask. “Will the horse have to swim?”
“Yes, the horse will have to swim quite a lot, so you can only bring one small backpack.”
Okay, cross off that option.
“So, it would be better to leave from Loreto then?” I ask. “Is there enough gas to get us to Loreto?”
“Yes, we can take you to Loreto,” says Basco. “But from there the trip to Trini is also complicated.”
“Are there small planes traveling between Loreto and Trini?” I ask.
“Yes, but in these last few days the runway has flooded.”
“So, from Loreto how might we get to Trini?” I ask. I am given a complicated series of instructions about asking around in Loreto to find space on a boat going to a place called El Lomito (The Lump), where some people are living and boats can not cross because it is still dry. From The Lump we must get another boat to the river, where, on the far side of the Rio Ibaré a truck might be making daily trips to Trini. But Loreto is flooding, they tell me, and lots and lots of people are trying to get to Trini, so you might have to wait a few days to find space on a boat.

And then, just as I picked up my backpack to begin loading our equipment onto the oxcart which would haul it 200 meters through the shallower water to the boat, Rolando came to me with an alternative plan: Steve and I will leave with Rolando and the school-age kids this coming Saturday or Sunday by hiring a boat (through a series of radio communications) to come and get us at Encanta and take us all the way to the river. We’ll see what happens…I sure hope he can find a way to make the plan work. So here I sit, once again, in the blind at Encanta.

Now, a few hours later, I am back at the house, sitting in my hammock, strung up between two palms. Below my hammock—water. Surrounding the house and lapping at the doorstep—running water. We are now part of the river system and the water is rising steadily, despite the change in weather. This is the 4th day in a row without rain, though the towering cumulus clouds blowing in on the strong, cool, north wind are promising that this 4th day will not be completed without showers or perhaps a good drenching.

The kitchen is now part of the river and this morning we got up and made a system of plank walkways from the fire place out the door of the kitchen and across the yard to the galpón, where we have moved the table, since its former location is flooded. The galpón is an open, palm-roofed structure with a raised earth floor that is normally used to store saddles and hang meat or to rest in hammocks. Now, after days of adding countless cartloads of dirt to raise the floor above the flood-level, it is the only dry space outside the house and thus has become the center of daytime activity. And if these last few days are anything to judge by, it is only a matter of time until the water rises into the house, or turns the dirt walls to mud, collapsing the house all together.

Rolando butchered a cow today—an entire cow per two months is the family’s ration of meat—and Rolando is now in the Galpón, busily turning the 600 lb. creature into piles of charque (think beef jerky on a massive scale), which will be smothered in salt and hung in the sun for at least 2 days. With two days of hot sun and lot of salt, the thinly sliced meat will stay good for up to two months. Lurdes is boiling a gigantic pot of the cow’s internal body fat, mostly stripped from the kidneys, which will be turned into blocks of lard and stored for future use: anything and everything can be deep fried in lard. Even rice and noodles are first deep fried before adding water (leaving the boiling grease so that they are cooked in the mixture of boiling lard and water). The food tastes good, but I find that large amounts of lard, especially for breakfast, does not agree terribly well with my normally-strong digestive system. Or maybe it’s just the water. We are now out of rainwater and are forced to drink the brown flood water that is flowing all around us.



February 8th

Rising, rising, rising. We hear messages on the radio about potable drinking water being carried in by Brazilian helicopters to families in Trini and Loreto. Meanwhile, here at Encanta, the outhouse has flooded and all the contents are now mixing with the floodwater that flows through and around it. Steve and I are both sick with diarrhea despite our efforts to drink only boiled water. Miraculously, Rolando, Lurdes and the kids seem unaffected and tell us that the water is fine.

Yesterday (before the outhouse flooded) one of the kids was about to use the outhouse when he suddenly ran out, screaming that the “sicuri” (anaconda) was entering the bathroom. I ran over to see and sure enough, a 2-meter anaconda was slithering slowly through the gap in the boards. Once inside the outhouse the snake proceeded down the hole and I got there just in time to grab its tail and haul it out of the outhouse. It writhed and lurched and quickly freed itself from my uncertain grip. It swam away quickly, across the yard, under the fence, and through the flooded pampas. Luckily it wasn’t aggressive and only had an interest in escaping, not biting me.

Posted by Sarah Faegre on 10/06 at 09:20 PM
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Hard Times For Everyone

by Sarah Faegre

February 2nd
11:30 a.m.

Rolando and Lurdes spent the non-rainy hours of yesterday gathering loads of dirt from termite mounds and hauling them back to the house in the ox-cart. Then we all shoveled loads of dirt around the flooding corners of the house and onto the flooded floor of the galpón. Tension is running high at Encanta as bit by bit all the family’s food runs out and the rising water puts their house and animals in danger. For almost a week they have had no sugar or flour, which are normally two of the staples out here. Their bi-monthly food delivery was due on January 15th and the “encargado” (man in change, directly below the landowner) is incommunicado at Esperanza. It is the job of the encargado to coordinate the delivery of food and see to the needs of the people working the land. Rolando and Lurdes are frustrated that he didn’t get the food delivered on time, or before the flood made the delivery more complicated than ever before. Now the 2-month supply of food will have to be brought by boat, since the water is too high for the ox cart.

The family has run out of everything except rice, lard and charque (dried meat). But in a day or two the rice and charque will be gone too. We have also used up most of the project food that Steve and I brought. We have enough beans and lentils for one meal of each, but all the rice, noodles, sugar, honey and canned food we brought is gone. We have 6 packs of crackers left. Luckily there is still corn and bananas in the chaco—the family’s garden island, 20 minutes by horse through the flooded pampas. Of course there are plenty of chickens and pigs to kill if necessary.

Bad news for the macaw family as well. When I climbed, the day before yesterday, I found one of the eggs smelling rotten and looking opaque. The macaws seem restless, although the female is certainly still incubating, as if at least one of the eggs were alive. This afternoon I will climb again if the rain stops.

5:45 p.m.

I am at the blind, writing with a headlamp because with the stormy weather it is as dark as night. The water just keeps rising and rising. It is starting to enter the house and Rolando and Lurdes are very worried. The blind, which luckily is on higher ground, is trying to become an island and will succeed if this rain keeps up for a few more days. Today it rained for 8 hours, almost without stopping. The new path that Steve found and hacked through the bromeliads is now boot-flooding high and not much better than the original path. When I was helping Lurdes in the kitchen today she looked outside and sighed deeply. “This rain makes me think things,” she said.
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like the people at Esperanza really don’t care about us. No one has come here to check on us. They know we have no food and that the flood waters are rising and they can’t even be bothered to attend the radio.” She confided that she wished they could leave. “But anyways, there’s no way to get out,” she said. Then, almost as an afterthought she said, “But it will be really sad when the rice is gone. Then it will just be meat, meat, meat.”

Posted by Sarah Faegre on 10/03 at 08:46 PM
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