Getting Eager

Classic Nicaraguan Pottery

We sit surrounded by gorgeous Nicaraguan handicrafts—and we have not yet left the United States.

Marlo and I have stopped at a huge colonial house Williamsburg, Virginia, where we are selecting Nicaraguan ceramics and jewelry to sell at Pella’s Tulip Time and other Midwest festivals this summer. This mansion is the warehouse for Chaka Market Bridge, a five-person, fair-trade importer with a goal of providing incomes for Nicaraguan artisans.

Its finance manager Geoffrey Geiling shows us vases, candleholders, bowls, necklaces, and rings that his company imports. Attached to each piece of hand-signed pottery—some classic, some funky—is a card with a photo of its creator and a short biography.

Funky Candleholders

We tell Geoff about the goals and plans of Friends of Chinandega, for these products—not only to provide income for Nicaraguans by our purchases, but to use our retail profit margin to further develop our organization’s relationship with our Christian friends in Chinandega.

When we confess we are totally new at this, Geoff gives us tips for arranging an attractive booth, setting up charge-card services, and repacking merchandise.

We make our product selections, write a check, and drive off. Geoff will pack our merchandise, and we’ll stop for it en route back to Pella in February.

We’re not yet in Nicaragua, and our eagerness is up a notch.

We’ll need to suppress it, though, during our next stop—a visit to our infant granddaughter in Raleigh.

I suspect she’ll have the charisma to manage that suppression.

Effortlessly.

With one pinky.