When Gwen's 6th grade science teacher assigned this project, initially I was frustrated. It was still the first week or so after the shutdown, the kids were on virtual learning. And it was still very unclear how we would get groceries, if the food system would collapse, if there would be a country-wide crisis preventing us from having access to any food at all. Everyone was stockpiling supplies and rationing food. So being asked to sacrifice three (!) pieces of our last loaf of remaining bread to a science project seemed frivolous at best. But I imagined the teachers were also at their wit's end trying to figure out what to do with the kids now online, so we didn't complain, and we started the experiment. Three pieces of bread. One Gwen handled with hands freshly washed with soap and water. One with hands not washed but rubbed with hand sanitizer gel. And the third with hands not washed at all. Months later the results are pretty striking!! (Sanitizer really does not look good.) And now that we have found that Panama's markets withstood the crisis beautifully, keeping supermarkets fully stocked pretty much the whole time, and now that we've found a way to safely order our groceries to be delivered right to the house, and are not worried about when or how we will get our next loaf of bread - we can breathe a sigh of relief, and be glad Gwen participated in that science experiment.....
