Sorry for the larger than normal span of time between posts.
I thought I would dedicate this post to a general catching up on what I’ve been doing.
One thing earlier on that I participated in was a chicken conference or I guess it would be better called an exposition on the raising of chickens, but I enjoy calling it a chicken conference. I mean, would I have thought that I would be going to chicken conferences a year ago? I don’t think so. You will never know or be able to predict everything in a year, month, week, or even tomorrow. There are always surprises or changes, fantastic and challenging. We are the ones that decide what to make of them and how to react.
So anyway, the conference, was well, quite interesting. People came from several different communities to showcase their successful chicken practices, all of which were done utilizing the resources that the community had. How do you get rid of parasites in chickens? One community was making their concoction from local moonshine, garlic, marigolds, and other ingredients. How do you disinfect the chicken coops? Well, just make your own vinegar from fermenting unrefined sugar cane sugar blocks and the skin of a pineapple in a bucket of water. It was good for me because there were several new techniques that I hadn’t known. It was even better, though, for the community members I brought along. For those that showcased something, you can imagine it got them some recognition for their creative efforts and hard work. Everyone that came was able to gain an abundance of information and got motivated seeing that “Yeah, these things actually do work.” Besides sleeping on cement floors in 2 large buildings, the other event which brought people closer together and made it feel like a camping or community experience was when we had some musicians play for an evening dance.
Beside the chicken conference, I still haven’t stopped working on the compost piles. It has been pretty challenging motivating people and convincing them that composting and other similar methods are cheap methods to replace their dependence on expensive chemical fertilizers. I have, though, been able to get through to some people and I am hoping that these people will be examples of the successes of organic fertilizers. Below I have some families who recently made their worm composts. This is a pretty big deal for a couple of reasons. One is that people here have such a fear of worms, mainly because the worms you find here are usually not in the ground but in the stomach. There are quite a few who wont even touch these California red worms. The other reason it was notable was because the whole family, husband, wife, and children all helped out in 2 of the 3 cases. Again, I just hope that through the examples of the brave, others will see the rich soil the worms make and the abundant juicy filets of “steak” the worms become when fed to the chickens.
With the grade school I am working with, things are not going too successfully. The children are full of enthusiasm, but the teachers are definitely lacking. Both that and the fact that the teachers can strike without penalty (they went on strike for 3 months last year) and can take weeks off for what I would call weak reasons or no reason at all have made it hard to show up when there actually is class let alone stick to my original curriculum. To give you an idea, last week kids had class for 2 days with the teachers taking of class for unknown reasons to me. This week, they had class on Monday but on Tuesday they came home after an hour saying there would not be class until next week Tuesday. For me, it is just sad because the kids are losing. Luckily, while there is not a private grade school, there is a private and equally affordable middle school in the community. This non government backed school seems to have some higher guidelines, such as the days there are to hold class.
Finally, the other big project the other 2 volunteers and I have been working on is making a world map for the community of San Carlos Alzatate. Just in the days that we sketched the borders of all the countries, it became a town spectacle. People would spend hours just watching us work our artistic magic but saying confusingly that it did not look too much like their town of San Carlos. (We are doing quite a good job, but I just hope no one from another country comes to measure up their country and hope that no one is counting all the islands). When we finished for the day, people would rush over to sit by the map and continue to talk about it some more. Just picture some old small town scene like in Mayberry to picture these men. It’s the most exciting thing that has happened since the arrival of these foreigners. The only hard thing about leaving such a small town is that it will be hard at first not getting so much attention back in the U.S.
Sorry I couldn't post any pictures because of problems with the internet, hopefully I'll be able to
put some up soon.
“There are no ordinary people.” “It is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.” – C.S. Lewis
First the wall was gridded into squares and so was a small drawing of the world. Then we began drawing what was in one square on the small world map into a corresponding square on the wall. I think it turned out well, but the sketch the most precise. Once the painting began, we lost our good boarder we drew and lost some entire islands when painting the Pacific.
The map is starting to come along. We 3 volunteers who live in or near San Carlos are tracing the country borders and the kids are filling them in.
