The Poop Shoot
So when I got to site, a host brother was working on a septic system for my baño. basically, it is a whole in the ground. about 5 feet deep. the rocks start at about 1 foot, but they are soft, as far as rocks go. So are we gonna put like a tank into this hole or something? no. just a hole, with a pipe from my toilet. wouldn´t this leach into the field right there? um. no. maybe we could do a composting toilet, i´ve been trained on that. yeah, he says, but we don´t really have enough ash or sawdust for that. how about with a simulated marsh or something, i´ve heard they work well. no, we don´t do that here. the people aren´t used to such things. its just not how we do it. hm. and this guy lives in quito. he´s generally open to new ideas. well, he had already started the hole, and the toilet was already installed with water, and there really isn´t much room for a marsh. so my excrement goes to a hole in the ground. i just hope it doesn´t fill up.
The School Garden
the school is right next to my place. its got land around it, some of which is flat. the existing garden gets trampled and eaten by horses and cattle that a community member pays something like $20 a year to tie up there. there is a PTA meeting, a parent of each of the 8 kids has to show up. it is a one room school house, and this is how they run things. so i go to the meeting to propose a garden. i would establish it, and we can all maintain it, and the kids can eat more vegetables. even though there is a perfectly fine flat peice of land, i´ll use the hillside, and i´ll build terraces as a demonstration. the plan for the flat bit is to make a little soccer field. when the machine gets here to widen it. meanwhile the only way to widen it without burying the school would be to remove the boulders maintaining the base of the hill, but whatever.
i propose the idea. they aren´t into it. they´ve tried working together before, apparently it doesn´t pan out. i learn more about that experience later. for now, they tell me they would rather just each have their own garden and then they´ll give their kids more vegetables. eh. alright. if you don´t want to do it, i´m not about to make it happen by myself. (this isn´t just defeatist, it is based on development literature. say i do make a garden happen by myself, do you think its gonna last when i leave?)
but my presence at the meeting is not for naught. they are organizing a fiesta for mother´s day and i´m recruited to be both the door guy and the bar guy, because since nobody knows me i won´t be pressured for freebies. ok, seems like a decent way to integrate, i guess. and they say in both jobs i will be accompanied by one of the padres de familia. more on this later. . .
Planting potatoes with a shot gun
that wouldn´t really work, obviously the potatoes would splatter, but it is the punchline of a joke about farming on extreme slopes. such practices tend to lead to erosion and a subsequent lack of soil fertility, thus pressuring the farmer to invest more in chemical fertilizers. when i ask them, is your land sloped? not much, they say. and then i visit, and it is literally a 100% slope (1 meter rise for every 1 meter run, or 45 degrees). and do you have erosion problems? oh no, but the cost of chemicals is very high.
so anyway, i am helping my host ma plant some ocas. ocas are kinda like potatoes. definitely same family. they are smaller and can be made sweet by leaving them in the sun for a bit after harvest. so we are planting these ocas in contour lines, and i´m not really bending over because the slope is over 100%, so i stand straight up on one row and my hands touch the next row. but erosion isn´t really a problem.
then it starts raining. i try to point out the erosion happening before our eyes, but thats just a little bit, nothing really. anyway, can´t really work in the rain, aside from generally sucking, it compacts the soil and everyone understands that. so we walk home soaking wet. when we get there i realize that the bills i stashed in my boot, for a rainy day, so to speak, have been severely eroded despite the plastic bag meant to protect them.
thus ended my habit of stashing money in odd places incase i got robbed. my boots and shoes rubbed through the plastic and began ripping and removing the ink from those bills. the ones i had in my hat band are not somewhere in the páramo, as my hat band fell off while running up to check out some ruins (the cayambe shaman told me to do it), and i didn´t realize till later.
anyway, i gotta get these remaining bills changed at a bank, cause no one is gonna take them in this condition (i heard a theory that the less developed the country, the more scrutiny is given to $20s). and since there are no banks in town, that´s gonna reqiure a. .. .
Trip to Ibarra
The established volunteers had organized a get together to welcome us newbies. i wasn´t planning to attend, as my site is a bit off the beaten path, but it so happened that through various occurences i am now the only new volunteer in the cluster. so i kinda gotta be there.
anyway, i came i saw i conquered. they are all very nice. and robert even offered to get my ruined bills changed, since the PC out-of-site-day policy and banking hours do not coincide well.
eh, not much more to say about that.
Medio Ambiente Excursion
The next week, my host father, a volunteer park guard, informed me that some people would be coming from some government Environment Department to check out the borders of the national park (Cayambe-Cocas) nearby. so i should accompany. sure.
Two guys and an attractive young lady. I´ve come to believe that the more important the job is, the more likely the man doing it will be accompanied by an attractive young lady. thats a generalization, and it is kinda sexist, but some have said that this country is kinda sexist too, so maybe it is ok to make such generalizations about it.
anyway, their idea was to go with all the local farmers to their fields and delineate the buffer zone for the park. said delineation being made by the farmers, as it is their land afterall. they don´t cultivate all of their land (the cut-off seems to be at about 150% slope), so the remaining can be called a buffer zone. the only problem is that once it is declared a buffer zone, they can never cultivate it, so they see this as the govmnt taking their land away. and it was rumored that these guys were coming to take land whether the farmers liked it or not. anyway, nobody showed up to accompany them except the volunteer park guard, who was planning on asking for a stipend, but thought better of it.
but they did manage to argue for a bit, i didn´t really understand about what. i´ve come to realize that some people, when agitated, speak in tones that give me a headache. i can actually feel the pain in my head coincide with their words. relax, breathe deep, hey, there´s the president of the community walking up to do some fieldwork.
so we pressure him into accompanying us. free lunch. sure. and we walk along to take GPS points of what buffer zones they can get. and they show me how to use their GPS, pretty simple.
walking along, we pass a field with trees in it. native, nitrogen-fixing trees. this is agroforestry! says one of the medio ambiente guys. the farmers here should look to this guy as an example! the owner of said land, we'll call him Don E. I´m certain he doesn´t read english or use computers, but it is probably a good practice to keep some degree of anonymity. i make a note of him because i interviewed him later with interesting results.
anyway, it is interesting that the medio ambiente guys sit back and watch while the two from the campo (country folk), the park guard and the president of the community, do all the work of digging holes to place the boundary markers. i guess it should be just as interesting that i kinda just sat back and watched too, now that i think about it. . . uhm. . . it was a two person job, alright!
i did help carry the boundary markers. but anyway, there was much debate about whether to place one on some lady´s land. she doesn´t live in the community, she is a lawyer, and rumor has it she is brava. so i said, look, ya´l l work things out with her in the city, call me, and i´ll go with the president of the community (heretofor refered to as the prez) and place the marker. it was like the first time i had an opportunity to make myself useful. they agreed, but they still haven´t gotten back to me.
there were some good pictures taken (i don´t carry a camera), and a promise to email them, so maybe one day i´ll have something pretty to post.
also, my investigative conversationalism uncovered that they are working on a project in a neighboring county with organic gardens, so i can take some community members to visit later if we want. and, i took the opportunity to schedule an interview with . ..
The Prez
I like to give a little labor in return for interview time. it helps me integrate, i usually learn something, and it repays them for their time. the prez doesn´t own land, he works as a tenant, so when it boils down, i was really helping him landlord, but whatev. we went and picked uvillas for a day. free lunch, sweet. and all the uvillas i could handle. they are said to be particularly high in vitamin C, and with the swine flu scare, demand is supposed to increase for such things.
also, they told me that no chemicals are required to produce uvillas. really? yea really. like none at all? none. we only had to fumigate (chemicals) once last month. hm. you see where i come from, when someone says "none" it means. . . nevermind.
i forgot how much each sack of the fuit sells for, but it isn´t much. the daily wage for field work is 6$. and it isn´t particularly fun. so when we finished, and the prez asked me, "did you enjoy harvesting uvillas?" i kinda laughed and said "yea, didn´t you?"
but he was being sincere. harvesting uvillas is actually pretty tame work, and you get to eat them. when you grow up with a hoe in your hand you get a different perspective i guess. and you get a different perspective entirely when you have a ho in your hand, but to continue with the interview. . .
at this point, i was still perfecting the interview. actually, i still am, but it was in a longwinded form with many questions which i consider to have little utility at my site. the interview was compiled by the office monkeys, not that they don´t know what the sites are like, but they designed it to have some applicability at many sites, whereas i see it as my responsibility to make sure it has significant applicability at one site.
anyway, i found out, among other things, that he doesn´t get paid to be the prez. and when i asked him how much he makes a month, he said $30. i coughed and asked again, no, $30, he said. i haven´t broached the subject with him since, it was kind of embarrassing, but i´m pretty sure he was telling me the week´s wage, not the month. anyway, his pops is 81 years old and still working. the prez is only 23, same as me, so we´re kinda like friends.
probably the most interesting questions were about projects that had come to the community in the past. i don´t have the interview in front of me so i don´t have all the facts straight, but actually further interviews have led me to believe that he didn´t either. regardless, i think the main points hold true.
there was one project already that came to teach terracing and organic gardening. the terraces and organic gardens now exist only in memories. there were some disagreements. probably a reason why the students´parents didn´t want to work together on a veggie garden for the kids.
another project came and gave the people pigs, the costs of which were to be paid back over several years. the pigs, lovingly called chanchos gringos for their white skin, died. other sources say that maybe one survived and was sold. but i´ve seen some whitish pigs around, so i need to investigate further. anyway, the project next gave the people chickens, if i remember correctly, which also died. the people already have pigs and chickens, mind you, but these varieties were probably supposed to be better than the common. or maybe they didn´t have pigs and chickens back then. well, it was only like 10 years ago, i think they did. anyway, so this same project also taught the people to make various pastries, which no one makes anymore. finally, they must have said "f- it" or something similar, cause they just gave the people back their money. the people (i´ve been typing like it was everybody, actually it was like 9, but in a community with less than 20 families, 9 is a good representative portion) decided to make a community bank, which is still going and has doubled it´s funds. sweet.
but on the whole, projects come and go, and not much changes. so what am i, one little dude, gonna do? probably not much, says the prez. yea. probably not. alright. . . . he also wants some better seeds. they sell bad seeds in town. i think we can solve this. (everyone has a brother or a sister or a son in quito, and quito has quality seed banks. . . am i the first to put this together?)
well, i had some other stuff to type about, but this is taking awhile, so i´ll just go on with two more interviews.
Don V´s Mysterious Cow Problems
So I´d just printed out my new version of the interview, with a handy chart to calculate costs and income for each crop, and there happened to be a cheerful old man visiting my hosts. i´d already established rapport with him, and he seemed happy to help me with my interview. "You know, it`s good to talk and be with friends, sometimes, yes, its good to be with friends..." he kinda trailed off. awesome. so here´s approximately how it went:
Q. Name and age
A. Don V, uhmmm. . . .ehh. .. . . 120. 120 years.
Q. er. really?
A. yes, i´m sure. 120.
Q. ok. do you have any children.
A. yes, one lives in the house, he´s 30.
Q. so you had a kid when you were 90? no, i don´t get to ask that, because the host ma comes in and says, "You know you´re not 120, how old are you?!" they´d been laughing in another room.
A. oh. yes, you´re right. uhmm. . .. 82. i´m 82.
Q. are you sure?
A. you know, i´ve got it written down somewhere. its good to have these things written down. . .
the interview continues a bit, the host ma is now sitting at the table helping the old guy out. most questions i just cross out before asking, poor methodology i know, but if you don´t understand yet, you will. . .
Q. HAVE YOU EVER HAD ANY ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION CLASSES?
to make sure he hears, i´m kinda shouting. turns out he hears ok, he´s just. well
A. You know. . . its good to talk and be with friends sometimes. . . its good to be with friends. . .
i´m not sure why i continued. i guess i just wanted to fill out my agricultural table on the back.
Q. do you have any cows, and how much milk do they produce?
A. i had many cows, and they gave good milk, but none anymore.
Q. what happened?
A. they all died, one after another, they just died. it was bolivar. i know it was him. they just died. one after another.
Q. Bolivar?
A. every day i would come to the field and another would die. every two or three weeks one would die. and in the end i didn´t have any more. now i don´t have any more cows.
the host ma steps in to inform me that Don V is talking about black magic
Q. black magic?
A. yes, Bolivar came to me once during the night, i was all alone, and he came and he stood over my bed, and he reached out his hand, but it wasn´t a hand it was a skeleton, and he tried to rip out my eyes, but i said, "I stand behind the Lord, and the Lord stands behind me!" and he disappeared. i´m lucky i escaped with my life.
Q. indeed. (i´m about to cry i´ve been holding in so much laughter. the host ma and bro are just laughing it up in the next room, making it increasingly difficult to continue to interview. eventually i just start laughing in this guys face, but he doesn´t seem to mind he just keeps babbling about this damn Bolivar the witch and how he is still roaming the countryside killing stuff.)
A. etc. etc.
So i can´t recall a specific punchline for that one, but the host family says there are several in the community that are the same, brothers all three, and it is basically a waste of time to try and interview them. so my pool of 20 is now 17.
Don E´s Agricultural Innovations
This guy has 9 kids, none of which stayed in the community. his two grandkids are back in the house, neither of whom seems likely to complete high school.
Q. do you practice agroforestry techniques?
A. no
Q. what about those aliso trees (the native nitrogen fixers) in your pasture?
A. oh. i think i´ll cut those down.
Q. why?
A. they shade the grass. the grass doesn´t grow as well
(i´ve heard of studies -which i would cite, had the technician ever replied to the e-mail which he told me face to face he would surely reply to- of agrosilviculture, as it is called when you have cows and trees in the same field. in the case of a test plot in Chimborazo, in a climate similar to my site, they were able to stock less cows per hectare, but with the warmth, and nutritious forage provided during the dry season, the cows produced more milk, enough of a gain to offset to smaller herd size. they also produced for longer, and with the lowered costs of fodder during the dry season, plus the added benefit of wood production, it is ultimately worth it to grow trees in your cow pasture. at least that is what the technician told me. but he also told me he would email the damn study, which he has not. so what do i know?)
Q. how many cows do you have, and how much milk do they produce?
A. 3, less than a liter each per day. (they are currently dry, presumably they will produce more after calving again)
the interview progressed, and i asked him about him crops, potatoes, corn, and aba beans. i asked him what fertilizers and pesticides he uses, how much he uses and how much they cost. also, i asked how much he sold the product for. the corn and beans he eats and he sends to his children. he manages to sell a few potatoes, but they eat most of them.
Q. so what is your principle source of income?
A. the milk.
i'm sure i gave some sort of tick or twitch to indicate my surprise. but i left without saying much. i later did the math on the crops, and it turns out, assuming he gave me approximately currect figures, he is losing money on all of them. if he doubled his production using current practices, he would simply lose twice as much. he would have more money, and more time, if he simply bought his corn, beans, and potatos. he could grow trees on his land, and in 15 years, without doing anything, he would be better off than if he and his grandkids continue to toil daily for that time.
but these are the sort of things that they don´t realize. they don´t do the math. granted, my results could be wrong, but that would be because he gave me bad numbers, which just further proves my point. he really has no idea whether the trees are helping or hurting his milk production, because he has nothing to compare it to. he knows the grass grows more slowly, but he doesn´t know that his cows might be more sick (coughing and sneezing like the ones of my hosts) and thus produce less milk without the trees. so, i think i´m going to try and teach some basic accounting and record keeping. maybe a few will take it up, probably the younger ones. i´m not an agriculture volunteer, i´m a natural resources volunteer, but i won´t be able to convince them of the economic value of their natural resources unless they have a better understanding of how to compare economic values. (my research indicates that convincing the people of developing countries that their natural resources have significant non-economic values will do little to further conservation goals, afterall, we generally aren´t too worried about beauty when we are hungry)
Getting the Maps
Last time I was here, I got some maps from the municipal office. barely. and they didn´t give them all to me. i don´t think i´ll go into it, it doesn´t really have anything to do with ecuadorian forestry. neither does bolivar the witch, but whatev. basically, i got most of them, and i´m gonna come back during the week and get the rest, so help me baby jesus.
Expectations
so, to curb my enthusiasm before i got down here, i told myself that my main goal was just to plant some trees. its a good goal, and i can get trees from the medio ambiente folks, but first gotta have a place to plant them, and then i gotta arrange something for after i leave, or else they´ll just get cut and not replanted.
so i came up with a new set of goals or expectations for my service.
1. i want some people to start keeping track of their costs and incomes for their crops. that will help them compare crops, compare practices, and it will help future extensionists help them.
2. some of the movers and shakers around here talk about developing ecotourism. i don´t really put much faith in tourism as a foundation of sustainable development across the developing world. for one thing, there aren´t that many tourists. for two, they don´t want to go just anywhere, they generally want to go to the beach. or the jungle. generally not the páramo. its cold and wet and anyway there are much easier routes to see it than through my site. but hey, if the people want it, i´ll give it a shot. and anyway, the basic steps of developing ecotourism (training guides in english and environmental stuff, building infrastructure like hostels and stuff, and gathering information about the sites) are good steps to take anyway. so it´s my goal to help them take some of these steps.
3. get some slow forming terraces built: they have really steep slopes, but they won´t terrace because it is a whole lotta work. so there is this practice called slow forming terraces, which is basically a contour ditch with a row of long lasting plants above it. it should work. i think some people will try it if i help them with the work. and a couple of years after i leave, if they keep it up, it will probably increase their production.
4. some reduction in chemical use: another reason for the accounting. already i am making things happen to get some beneficial fungus to site. we will try it out, and it is supposed to prevent a blight on some of the crops. so then they wouldn´t have to use chemicals for the blight. also, if they terrace they should be able to get good effects with less chemicals. also, the director of the project in town i´m working with is an agricultural engineer and he also wants to decrease chemical use in the two years he and i are around. so i can help to spread the techniques he teaches.
5. last but not least, i´d like to gain some understanding and maybe help guide in a good direction the project i´m working with, and some of the community groups. this would probably have the greatest effect on the community, but it is also hardest to measure my input. i already have a few ideas to increase participation in the project (important, without participation, when the project leaves, it leaves nothing), increase membership in the community micro-enterprise group, bleh bleh bleh. we´ll see.
Teaching the kids
ok, i´m pretty much done blogging for the day, but this is the last thing on my list of stuff to blog about, so i´m gonna type something.
i´m teaching some kids in two communities english and computer. i´m gonna teach some older students too, but they gotta help me with interviews. i think its a good deal. plus i can use it to get the parents to come to meetings to disseminate ecologically friendly ag practices. awesome.
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if you read this far, congratulations. you´ve read a lot of my blogging. maybe you should leave a comment, something like, "hey, i read that whole damn entry, and it was ok i guess." even if it was bad, don´t type that. it´ll discourage me, but above all, it conflicts with your behavior of reading the whole thing. psychological discord i believe it is called when one´s actions conflict with one´s beliefs. i´m not sure about that terminology, but it isn´t a good thing.
ok, i´m getting a call from the truck driver i gotta run.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
its been a little while
I´ve had trouble keeping up with the blog lately. I don´t usually have much time in town, and I´m too lazy to type up blog posts while at site (so as to load them when i get to town). mostly, i blog in my mind while riding in the back of pickup trucks. today, i should go to the municipio again and get the maps they owe me.
they don´t really owe me. in fact, they are going to tell me that i have to pay them, but i´m not gonna take that poopie. oh no. they are gonna give me those maps, and they´re gonna smile.
well, i should get out there, it´d be a shame if they left work before i got to stage my sit-in. i´ll come back to type up the results, which will be in reverse order because that´s how blog posts roll, but whatev.
chao
they don´t really owe me. in fact, they are going to tell me that i have to pay them, but i´m not gonna take that poopie. oh no. they are gonna give me those maps, and they´re gonna smile.
well, i should get out there, it´d be a shame if they left work before i got to stage my sit-in. i´ll come back to type up the results, which will be in reverse order because that´s how blog posts roll, but whatev.
chao
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Site
ok I´m here and i haven´t been robbed yet. brief run through of some things that have happened:
Salinas de Bolivar: they pulled themselves out of poverty. they had a series of international volunteers help them develop several value added industries like chocolate, cheeses, soccer balls, and some other stuff too. awesome
Training: I finished. 3 people didn´t. 1 left of own accord. 1 got kicked out for telling PC about taking some medicines that weren´t mentioned in the application, cause the trainee wasn´t taking them at that time. at least thats how i heard the story, and PC hasn´t clarified it any. the last got kicked out for attitude or something. that´s unfortunate, i didn´t think there were any problems, but whatev. thats how it goes. there is a theory that they plan (and budget) for a certain attrition rate and if the training class is as awesome as ours and few people leave, then there might be motivation on their part to look for problems. just a theory.
anyway, we had a last night together party at a little pizzeria/bar. it was crazy. unbloggably crazy. no one got hurt. (physically at least). nough said.
So here I am in Pimampiru waiting for a truck to take me up in to the mountains. and we are on alert for swine flu, so i shouldn´t be coming back down from the mountains for a while. well, i could come back to Pimampiru, but I probably won´t be able to visit the other PCVs around here. oh well, thats not why i´m here. Cuerpo de Paseo is the pun referencing volunteer experiences primarily based in tourism. this is the cuerpo de paz not the cuerpo de paseo we say.
others say if you´re not in africa, you´re not in the peace corps.
maybe. i dunno. ecuador is pretty posh, as far as developing countries go. some people cal it posh corps. ok. thats enough. i clearly have nothing worthwhile to type; i´ll get some lunch. meanwhile, if you´re interested, chew on this bit of anthropology my brother sent me. ..
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2009/01/11/120-taking-a-year-off/
Salinas de Bolivar: they pulled themselves out of poverty. they had a series of international volunteers help them develop several value added industries like chocolate, cheeses, soccer balls, and some other stuff too. awesome
Training: I finished. 3 people didn´t. 1 left of own accord. 1 got kicked out for telling PC about taking some medicines that weren´t mentioned in the application, cause the trainee wasn´t taking them at that time. at least thats how i heard the story, and PC hasn´t clarified it any. the last got kicked out for attitude or something. that´s unfortunate, i didn´t think there were any problems, but whatev. thats how it goes. there is a theory that they plan (and budget) for a certain attrition rate and if the training class is as awesome as ours and few people leave, then there might be motivation on their part to look for problems. just a theory.
anyway, we had a last night together party at a little pizzeria/bar. it was crazy. unbloggably crazy. no one got hurt. (physically at least). nough said.
So here I am in Pimampiru waiting for a truck to take me up in to the mountains. and we are on alert for swine flu, so i shouldn´t be coming back down from the mountains for a while. well, i could come back to Pimampiru, but I probably won´t be able to visit the other PCVs around here. oh well, thats not why i´m here. Cuerpo de Paseo is the pun referencing volunteer experiences primarily based in tourism. this is the cuerpo de paz not the cuerpo de paseo we say.
others say if you´re not in africa, you´re not in the peace corps.
maybe. i dunno. ecuador is pretty posh, as far as developing countries go. some people cal it posh corps. ok. thats enough. i clearly have nothing worthwhile to type; i´ll get some lunch. meanwhile, if you´re interested, chew on this bit of anthropology my brother sent me. ..
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2009/01/11/120-taking-a-year-off/
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Almost done with training Part 2
So Puerto Quito was fun. Played EcuaVolley and that was fun. Its kinda like normal volley ball but there are a few differences. You can spike on a serve. You can play off the net. and officially it is 3 person teams, but we had too many folks. The net is higher too.
Also we had a trainees vs. trainers futbol game, and we won. But I should keep this on topic and educational. . .
So after Puerto Quito we broke up in to groups based on region: sierra, costa, y oriente. went to Riobamba. We stayed up on a hill nearby, like a suburb, at a place called . . . Pucará Tambo which means something in Kichwa. Pucará means either community or fort, I´m not sure. It is used to refer to communities which are located on the remains of forts. The forts were used by the Cayambí to fight off the Incas for several decades. All of them I have seen are located on hilltops and consist of 3 or more concentric rings of walls/rubble. Tambo means rest, so Pucará Tambo was a restored fort turned hostel. It was pretty nice. And we got something akin to a continental breakfast, which was awesome.
The first night there a local guide (and the counterpart of one of the trainees to be stationed there) showed us the town. Its been awhile and I forgot most of the details but he told us that through community organizing, they kind of run their own show. It is a primarily indigenous community, so they don´t have to deal with mestizo bureaucracy, they get to make their own. Their fields were all very eroded years ago, so agriculture isn´t flourishing, thus leading to a lot of outmigration, but at least the ones who remain have some political power. And they build that sweet hostel. Now they just need some tourists (aside from Intiraymi the sun festival, when they are presumably booked solid).
On the way back up to the hostel, the guide started telling us about old local legends. Sometime around the late 1800s I think it was, the campesinos had to pay tribute to the whites in the city. It was called the decimo which means 10th. So they should have been giving one tenth of their produce to the city which seems like a reasonable tax to pay to avoid being pillaged by bandits (which presumable the city folk would have fought off. I dunno, ever since I read, and only half understood, an economics article about agrarian empires -something about the cost of conquering/defending peons and the sustainable profit of taxing them versus the less sustainable profit of plundering them- I try to see old school oppression in terms of rational agents) . . .
But anyway, the decimo turned out to mean men on horses coming and taking the best of the harvest, and as much as they damn well pleased. So one day, the white man on horse back is coming up the hill and this dude, the hero of the legend, crosses his path. Hero starts out all humble and offers his harvest and whatnot, but the white man insults him in some additional manner, so the hero takes him down off his high horse, so to speak. This creates a lot of noise, and a crowd forms and everyone starts beating this hapless noble. Especially the women, the guide emphasized that the community women beat the crap out of him.
And they take him from community to community beating him and such but they don´t really know what to do with him and they don´t really have a leader. So they are looking for a leader and someone calls out old hero´s name, and everyone agrees, so the hero puts on a robe and takes a walking stick or something and kills the noble and declares war on the oppressors.
So the city folk don´t dare come up into the mountains for a while, cause they know what they have coming. Hero took that noble´s head and sent it back to town to get the message across. The city folk get an army from Quito or something to get their oppression going again, but the mountain communities see it coming and they ambush what was supposed to be a surprise attack. About that time we had arrived back at the hostel for dinner, so I don´t really know how the story ended. Maybe the communities retained their independence. Maybe they lost it and only recently gained it back. I dunno. I also don´t know exactly why they lost all their fertile volcanic topsoil, but they did.
______________
So we spend the next days checking out organic gardens in the area. There was a two year project with over $100k and several specialists who came and introduced a bunch of organic techniques and crops, so they showed us a community where damn near everyone had an organic plot and most were flourishing. I asked the people, and they said that now that they had the experience of working their family plots, they had plans to expand and market. This in turn would create jobs and keep community members in the communities, as opposed to migrating to the city for work. so thats nice. The head of the project said he would e-mail me the methods, results, and technical information they used. he has yet to reply, but i am optimistic.
He also showed us an interesting plot from a 7 year study that had recently ended. Basically, the cattle in that area produce about 2-3 liters of milk per day. That is abyssmal. At my site they produce 5-7, and at my training host family 20-30. My training host family has factory feed and money for chemicals for their pastures. Anyway, so for this study they took a plot of land and planted trees, pretty well spaced out, like 5-10m between each. Some trees were native, others were from other parts of the Andes. All could be used for firewood or lumber or forage, some even had medicinal value. Quichual, Yaguar, and Polilepus. I´ve italicized those names as if I know that they are scientific, but actually I don´t. Except for polilepus, I´m not even sure those are real tree species, but they sound right. Anyway, point is that the cows now produce 5-7 liters per day, and they produce for longer periods. But, you can only stock half the animals. But, you don´t have to buy additional feed for them, so all in all, it is a winner. And it holds the soil better, and the trees are capturing carbon and helping along the water cycle, its really just a pretty picture. I have yet to find the paper that resulting from the study, but really an anecdote may be more powerful when trying to convince the people at my site to plant some trees, or let me plant them.
We also petted a baby llama and reached 5000m above sea level on Mount Chimborazo, the summit of which is the point on the surface of the earth closest to the sun, which makes it the tallest mountain on earth in a way, but only because the equator bulges. Anyway, these aspects of the trip were less educational. Well, I did learn first hand that snow indeed has a high albido, and that combined with the thin atmosphere associated with high altitude, I could indeed get burned beneath the rim of my hat. In fact the bottom of my nose was burnt. So I should have worn sun screen. . .
Uhh. . . We then went to a place called Salinas. Salinas is a really nice resort city on the beach. But the Salinas that we went to is not that one. It is a town built around a salt mine. Back in the 70s a Catholic priest came from Italy. He helped the people organize. Instead of violently taking the land from the hacendado, the rich guy who took half of all profits from the salt mine, they bought the land from him. He was only too happy to sell because the violent means of land redistribution was all the vogue at the time. ah. I gotta run. we are on "StandFast" starting in like half an hour. That means semi-emergency precautions for all PC trainees and volunteers due to the elections taking place Sunday. I´ll type more about Salinas later, it´s process from the poorest town in the Province of Bolivar to its current economic diversification and relative prosperity (only 5% out migration), is quite interesting.
You can read all about it shortly, if the pig flu doesn´t kill you first.
Also we had a trainees vs. trainers futbol game, and we won. But I should keep this on topic and educational. . .
So after Puerto Quito we broke up in to groups based on region: sierra, costa, y oriente. went to Riobamba. We stayed up on a hill nearby, like a suburb, at a place called . . . Pucará Tambo which means something in Kichwa. Pucará means either community or fort, I´m not sure. It is used to refer to communities which are located on the remains of forts. The forts were used by the Cayambí to fight off the Incas for several decades. All of them I have seen are located on hilltops and consist of 3 or more concentric rings of walls/rubble. Tambo means rest, so Pucará Tambo was a restored fort turned hostel. It was pretty nice. And we got something akin to a continental breakfast, which was awesome.
The first night there a local guide (and the counterpart of one of the trainees to be stationed there) showed us the town. Its been awhile and I forgot most of the details but he told us that through community organizing, they kind of run their own show. It is a primarily indigenous community, so they don´t have to deal with mestizo bureaucracy, they get to make their own. Their fields were all very eroded years ago, so agriculture isn´t flourishing, thus leading to a lot of outmigration, but at least the ones who remain have some political power. And they build that sweet hostel. Now they just need some tourists (aside from Intiraymi the sun festival, when they are presumably booked solid).
On the way back up to the hostel, the guide started telling us about old local legends. Sometime around the late 1800s I think it was, the campesinos had to pay tribute to the whites in the city. It was called the decimo which means 10th. So they should have been giving one tenth of their produce to the city which seems like a reasonable tax to pay to avoid being pillaged by bandits (which presumable the city folk would have fought off. I dunno, ever since I read, and only half understood, an economics article about agrarian empires -something about the cost of conquering/defending peons and the sustainable profit of taxing them versus the less sustainable profit of plundering them- I try to see old school oppression in terms of rational agents) . . .
But anyway, the decimo turned out to mean men on horses coming and taking the best of the harvest, and as much as they damn well pleased. So one day, the white man on horse back is coming up the hill and this dude, the hero of the legend, crosses his path. Hero starts out all humble and offers his harvest and whatnot, but the white man insults him in some additional manner, so the hero takes him down off his high horse, so to speak. This creates a lot of noise, and a crowd forms and everyone starts beating this hapless noble. Especially the women, the guide emphasized that the community women beat the crap out of him.
And they take him from community to community beating him and such but they don´t really know what to do with him and they don´t really have a leader. So they are looking for a leader and someone calls out old hero´s name, and everyone agrees, so the hero puts on a robe and takes a walking stick or something and kills the noble and declares war on the oppressors.
So the city folk don´t dare come up into the mountains for a while, cause they know what they have coming. Hero took that noble´s head and sent it back to town to get the message across. The city folk get an army from Quito or something to get their oppression going again, but the mountain communities see it coming and they ambush what was supposed to be a surprise attack. About that time we had arrived back at the hostel for dinner, so I don´t really know how the story ended. Maybe the communities retained their independence. Maybe they lost it and only recently gained it back. I dunno. I also don´t know exactly why they lost all their fertile volcanic topsoil, but they did.
______________
So we spend the next days checking out organic gardens in the area. There was a two year project with over $100k and several specialists who came and introduced a bunch of organic techniques and crops, so they showed us a community where damn near everyone had an organic plot and most were flourishing. I asked the people, and they said that now that they had the experience of working their family plots, they had plans to expand and market. This in turn would create jobs and keep community members in the communities, as opposed to migrating to the city for work. so thats nice. The head of the project said he would e-mail me the methods, results, and technical information they used. he has yet to reply, but i am optimistic.
He also showed us an interesting plot from a 7 year study that had recently ended. Basically, the cattle in that area produce about 2-3 liters of milk per day. That is abyssmal. At my site they produce 5-7, and at my training host family 20-30. My training host family has factory feed and money for chemicals for their pastures. Anyway, so for this study they took a plot of land and planted trees, pretty well spaced out, like 5-10m between each. Some trees were native, others were from other parts of the Andes. All could be used for firewood or lumber or forage, some even had medicinal value. Quichual, Yaguar, and Polilepus. I´ve italicized those names as if I know that they are scientific, but actually I don´t. Except for polilepus, I´m not even sure those are real tree species, but they sound right. Anyway, point is that the cows now produce 5-7 liters per day, and they produce for longer periods. But, you can only stock half the animals. But, you don´t have to buy additional feed for them, so all in all, it is a winner. And it holds the soil better, and the trees are capturing carbon and helping along the water cycle, its really just a pretty picture. I have yet to find the paper that resulting from the study, but really an anecdote may be more powerful when trying to convince the people at my site to plant some trees, or let me plant them.
We also petted a baby llama and reached 5000m above sea level on Mount Chimborazo, the summit of which is the point on the surface of the earth closest to the sun, which makes it the tallest mountain on earth in a way, but only because the equator bulges. Anyway, these aspects of the trip were less educational. Well, I did learn first hand that snow indeed has a high albido, and that combined with the thin atmosphere associated with high altitude, I could indeed get burned beneath the rim of my hat. In fact the bottom of my nose was burnt. So I should have worn sun screen. . .
Uhh. . . We then went to a place called Salinas. Salinas is a really nice resort city on the beach. But the Salinas that we went to is not that one. It is a town built around a salt mine. Back in the 70s a Catholic priest came from Italy. He helped the people organize. Instead of violently taking the land from the hacendado, the rich guy who took half of all profits from the salt mine, they bought the land from him. He was only too happy to sell because the violent means of land redistribution was all the vogue at the time. ah. I gotta run. we are on "StandFast" starting in like half an hour. That means semi-emergency precautions for all PC trainees and volunteers due to the elections taking place Sunday. I´ll type more about Salinas later, it´s process from the poorest town in the Province of Bolivar to its current economic diversification and relative prosperity (only 5% out migration), is quite interesting.
You can read all about it shortly, if the pig flu doesn´t kill you first.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Almost done with Training
Ok so we went on a Technical Training trip last week. First we stayed at a sweet hotel in Puerto Quito which is lower and much more humid than the Sierra. Lots of bug bites. The hotel was managed by a high school somehow. They had a nursery and some small livestock. Also down the road was an integrated farm called La Montaña they grew chocolate trees as their main source of cash but they also had banana, and various wood species. They also had Tilapia pisciculture, vermiculture (worms), and pigs and some other stuff. We toured there, trained there, build some A-frame levels and made some slow forming terraces. Thats basically a small ditch along a contour, with a slight decline to drain and some perrenials planted directly above it to stabilize. As rains erode soil down slope, the plants slow it down and filter out some soil while the water goes down the ditch instead of washing out more soil. Over time the upper wall of the ditch gets higher as the perennials catch more soil. And eventually you have a terrace, and it doesn´t take tons of labor.
Also, we pruned some cacao, you have to keep the branches low enough to reasonably harvest. There was a termite nest on mine, so I machetied it down and fed it to the tilapia. The chickens enjoyed the trail of termites as well. I hate to let tht protein go to waste (which is one reason I ate a grub that one time, but we feed most grubs to turkeys here).
uh i gotta run. i´m not even halfway done with the tech trip, and we´ve done more since then. and we´re done with training next wednesday when we swear-in, and then i´ll go to site where i don´t expect to have access to the web for quite some time. . . . so ¡chao!
Also, we pruned some cacao, you have to keep the branches low enough to reasonably harvest. There was a termite nest on mine, so I machetied it down and fed it to the tilapia. The chickens enjoyed the trail of termites as well. I hate to let tht protein go to waste (which is one reason I ate a grub that one time, but we feed most grubs to turkeys here).
uh i gotta run. i´m not even halfway done with the tech trip, and we´ve done more since then. and we´re done with training next wednesday when we swear-in, and then i´ll go to site where i don´t expect to have access to the web for quite some time. . . . so ¡chao!
Monday, April 6, 2009
El Ultimo Guerrero Cayambi
The rest of the site visit . . . I met Victor, the project director. 26 years old. Ingeniero Agropecuario interested in organic ag. also, we tied Paraguay 1:1. That makes it very difficult to go to the World Cup. Still possible I think, but I don´t really keep up with these things. Otherwise. . . I planted some potatoes with the host family and got my forearms sunburned. The father was impressed with my back and knee resilience, so I offered to show him joint mobility exercises. That will have to wait till I get back in May. . .
So back in Cayambe, we had training Friday, and more Spanish class Saturday morning, which I was not happy about. But fortunately our new facilitator is as cool as our last one, and she had our class in town. While we were walking around chatting spanish, we ran in to the 3000 year old shaman/cacique I mentioned a few posts back. His name is Pablo.
Pablo told us he would take us to his secret pools Sunday morning. He told us if we paid $50 for an old horse or a calf or something he would sacrifice it to the condors which would then fly down and consume it while we watched/took pictures. Cool, but we don´t really have that kind of money.
Anyway, so the next day me and two of the facilitators take the bus to the middle of the world monument near Cayambe (there seem to be many such monuments along the equator), where we met Pablo. He took us down a path and showed us where he would sacrifice livestock if we had it. The condors need room to take off, which is more difficult on a full belly. He pointed out a condor flying above the mountain as well. ´These are the last flights of the condor we are witnessing.¨he said. He´s probably right I guess. There are some 200 condors in Ecuador, he knows of 6 in this area.
So we checked out a little cave and then he took us down to the pools. The water comes from springs which filter through poumice stone. or some sort of stone which came from volcanic eruptions. it´s white and they call it cascajo and it is used as a soil amendment.
so the water comes out tasting fresh and he said in the morning it is carbonated. Pablo claims to be a geologist and I am inclined to believe him. He told us to get under a water fall, which would clean us and strengthen our lungs. Felt good enough. Then we got in this pool that he said his granpa constructed. The algae is a natural soap, he said. He also said the water would be good for us, but one of the facilitators had a slight allergic reaction. ´That´s not allergies, that´s your body rejecting all the synthetic things you eat and wear.´ ok.
so he´s got this scar on his back which he pointed out to me and said it´s from a spear. From the last indigenous war back when he was 18. Why did you fight? I ask. *shrug*
but on the bright side, he says he has worked on management plans for reserves before. Those of most of the indigenous reserves in Ecuador he says. Awesome, so I put him in contact with my counterpart Carlos, and we will see how that goes.
El Ultimo Guerrero Cayambi is his e-mail signature, by the way. It means the last Cayambi warrior.
Not sure if writing an entire blog entry on this dude is appropriate. Well, its on the guy and his pools. and the progress of the management plan. anyway, i thought it was interesting. I´ll probably take some other trainees back to those pools this week.
So back in Cayambe, we had training Friday, and more Spanish class Saturday morning, which I was not happy about. But fortunately our new facilitator is as cool as our last one, and she had our class in town. While we were walking around chatting spanish, we ran in to the 3000 year old shaman/cacique I mentioned a few posts back. His name is Pablo.
Pablo told us he would take us to his secret pools Sunday morning. He told us if we paid $50 for an old horse or a calf or something he would sacrifice it to the condors which would then fly down and consume it while we watched/took pictures. Cool, but we don´t really have that kind of money.
Anyway, so the next day me and two of the facilitators take the bus to the middle of the world monument near Cayambe (there seem to be many such monuments along the equator), where we met Pablo. He took us down a path and showed us where he would sacrifice livestock if we had it. The condors need room to take off, which is more difficult on a full belly. He pointed out a condor flying above the mountain as well. ´These are the last flights of the condor we are witnessing.¨he said. He´s probably right I guess. There are some 200 condors in Ecuador, he knows of 6 in this area.
So we checked out a little cave and then he took us down to the pools. The water comes from springs which filter through poumice stone. or some sort of stone which came from volcanic eruptions. it´s white and they call it cascajo and it is used as a soil amendment.
so the water comes out tasting fresh and he said in the morning it is carbonated. Pablo claims to be a geologist and I am inclined to believe him. He told us to get under a water fall, which would clean us and strengthen our lungs. Felt good enough. Then we got in this pool that he said his granpa constructed. The algae is a natural soap, he said. He also said the water would be good for us, but one of the facilitators had a slight allergic reaction. ´That´s not allergies, that´s your body rejecting all the synthetic things you eat and wear.´ ok.
so he´s got this scar on his back which he pointed out to me and said it´s from a spear. From the last indigenous war back when he was 18. Why did you fight? I ask. *shrug*
but on the bright side, he says he has worked on management plans for reserves before. Those of most of the indigenous reserves in Ecuador he says. Awesome, so I put him in contact with my counterpart Carlos, and we will see how that goes.
El Ultimo Guerrero Cayambi is his e-mail signature, by the way. It means the last Cayambi warrior.
Not sure if writing an entire blog entry on this dude is appropriate. Well, its on the guy and his pools. and the progress of the management plan. anyway, i thought it was interesting. I´ll probably take some other trainees back to those pools this week.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Site Visit
Well, I was going to put off blogging another day or so, but my mom tells me ëveryone is excited about your blog¨ those dots over the e in everyone would be quotation marks if this keyboard was in the US.
So, last Sunday I hopped on a bus and headed to my site. When I got to Pimampiru, I met two brothers, sons of the family I will be staying with, their mother, and my counterpart, Carlos. Well, not my official on paper counterpart, but I´ll get to that. So they showed me the camionetta, thats a truck which people ride as if it were a double decker bus. we had some lunch (chicken foot soup, with real chicken feet, and some other not as exciting stuff), and then we hopped on the truck and headed out with just under a dozen other folks.
The truck belongs to one of the brothers, Juan Carlos. The other brother, Hugo, lives in Quito. He works, but I forgot in what, and, along with Carlos my pseudo-counterpart, and one other guy, runs a foundation which I will be working with. The family I am staying with has three other grown children, all of whom work in Quito. Job prospects are slim at my site.
The truck blew a gasket on the way. I don´t actually know what that means, or if that describes accurately what happened, but I heard a pop. and it wasn´t the tire. So I hope out to stretch my legs, and another guy hops out with me. He pulls me aside and tells me he wants to talk to me about something. Fortunately Carlos comes too, because I can´t really understand what this old dude is saying. But Carlos translates old campo person spanish to young Quito person spanish (Carlos lives in Quito and is youngish):
This old guy says that there are a lot of ancient indigenous burial sites around here, and a lot of them have gold. Carlos confirms this, some one found a big gold scepter a while back, and they are always uncovering burial pots with bones in the fetal position within. This old guy says there is definitely a stash on his land, because he has seen a ghost of a lady wearing a golden dress. So he invites me to come visit him and maybe bring a shovel. Carlos says his neighbor must have a nice dress.
So they fix whatever it was that was wrong with the truck, temporarily at least, and aside from the muddy hill we had to hop out for, the rest of the ride was uneventful. the scenery was very nice though. Steep hills, rivers, tropical cloud forest vegetation. and empty pisciculture pools. more about that later.
When we arrive, I meet the father. Nice guy. Volunteer park ranger. We chat for awhile about all the things that need to be done around here. Then we watch the game. Ecuador 1, Brazil 1. Damn refs didn´t call a foul that would have lead to a penalty kick that would have won the game for us.
That night, Carlos and Don Chavez (the father) take me out to explore the neighborhood. This is a barrio of 70 people, 21 families. There is the school, the playground, the teacher´s house, the church, the community house where meetings are held, and the old school where the dance during parties. It has a leaky roof. They would like to add a second story as a tourist lodge. They have wood for this.
The next day, Carlos and I go down to the main community, a couple of miles, or 25 minutes driving. We check out the Colegio, a technical highschool specializing in pisciculture. Their pools are empty. The rector tells us that one of the neighbor´s workmen dumped rocks off a cliff on to the entry way for the water for the trout pools. That was about two months ago. I want to go down with a hoe and a pole and clear it out. By hand I figure it might take 6 weeks. I´d figure less, but they figure more, so I average. Anyway, the rector doesn´t want that he wants to get a machine to make a new entry way. This would require dynamite. and a machine. When is it coming? when it comes. well if you give me a hoe and a pole and 6 weeks. . . no. also, their water tank leaks. I figure it works like a toilet and I could probably fix it with my leatherman. or maybe some wire and epoxy. but no, he´ll have his maintenance man fix it.
When we leave, Carlos tells me that the rector told him he´d fix the tank last time they spoke, a month ago. He explains that part of the machismo culture is not taking other people´s work from them. So I´m glad I have Carlos to help me with these things. Also, the rector seems pretty legit. He´s worked their for some 18 years. He´s got some serious credentials in pisciculture. And he didn´t just have bad news: his students have to complete some 120 hours of environmental volunteer work per year, so thats a potential resource for me; and they are getting funds from the Proyecto to start a vivero on their grounds. A vivero is a nursery. I´ll get to the Proyecto in a bit. But the soil is bad, and there are security issues that need to be shored up before the nursery gets going.
From there we go to the Proyecto office. This thing is funded by the European Union. Carlos scored this for the community, like he got a volunteer from Peace Corps (me). It amounts to something like $150k going to a new truck, several computers, staff for one year, the nursery, and jarring and jellymaking equipment. The nursery grows fruit and reforestation trees. The trees are given to the local farmers. Their produce, at least some of it, according to market studies and processing capability, is bought by the microempresas, that´s the small enterprises firm, processed, and sold locally and abroad. During the first year, starting now, agricultural and environmental extension agents will go to the various neighborhoods of the community and teach best practices, which the farmers may accept or reject, since it is their land afterall. So this seems like a good thing.
But no one is at the Proyecto office except the secretary, so I don´t find any of that out till the meeting the next day. Anyway, Carlos and I hike the shortcut back to the house. He points out the Eucalyptus trees and the abandoned greenhouses, plastic tatters on wooden frames, which are the result of USAID efforts over a decade ago. Abandoned greenhouses are clearly worthless, the Eucalyptus trees are generally considered to have negative environmental impacts: the suck up a lot of water, and their leaves contain resins which are harmful to other plant species, thus stifling biodiversity. So not all development efforts work out. Many don´t. Will mine? They say there is a town in Ecuador with a street named after a PC volunteer. Maybe they´ll name a street after me. We are hiking up this shortcut, taking about an hour, because the road is so bad. We talk about bettering and extending the road. But wait a minute, the neighborhood where my site is is supposed to have the most intact forest. It is also the furthest from the main community. If this correlation is causal, then wouldn´t bettering the road lead to more deforestation? if they can get their products to market easier, won´t they produce more? log more? clear more pasture? leave more trash from the city lying on the path for us to pick up? normally I don´t pick up trash on the ground, but since carlos is doing it i might as well follow suit. also, there really isn´t much so picking up a little leaves it fairly pristine. carlos assures me that bettering the road will not lead to more deforestation.
when we get back we eat lunch. then we go check out the school. the teacher is struggling with her computer. we offer to help. (we is still carlos and i) somehow 50gb have been used and we can´t figure on what. but thats not the problem, the printer is, so we mess with that for a while. the teacher would really like computer classes for her and her 8 students. also english classes. also a fence around the school grounds to keep out wandering livestock. i can do these things. she is also young and has all of her teeth. but the guy i later see her with has probably noticed these things before me. anyway, the fence can be a cerca viva, that means live fence, and we can expand upon the garden, and i can teach some environmental ed to the kids. so i have things to do in the neighborhood that don´t require the hour hike to the community center.
next we (C & I) take another hike up to a get a vista of the reserve. My site is located near the Cayambe Cocas national park, one of the largest in Ecuador. Between that and my site is a private reserve which the foundation which Carlos, Hugo, and the other guy run, the Fundación Semilla Ambiental has been working with the owner of the private reserve to get government support. There are three options: SocioBosques, Servidumbre Ecologica, and Bosque Protector.
SocioBosques is an Ecuadorian government thing which pays $10-20 per hectare of preserved forest, focusing on areas which have enthological importance (indigenous presence), watersheds, and areas bordering national parks. This private reserve, called Sabia Esperanza, which means Wise Hope, has no living indigenous peoples, but it does have at least 3 distinct ecosystems (páramo, cloud forest, and humid forest), and it does border the Cayambe Cocas. They are communicating with officials about the viability of getting in this program.
Servidumbre Ecologica is basically an agreement between neighbors to mutually protect their lands. The owner of the private reserve is certainly down for this, but the neighbors would probably need some incentive. Sociobosques could be an incentive. Ecotourism could be another. Anyway, to do this right, you have to write down all the ways the land can and cannot be used, and that pretty much requires a management plan. . .
Bosque Protector absolutely requires a management plan. It means that if the owner doesn´t have the resources to preserve the land (prevent logging, poaching, fires, etc), the gov will step in and help out. thats what Bosque Protector means, a management plan means a group of biologists specialized in birds, plants, animals, fungus, and whatnot spend a couple of weeks studying the site and a couple of more weeks analyzing the data and it costs several thousand dollars. I say it´d be nice to have that done by the time I leave, Carlos says he plans on getting that underway in 6 months at most. so i guess i´ll email all my biologist friends. . .
the proposed funds for this would be coming from ecotourism. but the economy is down. i play devil´s advocate with Carlos for a bit. We are looking out over the reserve. Not many tourists come this far out in the mountains. there are plenty of other more popular tourist destinations. and seriously, the economy is down.
maybe we can get some local university students to help us with a base for the management plan. then we can work from there.
we return to the house. we have scheduled a neighborhood meeting for 6pm. to introduce me to the community. we get to the community house at 6:30. at 7 enough people are there to start. Carlos does most of the talking. For my part, I point out that there are plenty of volunteer opportunities in the US, I chose to go abroad because I like to travel, to get to know knew places and knew people. I couldn´t ask for a better site than ecuador, and I really like this community. I don´t know much about agriculture, but I have resources from which to learn.
Then we do a priority needs assessment with the community members at the meeting. This is one of 4 PACA tools which the PC has taught us to utilize. PACA stands for Participatory Analysis for Community Action. We split into two groups, guys and gals. PACA does this for all the tools because many development efforts in the past focused only on guys, then only on gals, and really one needs to focus on both at the same time, while recognizing that they are different.
I´m with the ladies and Carlos is with the men. This is not how we planned it. I have been told that jealousies arouse easily in these parts, but it just worked out this way. So the ladies´priorities are: fix the road. build a bridge over the quebrada so we can travel when it rains. and work at the school (english, computers, and fence, like i mentioned). also, and this was an afterthought so it didn´t really get ranked in the priorities, but they all agreed it was important: train and get seeds for them to have integrated farms so they can feed their children well.
One lady got really frustrated when she realized that I couldn´t necessarily accomplish all of these things. specifically the road and the bridge. they are already in the process with the gov. she said, ¨so should we stop with the government, if you are going to provide these things?¨nononono. please don´t do that. i´ve never built a road before, or a bridge, i don´t really have the power to do such things, and my organization isn´t likely to get them done for me either. but hey, since i don´t really have a 9-5, or a farm or family to look after, i´ll go to the municipal office and nag them about the road sometimes, ok. . . .ok.
they guys want agricultural technical assistance, dairy technical assistance, and more markets for their products. well, the Proyecto covers that, and i´ll be working with the Proyecto, so I think things will go alright. also, i got an old PCV (claims to have been the first organic veggie farmer in ohio) to commit to giving a charla, thats like a seminar, on organic ag. also, i got a list of their tomate de arbol pests, and I got an ag manual with organic pest remedies. also, Carlos mentioned a NGO in quito which helps small farmers find markets. so yea. alright.
at the meeting I met the president of the neighborhood, nice guy. as well as the standing president (covering until the elections april 26), an older gentleman who was supposed to be my counterpart but that was before he got this position. anyway, he agreed to help Carlos and I by getting copies of some maps of the area showing land titles, watersheds, maybe even land use. . .
so that was my first full day at site. next day we participated in a minga, that a communal work party if you haven´t been keeping up. started at the old school house, moving the lumber inside so it would get rained on less. and then going down the road chopping the back the vegetation with machetes and hoeing clear the ditch on the side. carlos said i looked like i was in star wars wielding that machete. i had slightly different technique.
one of the guys tried to sell me some of his land. it is on about a 65 degree slope. no joke. i said if i was ever looking to jump off something, i might buy it from him. $10k. yea right. here, i got it in my pocket. oh no i don´t, must have fallen out.
then the electioneering trucks come by. they give us bread, cola, candy, and booze. that booze tastes terrible. puntas they call it. then lunch break. i get two plates. then Carlos yells over from around the bend that it is lunch time, so i get another plate. then we go back to the house, and i get another plate. we were gonna go to a meeting in another neighborhood, but we´d be late, and i´m full and lazy. so we hang around the house helping Don Chavez fix his pig pen. then we go to the main community for a meeting about the Proyecto same as the meeting we skipped, just a different place, so we didn´t miss anything.
i find out about the Proyecto, which I already typed about. afterwards, we ride home in the back of the truck. i get some more puntas, and an offer to get a personal guide to Lago Puruantag when I return in may, because this younger farmer thinks i´m a nice guy. the one with the booze tells me to take him back to the US, where the fields are flat. but this place is beautiful and you are close to nature. nature is nice, but it doesn´t pay the bills, take me to the US. He doesn´t like it here, says the younger farmer, because he is fat and he rolls down the slopes. He is a little bigger than the others. I want a tractor, he says, we don´t have any tractors here, they won´t fit on the slopes. Why don´t you make terraces, I ask. Because we are lazy! and he gives me another drink.
Meanwhile, this other drunk SOB keeps trying to shake my hand. we are both at the very back, tailgating so to speak. he is on the left, i am on the right, so when he offers his right hand, i offer my left, because my right hand is the only thing between me and a busted back full of rocks. and he´s like, no, like a man, like a man, with the right. so i wrap my arm around a bar and do what i can to shake his hand. ok, that was cool the first time, he demands i shake his hand about a dozen time in the 20 minute ride, and when he gets dropped off, he shakes my hand again, and he about got his ass dragged down the road when the truck pulled off cause he wasn´t letting go and i sure as hell wasn´t about to jump out the back. anyway, he did eventually let go.
well, if you´ve read this far, then you deserve the pointless story presented above. meanwhile, the guy who runs this internet place wants to close, so i gotta head out. the rest of the site visit went well. . . . other people have much crappier sites. some people on the beach have better ones. i am very happy with mine and the work i have ahead of me. hasta la vista
So, last Sunday I hopped on a bus and headed to my site. When I got to Pimampiru, I met two brothers, sons of the family I will be staying with, their mother, and my counterpart, Carlos. Well, not my official on paper counterpart, but I´ll get to that. So they showed me the camionetta, thats a truck which people ride as if it were a double decker bus. we had some lunch (chicken foot soup, with real chicken feet, and some other not as exciting stuff), and then we hopped on the truck and headed out with just under a dozen other folks.
The truck belongs to one of the brothers, Juan Carlos. The other brother, Hugo, lives in Quito. He works, but I forgot in what, and, along with Carlos my pseudo-counterpart, and one other guy, runs a foundation which I will be working with. The family I am staying with has three other grown children, all of whom work in Quito. Job prospects are slim at my site.
The truck blew a gasket on the way. I don´t actually know what that means, or if that describes accurately what happened, but I heard a pop. and it wasn´t the tire. So I hope out to stretch my legs, and another guy hops out with me. He pulls me aside and tells me he wants to talk to me about something. Fortunately Carlos comes too, because I can´t really understand what this old dude is saying. But Carlos translates old campo person spanish to young Quito person spanish (Carlos lives in Quito and is youngish):
This old guy says that there are a lot of ancient indigenous burial sites around here, and a lot of them have gold. Carlos confirms this, some one found a big gold scepter a while back, and they are always uncovering burial pots with bones in the fetal position within. This old guy says there is definitely a stash on his land, because he has seen a ghost of a lady wearing a golden dress. So he invites me to come visit him and maybe bring a shovel. Carlos says his neighbor must have a nice dress.
So they fix whatever it was that was wrong with the truck, temporarily at least, and aside from the muddy hill we had to hop out for, the rest of the ride was uneventful. the scenery was very nice though. Steep hills, rivers, tropical cloud forest vegetation. and empty pisciculture pools. more about that later.
When we arrive, I meet the father. Nice guy. Volunteer park ranger. We chat for awhile about all the things that need to be done around here. Then we watch the game. Ecuador 1, Brazil 1. Damn refs didn´t call a foul that would have lead to a penalty kick that would have won the game for us.
That night, Carlos and Don Chavez (the father) take me out to explore the neighborhood. This is a barrio of 70 people, 21 families. There is the school, the playground, the teacher´s house, the church, the community house where meetings are held, and the old school where the dance during parties. It has a leaky roof. They would like to add a second story as a tourist lodge. They have wood for this.
The next day, Carlos and I go down to the main community, a couple of miles, or 25 minutes driving. We check out the Colegio, a technical highschool specializing in pisciculture. Their pools are empty. The rector tells us that one of the neighbor´s workmen dumped rocks off a cliff on to the entry way for the water for the trout pools. That was about two months ago. I want to go down with a hoe and a pole and clear it out. By hand I figure it might take 6 weeks. I´d figure less, but they figure more, so I average. Anyway, the rector doesn´t want that he wants to get a machine to make a new entry way. This would require dynamite. and a machine. When is it coming? when it comes. well if you give me a hoe and a pole and 6 weeks. . . no. also, their water tank leaks. I figure it works like a toilet and I could probably fix it with my leatherman. or maybe some wire and epoxy. but no, he´ll have his maintenance man fix it.
When we leave, Carlos tells me that the rector told him he´d fix the tank last time they spoke, a month ago. He explains that part of the machismo culture is not taking other people´s work from them. So I´m glad I have Carlos to help me with these things. Also, the rector seems pretty legit. He´s worked their for some 18 years. He´s got some serious credentials in pisciculture. And he didn´t just have bad news: his students have to complete some 120 hours of environmental volunteer work per year, so thats a potential resource for me; and they are getting funds from the Proyecto to start a vivero on their grounds. A vivero is a nursery. I´ll get to the Proyecto in a bit. But the soil is bad, and there are security issues that need to be shored up before the nursery gets going.
From there we go to the Proyecto office. This thing is funded by the European Union. Carlos scored this for the community, like he got a volunteer from Peace Corps (me). It amounts to something like $150k going to a new truck, several computers, staff for one year, the nursery, and jarring and jellymaking equipment. The nursery grows fruit and reforestation trees. The trees are given to the local farmers. Their produce, at least some of it, according to market studies and processing capability, is bought by the microempresas, that´s the small enterprises firm, processed, and sold locally and abroad. During the first year, starting now, agricultural and environmental extension agents will go to the various neighborhoods of the community and teach best practices, which the farmers may accept or reject, since it is their land afterall. So this seems like a good thing.
But no one is at the Proyecto office except the secretary, so I don´t find any of that out till the meeting the next day. Anyway, Carlos and I hike the shortcut back to the house. He points out the Eucalyptus trees and the abandoned greenhouses, plastic tatters on wooden frames, which are the result of USAID efforts over a decade ago. Abandoned greenhouses are clearly worthless, the Eucalyptus trees are generally considered to have negative environmental impacts: the suck up a lot of water, and their leaves contain resins which are harmful to other plant species, thus stifling biodiversity. So not all development efforts work out. Many don´t. Will mine? They say there is a town in Ecuador with a street named after a PC volunteer. Maybe they´ll name a street after me. We are hiking up this shortcut, taking about an hour, because the road is so bad. We talk about bettering and extending the road. But wait a minute, the neighborhood where my site is is supposed to have the most intact forest. It is also the furthest from the main community. If this correlation is causal, then wouldn´t bettering the road lead to more deforestation? if they can get their products to market easier, won´t they produce more? log more? clear more pasture? leave more trash from the city lying on the path for us to pick up? normally I don´t pick up trash on the ground, but since carlos is doing it i might as well follow suit. also, there really isn´t much so picking up a little leaves it fairly pristine. carlos assures me that bettering the road will not lead to more deforestation.
when we get back we eat lunch. then we go check out the school. the teacher is struggling with her computer. we offer to help. (we is still carlos and i) somehow 50gb have been used and we can´t figure on what. but thats not the problem, the printer is, so we mess with that for a while. the teacher would really like computer classes for her and her 8 students. also english classes. also a fence around the school grounds to keep out wandering livestock. i can do these things. she is also young and has all of her teeth. but the guy i later see her with has probably noticed these things before me. anyway, the fence can be a cerca viva, that means live fence, and we can expand upon the garden, and i can teach some environmental ed to the kids. so i have things to do in the neighborhood that don´t require the hour hike to the community center.
next we (C & I) take another hike up to a get a vista of the reserve. My site is located near the Cayambe Cocas national park, one of the largest in Ecuador. Between that and my site is a private reserve which the foundation which Carlos, Hugo, and the other guy run, the Fundación Semilla Ambiental has been working with the owner of the private reserve to get government support. There are three options: SocioBosques, Servidumbre Ecologica, and Bosque Protector.
SocioBosques is an Ecuadorian government thing which pays $10-20 per hectare of preserved forest, focusing on areas which have enthological importance (indigenous presence), watersheds, and areas bordering national parks. This private reserve, called Sabia Esperanza, which means Wise Hope, has no living indigenous peoples, but it does have at least 3 distinct ecosystems (páramo, cloud forest, and humid forest), and it does border the Cayambe Cocas. They are communicating with officials about the viability of getting in this program.
Servidumbre Ecologica is basically an agreement between neighbors to mutually protect their lands. The owner of the private reserve is certainly down for this, but the neighbors would probably need some incentive. Sociobosques could be an incentive. Ecotourism could be another. Anyway, to do this right, you have to write down all the ways the land can and cannot be used, and that pretty much requires a management plan. . .
Bosque Protector absolutely requires a management plan. It means that if the owner doesn´t have the resources to preserve the land (prevent logging, poaching, fires, etc), the gov will step in and help out. thats what Bosque Protector means, a management plan means a group of biologists specialized in birds, plants, animals, fungus, and whatnot spend a couple of weeks studying the site and a couple of more weeks analyzing the data and it costs several thousand dollars. I say it´d be nice to have that done by the time I leave, Carlos says he plans on getting that underway in 6 months at most. so i guess i´ll email all my biologist friends. . .
the proposed funds for this would be coming from ecotourism. but the economy is down. i play devil´s advocate with Carlos for a bit. We are looking out over the reserve. Not many tourists come this far out in the mountains. there are plenty of other more popular tourist destinations. and seriously, the economy is down.
maybe we can get some local university students to help us with a base for the management plan. then we can work from there.
we return to the house. we have scheduled a neighborhood meeting for 6pm. to introduce me to the community. we get to the community house at 6:30. at 7 enough people are there to start. Carlos does most of the talking. For my part, I point out that there are plenty of volunteer opportunities in the US, I chose to go abroad because I like to travel, to get to know knew places and knew people. I couldn´t ask for a better site than ecuador, and I really like this community. I don´t know much about agriculture, but I have resources from which to learn.
Then we do a priority needs assessment with the community members at the meeting. This is one of 4 PACA tools which the PC has taught us to utilize. PACA stands for Participatory Analysis for Community Action. We split into two groups, guys and gals. PACA does this for all the tools because many development efforts in the past focused only on guys, then only on gals, and really one needs to focus on both at the same time, while recognizing that they are different.
I´m with the ladies and Carlos is with the men. This is not how we planned it. I have been told that jealousies arouse easily in these parts, but it just worked out this way. So the ladies´priorities are: fix the road. build a bridge over the quebrada so we can travel when it rains. and work at the school (english, computers, and fence, like i mentioned). also, and this was an afterthought so it didn´t really get ranked in the priorities, but they all agreed it was important: train and get seeds for them to have integrated farms so they can feed their children well.
One lady got really frustrated when she realized that I couldn´t necessarily accomplish all of these things. specifically the road and the bridge. they are already in the process with the gov. she said, ¨so should we stop with the government, if you are going to provide these things?¨nononono. please don´t do that. i´ve never built a road before, or a bridge, i don´t really have the power to do such things, and my organization isn´t likely to get them done for me either. but hey, since i don´t really have a 9-5, or a farm or family to look after, i´ll go to the municipal office and nag them about the road sometimes, ok. . . .ok.
they guys want agricultural technical assistance, dairy technical assistance, and more markets for their products. well, the Proyecto covers that, and i´ll be working with the Proyecto, so I think things will go alright. also, i got an old PCV (claims to have been the first organic veggie farmer in ohio) to commit to giving a charla, thats like a seminar, on organic ag. also, i got a list of their tomate de arbol pests, and I got an ag manual with organic pest remedies. also, Carlos mentioned a NGO in quito which helps small farmers find markets. so yea. alright.
at the meeting I met the president of the neighborhood, nice guy. as well as the standing president (covering until the elections april 26), an older gentleman who was supposed to be my counterpart but that was before he got this position. anyway, he agreed to help Carlos and I by getting copies of some maps of the area showing land titles, watersheds, maybe even land use. . .
so that was my first full day at site. next day we participated in a minga, that a communal work party if you haven´t been keeping up. started at the old school house, moving the lumber inside so it would get rained on less. and then going down the road chopping the back the vegetation with machetes and hoeing clear the ditch on the side. carlos said i looked like i was in star wars wielding that machete. i had slightly different technique.
one of the guys tried to sell me some of his land. it is on about a 65 degree slope. no joke. i said if i was ever looking to jump off something, i might buy it from him. $10k. yea right. here, i got it in my pocket. oh no i don´t, must have fallen out.
then the electioneering trucks come by. they give us bread, cola, candy, and booze. that booze tastes terrible. puntas they call it. then lunch break. i get two plates. then Carlos yells over from around the bend that it is lunch time, so i get another plate. then we go back to the house, and i get another plate. we were gonna go to a meeting in another neighborhood, but we´d be late, and i´m full and lazy. so we hang around the house helping Don Chavez fix his pig pen. then we go to the main community for a meeting about the Proyecto same as the meeting we skipped, just a different place, so we didn´t miss anything.
i find out about the Proyecto, which I already typed about. afterwards, we ride home in the back of the truck. i get some more puntas, and an offer to get a personal guide to Lago Puruantag when I return in may, because this younger farmer thinks i´m a nice guy. the one with the booze tells me to take him back to the US, where the fields are flat. but this place is beautiful and you are close to nature. nature is nice, but it doesn´t pay the bills, take me to the US. He doesn´t like it here, says the younger farmer, because he is fat and he rolls down the slopes. He is a little bigger than the others. I want a tractor, he says, we don´t have any tractors here, they won´t fit on the slopes. Why don´t you make terraces, I ask. Because we are lazy! and he gives me another drink.
Meanwhile, this other drunk SOB keeps trying to shake my hand. we are both at the very back, tailgating so to speak. he is on the left, i am on the right, so when he offers his right hand, i offer my left, because my right hand is the only thing between me and a busted back full of rocks. and he´s like, no, like a man, like a man, with the right. so i wrap my arm around a bar and do what i can to shake his hand. ok, that was cool the first time, he demands i shake his hand about a dozen time in the 20 minute ride, and when he gets dropped off, he shakes my hand again, and he about got his ass dragged down the road when the truck pulled off cause he wasn´t letting go and i sure as hell wasn´t about to jump out the back. anyway, he did eventually let go.
well, if you´ve read this far, then you deserve the pointless story presented above. meanwhile, the guy who runs this internet place wants to close, so i gotta head out. the rest of the site visit went well. . . . other people have much crappier sites. some people on the beach have better ones. i am very happy with mine and the work i have ahead of me. hasta la vista
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