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