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.