Reading: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Seeing as I have been in site for a full two months now, I figured I should probably give some time to explain what I have actually been doing for the last two months in Chimbo de Venecia. Pictures included.
My official project from Peace Corps was to work as a liaison between the NGO ACDI/VOCA and the local ag-organization of cacao farmers in the community. However, in typical Peace Corps fashion, ACDI/VOCA has effectively lost all of their funding for the region of Ecuador that I am in and the ag-organization that they had been hoping for me to work with in essentially non-existent. Fortunately, my counterpart/host dad is the closest thing Ecuador could produce to the Energizer Bunny, which has left me with a handful of small projects to occupy my time with these last two months. Yet, I still have to start my CAT tools… :)
The majority of my work has been centered around starting family gardens with four different families in the community. At the moment we have one that we have started with my host family, the family across the street has two separate plots and then two families down the road have each started one. Growing vegetables down here has proved interesting mostly because of vast variety of option that Ecuador has to offer. Though, people here have a very narrow scope of what is including in the vegetable food group and an even smaller one when it comes to ways of preparing and eating veggies (they specialize in rice and plantains)…
But that being said we have cabbage, broccoli (both of which are likely to bolt…), carrots, cilantro, tomatoes, okra, eggplant, watermelon, cantaloupe, a green beans equivalent, bush beans, corn, onions, cucumbers, peppers, peanuts and swiss chard growing successfully in addition to a few tropical things that I’ve never heard of…
The biggest challenge with these gardens, besides trying to convince one of the women that she needs to water her plants every day because of the heat, is the vast amount of nasty bichos that they have down here. Getting most of the plants started was quite the trick, because the ants and grubs kept eating the seeds and seedlings… so the trick is to start everything in seedbeds or cups – just make sure that you don’t have ants in those. My counterpart and I are hoping to get two more gardens started at the school, the Center de Salud and there are a few other families that have been interesting in the project as well. Below in one of the five gardens and there’s more in the facebook photo album.
In addition to the gardening project, I have been helping three families (unsurprisingly the same three that have gardens) with starting up fishponds to raise tilapia. We have at the moment a larger pond (9x12m) at my host family house and two smaller ones with two other families. This has been a bit more frustrating because there seems to be very little regard to proper pond management in terms of the amount of fish the pond can sustain, breeding and separating, oxygen levels, drainage and feeding. But poco y poco we’re working things out. My hope is that I can eventually convince them why it is beneficial to raise the spawn in one of the small ponds and then eventually separate out the males into a larger pond, as they grow bigger and much faster when they’re not busy breeding. But trying to convince any of the men here that it’s okay to take away another male’s right to sex is running yourself into a brick wall. Clearly God created sperm for a reason and so that all things, dogs, fish, roosters and people could reproduce without question.
Aside from those two main projects, I’m still teaching English whenever the director of the school things it’s worthwhile to actually have class and my house has become a nightly homework free-for-all help session. Oh, and I’ve been going to confirmation, as if being confirmed Lutheran wasn’t enough, my host mom figured it would be good for me to accompany my host sister to catholic confirmation. Ironically, the piousness of this country is lost on the fact that people here don’t read much, including the Bible. Thus, I’ve been managing to hold my own to the dismay of Don Gabriel, who likes to make a habit at taking stabs at the protestant reformation in my presence. Kudos to 10+ years of Sunday school.
I’ve also finished the entire Harry Potter series and listened to all of the Beatles discography. I also was a judge of a beauty pagent - Señora Bonita de Chimbo. Boom daddy.
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| Main street, only street, Chimbo de Venecia |
My official project from Peace Corps was to work as a liaison between the NGO ACDI/VOCA and the local ag-organization of cacao farmers in the community. However, in typical Peace Corps fashion, ACDI/VOCA has effectively lost all of their funding for the region of Ecuador that I am in and the ag-organization that they had been hoping for me to work with in essentially non-existent. Fortunately, my counterpart/host dad is the closest thing Ecuador could produce to the Energizer Bunny, which has left me with a handful of small projects to occupy my time with these last two months. Yet, I still have to start my CAT tools… :)
The majority of my work has been centered around starting family gardens with four different families in the community. At the moment we have one that we have started with my host family, the family across the street has two separate plots and then two families down the road have each started one. Growing vegetables down here has proved interesting mostly because of vast variety of option that Ecuador has to offer. Though, people here have a very narrow scope of what is including in the vegetable food group and an even smaller one when it comes to ways of preparing and eating veggies (they specialize in rice and plantains)…
But that being said we have cabbage, broccoli (both of which are likely to bolt…), carrots, cilantro, tomatoes, okra, eggplant, watermelon, cantaloupe, a green beans equivalent, bush beans, corn, onions, cucumbers, peppers, peanuts and swiss chard growing successfully in addition to a few tropical things that I’ve never heard of…
The biggest challenge with these gardens, besides trying to convince one of the women that she needs to water her plants every day because of the heat, is the vast amount of nasty bichos that they have down here. Getting most of the plants started was quite the trick, because the ants and grubs kept eating the seeds and seedlings… so the trick is to start everything in seedbeds or cups – just make sure that you don’t have ants in those. My counterpart and I are hoping to get two more gardens started at the school, the Center de Salud and there are a few other families that have been interesting in the project as well. Below in one of the five gardens and there’s more in the facebook photo album.
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| Family garden |
Aside from those two main projects, I’m still teaching English whenever the director of the school things it’s worthwhile to actually have class and my house has become a nightly homework free-for-all help session. Oh, and I’ve been going to confirmation, as if being confirmed Lutheran wasn’t enough, my host mom figured it would be good for me to accompany my host sister to catholic confirmation. Ironically, the piousness of this country is lost on the fact that people here don’t read much, including the Bible. Thus, I’ve been managing to hold my own to the dismay of Don Gabriel, who likes to make a habit at taking stabs at the protestant reformation in my presence. Kudos to 10+ years of Sunday school.
I’ve also finished the entire Harry Potter series and listened to all of the Beatles discography. I also was a judge of a beauty pagent - Señora Bonita de Chimbo. Boom daddy.
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