Environmental Fair

Yesterday we capped off our three-day environmental fair - Unidos por el Agua, Aguas Zarcas. I have been working with a group of individuals in the town who are very passionate about cleaning up their community and spreading environmental education. The fair was a big success. Friday we had an a little inauguration, mainly for the school students, including games, songs, dance groups, a clown, local artists exhibiting their crafts made from recycled goods, classes on water conservation, trees and reforestation. Saturday was the big work day - we planned to plant trees and clean up the rivers of all the trash people throw in them. Sadly, the local Municipality didn't give us the truck we needed to haul all the trash away, so we weren't able to do the trash pick up. Hopefully that will happen within a month or two. Regardless, we had over 60 participants come to plant trees. In total we planted well over 300 trees around two streams that had been deforested and also a spring that was used to supply a couple communities with water. Sunday we had a bike rally to demonstrate to the entire town our concern for the environment and our commitment to cleaning up the town. Afterwards we had Bingo to raise funds for the school. It was a great activity, and I think it got a lot of people interested in cleaning up their town/being more environmentally responsible. I took a bunch of pictures, but forgot my camera Sunday, sorry.

Friday: Events for the kids, recycled art/furniture, typical dances, tree class.

Saturday: Tree planting in two different creek.

Yes, I'm still here

By now I'm sure a lot of you have forgotten about this blog; you assume I'm probably just passing time on some tropical beach, sipping on a coconut and talking to the monkeys. Well, think again.

I'm still here. Still in my community. Still with a lot of frustrations. But.

But, I have some work. In my community I've gotten one family started with worm composting of their kitchen scraps/garden refuse. I have another family with a small garden and another will a simple greenhouse for producing vegetables.

What I'm really excited about, though, is work outside of my community. As of late I have been working with a group of people in Aguas Zarcas, which is my nearest large town. In fact, my community (Garabito) is part of Aguas Zarcas. Think of Garabito as a borough of Aguas Zarcas. Anyway, this group of people includes the director of the large school in Aguas Zarcas, a couple shop owners, my host father, and a couple other prominent figures in the area. We are preparing an environmental awareness weekend the 30th of September through the 2nd. What it looks like is Friday there will be a small inauguration and activities/cultural plays/environmental charlas Friday. Saturday we will be cleaning up streams and rivers, and planting trees. Sunday we will have a bike rally to promote clean transportation and spread the word about environmental awareness. It has the potential to be really, really big. We are inviting all of the news channels and already have lots of donations for big corporations/businesses all around Costa Rica.

An offshoot project of this is to eventually start a recycling center in Aguas Zarcas. Recycling is a relatively "new" concept here and we are pushing it in the schools. The problem is that there are very few recycling centers in the area and so even if a family were to separate their trash nobody would pick it up/it wouldn't be taken anywhere. We hope to fix that.

After this project I am planning to head South to give gardening classes in another volunteer's site. That's basically it for now as far as work is concerned.

Rio Celeste

This past weekend I went up North for a meeting of all the volunteers in my zone. It was nice to get to meet other volunteers/do a little networking. I may have found some other communities who are interested in what I can offer. Also, we had a nice excursion to Rio Celeste. This river has been on my list of places to go in Costa Rica and it did not let me down. The area is surrounded by volcanoes, and the river basically runs down the volcano and through the surrounding areas. The interesting part is that chemicals from the volcano, or whatever is being spewed out from deep in the earth, have given the water an unnaturally blue tint. It looks very fake, like something you might see at Disneyworld or a dish detergent. The park is made up of trails which follow the river and take you to different "attractions". There is the waterfall, natural hot springs, the lake, heat vents etc. Some parts you can swim in and also enjoy a warm thermal spring. Other parts are either too hot or have too high a concentration of the chemicals to go swimming in. Regardless, you leave the water smelling of hard boiled eggs.

On the work side of things I may have found some volunteers to work with, as I mentioned earlier. I continue giving English classes, and this Sunday we will be working on the tree nursery (fingers crossed).

Here are a few pictures from the excursion.

4th of July and What Not

I just got back from a 4th of July celebration/work in another volunteer's site. I left the 2nd for Playa Uvita - a beach park located close to Playa Dominical, on the Pacific side of the country. A group of about 12 volunteers and myself stayed there to celebrate independence day with sun, surf, and delicious food. The beach was amazing - warm blue water backed by palms and tropical forest. After spending a couple nights there I went back inland a couple hours away to a volunteer's site to give classes on biointensive gardening/making compost/ worm composting. We were both a little nervous that nobody would show, but in the end we had 12 in attendance. The classes went really well. They all seemed to be excited about the topic and had lots of questions. Sadly, I forgot my camera so I can't show you pictures from the beach nor the class.

However, I do have pictures from my garden. This time upon returning I found my garden in great shape. What a relief!

A little about my garden:

I'm practicing biointensive gardening. This is what we were taught in Paraguay, and the more I do it and see the outcomes the more I believe that it is the best for small farm/large garden production. The basic principle behind biointensive gardening is getting the most out of the space you have through intensive practices. There are 8 basic principles, but I usually teach the first four since they are most applicable to the people I work with. They are:

1. Deep soil preparation using the double dig technique. If done properly you are left with at least two feet of fertile, well cultivated soil. This is probably the most important technique though the most labor intensive

2. Constantly creating and applying abundant amounts of compost

3. Close-spaced planting hexagonally instead of in rows. This helps you maximize your spacing and creating a green mulch. This is when the plants are just close enough so that their leaves shade out any competitors.

4. Companion planting. You all have heard me talk about this. Growing certain plants together can boost the growth and/or flavor of both plants, as well as best utilize space.

Anyway, here are some garden pictures

Tomatoes grown with Asian greens.

Beans and squash.

Asian Greens.

Toucan in the backyard.

Moving on.

No, the title does not suggest that I am leaving. It merely represents my mental state this past week or two.

So, do you remember in my last blog how I talked about the "big" meeting with all the people who voiced an interest in garden projects/ other small agr. projects? Well, I went house to house handing out invitations just to make absolutely sure everyone remembered when it was - a friendly reminder. The day came and guess who showed up? Absolutely nobody. Not a single person showed up. Nobody had the decency to call to tell me they wouldn't make it and to this day (a bit over a week since) I have only heard one excuse from someone as to why they didn't go. The rest just try to avoid it and act as if nothing happened.

As you all can imagine I was furious. It's one thing for me to push projects that I want without the people voicing an interest and then have poor turnout. It's another thing to have people specifically tell me they want to learn more about gardens and so forth and then just not show/care about actually doing it.

The week following the incident I was mainly just angry. I was upset that I put the energy into something that was just a lie. I was angry that I am spending my third year not doing anything. I was angry with the community for being deceiving.

So, as the week passed I found myself less angry and mainly just disappointed. Disappointed in the community, my third year, etc. I had specifically signed up for a third year to continue with the work I was doing. I didn't have sitting around and doing nothing with people that don't want to do anything on my mind when I decided to extend.

But, though it is frustrating and harsh, it just goes to reinforce the Peace Corps experience. That is to say, even when you feel like you know exactly what you will be doing, nothing is for certain. Our goals are to help with technical aspects of community development, and cross-cultural exchange. My time has been mainly the latter. And, so, even though that wasn't what I wanted, it is my third year experience.

That being said, I have decided to change things up a bit. I've decided to try and work with volunteers in their sites. I figure if people don't want to work here I can find people elsewhere who do. I've also decided to try and take more vacations. I might as well see the country while I'm here. And, finally, I'm still here. Things could change/happen within the next 6 months. So, instead of being frustrated and pissy about the whole situation I'm just going to go with the flow. If my third year ends up being more cross-cultural exchange, learning a new language then so be it. I'd rather it not be like that...but at this point it is kind of out of my hands.

A rant

Here it comes:

I just got back from a week in San Jose for Mid Service Training. It was nice to get to see other volunteers and hear what they are doing and what not. We had some interesting sessions and I was asked to give a presentation on worm composting and biointensive garden practices. It was good.

Now, I just got back in site and went to check on my garden which I had been working on prior to leaving. I put in a lot of work, did lots of planning in how I would plant everything etc. And I come back to a bone dry garden with most plants dead/dying. I'm pissed.

I specifically asked the family if they could water the garden "Of course we can, not a problem, don't worry about it." Great, I figured. Besides, it rains here so often that they probably wont need to water. It barely rained this week and when I asked why nobody watered the garden I wasn't given any answer, just an embarrassed shy shrug. I understand that the garden is my responsibility, but the family knew it was for them too, and they said they would do me the favor.

Now, I'm pissed. It's not necessarily only the garden. I think it's a combination of things. Everyone's general apathy towards any type of work, their disinterest or feigned interest in most things. Add those to a bone dry garden with no excuse as to why and maybe you can understand my frustration.

I'm going to work in my garden tomorrow and try to salvage what I can. I'm also going to hold a big community meeting to make concrete who actually wants the gardening projects they originally had said they wanted. If people flake out on this, or just don't care then I'm going on vacation....for six months.

Manuel Antonio

This past week I had the pleasure of having Emily, a past PC Paraguay volunteer, come visit me. She came up to my site for a bit and then we headed down to National Park Manuel Antonio. The park is about 3.5 hrs South of San Jose by bus. It is an absolutely gorgeous jungle/beach paradise that you see in the movies. The rainforest makes it's way all the way up to the white sand beaches. The park itself isn't that big and you can see it all in one day. There was a ton of wildlife. We saw sloths, monkeys, snakes, lizards, crabs, pelicans, raccoons, and all kinds of interesting bugs. This is a picture heavy post, so I will leave you all to enjoy the photos.

Emily and I made Chipa in site to celebrate Paraguay's bicentenial.

A not so great picture of a tree sloth.

This is Manuel Antonio beach, one of a couple beaches located within the park.

This was an amazing palm...we will return to it later.

Beach

Emily on the palm.

The jungle in front is punta catedral. It used to be an island but a land bridge was formed so you can walk around and get some great views of the park.

Cool tree.

The beach from above.

Hermit crabs

Towards late afternoon the waves started to get HUGE. In fact, the park guides said they had never seen waves that big, nor seen them come so far up shore. It was kind of scary.

This was that palm that is pictured earlier..the waves came so high and were so strong that it took out this palm. sad.

Outside of the park are many other beaches, and the waves were also quite big.

It was a really nice vacation, and obviously great to see a good friend. I came back to site feeling rejuvenated and with some new ideas for potential projects. More on that in the next post.