Its All About the Poop - 8/10/09

My first week at Rio Muchacho has been incredible. The actual farm itself is so beautiful. There´s lots of thatched roofs, bamboo constructions, incredible gardens with so many flowers and food, a meditation garden, and even the animal section isn´t too bad. On the farm they row a million kinds of fruits and veggies, basically whatever the climate will allow. They have cows, donkeys, chickens, ducks, pigs, horses, guinea pigs, and lots of cats and dogs running around. Our days begin at 6 AM with either preparing breakfast, watering the gardens, or taking care of the animals. My monring chore for the first week was taking care of the cuyes (guinea pigs). On the coast they don´t eat them so on the farm there just a source of organic material (aka poo). The cuye cages are situated on top of the worm composting beds, the cuyes eat lots of grass and other grains, then poop it all out into the worm beds, which the worms then eat and poop out to create nutrient rich humus which is then used to fertilize the plants. So what I actually do is dump the poo from the litle cuye hiding places in the cage into the worm beds and give them food and grass. Then I water the worm beds and the compost. Breakfast is around 730 which is always fruit, muesli, bread and tea. This is probably my favorite meal. Then at 830 am we start the real work. This can be a whole variety of jobs such as weeding, planting, harvesting crops, or, today I shoveled out the contents of one of the composting toilets for about 2 1/2 hours. At 12 we have lunch which is usualy suop with yucca or beans or carrots or peantus or a million different things from the garden. After we have a heap of white rice which is always excessive and then some sort of hot dish, salad, and sometimes more bread and juice. We start working again at 130 where we work on a whole variety of projects from preparing bamboo with machetes for construction to clearing out a plot of land to start a new garden or making chocolate from the coca plant to make a delicious chocolatey spread. We finish at 4, I usually shower unless the electricity is out and we have no water, and then we have dinner between 6 and 7 which is usually similar to lunch without soup. On Wednesday afternoons we have a cultural activity instead of work. So last Wednesday we went to go see an enormous palm that has been taken over by a parasite and has grown these crazy roots and vines so you can no longer see the actual palm. Later we made rings out of seeds. The other part of my time here is psent in my permaculture and organic farming course. I love this course! THus far we´ve learned the theory and pricniples of organic farming and a little about composting. We have class instead of after breakfast work, 3 times a week. We also watch movies the nights we have classes and some of them have been so interesting. THe firs one we saw was called"Peak Oil" and it was about how Cuba had to basicallly change everything to become completely self suficient and more sustainable after the USSR fell. THey changed everything to organic farming, solar power, huge public transport, bikes, an urban farming. It´s really impressive and of course appeals to my mild obsession for Cuba. THe second movie was called "The Future of Food" which was mildly frightening about GMOs (genetically modified organisms). Basically, Monsanto created these GMO sees and patened the gene in the seed, the seed is only showing its good attributes for one season and then they have to rebuy the seed. They started asking o test farmers crops and found that certain crobs were exhibiting the genes of their seed, sue them, an won with the judges saying that the farmers were responsible for making sure these seeds did not get into their fields, even if these seeds were blown in by the wind or pooped in by a bird. It alo talked about the agro and food industry. So frightening and interesting. Al the volunteers are great and I´ve been able to practice my spanish a lot.

Whales and Boobies - 8/2/09

How in the hell do these months keep flying by? Since leaving Salasaka I´ve been indulging in some touristy fun. I started my trip off by heading to Puerto Lopez. It was by far the worst bus ride yet. I took a night bus hoping to sleep through and literally did not get a minute of rest. It was so bumpy I was constantly being bumped off my seat and the night before I only got 4 hours of sleep. It was a rough one! FInally I made it to Puerto Lopez and got into my hostal. I fell asleep for a couple hours. When I woke up I kept having seriously painful stomach pains. These lasted a few hours and then I decided to pay a visit to the oh-so-convenient hostal doctor. Apparently I have amoebas and something else. Excellent. I got loaded up with some meds and crawled back into bed. First day in PL, kind of sucked. The next day I was feeling a lot better and went to the Los Frailes beach in the national park nearby. It has a beautiful white sand beach with turqouise blue water, and I spent the whole day relaxing there. The next day I fially went to go see the whales! During July and August you get to see the whales migrating from Antarctica to Puerto Lopez; they go there to mate ad have their babies in the warmer waters. TO get to where the whales hang out you have to take a really rough boat ride out into the ocean for about an hour and a half. I´ve never concentrated so hard on not vomitting. However, it was well worth it. They were jumping out of the water and crashing back down a couple of times. It was incredible! They are so huge, it´s super overwhelming. After seeing the hwales for wahile we headed to Isla de la Plata. This island is home to many birds but most importantly, the blue footed booby. So many people had said that this part of the tour wasn´t worht it, but I thought it was incredible. I mean, unless you have blue footed boobies running around your backyard, I don´t know how you couldn´t have been impressed. We hiked around the island for a few hours and then headed back tothe boat for lunch and snorkeling. Honestly the snorkeling wasn´t that great but there were a few really pretty fish; the coral was totally dead though. Then we made a long and nauseating voyage back to the port. The next day I headed out to Bahia de Caraquez to get everything settled for my next volunteering stint at the Rio Muchacho Organic Farm. It turne out that none of the volunteers were really goig to start until Monday so I decided I would follow suit and just hang out until then. Luckily there were two sisters from the US staying at my hostal who were great, Keera and Ana. They were there to volunteer at an organization called Planet drum. I was thinking about volunteering there for a bit but after seeing where the volunteers live I am pretty sure that I will not be volunteering there. It´s defining characteristics include a serious bug infestation with no flushing toilets or running water for that matter. Anyways, I spent the weekend with the girls going to the beach, taing the tour of some mangroves, and eating a lot of foods. They were so fun and really made the weekend. And now I´m just relaxing before I start my new volunteer gig.

Last Bit of Salasaka Living - 7/26/09

No surprises, I stayed in Salasaka. I just couldn´t leave! I also got rid of my cold, so I think it was for the best. The last week of teaching was actually the most annoying week ever. 2 twelve year old boys joined my 2 tweleve year old girls and I´ve ever seen such annoying results. Bad 12 year old hormones, bad! THey would hit eachother, say bad words in Quichua and then the others would tattle, they refused to pay attention, or I guess they were just too distracted. Clearly I never produced such a ridiculous scene at that age. So it was a frustrating last week but we got through it. The time outside of class though became more and more fun. We all got into the habit of cooking ridiculously delicious treats, from soufles to salsas. I have made my mark on Pacha Mama cuisine with the peanut butter cookie. I also made some kick ass zucchini bread muffins. Saturday we went to a reggae/metal concert and save the Amazon festival all day. We ran into a girl that I volunteered with at Arutam as well, which was fun. THere was one reggae group called Rasta Alma that was so fun. Later that night a group of us went to Baños for dinner and then a last all night party at the Leperchaun bar. We ended up leaving at 5 am and made like an hour trip back to Salasaka which resulted in a really rough morning. Now I´m packing up all my things to leave Salasaka, for real, and making my way to Puerto Lopez to see the whales!