On Tuesday we had a very interesting day of class. The gas station Repsol has been leaking gas into the estuary for what seems to be about eight years, or since the earthquake. It became such a problem that they could no longer turn the blind eye and have had to close the gas station and do some major clean up. So Friends of the […]

  This has been an interesting if not a bit frustrating of a week. On Tuesday I spent the better part of the afternoon planning class with Maria Elena who has done her thesis work on contamination of the Estuary Rio Chone. We had put together a presentation which when we tried to print. It wouldn’t and then the computer shut down all together. When we […]

  This week we worked with the Fanca eco kids club to make recycled paper. On Tuesday they showed us how to rip up papers, what kind to use, how to soak them, blend with aloe to make it sticky, and then use frames to create papers. We left them to dry until Thursday when we completed the project making boxes, notebooks, frames, cards etc. We […]

This week in Bahia I have been focusing on educating the educators. That is to say that my students are preparing to go and talk at schools about what they have learned. The two themes are Mangroves and Dry Tropical Forests. We spent both Tuesday and Thursday preparing materials, posters and discussing activities and ways to present information.  I am working with Marcelo to organize times […]

I am sorry that I wasn’´t able to write sooner but there was a strike here in the lovely province of Manabi to demand more money to improve the infrastructure here. Everything was shut down from the buses to the schools to the internet cafes. It put a bit of a cramp in this week´s lessons as well. On Tuesday we continued with a lesson on […]

Marcelo and I led a presentation on birds and how they can be a good indicator of contamination as they are migratory animals. We will be going to Isla de Corazon to see many birds, mangroves, as well as a successful effort at conservation. The students will be giving presentations on the different birds we will see there such as pelicans, cormorants, frigate birds, etc.  […]

The seeds that we collected for the seed art mainly were jaboncillo and maracuyá. They also collected some seeds that I unfortunately didn´t write down so I will try to keep better track of details next time.  This week we did some review of plant zones. I taught my students some English words such as plant, trail, pollution, grow, forest, environment etc. which they loved. Since Tuesday […]

This week we finished up our topic of the different zones of life in this bioregion (dry tropical, very dry tropical, humid tropical and mangrove) with seed art. We went and collected seeds from various trees around Bahia. We then learned from a local artisan how to perforate holes into the seeds with an ancient method of heating up a needle in a candle flame […]