Eco-Ecuador
Collaboration for a Long-Term Sustainable City
July 11-15, 2005 We’ve been having some beautiful weather recently, interspersed with the gray skies and misty air. All four volunteers arrived, two on Monday and two on Thursday night. Together with Jackie and Carley there are now 6 volunteers. After another week, we will be down to 4. We spent time at the greenhouse transplanting trees from baggies to bottles, repairing one of the […]
July 4-10, 2005 This week we watered and finished installing pipes at the Dairy Farm and Cherry Tree sites. So far no problems with insects or animals at Cherry Tree, and the trees look healthy. There is a world of a difference in growth between the trees planted just 2 months earlier in the rainy season, and those planted later. Dairy Farm fencing is being […]
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. […]
June 20-25, 2005 Angel and Pablo from Maria Auxilidora stopped by to discuss their idea of fixing up El Bosque with bamboo handrails and steps, and making two miradores. I guess they’ve been inspired by Bella Vista. We painted and punched holes in the bamboo watering pipes, and installed them at the three km 8 sites. We did not water at Endara as there was no […]
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 […]
June 6-12, 2005 Aside from the usual greenhouse activities (watering, composting, clearing out dead plants, organizing), we did a lot of structural maintenance as dogs had broken in. We reinforced certain sections with wooden posts and/or chicken wire. Also continued fixing the seed beds. We put up plant label signs for the seeds that the Bioregional Education Program had sowed, and remounted the Planet Drum […]
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 […]
May 30-June 5, 2005 Volunteer situation: Hannah and Montana arrived on Wednesday night, and Jackie on Saturday night. They will be staying through the summer, except Montana, who leaves mid-July. He is staying at the Bahia B&B. (Hannah was actually one of students in the group I led in a previous job to Costa Rica for the Experiment in International Living.) We now have 6 […]
Weekly update from Bahia. Sunday’s outing to Cabo Pasado was a smashing success. The walk was led by Cheo and was a challenge to many of the participants who aren’t used to physical exertion, but they loved the challenge none the less. We got to the beach and they were in heaven playing in the sea and in the sand. Then Cheo gave us a […]