December 10, 2002 With election fever over, calm has once more descended upon Bahia de Caraquez. The Planet Drum house too has descended into relative tranquility, with only two volunteers living in the space previously occupied by seven. Work on community liaison has surpassed expectations with residents of Maria Auxiliadora, the community worst hit by the El Nino disasters. In a hectic week about 50 […]

Sara Gomez and Matt, Planet Drum Volunteers, Thursday, October 17, 2002 Matt and I arrived in Bahia over the weekend, and have been settling in for the past few days. We have been working on the middle room of the apartment (the one with the new floor), since that’s where we have been sleeping. Matt did some work with cement patching up cracks and holes […]

Monday, December 9, 2002 Here’s an update on the park project and Maria Auxiliadora since that is what I have been working on.  We have been speaking with Patricio from the Department of Tourism at the Municipio to develop the project. He is helping us develop a powerpoint presentation so we can present the project to other people…it includes the idea of guided tours, work […]

Wednesday, December 4, 2002 Leslie did not show up yet. I do not think that a lot has been done recently with Fanca. Compost production should be continuing as before, but the worms are not there yet. Jeff went to Porto Viejo before leaving to ask about worms, and they told him they would be ready two weeks later, I believe.  Before I left most […]

Tuesday, December 3, 2002 Current volunteers are just Sara and me. Justine and Maggie left last week, and Alexis hasn’t turned up yet. We are enjoying a lot of help from other people in the community, though – Genesis school volunteers, various friends of Cheo, and other gringos. An American living in Canoa last night offered to help us – he’s a bit of a […]

Wednesday, November 27, 2002 Maria Auxiliadora: Today we collected the sign for the bottom of the Maria Auxiliadora hill and brought it to the PD house for painting. I’ve also paid Phil Collins to get the t-shirts for the guides. We’ll try to sell the excess t-shirts to tourists and local tour companies. Any “profit” money will go to Maria Auxiliadora or be invested in […]

Tuesday, November 26, 2002 Things are going well here, and I am loving it in Bahia. At the moment I am working with two short-term volunteers, Justine and Maggie, but they leave for Quito in a few hours. These two volunteers, a work party of Maria Auxiliadora residents (Elba, Benito and co.) and I installed benches throughout the park, with very nice log benches at […]

Tuesday, November 19, 2002 We are still working on painting the two signs for the entrance (one for the entrance and one for halfway up the hill). We finished putting in all the little tree marker signs, and had a work party to clean up the park on Sunday (collected trash, cleaned up trails etc…). about 25 or 30 people (lots of children too) showed […]

Thursday, November 14, 2002 Some good news, Matt has managed to raise $325 so far for the greenhouse (any money not used for that project can be used for the other projects). Matt and I have been working on the greenhouse since Tuesday and it has been going up really quickly. The entire stucture is up, and today we hope to finish building tables for […]

Chris HaafPlanet Drum Volunteer The revegetation project does have some serious problems but I did not explain the sources of the difficulties well. We have all been planting a lot of seeds. Jeff with the girls from the Immaculada School, Kristen with kids from the Rotary School, and each of individually has been working and planting. We have tried many different methods but have had […]