July 22, 2004
The week has been extremely full and lively thus far.
In regard to finding new sites: I will connect Miguel this weekend. He seems like a good lead and I’m excited at the prospect of planting in the El Torro basin. Perhaps our presence there will encourage Pedro and his brothers to commit as well.
We have the ridge walk from La Cruz to Leonidas Plaza scheduled for this afternoon with Marcelo and his volunteer Ben. The intension is both to scout for potential sites and to gain further insight into seed collection. (We had an amazing meeting on Tuesday for Project Seed Bank and decided this ridge walk and a trip to Cerro Seco would be a good place to start researching and collecting information about the different species.)
The Fernan Sanchez, as well as a few other plants, will go into the ground once we have completed the installation of the bamboo pipes. They are doing well although they are still going through their “shock” from the transplant. I don’t want to move to quickly. I feel they should be thoroughly recuperated before we put them in the ground.
With respect to placing water containers on site in Jorge Lomas: I can identify pros and cons for both options: cistern vs. barrels. If we actually place barrels on the sites we have little control over them being stolen or vandalized, however it would be more convenient. Also, if I wanted to have a truck deliver a large amount of water periodically I’m not sure how accessible the sites would be for the water truck. If we went the cistern route, it would be more likely that our water supply would not be tampered with yet we would not have free access to it (being that it is in this man’s, Coco’s, cistern and we would only have access when someone is home). Coco resides in a gated house. We could easily overcome this by arranging a schedule with him so he would know when to expect us. I feel like the latter is the more sensible option.
New volunteer news. Celena is from Toronto, Canada. She is a nursing student that recognizes the relationship between ecological health and human health. She has some hands-on experience with horticulture and extensive experience with community living. Her friend, Natasha, volunteered for us last summer. She will be here until mid-August.
The newest volunteer is a woman by the name of Christina Rivera. She is from the Pacific Northwest until September initially. She will be traveling in Ecuador for the next nine months and if everything goes well, she will volunteer for us on and off throughout that period of time.
The Kiwi (Jackson) we were expecting to arrive this week got delayed. Christina Knott and I will meet him in Quito next week at the Forum. While we are there Celena and Christina Rivera (who also goes by the name Sol and this is how I will refer to her from now on) will maintain the watering schedule, transplant and various other tasks. They will also attend the International Mangrove Liberation day festivities that will take place in Bahía on the 26th. I have already asked them to write an essay on this for the website.
I have a few more comments from folks regarding the website. One suggestion has been to add pictures from Bahía to the website. Sol has a digital camera had has offered to send pictures to the web person. Another suggestion is to create an alternative web page specifically for our work here. We thought it could also be used to post seed and native species information in English and Spanish. One of our goals for Project Seed Bank is to have the information easily accessible to others.
En paz,
Renee
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