Kristen Ford and Chris Haas
Planet Drum Volunteers
It has been one week since Peter and Judy’s departure to Guayaquil. I figured that today would be a great time to send my first report.
This week has been full of successes. I spent quite a bit of time at the compost patio in Fanca getting to know the workers there better. Cesar, the older man, has tremendous enthusiasm and knowledge about the project. I marked the pichiche seeds that Judy and I planted last week with pink straws. Between Jeff, Chris and me, we did about 1000 new bags of seedlings this week. We also spent a lot of time removing seeds from there shells so they would be ready to plant.
Jeff has been bringing students from Immaculada and I brought students from Escuela Rotaria a couple different days to learn and help. I have been working with the teachers at Club Ecologico to let me bring those kids to the patio too.
I distributed about 75 Fanca Produce instructional booklets to children at Escuela Rotaria during a series of classes where they toured the patio and discussed the project. I am looking at schools, particularly Escuela Rotaria, to incorporate seed planting right into their programming. We are inviting schools in other parts of Bahia to plant seeds as part of their field trip to the patio to see how it runs.
I have been talking with community members about filling the role of stewards for Fanca Produce. We have been trying ot figure out what specific incentives to offerpeople for being stewards beyond the general benefit to the community.
I haven’t had much luck with inviting people to come out while I’m there, but we are going to try advertising a “Community Stewards Training Program” to take place next Thursday at the patio all day.
Other than Fanca work, I have been fixing up the house. The toilet in the pink bathroom is now working and I have collected ceramic tiles from the beach to do a mosaic over that dirty, outdated sink . I painted the bathroom floor (a big improvement) and painted the “office” walls. I moved the computer, table and shelves to that corner and it looks very nice. The whole space has opened up.
Now for Chris’s report…
With the help of José Eduardo (who is Señor Abeja´s son) we were able to replace nearly all of the stairs in the ´Bosque en Medio de las Ruinas´. In the big staircase in the back we did all but two stairs and there are still a couple stairs in other places that are rotted and need to be replaced. The problem is all the wood is gone and I have tried to find recycled wood several places with no luck. It seems that wood may need to be bought but I don’t think I am going to do anything until I find out how much the signs are going to cost.
In any event, most of the stairs are done and my project for this week is to find someone to make the signs. This week I also spent some time at Fanca with Kristen and worked on getting seeds ready with Jeff.
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