We planted the Universidad site on Thursday and Friday.

February 10, 2003

All is well. We have had rain for a few days in a row.

House:

Things here are good. The house is in a calm and clean state with Megan, Chela, and myself. We made light fixtures out of wire and colored paper. They look good. I have made an agreement with Juan, the carpenter who is building the bar in town. He is going to construct our wall for the middle bedroom. All we have to do is purchase materials, which should be cheap. In exchange, we are going to help him paint his bar. 

We are working on sealing the house with screens before the mosquitoes get too thick. As of now, I have only replaced a couple of screens on windows. We have yet to seal the holes between the walls and the roof.

Maria Auxiliadora:

We have not done much here this past week, although we have plans to fix the stairs this week. Heavy rains last week delayed this process. We took advantage of the rain to do other projects.

Fanca:

I have been in Fanca working in the compost/worm beds. They are under construction. We have continued moving the sacks to the Universidad.

Universidad:

Most of our efforts over the last week have been focused here. We planted many of the new seeds I got from Guayaquil in new seedbeds. We have continued to transplant algorrobo and achote (this is the plant that grows from the little red seed, which were used by natives to make face paint). 

We planted the Universidad site on Thursday and Friday. We planted Pelo Caballo and Algorrobo on the slopes, and Moyuyo on the flat parts. We have had at least one good rain every day since then. We will begin fencing this afternoon.

This is all for now.  On a personal level, I am really enjoying my time here. The re-veg project was wonderful. During lunch at the university, I met some biology students. They asked what we were doing and I told them. They asked if I would release a Mata Caballo snake into the wild for them, since we were working in the hills where they wanted to release it. “Okay,” I said, not really thinking about the moment of truth. I released it artfully. It came out of the bucket it was being held in, turned sharply to check me out, decided I was a friend, and climbed up the nearest tree, where it was practically invisible.