Please Support my Community’s Agriculture

Greetings. Today I write to you all with a request.

I would like your support for an agro-business seminar for farmers from my and fellow Peace Corps Volunteers’ communities. Farmers in our communities are mostly subsistence farmers, and when crop yields surpass household needs, the farmers try to sell their surpluses and are lucky to receive market value. Despite the challenges stemming from terrain, transport, and lack of fair markets, some of my farmers routinely makes sales outside of the community. Erik and his mother Gelda specialize in growing sweet peppers. Yaneth crafts artisan work form her farm's products. My host family harvests oranges and floats them closer to market on rafts constructed from bamboo. Although these farmers are experiencing successes, they are still struggling to purchase school supplies and uniforms and send their sick family members to the medical clinic. They are living in poverty.

The goal of our proposed seminar is train farmers in basic agro-business skills so that they can earn more income from their small family farms, allowing them to climb out of poverty. To achieve this the seminar will address: setting achievable goals, how to interact with government agencies and other organizations, understanding contracts, crop insurance and loans, keeping track of personal finance and savings, land use planning, making a work calendar, and learning the basics of marketing.

Please help us cover the costs of materials and logistics for the seminar. Donate now to the Agro-Business Seminar. Happy Holidays and thank you!

Chocolate and Mud Making

My last entry featured several very handsome cacao pods. This photo-heavy entry is about what comes next. Some details are left out, but the basic steps are all included.

First the pod is cut open to reveal the white slime covered seeds inside. The goopy seeds are removed from the pod and piled up to ferment for 6-7 days to improve the flavor of the chocolate. From there the seeds are spread out in the sun to dry for another week.

Then comes toasting. The beans are toasted over a low fire (or gas flame in my home) for about 20 minutes. The house will fill with a chocolatey aroma and the beans will sound like popping corn when they are toasted.

Here is a pile of toasted beans ready for shelling. The beans have a thin shell covering the true cocoa goodness that lies within. I squish the bean between my thumb and fingers to crumble the shell off. It's pretty time consuming by hand, so industrially they use rollers and fans to blow the shells away. Recently I saw a news article about a coal power plant that will also burn cacao bean shells from a near by chocolate processing plant in New Hampshire.

Shelled cocoa beans

Grinding the cocoa beans requires a bit of elbow grease when no motor is involved. I use a corn grinder. My host mom uses a large smooth rounded stone that she rocs back and forth over the beans until they are a paste.

My corn grinder, which has yet to grind corn.

Once the paste is fine and runny, it is ready for shaping. I prefer disk form, so I pat them out with my hands and let them harden. And that's the skinny on chcolate making.

Forming chocolate patties is oldly similar to forming salmon patties

The following pictures are from my first experience in mud oven building. With the help of fellow area volunteers and my neighbor kids, we built a 4ft outside diameter, 2 foot inside diameter oven under my house. It was a pretty messing ordeal, which means it was a lot of fun. And finally, a good use for all the mud in my community!

Mixing sand and clay for the inside lining of the oven, where it will act as a heat sink

Preparing the insulation layer, saturated clay slip with sawdust

The dome is a sand form to hold the space and shape of the hollow where I will bake

My semi-finished oven

Cocoa Pods as Big as Your Head

I know it has been a long time since my last post. To hold you all over until I have time to write something worth reading, here are some pretty pictures.

A new cacao variety bred in Costa Rica (photo taken by me at the facility!)
I hope to be grafting with it in Druy before I depart

Grafted plants at Costa Rica's CATIE
(Center for Tropical Agriculture Research and Study)

Kate posing with one of the largest cacao pods I have ever seen.
The CATIE gardens are a mystical place

Me, after a very unpleasant trip to my latrine, which was home to a very unruly family of wasps
My farmers teased me with name calling of "la chinita" (the chinese girl)

Ernesto, helping rid my latrine of wasps. His technique involved burning gasoline soaked synthetic rags. My latrine has still preserved the smell. I miss the smell of composting poo. I think the wasps do too. They buzz no more.

Making a fool of myself for laughs. I can't explain.

Rebecca, Kate, and I give a rediculously messy demonstration on brownie preparation

A fresh "patch" graft on a cacao seedling

The truly rainy season has returned

A baby peanut plant!

what was left of the peanut plant after the adorable baby goat got through my fence

A watermelon (this pic is for you, Mom)

knitting class has been a huge hit. I never would have thought it would be in the tropics

Glorified babysitting

Andi and Kate model some hot duds at Kate's leadership seminar

Jose showing off lateral grafting on cacao tree by the school

Playing games to see who can avoid Janell's questions... looks like Ernesto
was the big winner

Miss Mishap

When I really like what I am eating, I tend to dance. Not standing up, but sitting down. I dance in my seat. And if there is music, all the better. So Wednesday morning I was taking my morning oatmeal (chocolate flavored) and scooting about to the radio when I was struck still by a realization. Although I had not considered myself a subscriber of jazz, the Costa Rican jazz station had found a willing set of ears. However, after three days of listening, I recognized the music as different familiar genre. This class of music, this “jazz,” was the tranquilizing background music of doctor`s office waiting rooms, mall corridors, and elevators… really any place that would cause me anxiety. As such I had avoided it with passion back home. But as that world is now far removed, and the association with jazz and uncomfortable spaces dissolved over time and distance, jazz can be enjoyed.

On side note, I have suffered my first machete wound. This week I played the antagonist pitted against a barbed wire fence (my skirt bore the brunt, but my hands and forearm bare scratches), a shovel (my shin and knee are graced with a purple blue crests… I am hillside digging challenged), and my very own machete. I was filing my beloved machete, which I believe is a much more dangerous act than actually wielding it, and I got all caught up in rhythm of filing. So much so that I nearly missed the edge of my right thumb slice itself right off. However, the subsequent outpour of red gummed everything up so much that further filing was suspended. Nevertheless, the wound is little to speak of. Previous accidents with kitchen utensils have created much more excitement.

But yet further animation was caused by an ant yesterday as I scurried out of my community in six a.m. semi darkness for a day of machete shopping in Changuinola. I closed a gate on the goat pasture encircling my house, and as I placed my hand on the gate, a very gracious ant placed its stinger around the tender tip of my ring finger. A throbbing exploded from my finger and the air in my chest could neither leave nor be refreshed. This contender of an insect was a bullet ant. It`s name comes from the effect of its sting, which purportedly feels like being hit by a bullet. Although I lack the bullet wound for comparison, I would not dispute its naming based on my recent experience.

I spent the rest of my hike staggering not unlike a drunkard and resisting the constant urge of dragging my finger through the mud puddles to cool the burning pain. Eventually the pain traveled up though my hand and to my forearm. I kept trying to just shake it out. As I sat in taxi leaving my site I discovered the most peculiar bit of my new injury. My swollen, hot pink finger was wet. Initially I attributed it to rain water dripping into the taxi. But once I eliminated that possibility, I inspected to sting to check for seeping. No such luck. My finger was sweating, rather profusely, but only the finger tip above the first joint.

I am glad to report my left finger has returned to its previous condition with only a pink pinpoint mark to denote yesterday`s encounter with yet another one of Panama`s ant species. However, my right thumb still complains bitterly with each tapping of the space bar.

calculating and discussing financial losses in cacao due to unmanaged disease... which can easily exceed $1000/hectare... equivalent to the annual income of some of my farmers

identifying critters (pests and beneficials) in the cacao field


my job security... a disease called black pod


monilia, enemy number one, in its last stage on the far left. it is a fungus that all out attacks cacao fields


a pretty fungus on a decaying log

Borderless Engineers

A couple weeks ago, the Pueblo Naso (literally the Naso Village, the indigenous community in which I work) received an international visit. Half a dozen team members from the Austin, Texas chapter of Engineers Without Borders came for the group`s second visit to the town of Sieykin to continue work on an aqueduct project. Not knowing whether I would be of much use, but wanting to learn more about their project and to see more of the Naso community, I requested permission to pay the group a visit.

I woke up nervous and hours too early the morning of the hike across the mountains from my community to Sieykin. With my ever-wonderful neighbor Jorge guiding and rain threatening, we departed at six a.m. and spent the next three hours sloshing, climbing, sliding, and chatting our way along gentle rivers and eventually up a mountain nick named pela diente,` tooth peeler`. Elda, a farmer with whom I work, explained that mid-climb up the steep tooth peeler, nose breathing gives way to all out panting which in affect reveals one`s pearly whites. Apparently Jorge and I kept too easy of a pace amidst our chatter and picnicking on boiled eggs so that my teeth didn`t honor the mountain`s legacy.

Once in Sieykin, I found my use pasear-ing: visiting folks in their houses, making small talk, and secretly hoping that they would offer some delicious food or drink. Of course the visiting`s purpose was to discuss the team`s project and to collect census and baseline health data, but my participation was mostly limited to small talk. I butchered the Naso language for their amusement, and expanded my knowledge of the tribe`s very intertwined family trees.

Meanwhile, the brave souls of the group went with community guides in search of an adequate water source. As the days of searching through the unforgiving muddy mountainous jungle terrain, this illusive water source soon became known as the “ojo de oro”, the spring of gold. The team collected and analyzed water sources and surveyed possible aqueduct routes and returned battle scarred, mud covered, and inexcusably happy at the end of the day. A great group with a well-executed project. I am looking forward to their next visit, implementation, in May or June 2010.

EWB Austin members making sense of their data

In search of the ojo de oro

Jorge atop pela diente

Feliciano Feliz

I recently have found myself in an unlikely game of courtship. My would-be suitor is Feliciano Feliz. His happy name owes to the fact that he has five girlfriends. Despite his polygymous behavior, Feliciano is pretty progressive. He is not racist. He has brown girlfriends, white girlfriends, and even spotted ones. And he is pretty open minded about what defines female attractiveness. He even has a bearded girlfriend. I have also discoved that Mr. Feliz is not much of a specie-ist either. He and his five girlfriends are goats. In recent visits, I have found myself the recipient of what I can only deduce as overt attempts to seduce me into joining his concubine.

Because the soil in my patio lacks fertility, I often visit Feliciano and his women folk to collect the droppings that fall from their evelated throne to use as fertilizer in my garden beds. I trudge up the hill to their palace in my boots with shovel and buckets in hand. Upon my arrival Señor Feliz comes down to greet me. He stalks, circles, and sniffs my wares. The stalking continues. When he is satisfied that his presence is known to me, he goes about spreading his royal mustiness. Feliciano rears to show his magnificent height. Then he settles his front hooves back on the earth and closes in. I pause from my manure shoveling and politely confront him with my shovel. He backs off a bit, and I take the opportunity to inhale. Assuming that I am just playing hard to get, Feliciano takes an alluring drink of his own urine. I finish filling my buckets and return down the hill with Feliciano trailing. I close the gate on Feliciano and continue down to my house. He calls after me with his best come hither grunts, apparently unwilling to admit defeat. He knows I will back.

Last weekend I stole time away from my farmers and their gardens, to go with some friends from Changuinola to go visit one of their friends in Costa Rica. I enjoyed the luxuries of cool mountain air, warm water, and private transportation. I traded in my one-utinsil-serves-all soup spoon philosophy for place settings which included two pieces of dessert silverware and enough food that required their useage. It was exciting.

coffee farm sidewalk

Costa Rican travel buddies and host Andrey

considering taking up residence under the very large leaves

at an ellusive valcano crater on a very foggy morning

a Costa Rican breakast with Mario and Denisse

my first bell pepper harvest... a sorry case for soil improvement

the garden of my ag promoter Jose with his family amidst the cucumbers

Cuko starring in a battle with a lizard

Comings and Goings

Whenever I am hiking about in my community and I am spotted by someone, I can expect the same series of questions: where are you going, where are you coming from, and when will you return. Beyond me first phrase, “Rain is coming,” those were the first sentences I learned in Naso. Likewise, per my students’ requests, they formed the material covered in my first English class. As a result, I now get to talk about my comings and goings in three distinct languages.

Initially I was bothered by such an invasion of privacy. Was it necessary that I be accountable to every member of the community at all times? But eventually I caught on, and I have joined in keeping loving tabs on my neighbors’ whereabouts.

Once the traditional line-up of questions is exhausted, the conversation turns to my ‘family’ (my cat). Cuko’s name is evidently much easier than my own. When I present a mug of sickly sweet watered-down coffee (the locally preferred cup-of-joe), visitors will thank me, ‘Gisel, Janay, Janny, etc.,’ and, when the pet in question is not in sight, ask for Cuko by name.

So a few days ago, in accordance with my recent push to expand my pitiful Naso language skills, I tried responding with the best Naso I could muster: “Bor micho plï ära” (My cat hunger much).” Deep belly laughter exploded from my neighbor. I suspect something in the syntax went terribly wrong.

My neighbor may suspect that Gisel’s cat’s days may be numbered.

Almonds how I knew them before Panama (left), almonds how I know them now (right).

The ones on the right are (much) tastier.

Morning glory of the beach?

Man in canoe on the San San River

Pictures!

Rebecca with the first harvest

wild cacao relative (i think)

study session with my 'sisters'

San San Pond Sak, turtle nesting grounds

San San Pond Sak

Preparing balsa bark as a compost bin

trellis making

cacao pruning debate

baby cacao trees