Tjä Toë

A couple Thursday mornings ago, Ernesto and his grand kids led me up the hillside to his farm to collect almonds. We had been waiting for the harvest for months ever since the branches filled with pink blossoms late last year. We climbed the hillside passing his plots of pineapples, green beans, basil, peppers, and peanuts. Eventually we climbed above the fog and drizzle that enclosed our houses below.

I sat down on a fallen tree trunk and found my eyes stinging with tears. Precious little time remained for me to savor with neighbors I had grown to love. Ernesto has proven to be the teacher of all things: introductions to dozens of new fruits and edible or medicinal plants and advise on how to evict bats that visited nightly and the very large snake that took up residence in my roof. His grand kids have pulled me through the rough patches. They bring me tea or herbs when I cannot rise out of bed. They have taught me how to prepare all of the new foods their grandfather brings me. They also fire my oven. They are much more adept at the task.

My Peace Corps service will come to a close in a couple weeks. From there a new adventure will begin. On June 20th, my friends Kat and Kate and I will embark on bicycles for the United States. Along the way we will be joined by five others on a tour we have called Cycles of Change. More information on the participants, route, schedule, and mission is available at http://cyclesofchange.wordpress.com/. We will be updating regularly throughout the tour.

tree frog

a ubiquitous cacao pod photo

candied orange peels

orange peeling

my prep station

examining a walking stick insect

a wild cacao relative

tree roots that could inspire a Halloween mask

The Buzz about Ag Biz

Saturday, March 27th marked the final day of the Bocas Agribusiness Seminar. As the sun peeked over the horizon we left our homes, hiked out of the community, forded, or in some cases traipsed, across the San San River, and waited for out taxi. The cable suspension bridge had washed out four weeks prior and even made national evening news, which caused the governor to promise he’d build a new bridge within a month; however, construction has not yet begun. Luckily, though, it has been dry.

At the appointed hour Don Solano, our skillful and sporadically puntual taxi driver, arrived to whisk us off to Changuinola for the last day of the seminar. Along the way we were stopped at a banana crossing, which could be equated to a train crossing, especially here as train tracks in the area were ripped up years ago and rumored to be purchased by the Chinese. The bananas were on their way from the field to the washing and packing plant, to be boxed up and piled into a semi truck painted with yellow bananas and a bright blue and yellow oval seal, eventually put into a shipping container to cross an ocean, ripen from green to yellow, and be sliced on breakfast cereal.

With little further adieu we arrived to the seminar, and the farmers were a buzz with new friendships. Thirty-three farmers, all indigenous, from eight different communities participated in the seminar. We were missing a couple on the last day. Olmedo from my community could not make it. His brother suffered a serious machete wound the previous day in Sieykin. As I had hiked to the taxi stop that morning, Olmedo was hiking the three hours over the mountains to Sieykin to tend to his brother who had cut open his knee which had required nine stitches to be closed back up. He is still recovering. Olmedo says to have taken away his machete.

During the final seminar day the participants were asked formulate and share with the group a goal that they had for their farm. Their goals included doubling their production of plantains in the next ten months, upgrading the infrastructure and pasture lands for their goats in the next six months, and planting three more hectares of cacao with their families utilizing the agroforestry systems that Peace Corps Volunteers had taught them. Some drew maps or work calendars to further illustrate this goal. We ate cake that a woman in my community had made. She had been my first student. It was a jubilant day.

Sunrise from Druy

A bridge to the river bottom. The other half tumbled

how to keep your pants legs (or skirt bottom) dry

Don Solano's majestic beast

stop! banana crossing

role playing marketing your product: platains

a stately ag biz participant

team building, a group sit

fishing, in the fish tank

counting the catch

my haul

Mauricio & Cuko

Thanks

Thanks to all of you that have helped support the agribusiness seminar. Your generosity has been amazing. And thanks to all of you who continue to follow my blog despite my recent shameless overt pandering for money.

The holidays found me back in the states, where you all dazzled me with your fancy phones, caught me up on last year’s booms (i.e., Sully’s water landing, açai berry) and busts (i.e., cash for clunkers, Tiger Woods), and showered me in hugs. Sorry for showering you all in tears. It is just what I do. Tomorrow I will head back to my community in something like Santa Claus like fashion, with my pack filled with puzzles for the kids, yarn for my knitting ladies, and specialty chocolate bars processed from purely Panamanian cacao (the very chocolate grown by my farmers!) for my farmers. It’ll be their first time tasting the finished product. I hope they are thrilled as I am.

Austin, Texas recycle bins even feature cocoa pods

Austin mural

Congratulations, Corin & Kieran!

my folks

thier livelihood

the homestead

my host family

celebrating mother's day (dec 8) with chocolate-banana swirl cake

my host brother is cute (turn your head to view)

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