Jesse Skwaruk - Community Development Facilitator in Honduras

All is well in Honduras! I have finished my whirwind of an orientation to the community of Salado Barra with Jean and have been exposed to the various projects and initiatives which are present here. We have decided that my primary task as community developer will be to assist those in the community in developing micro enterprises. The first project (which will be ongoing) is to start an artesanias project with those in the community. The first phase will be based on jewelry making, very exciting! Lots of interest in this project! I have collected seeds, vines, coconuts and am making some great pieces to show those in the community. From here I will host a community meeting to find out who is interested. Some of the youth are already interested, which is great, as once they finish grade 6, they have very few options for work. Additionally, I will be hosting English classes to help community to communicate with English speaking tourists when they arrive to the refuge. I have already hosted a Solar Cell Phone Charger meeting and the group involved is very keen. They are incredibly gifted at making Solar Cell Phone Chargers! This was great to see!

Here are some photos of the house I am living in, me at the beach (a 3 minute walk from my house) and an image of the houses that the majority of the community live in. I am very fortunate to live in such a huge house- an old plantation house, probably over 100 years old, newly renovated! Mangos are falling from the trees and left to rot on the ground- the ground is littered with hundreds! I have been feasing on mangos daily! Well, back off to work, Jean has left me plenty to do!! Saludos!

Tracking Toucans in Costa Rica - update from Alex

Since my last report, I have been helping a master's student track toucans for his research. I've also spent long hours at the computer, researching Ecoagricultural Landscape projects in Latin America, as part of a global review being conducted by a partner organization of CATIE in Washington, DC. I'm helping with the experimental garden - planting vegetables, turning compost piles and concocting bizarre organic soil amendments to apply to the garden beds. I'm continuing to make slow but steady progress in the arboretum, setting out an interpretive trail, but my project depends on the schedule of a few very busy and important people who are hard to get meetings with.

Finally, I have been asked to give a big presentation on permaculture to the agriculture department at the end of February. I'm a little bit terrified to present my amateur permaculture knowledge to a roomful of academics and internationally-accomplished agronomists, (in Spanish no less), but excited about the challenge and opportunity to share what I know.

In short, I have plenty to do and am having fun, although I don't feel any connection to a particular project or community here, and don't feel as though I'm making any real contribution to development in Costa Rica. I am really enjoying living in Turrialba and am appreciative of the beautiful and peaceful setting where I work.

The picture of me tracking toucans with the radio telemetry equipment (because unfortunately I don't have any pictures of me holding a toucan just yet).

The 2012-2013 intake for FBC international internship applications is now open.

Each year, Falls Brook Centre offers young Canadians an opportunity to gain practical experience in the fields of organic agriculture, environmental education, land restoration, renewable energy and community development through the Canadian International Development Agency’s (CIDA) International Youth Internship Program (IYIP). The goal of this project is to give young Canadians practical work experience and to develop skills in the fields of international relations and sustainable development both in the context of Atlantic Canada and in Latin America.

PREREQUISITES FOR ALL INTERNSHIPS:

• Be aged 30 or under;
• Be Canadian citizens or landed immigrants able to work in Canada;
• Be currently under or unemployed;
• Have not previously worked outside Canada in a paid, career-related position;
• Be a graduate of a college or university; and
• Have not previously participated in another Youth Employment Strategy (YES) internship program
• Be able to function in both written and spoken Spanish;
• Applicable Degrees include the following: forestry, biology, geography, international development, environmental studies or science, resource management, anthropology or rural development

Please visit our internships page for full details on the 20 placements and application process or visit our website www.fallsbrookcentre.ca

Analog Community

I was 5000 km away from my mother’s cookbook and I wanted to bake banana bread. It was a rainy Saturday, snowy in Ontario, and my mother was out of town; unreachable by phone or internet. I’d already borrowed eggs from Patricia, the Polish girl who lives next door in the middleclass Honduran neighbourhood in which I had found myself living. The man who owns the tiny convenience store across the street was throwing out some over-ripe bananas and sold them to me, although reluctantly, for a song, telling me they were no good “feo” ugly. At home, in a traditional Honduran handmade clay bowl, my squishy bruised treasures sat half-mashed and unmeasured, sugar, soda, eggs, flower and oil lingered impatiently in various quantities on the countertop and I unenthusiastically signed onto Facebook and begged the tiny photos of my friends and family, my virtual community, for help. “Emily” said my status line “is looking for the most delicious banana bread recipe.”

It was just before noon, someone was surly online and keen to summon some secret family recipe from the depths of their mind and ‘post it to my wall.’ I continued mashing the bananas, I tidied the kitchen and went next door to make sure I could use Patricia’s oven. Yes, of course I could. I already knew this, I’d asked twice already that morning, once over coffee with, Jenny, my Canadian roommate, Patricia and Heidi, the Norwegian girl who lives downstairs, a veritable International Women’s Day breakfast. I had asked again when I went to borrow the eggs. Just before the fruit flies and ants had gotten the better of the bananas I found both my message inbox and my wall replete with messages, some only notes of encouragement and curiosity but others boasting the finest banana bread ever to be baked, the sweetest, the moistest, some with optional chocolate and others with nuts, one written in free verse and another in an eloquent series of haikus, messages building on other messages, supporting and refuting bakery success. I was overwhelmed. However trivial my question, my community had answered my call for help.

The next week, in the small costal puebla where I am completing my Falls Brook Centre internship, a young mother died and that night no one slept. All the member of the 46 household village met in the church and stayed there singing and crying and consoling until the sun came up. Everyone in the village is linked, most by blood or marriage, the rest by religion, occupation, interest and proximity. After the young woman, who had been sick for many years, had been buried, her fellow women continued raising her children, they continued cooking on each others’ stoves, continued turning each others’ compost piles, continued bearing each other’s burden, continued telling each others’ stories, living and dying side-by-side.

Then yesterday, wandering through the Honduran jungle, a friend with a beak alerted me to a typical subtropical forest phenomenon; plants growing beside, up, through, and inside other plants. A weaker one asking a stronger one for help, a taller one shading the seedlings of another species in the damp soil below its sprawling branches, the bark of one providing nutrients and substrate for any number of others; sacrificing its own moisture and physical space for the benefit of something that could very well deplete its own individual potency. Raising each others’ babies; feeding them with resources so scarce it would only make sense to hoard them to ensure the survival of one’s own kin, creating networks of root and canopy and vegetative communication; conflict and balance and connection and vulnerability played out in green and brown, a tangled jungle forum for the common good, relationships so universal, so analogous to the neighbourhoods and societies we have spent a hundred human years thwarting that drawing parallels seems obvious and plain. Yet somewhere out in cyberspace and in a hundred thousand tiny muddy villages on coastlines in every habitable continent a similar dependency and exchange exists between mothers and nephews and proximal friends and greedy rivals and in all of these examples, the muddled commonalities that make community and forest and banana bread a reality.

GTMO

I've been telling you all about one of the more fantastic chain of events and the themes that run through it so that you might imagine how rare of a country Cuba is. It is very different, and doesn't always make sense in many more different ways. The ways things happen here don't necessarily fit the context of a latin country, or a western one, they don't fit with a developing one or a developed one, a country that has resources or doesn't, is managing them from a socialist mandate or with capitalist aspirations. Yet all of these seem to be true in Cuba.
But let's leave the socio-economic and political descriptions behind.
First, I'm going to second Jess' motion to recognize Ranil as a far-out walking encyclopedia who radiates a passionate and yet serene energy. I had a hell of a lot of fun learning from him. After my encounter with him, my objective is analog forestry, so much so that I have it in a tattoo (the design was originally conceived after my grandfather, an extension forester in NS, died).
I hope take on the Analog Forestry portfolio at Falls Brook Centre, and make it an example of what AF can do. I've already been thinking of three other sities that I have access to where AF might be spread.
Second, I'm going to tell you about the house where I am staying. Jean described it very succinctly as “...a rarified existence.” The family are artists. The father has sculptures around Guantanamo, in the largest Baracoa Hotel, and some of the most stirring paintings I've ever seen.
One of his sons is preparing an exhibition even now, and took time from that to do my tattoo. As artists in Cuba they are hardly of the starving sort and as hosts of foreigners they are down right rich. The house is large and green. I feel like I'm in the fifties every time I look around it. It has a patio on the front and a patio/courtyard out back. The roof is barren and accessible for sunning, or watching the street below. Because of the quality of their home, to say nothing of their hospitality, I'm sure they get more than their fair share of guests.
So, to fill out the house, let's count the family entire. The Mother and Father. From the mother's first marriage are two sons (they live elsewhere but frequent the house enough) who work in security. The two sones from this marriage, the 24 year old's wife is pregnant, the 22 year old is dating a 15 year old. Until recently there was a second pregnant lady, the wife of the one of the security guards at the house. On weekends the two daughters (8 and 9) of the other guard might visit. Next there is the Negron, Duque, the huge Dobermann who inhabits the back patio. He is a beast but really a push over. On my first day here I saw him hit by a car. He just rolled with it, missing two steps in his chase for another dog. Princesa is the little white dog a third of his size, and if ever I've seen a couple in love, these two are.
This big green box of madness is my home. Conveniently situated a three minute walk from El Puente Negro, a rail way track crossing the river that recently had a ped-way welded on the side. It's not uncommon to be crossing, especially at night and meet the train. Every time it happens I think of Stand By Me. Claudia, Jean, Ranil and Mamerto (from D.R.) had that experience one rainy night. Another eight minutes walking and you arrive at the bustling downtown Gtmo, with its Plaza, two pizzarias, and two restaurants(one is all veggie).
Eight minutes in the other direction from the house is the Formadora, the round-about with the Guantanamo sign you may have seen in Micheal Moore's film “Sicko” when he tries to bring Americans to Gtmo Naval base for free health care, and ends up taking them to the La Habana hospital. Beyond this sign, is a very agreeable fifteen minute bicycle ride (I've left behind the horrible traffic and crammed buses of La Habana where my Ipod and camera were stolen) down some gentle hills to the dry, saltly, god-forsaken savannah—a vista you could easily confuse with Africa; so easily that Claudia has left to go to Uganda on vacation, but it is here—where the farms are. This is where Analog Forestry can prove that it can turn a desert into the forest that once was.

Cuban Mechanics and BMW's

Having heard that Cubans are industriously inventive and entirely adept at improvisation with mechanical matters, or with any matter whatsoever, one might be inclined to portion out a ration of faith and hope, which Cubans would receive not altogether ungratefully with a small mark in their state issued libreta (ration record book). Seeing that the Cubans have managed to keep the old máquinas (the classic American cars), the mechanical beasts on the streets next to the organic beasts of burden, for fifty y pico years, one can rest assured that his or her hope and faith in the ingenuity of the Cuban is well founded.
My question is where does this go wrong? A BMW was rented to carry wheelbarrows across the country. A fifteen hour odyssey that cost over 500 dollars to move five wheelbarrows, an assortment of over materials and one Claudia María Menendez, Compañera, Facilitator and project coordinator. At a certain point in the night (they drove the red-eye highway to avoid the heat of the day) they got a flat tire. Out comes the spare, and on they continue undaunted. At another certain point in the night, closer to their Guantanamo destination their spare tire ponchó. Flat. They are in the middle of nowwhere, but after some diligent and dogged pursuit they discovered a ponchero. The tire is fixed and they make it the rest of the way to Guantanamo.
There is an answer to my question. We will get to it. The clues to the answer lead back to La Habana so we must follow. The car leaves Gtmo and begins the return trip, and receives its third flat tire on the trip. I know not if they had both tires repaired and so a spare was employed or if they had to forage for another ponchero, I do however know that they did finally arrive in La Habana. There must have been a diagnosis that included other problems because word we received here in Gtmo was that he BMW was toast. At least part of that diagnosis encompassed the exhaust system, which had newly been replaced and positioned too close to the wheel, and so the heat wore down three subsequent tires in a matter of 30 hours of road time.
The Mechanics went wrong is their knowledge of the portion of the anatomy of the car. The anatomy of my question has grown then: In a country were resources are so scarce and it serves everyones best interests to avoid the waste of resources like this and other exemplary examples that mechanical improvisational aptitude exists and is successful, how could these mechanics go so wrong? I know that this knowledge could not be so complete in its coverage, that it is dangerous to generalize and assume. I merely pose the questions to provoke some thought.
In truth, flat tires wantonly ravage this country. People's lives are governed more by the whim of a flat tire than by the libreta or the lack of electoral options. Out of the three bicycles I have personally used here, all three have suffered flat tires, two were chronic slow leaks, one of which became terminal. Also our chauffeur Ol'Faithful (Don Fiel) suffered a flat tire while he was conducting us back from our seed collecting picnic at the beach. In the changing of the tires, the heavy old 1957 Chevy fell off the pneumatic jack, nearly crushing Ol'Faithful. But of course, in the end his spare tired carried us safely the rest of the way home.

I feel a little sheepish submitting this post as I haven’t exactly been ‘on the ball’ when it comes to the blog, however I will say my absence has not been because of lack of experiences. Reflecting on my time spent here in the Dominican Republic thus far I realize that I have definitely had my highs and lows.
Life in Santo Domingo has been interesting to say the least. We have scored a pretty decent apartment in a safe area of the city, about a 10 minute taxi ride from the zona colonial, the old part of the city where there is actually character. Our guagua rides home from work sound familiar to what Terry and Melissa experience everyday as well. Painfully slow traffic, deafening noise, and a myriad of flashing lights. Of my travels thus far, Santo Domingo has to be the most Americanized city in Latin America. Generally, people really seem obsessed with status of which they attach to things like Burger King, brand names and expensive cars (SD has the highest BMW ratio per capital in the world). Not much different than back home. We know a woman who is pretty much paying a mortgage on a couch that she couldn’t afford but yet still complains in the same breath about not having enough money. Sometimes I like to romanticize developing countries in that they haven’t bought into capitalism like more developed countries… Santo Domingo has shown me another reality, especially in contrast to the campos we work with.
Work wise we spent the first month or so preparing for the IAFN conference that we hosted here in the Dominican Republic. The weeklong conference itself was incredibly inspiring, spent with some really interesting people. A definite highlight was learning from Ranil Senanayake. Incredible doesn’t quite describe him. For the Cuba cats they will know what I’m talking about when I say that I’ve never met someone who is so passionate, knows so much, who at the same time is just a really cool person. Good times.
Now that we are all fired up from the conference we’ve developed a new work plan. I’m on board to instigate an Analog Forestry demonstration parcela in the city’s Jardin Botanico. We’re really excited about the potential this project has to spread the good word about AF.
On a personal note, I’m proud to say that Jenny and I received our PADI open water diving certification about a month ago. Now we are pretty much mermaids!
Well, that’s about all I have to report at the moment. Miss you all back at Falls Brook and of course my fellow interns!

Pura Vida,

Jess