Update from Greg Lynch in Nicaragua

With just one week in, it feels like I’ve gotten myself a bit of a rhythm here. Certainly a rhythm much different than at FBC but a rhythm nonetheless.

I flew into Managua on Saturday night and was happily greeted by a Carlos, a cab driver sent by our friends at Casa Candiense. He quickly whisked me out to the Casa to get a good night sleep and to meet Carrolle who is working as the education coordinator there. She made me feel very at home and after a short chat we crashed.

Since I was told Monday would be best to arrive I had a day to explore Managua. Carrole took the time out of her day to drive her giant truck through the swarming streets. I was pleased to see that Managua has decorated for Christmas in the classic neon purple and pink I so associate with childhood Christmases. I mustn’t forgot the three lane roundabouts with glowing Christmas Trees and a statue of Jesus atop the world. The market, a delicious meal in enormous chairs and my first day in Nicaragua was soon done.

Monday morning I was off to Sabana Grande. I spent most of the day on the bus, though by far one of the more comfortable bus rides I’ve taken in a while. By late in the afternoon I had arrived and found myself sitting at a table at the Solar Restaurant with the Mujeres chatting excitedly about all manner of things. It became very clear these women run the show and know how things should be done. Once again I was soon steered in a new direction. I was brought to the home of Adelina where I will be hosted for the next month and a half.

Within just a few minutes of arriving I was fed and welcomed into the family very warmly. Adelina whipped up a quick meal while her three daughters chatted with me and explained the home. With my own room, mosquito net, plenty of food, water and the pleasant soundscape of frogs, salamanders and dogs singing me to sleep it didn’t seem like long until I was awakened by chickens at my door.

Another great meal in the morning and I was down the path to the Centro Solar. Arriving, I soon met up with Ben and Jessie, interns from the first and second intakes respectively. With no time lost I soon got to know how things worked at the Centre and with the Mujeres. For my first day I joined the two of them on their projects and lent a hand in any way I could.

Day one at work here in Sabana Grande was a little confusing but certainly productive. Not one to hold back, I soon found myself standing on an adobe roof passing a stove pipe down into the kitchen to newly improved stove. Getting the stove up and running I was soon replacing the adobe shingles and back on the ground in no time.

Since day one I’ve been spending my mornings working with Maurito. Maurito maintains the gardens and does odd jobs for the solar restaurant. For those of you that know me I do enjoy a good chat; spending time with Maurito has given me plenty of practice at listening as well as chatting. It’s great to work with someone who is happy to teach about most anything from banana cultivation, the solar powered water system to Spanish grammar and the history of the enourmous 500 year old ceiba tree down the road from my house.

So here I am enjoying the community. Helping out with any project I can and learning a lot along the way. The women here are very interested in beekeeping so I’m going to see if I can get them set and ready before I go. The Nicaragua I am seeing now from Sabana Grande is one of warm people, strong women,  gorgeous views and an endless amount to learn.

More from Adam and Elisa in Dominican- Biodiversity Restoration and Community Development Facilitators

Time flies! Work is rolling, friendships are blossoming and the beautiful vistas

are leaving us jaw dropped.  And to think, in a couple of weeks we will have

completed half of our internship abroad! Adam and I are realizing that the more we

weave ourselves into all kinds of projects, the harder it’s going to be to leave

come March.

Our approach so far has been to take advantage of any opportunity that comes our

way which means our weeks are flurries of activities running from meetings to

monitorings. These past months have been taken up by planning the big “Dia de

Campo” event which was a celebration of the reforestation project so far.  Adam

also tirelessly put together funding proposal to develop the forest industry in

Republic Dominican; while I spent a lot of time studying web design and planning

workshops.  A goal of ours is to ensure the continuity of the website updating

after we leave. So we have been offering computer training workshops to local

youth to teach them how to manage a website. In a couple of months we hope to have

trained a team of youth that will have a good foundation in web design and will be

able to promote their own region without relying on temporary interns.

On top of our outlined work plan, we also have been doing a lot of networking. One

of these partnerships is helping maintain communication between the Water Resource

PeaceCorps volunteers and ENDA.  Both organizations have worked together in the

past, so our role is to act as the intermediary to identify opportunities for

collaboration in the upcoming projects. We are also assisting the Incubedora de

Micro Empresas- The Incubator for Micro Enterprises  in Cotui  to develop a fruit

processing plant in a nearby community and working on various ecotourism ventures.

The concept of ecotourism is only starting to take off in Dominican. A number of

tour operating companies, including Colinas EcoTours, are actively working on

redefining  tourism in the country. For a country rich in biodiversity minus the

threat of any poisonous creatures; the time has come for the Dominican tourism

industry to turn its focus on the interior. A bonus from working in the ecotourism

sector is that we get to visit sites such as the Ruta del Cacao, and the wetlands

near Haitillo lake! Some of these tourist destinations are outcomes of  ENDA’s

forest management initiative so we are also promoting them via the website. In

parallel to our information gathering for the website, CATIE, the Centro

Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza – the Model Forest organization

based out of Costa Rica, is putting a 20 year legacy documentary together

highlighting all the Model Forest work that has been going on around the world.

We have had the fine privilege of accompanying the film maker to interview

involved members for the Dominican portion of the movie. 

Before the holidays start, we want to tie up loose ends and wrap up projects.  We

do look forward to some down time and getting to see more of the country.  There’s

also the highly anticipated the bachata legend, Frank Reyes, whose concert next

door at the De Melissa Car Wash has been marked in our calendar for weeks now!

It’s safe to say that yes in fact, we’ve caught the Dominican Latin Fever.

Saludos,

Elisa & Adam

Adam with his vegetation sampling partner.

Sr. Ferreira showing off healthy seedlings.

Tree nursery for reforestation project.

News from Salado Barra, Honduras – Mira Maude Chouinard, Biodiversity Restoration & Community Development Facilitator

Quite a few things happened in Salado Barra since Anna last wrote to you!  It is now the rainy season, and the workers of Falls Brook Centre’s local project – Proyecto Mangle – have been restoring and planting in the past few weeks.  All of the plants in our nurseries have to go into the ground before the dry season begins!

While Anna works hard in the kitchen and medicinal gardens with the hope of improving food security in the community, my individual work consists of monitoring and reporting the advancements and changes in the Biological Corridor (a project with the multinational Standard Fruit/Dole) and ensuring the success of the solar panel business that members of the community have started.  Together, Anna and I teach English and Environmental Education classes to kids in the community, and tackle the challenging task to revamp Salado’s ecotourism management plan.

A week ago, we were extremely lucky to have Dr. Ranil Senanayake, a systems ecologist and founder of the Analog Forestry restoration system, visiting us from Sri Lanka.  Dr. Senanayake has been involved in this project for a few years. His visit consisted of evaluating the progress of the Biological Corridor, the demonstration and restoration sites.  He also made sure to collect epiphytes from El Cacao (where Falls Brook Centre holds other projects), taught us how to put them back on trees to ensure their reproduction and proliferation.  Dr. Senanayake is an incredible source of information, and gave us the honor to evaluate one of our analog forestry designs.

Members of our project also held a reunion between workers of Salado Barra, Omoa and El Cacao, with the intent to share, learn and evaluate each project’s successes, challenges and lessons learned.  Anna and I were pleased to see Brittany, the Falls Brook Centre intern working in Omoa, and to learn from her project.

On a leisurely note, we celebrated the Proyecto Mangle’s one year anniversary this past Friday.  We played games, organized a talent show, and were treated to a real feast composed of a freshly bought and killed pig, rice and beans, yuca, tortillas, and chimol.  Community members danced until the wee hours of the morning, celebrating one year of hard restoration work!

Que le vaya bien,

Mira + Anna

Mira loving the jungle

Environmental Education with some of the kids

Beautiful mangroves

Brittany MacGillivray - Community Development Facilitator in Honduras

After a long day of traveling, I arrived late in the day Sunday to San Pedro Sula, Honduras on October 14th. I was promptly greeted by a smiling and helpful compañero, who much like myself was eager to get out of the busy, loud, and smelly city, and head to the coast. Jumping right into things the next morning, most of my first week was spent being oriented to the office and all of the people involved with the project. Much to my devastation however, when you drive into the Barras communities along the beach, you are shown a reality that exist here that is a major problem: the garbage! Due to the ocean currents and the geography of the coast, garbage is constantly being washed up onto the, what would otherwise be beautiful beaches. As is indicated in the picture, one of the many problems that exist with this is the sanitary nature of the things (i.e., the discarded medical jar) that sit on the shores where people are living, where food is caught, and where children are playing. Roger assures me that in January we will attempt to clean some of this garbage up, and hopefully start a trend where beach clean-up becomes a regular occurrence.

Garbage that collects on the beach in the Barras.

Week two and three for me were spent in Copan Ruinas at a Spanish language school, which was a helpful and necessary venture. Following my language training, the first work day back in Cuyamel, another reality sets in: we are faced with a lot of hardships here before the restoration work can even begin. Specifically, due to the rain the night before, the office had been flooded, and soon after discovering this, the electricity went out for the remainder of the day due to a tree falling onto a power line several kilometers up the road. This will continue to be a constant battle for us throughout the next couple of months while rainy season is upon us.

Throughout the weeks to follow, many of the same problems were faced again, with issues regarding electricity, but more so with the rain. The road to the Barras gets washed out, which prevents us from getting into the communities and conducting our restoration work. Finally, toward the end of week five we were able to get into the communities. Thursday and Friday we had visitors from other projects in Honduras with us to help conduct a workshop with some of the women from Barra Motagua, and to begin an initiative regarding the exchanging of knowledge between projects. A local artist showed everyone how to make jewelry and other useful things, such as long-lasting candles and purses out of the garbage that they have on the beach. Teaching these skills to the members of the community is useful because it gives them the opportunity to participate in their own economic venture, making and selling the things that they are able to produce from the trash that cost them nothing to acquire and use.

The following week, I spent a day being introduced to the nursery that is being constructed in Cuyamel. It will be largely beneficial to the project to have the nursery in town, close to the office to help increase the protection and care of the juvenile plants, along with the already established nurseries at the schools in the two communities. The next day was a long day spent making our way into Cuero y Salado on a knowledge-exchange venture with the project in Barra Salado. The sharing of knowledge is a beneficial opportunity for our project, as it is not as well established as the project in Cuero y Salado. Specifically, it will aid us in our initiatives by allowing us to observe the progress and successes made in a similar project. These methods can then be implemented here, allowing us to further help those who live in these vulnerable Barra communities, and to further protect and restore the environment that exists there as well. On our drive back to Cuyamel we also stopped to visit the mangrove restoration project in Cacao, spending some time there being shown some of their ideas and efforts, as well as getting to see their very large, very diverse nursery.

Hopefully over the next couple of weeks the rain will allow us to get back into the communities so we can spend time applying our new knowledge, getting some trees into the ground, and doing some monitoring of the restoration sites.

Por ahora, eso es todo de Cuyamel.

Hasta pronto,

Brittany

The group of participants from the workshop in Barra Motagua.

Roger, Paula, Carlos, and I on our tour through the mangroves in Cacao.

Jessie Lyon - Appropriate Technology Technician in Nicaragua

I write you from La Casita Solar, the restaurant of the Mujeres Solares de Totogalpa. The dining room is spacious and breezy, and in the kitchen Doña Adelina squeezes fresh oranges for lunchtime.  Mauro, the only man of this twenty person cooperative, hoes the vegetable garden beside the restaurant.  Nimia, the cooperative’s administrator, hosts a meeting in the gazebo by my table.  This is where I work and this is who I work for.

I arrived in Sabana Grande after two weeks of Spanish immersion in El Lagartillo, a thirty-family community southwest of here.  Four hours of Spanish grammar everyday quickly gave me the skeleton for a new language.  Soon I was squawking away with my teacher Rosa, and the other students at the school.  El Lagartillo is an exceptional place, grinning with pride for their school, a solar-powered library, a children’s drama program, stunning landscapes, a strong socialist history and their community band, Los Rusticos.

Five hours across the rural Nicaraguan badlands took me and my backpack to the side of the Pan-American highway.  After great confusion I found Sabana Grande and my host family and new roommates, a grandmother and her two grandchildren.  I fit so comfortably in this girly house, and before I knew it I had a rhythm to my days and a whole new life.

Working for the cooperative takes the schedule and pace of typical Nicaragua—relaxed, calm yet meaningful and demanding.  I contribute half my time to current projects started by the Mujeres and their partner NGO Grupo Fenix, and the other half to my own initiatives.  With fellow intern Benjamin Pedro, I build and install bottle lights and work to improve los fogones mejorados, a project in which three solar women sell wood-efficient stoves.  Last week I helped a group of students install a solar system in a local house and built a solar cooker with Reina and Rumalda, two members of the cooperative’s construction committee.  I am in the process of putting pictures and biographies of each member on their website, and organizing English and music classes for kids during their Christmas holiday in December and January.  Today I prepared plans and rootings for a medicinal herb garden.  My favourite project promotes local micro-enterprises for a youth group here.  I am applying for a small grant to start a bicycle rental company for volunteers and tourists.  Entering the world of funding has been an incredible and inspiring challenge.

So, life is grand, and I feel exceptionally lucky to be a Falls Brook intern.  Between work days, my friends and I travel to canyons, waterfalls and beaches.  We snack on fresh guava fruits and tiny bananas.  We follow the ups and downs of Sabana Grande’s baseball team.  Nicaragua remains generous and warm.  I am so looking forward to what is to unfold in the chapters ahead.

Romalda drills the frame for a solar cooker. 

Jessie helps Grupo Fenix volunteer Alex, improve his design for a new solar
cooker.

Ben, Jessie and workshop attendees install a solar system into a local home.

Update from Chelsea Scheske - Organic Agriculture Facilitator in Cuba

¡Saludos desde Cuba!

I arrived in Pinar del Río a month ago and already I’ve seen, done, and learned so much.  In a typical week, Lina and I spend two days working in the office on tasks like data analysis for the diagnostic we’ve been doing for the project.  During the remaining three days, we bike out to the farms and work with our farmers.  I love that we have the freedom to pedal around the Cuban countryside, it’s a great balance for those days spent with our heads down in the office.

Lina and I have been hard at work implementing a medicinal plant project with the support of Professor Suarez from the University of Pinar del Río, Cuba.  This project is part of a larger program under the banner of PIAL (Programa de Innovación Agropecuaria Local).  The mission of this program is, in summary, to foster decentralized decision making in order to incorporate farmer knowledge and experience into agricultural innovation.  As most of you probably know, decentralized decision making is a huge part of food sovereignty, so as a food sovereignty enthusiast this is an AWESOME program for me to be a part of.  It’s really been great to have Lina here with me.  As she’s done her masters and will soon be doing her Ph. D on Cuban agriculture.  She’s accumulated a LOT of knowledge on the subject.  Cuban agriculture is organized much differently than Canadian agriculture, and with its numerous different cooperative structures it can seem a bit complicated at first.  Believe me, I’m taking full advantage of her conocimientos!

Right now we’re working with several local farmers to develop medicinal plant propagation on their farms.  This is pretty cool: in Cuba, every province has a specific farm dedicated to the production of medicinal plants.  Here it’s the Finca de Plantas Medicinales de Pinar del Río.  This farm supplies medicinal plants to the provincial medicinal plant factory, which in turn processes the plants for distribution among the population.  This includes isolating the medicinal element and expressing it in forms like tinctures, pills, ointments, etc.  The project we’re working on is in place to help supply the provincial medicinal plant factory with certain plants that are in high demand, and are not being supplied in great enough quantities by the provincial medicinal plant farm.  I think it’s so interesting that Cuba has a whole sector dedicated to the production and distribution of medicinal plants.  It’s cheaper than producing pharmaceuticals, many would say healthier, and it’s helping to keep traditional medicinal knowledge alive.  I’ve learned so much about “traditional medicines” since arriving.  In contrast to Canada, the majority of the Cubans I’ve met have at least some kind of knowledge of medicinal plants, and most grow them in their houses.  It’s pretty inspiring.

Working in Cuba is much different than working in Canada.  Because of the difficulty in getting certain supplies, sometimes it takes a LOT of creativity to get simple tasks done.  But the people here have responded to the challenge.  It’s seriously amazing to see what kinds of innovations these farmers have come up with!  Along with them I’m being forced to “think outside the box”, and in terms of personal development it’s been great for my problem solving skills.  For example: Need to cut the grass?  Here’s a machete!  Need a toothpick?  Use this machete!  Want a haircut?  Machete!  You get the idea.  By the time I’m done this internship I’ll be able to use a machete for absolutely everything, including shaving my legs.  It’s going on my CV, count on it.

Not only are we able to work with local farmers and medicinal plants, we’re using Permaculture and Analogue Forestry principles on all the farms!  For example, on Tony’s farm we’re implementing a permaculture design based on medicinal plants to demonstrate the benefits of using permaculture principles to grow medicinals, which are notoriously sensitive.  We’re using mostly tires and rocks, which Cuba has in abundance, to make things like raised beds, mandalas, and herb-spirals.  We think it looks pretty great (check out the picture!).  Tony is a Boccachi expert, and also an avid “lombriculturalist” (worm-culturist)… so yeah, we get along!  Lina and I are also trying a “mini-lombricultura” bin in our place with the worms they use in Cuba (California Reds).  We’ve had to be creative about finding supplies and constructing the bin, but so far it’s been a success, although the dueños of the casa where we’re staying aren’t quite sure what to make of it… they’ll come around!  Lombricultura is mostly used here to process manure in large quantities for application as fertilizer in agriculture.  Composting and recycling food waste are not popular, so if we can get this vermi-compost system working with the California Reds we’re thinking about creating a workshop to give at the farms or in the schools.  You know… changing the world, one worm at a time!  I’ll keep you posted.

Tony and Chelsea with the finished Mandala design.

On Sely’s farm (another farmer in our project) we explained the benefits of sowing with the contours as opposed to down the slope and put our mad A-Frame skills into practice, mapping out the contours on a particular field with a very steep gradient.  He planted his tobacco y frijoles there last week using this technique, and we’re hoping he’ll see an improvement in his yields.  We’re also using the living fence concept in this field as another way to reduce erosion and run off of nutrients, soil and water.  As well, we’re in the process of designing an Analogue Forestry Corridor on his farm using medicinal plants, fruit trees, forage, and root crops.

I could go on, but I’ve got to save something for next time!  In summary, I’ve so far had the opportunity to meet and work with some amazing people who have already taught me so much about organic agriculture, creativity, and resilience.  I’m looking forward to 4.5 more months of it!  So I bid you adios.  Learn lots and have fun!  And of course, toil hard.

Nos vemos,

Chelsea

Cutting tires to be used to make raised beds in permaculture design.

Frame built using farm resources, and used to measure slope to facilitate contour
plowing.  

Russell Vinegar - Biodiversity Restoration Facilitator in Costa Rica

A month into my time here at International Analog Forestry Network HQ in Londres, Costa Rica, and the internship is going well. The IAFN secretariat is not directed to work in the community, but rather to help coordinate, support, and share information between analog forestry efforts worldwide, and that is what most of my time has been spent working on, via the wonders of technology. Nevertheless, we’ve been putting effort into developing positive relationships with the people here and hope that Londres can grow as a nucleus of AF activity, which means we’ve also been ‘washing our hands in the soil’ on a regular basis.

Our office location here is relatively new, so we are still getting some key elements in place. We built a swank compost shed, and have been gradually working away at a nursery (for plants, though there are plenty of babies in town), placing posts, putting in support cables, tensioning it all up, flattening the beds, fixing the shade cloth, and now stocking it up with plants. It hasn’t quite been an exercise in natural building, as we have been working with concrete supports, metal posts, and plastic shade cloth, but hopefully we have created a more permanent and impressive structure than bamboo and palms would have afford us. It is intended to serve as a communal nursery to support increasing the number and diversity of trees in the community, filling public spaces, home gardens, farms and fincas. We are lined up to design some of the landscaping for the high school once it moves to its new site, and I have started the communication ball rolling to get the staff and students involved in the process. At a meeting at the elementary school this morning I found many eager collaborators do outdoor environmental education! They have a lot of great stuff going on there already (veggie garden, hydroponics, young fruit trees, budding butterfly garden, awesome murals) which I am eager to learn more about. I am doing my best to keep collaboration and continuity in mind as we go.

After a good sweat outside in the morning, I have taken to jotting over to the stream where some fallen trees have made a pleasant waist deep swimming hole. Laying back in the water, I do my best to relax and stay calm, but can’t help but constantly anticipating the nibbles of fish. Gazing up, a huge dead tree stands leafless overhead and reminds me of winter and Canada and senescence in the fondest of ways. Rain usually begins trickling about this time and so I hustle back to the office for lunch.

Carrying on with work inside in the afternoon, a few projects have been on the go. We are preparing the structure for a huge plant database we will be hosting online to serve as a resource for designers, somewhat along the lines of Plants for a Future but inclusive of the tropics and tailored for easy AF application. At this point it is more of a head scratching, detail fixin task, but the grunt work of entering the data lies ahead. Updating Wikipedia pages, and assorted website and translation work round out the gig. Research I’ve done into carbon markets, accounting, and ecosystem service payment for some potential projects has been mostly puzzling and disconcerting, but is relevant given the rapidly growing forest carbon sector. That’s all for now.

Nursery and growing plant collection - what up!?

A snippet of Milo's land, AF in action.

Suriname cherries - just another roadside attraction.