Making It

By any measure, this must have been my most successful week in Tolte. I think the key day was Thursday, (March 8), when I got to lead off MCCH’s granja integral workshop with a talk about soil erosion and how to reduce it. I talked about the different components of soil, and how easily they could wash away, especially the living components of microorganisms and organic matter. I gave examples of different land slopes that I had seen on my farm visits, and how they could be managed so as to reduce erosion. And I demonstrated the famous 1 percent land level that I learned to build in the Peace Corps, and asked to be allowed to use it with the attendees. And since they were there, I actually made appointments to see the ones I hadn’t seen.

But this talk was only the turning point of a week that saw five adults show up to study English on Wednesday, and four more on Thursday, giving me two fourteen hour workdays in a row. And on Friday, when there was no school, I did two farm visits in the early part of the morning,, attended the community budget meeting, and then, after lunch, I finally helped Asencio dig an irrigation channel on a one-percent slope, using the famous Peace Corps level. He was so enthused that he said he was going to make his own one percent level. It is also helpful that Asencio is a well-liked leading citizen—what he does is likely to catch on. I feel like it’s an historic moment, or at least a big moment in my history here.

I also took Rafael, one half of the young Belgian couple sent here as volunteers, with me on the morning farm visits. He is an agroforestry enthusiast, and he thinks that some trees, if they are of the right type, could fit into Asencio’s plot of land (the one that I leveled later that day). The only problem is that neither of us know much about the trees of Ecuador, and we were stumped (pun, hahaha) trying to come up with the right kind of tree. As usual, the universe coughed up an incredible stroke of good fortune, when Dr. Joe Peters, former Peace Corps Ecuador forestry volunteer, decided on that very day to send me an e-mail for the heck of it. Needless to say, I immediately asked him for an appropriate agroforestry species. He hasn’t responded yet, but I still think his e-mail was exquisitely timed, as are so many things that happen here.

The other half of the Belgian couple is Geraldine. Since I was told that she was a teacher, I took her to school on Tuesday. Geraldine, like me, is a high school teacher, and she found the grade 1-2-3 class a bit overwhelming (read: horrifying). I really hope that she’ll work with the kids one or two at a time on reading. I think that might be best. Her Spanish is actually very good, but 20 kids calling for her attention at once might have been a bit too much. She and Rafael spent most of the rest of the week putting down pavers in the streets of Tolte, which is the big community project right now.

The farming thrills did not end on Friday, though. I made a bunch more appointments for Saturday, and again experienced great satisfaction. Mesias has a little piece of land behind his house/store where he wants to plant the plants that MCCH brought on Thursday. He had already taken a shot at laying out contours by eye, but I did get to use the land level with him on another small area. He has a larger piece of land lower down the mountain, and I want to get out there, too, but I was glad to have a quick start on Saturday.

I had a much longer visit with Joaquin and his son Angel (better known as “Grande,” since he is easily the biggest person in Tolte). They were plowing a wheat field with a yoke of bulls, and I took the opportunity to lay out some contour lines for them to follow. Contour plowing is an essential soil conservation practice, but not one that I’ve ever gotten to work on before. In Costa Rica, it was always terraces. Anyway, they plowed until lunch, and I took over Joaquin’s part of the job after lunch. This consisted of walking in front of the bulls holding a long stick while Angel managed the plough, a job that he says makes the bicep in the arm that guides the plough really tired. I can well imagine. Anyway, it was sort of my job to use the stick to whack the bulls on the snout to turn them around at the end of the furrow, or get them straightened out if they went off track. I wasn’t at all good at this, but Angel was surprisingly patient and I did get better over time. And I only took one head butt. The word for this in Spanish is “embestiar,” a term I find particularly satisfying due to its inclusion of “bestia,” “beast.” Angel became concerned near the end of the job that the bull was determined to really get me, and he had his very pregnant wife Gladys come down to finish the job. The bull wouldn’t dare embestiar her, believe me. If I’m feeling ambitious, I took photos of some of this contour plowing, and you’ll also get a glimpse of Joaquin, who has been mentioned in quite a few of these entries.

Angel with the contour level

Joaquin and Angel and the Tolte Bulls

It was now much later than I expected, about 4 in the afternoon, but I went after one more visit with Cristian, one of the AVANTI becarios who has not had enough money beyond the AVANTI grant to continue his studies, his wife, Laura, who actually was the one who invited me to visit, and their little boy, Ariel, who looks so much like Laura that seeing them together makes me laugh out loud. I learned only this week that Cristian is only 21 and Laura a mere 19, which produced more culture shock than it should have. In any case, they took me down to pieces of land owned by Laura’s grandmother and Cristian’s father. Cristian’s father’s land was a very micely laid out orchard, with ample spacing between trees and the healthiest looking trees and fruit that I have seen here, which I think shows the importance of adequate spacing, an idea I have been trying to deliver for a while.

While the orchard was quite nice, the piece of land belonging to Laura’s grandmother was absolutely fascinating. The land is incredibly steep—we seemed to be descending into another world. But the otherworldy effect was compounded by the incredible mix of fruit trees and ground crops that covered the hillside. It was like being in a food jungle, or “food forest,” as the permaculturists say. It appears that Laura’s uncle and grandmother cooked up this way of working more or less by chance, starting with small fruit trees and planting other crops to cover the soil and give some kind of yield in the meantime. The result is that this farm produces citrus, avocadoes, bananas (very unusual here), spinach, parsley, chamomile, and dozens of other medicinal and leafy ground plants. I wish everyone in Tolte could have a farm like this. I know that Rafael will be thrilled when he sees it, and spend the rest of his time here trying to figure out why no one else works this way.

This week will see me out on more farms, doing the best I can to save Tolte’s soil, as I also teach English to as many people as possible. This is why I insisted that AVANTI give me nine months—it has taken me six just to get to this point, and I think I could be really effective for at least another six. But I’ll settle for the remaining three. On the other hand, people are starting to ask me to look for a way to stay here, and I’m considering it. Life here is, after all, really good. And now I’m off to jam Ecuadorean music with Don Luis. Music, soil, teaching—it’s true, there isn’t much else to want, except a predictable salary based on recognizable work. And maybe that’s attainable…

Ah, I didn’t post this right away, and now more things that are closely related have happened, so I’ll just toss them in. Rafael and Geraldine went to the Colegio Tecnico with Carlos on Monday, and met with the Forestry teacher there. He has a nice little tree nursery, and he immediately offered to show up with a bunch of students and plant the windbreak, with a few agroforestry trees for shade in the middle of the field. He wanted to come today (Friday, March 16), but the directora of the colegio put the kibosh on that. No, the students were too busy this week, and next week is exams, so we’re inviting them for the week of the 26th. I’ve also asked them for enough trees for a piece of land where I proposed a windbreak a couple of weeks ago. We also had to write a letter officially requesting the trees in the name of AVANTI.  Elvia is now correcting our crudely worded letter into the excruciating official language of such letters, and we hope to get it to the school by means of one of the students on Monday. I have to admit, I’m enjoying having Rafael and Geraldine around. First of all, they strike people as even more “gringo” than I do, probably only because they’re newer. They’re also fun to be around, and know how to get things done. I really shouldn’t have questioned their arrival.

Also, two things make me notice the passage of time. The first is that my computer has informed me that Daylight Savings Time has returned to the United States. I suppose that means that I’ve been here a while, since I was already here when Daylight Savings time ended in the fall. Also, the weather seems to be changing, perhaps prematurely. We know longer have daily fog and rain, although the rainy season is not due to end until the beginning of May. I hope that we’re not looking at a drought, or all the trees in the windbreak will be reduced to withered sticks.