Do Not Go Gentle

I suppose the long gap in my contribution to this blog reflect the fact that my time in Tolte is winding down, and there doesn’t seem to be a thing I can do to slow that process. The high (maybe too high) hopes I had of making some lasting impression during my second year here, some micro-enterprise, some excellent project with the granjas integrales group, have produced nothing, and now there is not enough time to change that.

A sort of inertia seems to have possessed everyone. I have been trying for two weeks to give a talk about turning organic waste into fertilizer. This was inspired by the fact that the Municipalidad de Chunchi, whch picks up Tolte’s garbage, now requires that organic and inorganic garbage be separated. In the meeting where this was announced, I immediately offered to help people compost their organic garbage, and explained that this should not be shipped off as waste, but rather used as fertilizer. Since only the president of the junta directive took me up on that (he already wanted a worm bin to make vermicompost for his fruit trees; it was an easy sell), I decided to offer my talk to whomever might be interested. And it seems a million things have conspired to prevent me from even notifying the community that this is going to happen. The latest is that the public address system isn’t working, making notification difficult, if not exactly impossible. To dodge the PA problem, I was going to offer my talk during the community meeting on Tuesday, but the meeting was cancelled due to lack of attendance. I also have to do this on the terms of the junta, because I need the salon communal. I can’t give my talk in the library, because the electrical system that includes the library and the school burned out three weeks ago, and hasn’t been repaired yet. And so, the dominoes keep falling, and the days keep passing, and if I give my talk before the end of May, I’ll have to be grateful. Unfortunately, compost takes longer to mature than I have time left, so who knows what will happen with any of this.

Another project that is long delayed is my effort to make biochar out of animal bone. The delays here are somehow more comical, because they involve my stalwart drinking companions, Reccion and Damasio. Reccion really has the interest in making the fertilizer, and has accepted that it’s a good idea that he wants to try, which is an incredible step forward in a community that hardly uses any fertilizer, whether organic or chemical. Damasio is the one who really knows how to make charcoal, and my dedication to biochar makes me prefer to make the bone phosphate fertilizer this way rather than simply burning the bones and grinding them up, although the advantages may only be slight. To top it off, Reccion has a llama skeleton we can use for our experiment. I never imagined that any of the comical touristic llamas of Tolte could come to this. We keep scheduling the process for Friday, or next Friday, and one or another demand on either Reccion’s or Damasio’s time prevents it from happening. I haven’t lost hope yet, but I doubt that I’ll be here long enough to see Reccion’s avocado or orange trees flourish in their organic phosphate bath.

There was a note of encouragement this week, though. When the French guys were here testing the kids’ vision, they came with me on a farm visit to a piece of land that belongs to Alicia. Only one of the French guys is an optometrist. The other is an organic farmer. The organic farmer and I agreed that to manage a pest problem in one of Alicia’s fruit trees, she could try spraying the tree with milk. Of course, that was back in February. The other day, I saw Alicia’s son Joel, a boy so flimsy he could pass for an American child, struggling to haul a tank of gas up to his house on a two wheeled cart. I gave him a hand, which turned out to be somewhat tougher than I expected, and got him, the gas tank, and the cart up the hill to his house. Alicia, of course, insisted on feeding me fava beans, cheese, and some kind of extremely grassy tasting herbal tea, and it occurred to me that I didn’t know how the milk thing had gone. It turns out to have been a home run success. The tree is doing much better, the pests are gone, it felt funny spraying milk instead of drinking it, but what a good result! Maybe I need twenty years here instead of two.

There is talk about finding some way to keep me here. The Fiesta de Parroquializacion de Tolte is coming May 21, and several people are talking about pressuring Carolina on my behalf. As I understand it, she simply doesn’t have the money, and maybe has grown tired of providing an English teacher when so few in the community have taken advantage of my presence. So I’m not sure that popular demand will do much good. But the Fiesta should be excellent. ESTASIS has a new song in praise of Tolte (yes, I wrote it, but I won’t be singing it once Mario learns it), and we’ll be performing it during the festivities. I suppose my pride was injured when I heard that the junta had purchased a Himno Parroquial (sort of a town anthem) for $1500. I told Francisco that I would do it for $50 and a case of beer, but I guess he felt that he had to go a more formal route. We’ll see which song captures the popular imagination when they face off on the 21^st. But I know that there are already children singing the chorus of my song from having heard ESTASIS practice it. And this in spite of how appalling ESTASIS sounds, no matter what we play.

And I suppose there is a glimmer of hope on the English teaching front. Mario came to me the other day and said, “David, I have to learn English, it’s urgent.” I suppose having a pregnant teen-aged wife in England might contribute to that urgency. I told him that since I couldn’t charge him, I wanted him to find three other people who would study English all out for the next two months. We found three, but one dropped out right away due to some religious study even that is occurring at the same time. So I have Mario and two high school girls, Elvia and Yolanda, studying English all-out three days a week. At least, I think I have them, but this is only the first week. The first two days have gone pretty well. I’d still like a fourth person for pair work, but let’s see how far we can go. Maybe this will be my lasting contribution to Tolte—three young people well-prepared to speak English when they emigrate…

One more parting thought. Spending every Sunday in Chunchi as I do, a couple of people asked me to teach English to their kids, and that’s how I spend my Sunday afternoons now. It’s very different teaching these kids from teaching in a school classroom situation. The kids are more motivated, and they know that their parents are right behind me—sometimes literally. And while I’ve been horrified at some of the mispronunciation their teachers have taught them in school, they seem to be making good progress with me. Best of all, the father of one of my students has a land development project going in Navon, a town south of Cuenca. He’s mentioned me to the woman who’s the equivalent of County Executive there, and she seems to be interested in the things I know and could bring to Navon. So perhaps the end of my time in Tolte will carry me to the beginning of my time in Navon. For some reason, I never seem to run out of hope here in Ecuador. “David,” people tell me, “hope is the last thing you should lose.”