So, what sorts of agricultural work can a civil engineer whose only conocemiento (knowledge) of farming is based on gardening hope to share with a population of life-long farmers? Well, not tons, but more than I initially thought. The results of the community assessment survey I conducted show that very little fertilization of any variety, and no pest control outside of fumigation, takes place in my community. Peace Corps did a nice job of teaching its trainees to make organic fertilizers and pesticides, as well as ideas for pest-control based on integrated planting techniques, so I hope to share this knowledge through two organic community gardens. I won’t pretend to be an organic fanatic, but in my community where family incomes hover around $100/month (I live on more than three times that and am not wealthy by local standards), the cheapness of organic fertilizers and pesticides is very attractive.
One of the gardens I mentioned in a previous post, and it is already fenced in, tilled, and set-up to be a fairly traditional vegetable garden. The other would be new, and my hope is to make it container-based (probably old, halved truck-tires) focused on intensive, micro-scale production. I hope the gardens will serve as hands-on teaching facilities for fertilizer and pest production, and also as inspiration for family gardens that could diversify the overly-starched, rice and yucca diet of the area, while simultaneously providing food security.
I’ve also talked with my counterpart at the Centro about helping out a few days a week with poultry production in order to learn how to go about it. My community wanted the local Parroquia (township, sort-of), to fund a micro-empresa (micro-business) raising chickens, but funding fell through. I hope to get the project going again, and maybe coordinate with two cajitas de ahorro (micro-savings banks) run by women’s groups in the community to provide the loan needed to begin the project. If it goes well, there’s a slim chance I could actually use my engineering background to design and build chicken coops!
Though the view of work from where I sit has been a
bit gray, life at my host family’s has been cheered by the arrival of Poleth (pronounced Paulette) and Matthew, host niece and nephews from Quito who came at the beginning of July and are spending the summer with my host parents. In the picture to the right, the niños (kids) are waiting for bus to take them and me out to my community for a picnic to celebrate the end of exams for the students I teach in the campo. They had a blast, and I ate my first salad prepared in un-boiled river water. To my surprise and delight, Montezuma did not exact his revenge, so, apparently, I have a fully-integrated stomach. If only the rest of me were so well adjusted....The picture to the right is of Poleth helping me make cinnamon rolls. I got an excellent recip
e from Emily, a fellow volunteer in Loja Province, and have made them a number of times in a campo oven. A campo oven is just a pot, but I put rocks and bricks on the bottom to store heat, close the lid tightly, and it bakes fairly well. Instructions for its construction came in the literature PC gave out at swear-in, as ovens are rare in Ecuador. In my life of hot water, microwave, and basic cable, I enjoy using the campo oven to feel a bit more like I’m in the rustic Peace Corps of my imagination, rather than the Posh, but isolated, Corps of reality.
