Happy Holidays

Hola to all at home: Family, friends, former co-workers and fellow Volunteers!

We wish you a merry christmas....may you spend it with family and friends and snow. We are jealous of all of the reports of cold weather coming from up there...our fleece sweaters are currently growing a bit of mold. We are determined to drink hot cocoa over christmas even if it means sweating.

We also wish you a wonderful New Year. We certainly have quite a few projects to focus on as we more into the new year. We will be working on teaching english, building estufa lorenas, starting up a reforestation effort, restarting the island´s tourism group, and starting a club for kids. As you move into the new year, please remember that there are lots of little ways that you too can make this world a better place without taking 2 years to do Peace Corps. Please consider making one of the following your contribution to a better world:

*Visit special places. Make some time to go to the places you love. Parks, museums, nature centers, plays, concerts, cultural events. Help these important institutions to feel supported with your presence, your attention and your money. Saying you love the Zoo isn´t enough....you´ve got to go and enjoy and support it. If neglected too much we lose these wonders through funding cuts and neglect.

*Follow one of the three Rs that you are not already doing. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle...in that order. Are you using cloth bags at the store? Do you even need a bag for this purchase at all? Reuse all that you can... for items that you normally use throw aways think of reusable alternatives. For example paper towels vs cloth rags...I mean it isn´t that hard when you aren´t handwashing things. Change those light bulbs to florescent...it does matter!

*Volunteer your time. If you are not already volunteering somewhere get out there and start. Volunteering gives to your community, makes important community ties and enables our society to accomplish a ton of good with the little funding that most good-doing groups have. Yes, everyone does have some time to volunteer...you just have to want to use it for volunteering. As a full time volunteer and former volunteer coordinator I offer a 100% garuntee that there is volunteer work out there that will fit your schedule and warm your heart. You will get more out of it than you put in, I promise.

*Speak up for what is right, whatever you consider to be right. Consider asking your local and national leaders to support environmental issues. Even if Global Warming is a total hoax it is just good sense to keep this country and globe from being a gross place. We as a country need to lead the world in making the environment a priority and backing up our priorities with $. China isn´t going to do it...and they are the ones jostling to be next to lead. If the USA will not lead in a direction that the world thinks is reasonable, the world will look elsewhere for leadership.

*Make yourself just a little healthier....it will pay off long term in your energy, time available, and less healthcare cost. I can attest that a being a little bit healthier brightens your whole world. You will feel better and thus be more able to go volunteer. Uh-oh starting to repeat myself...it is time to quit.

One of my favorite sayings has always been from Gandhi "we must be the change that we wish to see in the world¨. Kevin and I are living it...and so can you. What change will you be in 2008?

We will be on the island for a while...so you might not see another post until mid January.
Feliz Navidad y prosero año nuevo a todos.
April y Kevin

All I want for Christmas....

Well, we still find it almost impossible to believe that it is the Christmas Season. It is not possible that you poor souls up north have snow and cold weather....and that we are missing it all. Mailing packages home for the holidays was a surreal experience...what holiday are these for anyway, it is too warm for Christmas.

Now, don´t get me wrong. Christmas is celebrated here, in some areas in much the same way as in the states. The streets are more full of sellers and buyers than normal - but the noise and music are much the same as other holidays. Here in Santiago, where I sit typing, there are plenty of christmas lights at night and wrapping paper for sale in all the stores (sold by the sheet). The Virgin processed last night, carried on by a croud of the faithful (these processions happen more often in a year than I would have thought before coming here).

On the island there isn´t much in the way of Christmas celebration. I have been told that Chrismas will be just another normal day. New Years will get more recognition with parties and special food. This leaves us free to make Christmas as big or small a deal as we want within our home. Very exciting to be totally free of outside Christmas imputs...no commercials, no christmas specials, no holiday traffic or holiday cookies luring me from the table in the office.

I did go to a Christmas parade with a boat load of children and adults from the island. There were about 60 of us loaded into a boat that is sometimes used to haul cattle (watching them load cattle is interesting!). The ride to port was a long one as the boat was so full and running just a 40hp engine. Just before we arrived at port there was a general changing of clothes and shoes and every kid had their hair brushed and was sprayed with deoderant or perfume because apperance is very important here.

The local government paid for the ride and provided a small dinner just to encourage islanders to go to the parade with thier kids. The parade started after the dark came and the rain left. It included floats pulled by semi trucks, a marching band, lots of music, and lots of thrown candy. There were also some fireworks and a band/orchestra concert afterwards.

We then piled back into a bus to go to the port only to find that the captain had not bought fuel when we arrived. As it was now 10pm buying fuel wasn´t possible so for a while it looked like we were going to have to sleep in the port area...not a fun prospect. Someone managed to track down and wake up a guy who could sell fuel and so we were able to leave. We arrived home at 1am. It was a long but fun night.

So what does a Peace Corps Volunteer ask for for Christmas? Well, it is different for everyone. Kevin and I asked for:
*hummingbird feeders to lure all the hummingbirds closer to the house
*synthetic travel underwear (synthetic dries fast and the ants like to eat cotton)
*letters / photos from home
*tyvec envelopes (it is hard to find strong mailing envelopes here and they don´t like it when we reuse them)
*and the biggie: a world band radio, meaning a radio that picks up SW bands. Stay tuned (haha...a radio reference) for a post about our experiences with the new radio.


So what are our plans for the Christmas holiday? We have friends coming to stay with us. Brook and Mac are another of the married couples in out training group and they will be with us from Sunday to Wednesday (if we can get them off island then). We hope to get the ingredients for bread, cider, hot chocolate, apple crisp, and other yuppy holiday foods. I hope to do luminaria on Christmas eve on our porch. I think that we will make christmas "poppers / crackers" for our host families and nieghbors to share the spirit and culture with them.

We are thinking of all of you and the wonderful cold that you are getting up there. We miss you (even if I don´t miss all the christmas craziness).

Listening to the world

What do I really miss here in Panama!"=)(/&%$·"!ª well, keyboards that actually show the symbol you will get when you type a key is one thing that I miss. What I had been planning on saying before the unsucessful quest for a question mark got me side tracked was that I miss NPR - otherwise known as national public radio (yup, sorry mom... news with a liberal bias).

Here in Panama there is plently of news, on TV, radio and newspapers. On the island we only get radio, and while we enjoy listening to the local radio most of the time, listening to news is hard because it is fast spanish without context clues to help with changes in subject. What I end up hearing is ¨blah blah hoy blah blah blah presidente Bush blah ba blah¨ Or simular experiences where the recognisable word is Estados Unidos, Chicago, California, or insert some other single word. Just enough to know that something noteworthy enought to make world news but not enough to know what it was.

As a result of this we felt totally out of touch with everything in the world. How DID Putin go from questionable to be Time´s man of the year anyway? Who is still in the running for the presidential primaries? All a mystery to me.

Sheer dumb luck put us into a conversation with a volunteer who wanted to sell a very nice used radio. So for Christmas we asked for help funding a World Band radio purchase. Thank you to Grandma Cropper for sending the funds to allow the purchase...you got a great deal. (Anyone else who sent us radio money...don´t worry...I will likely use it to further my mola collection. That will also make me very happy.) So we are now the proud owners of a Grundig Yacht Boy 400E radio...I think that we are the 3rd PCVs to use it and it is a nice radio.

World Band Radio is also called SW, short wave radio, Single side band...well, a ham radio operator would correct me with a long thesis on what each of those really means, but all that really matters is that they are things that I can now hear that you don´t hear with an AM/FM radio. SW radio is different from AM/FM in many ways:

1. You hear things from all over the world. We have heard prgrams from: the Netherlands, Prague, England, Germany, Japan, China, South Africa, Equador, India, Argentina, Cuba, Iran, the USA, and others. We have heard languages that we can´t identify and some great world music. We have heard China broadcasting news in Spanish (that is a fun accent). Each broadcaster has a target audience, but sometimes the conditions are right for the signal to carry much farther than intended.

2. Reception depends on time of day and atmosperic conditions. SW radio comes in clearest the 2 hours before sunset...whatever time that is locally, until midnight. Also the 2 hours before and after dawn can be good. Reception is often staticy and sometimes includes funny alien sounding noises. Sometimes the volume changes as the signal clarity changes. But hey, it is worth it for some english language news.

3. Program times and channels can vary seasonally and by day of the week. Where there is static now on a frequency may be a show that starts on the hour. Broadcasters each have their own schedule and may broadcast for just part of a day. For example the United Nations has a broadcast that lasts for just 15 minutes. Broadcasters even switch frequencies over the course of the day. This means in an evening of listening you may have to seek a new channel several times. All that channel surfing means you run into fun and strange things. It is kind of like watching cable if you had 1000s of channels and each only broadcast for 3 hours a day...you sometimes get lucky and sometimes not.

I still haven´t heard enough news to know what is really going on in the States (most of what is being broadcast out of the states is religion or is aimed at other parts of the globe and thus hard for us to pick up). But at least we are hearing world news: So you all hit $90 a barrel with oil...glad I am not buying gas these days. I recommend that you think about driving a veggie car like my mom :) (she says my car is running fine!)

If you are interested in trying out world band radio I would suggest trying it out before you spend a lot of money on a radio. There are inexpensive radios out there, but they say you get what you pay for. It can be very rewarding some nights, and very frustrating others.

Overall a night of listening to the world is a very good way to get connected to life outside our island. It is hard to explain just how much fun it is to hear African drumming, Spanish with a Chinese accent, Cuban radio playing Martina McBride singing Christmas Carols, or All India radio giving the cricket scores all brought to you by sheer luck and a little radio.

Thanksgiving 2007

Thanksgiving 2007 was a good holiday. We sincerley missed our family and friends, but we managed to have a good time. Of course, Thanksgiving is a USA holiday - so Panamanians do not celebrate it. That is why we choose to leave our site and celebrate this first major holiday with other volunteers.

For Thanksgiving, we went to the highlands of Panamá, near Vulcan Baru. It was about 2000 meters in elevation, so it was cool, at times like a late September day, and we enjoyed a fleece and a fire at night. Along with 3 other couples from our training group, we rented a cabin located in the mountains. THe cabin is nestled on private land between two national parks - Amistad and Vulcan Baru. The purchase of the land pre-dated the creation of the parks...thus it is a beatiful and secluded spot. Below are photos of the cabin - yup, there was good reason to be jealous. I should also mention that the cost was a good bit more than a typical panimanian (or PCV without thier friends) would pay.

The cabin had a woodburning stove for heat - and we really needed it. It also had 2 futons and a King size bed...so while the photo above was taken as a joke two couples did end up sharing the bed (the floor was too cold to consider). It also had a small kitchen and two tiny baths. But the real beauty lay in the beauty outside and the friendships inside.

There are 8 different species of hummingbird that live near that cabin...and many more in Panama as a whole. I think that I got to see 5-6 of those that live near the cabin. It was easy to see them because the feeders were always just buzzing with them.

Cera Punto is a pretty community. It is part of the Panamanian region that grows the most vegitables and food products because the climate there is cooler (higher altitude) and the soil is rich due to the volcanic histore. This agriculture makes use of some shockingly steep hills. I don´t understand how they do it...or how they keep soil erosion from being a problem (possibly they just put up with the erosion and don´t work to prevent it).

The Lodge Los Ketzels in Cera Punto has very generously hosted 100 plus PCVs for Thanksgiving for many years. They even allow us to rent out thier kitchen and work together to cook the Thanksgiving meal. THis year we cooked 4 (25lb) turkeys, 3 large hams, 2 sacos of potatoes, 40lbs each of brocolli and coliflower, and heaven knows how many sqash, loaves of bread for stuffing, veggie loafs, and desserts. It took 2 days to prep and cook and dinner was served right on time with food left over at the end (even though everyone was groaning they were so full). Kevin headed the Turkey prep crew (I was to work it but they got them done as fast as I predicted and I missed most of the process...last year the Turkeys took 8 hours and made everything late). Below is Kevin with his crew and final product. When asked how he knew so much about turkey cooking he sited his lovely wife as his teacher. However...I would like to note for the history books that I did not teach him to cook salad.This is what the final buffet looked like. We really didn´t have enough room to wiggle once everyone had food.

The day after Thanksgiving we spent the morning on the 3 Cascades hike near the cabin. It was a lovely short hike that managed to have plently of challenge.

All in all, we had a lovely Thanksgiving. We will be staying in our community for Christmas and celebrating it with our new neighbors and friends there. I expect Christmas to be good as well, but a bit quieter.

I hope you all are enjoying the holiday season. It has been impossible for me to belive that Christmas is just around the corner. The weather certainly does not help me to believe it.

Love to all.

April and Kevin

My Grandpa Dierks - Final update

I am very sad to pass along the news that my Grandfather, Paul Dierks, lost his battle with lung cancer on December 1st, 2007.

He lived every moment of his more than 80 years with virve. He always had a ready smile and joke to share. I was lucky enought to have two grandfathers who both showed in thier actions that it is a good thing to have fun regularly. As a long time and highly decorated member of the Loyal Order of the Moose, Grandpa Dierks aslo modeled a life of generosity and service to others which I strive to emulate in my own (non-moose) way. He also clearly loved my grandmother, I can only hope to have 59 years of happiness like they did. He will be greatly missed by our entire family.

Thank you to everyone who helped to make his last months more bright and interesting through cards and notes. He truely enjoyed the mail and your kind words. Please help me honor his memory from affar by hugging or calling a loved one today.

The Supermarket on the Island

There are five tiendas, or small stores, on the island. When we arrived, three months ago, there there three, but two others have decided to open. It sounds like most tiendas last about a year, with some up to six years. Generally, it is just a a part of someone´s house and is open when they are there and closed when they aren´t. Our third host family ran a tienda. Here is a picture of the store. Everything that is for sale. That´s it.


They have oil, rice, beans, salt, sugar, flour, sardines, tuna, spices, condensed milk, tomato paste, powdered milk, bleach, soaps, toilet paper, toothpaste, some simple medicines, flashlights, batteries, cookies and sweets, onions, garlic, and potatoes. She would generally go to a nearby port to restock every two weeks. As April mentioned in her post about our house, our closest tienda actually has a propane powered fridge as well, so ice, drinks, and duros (frozen bags of juice for 10 cents).

In contrast, in our regional capital of Santiago, there are numerous tiendas and at least eight supermarkets, two of which are now 24-hour supermarkets, with pretty much anything you could need. While you can´t find everything that you can find in the states....you can find plenty. The things that we miss the most in a supermarket? I miss:

Cheese, good real cheese. Cheese comes in white and yellow here. There are a suprisingly large number of white and yellow processed "cheese" options in this world...and none of them worth much attention. I really miss blocks of parmasean. Oh for a chunck of really sharp cheddar. Fresh motzerella I dream about. Feta...is that feta for real or is that really just ground queso blanco? Blue is beyond knowing. You can occasionally find decent cheese...but it is rare in stores and costs my daily salery (wondering what that is now aren´t you??)

Good icecream. I can´t have it in my community due to lack of electricity...but suprisingly a good rich chocolate icecream is hard to come by at all.

A wide variety of vegitables. Veggies are just not as commonly used in the diet here as at home. I could grow estatic for a baby spinach salad. I could drool over fresh real mushrooms. I have been looking high and low for sweet potatoes. I get depressed when I realize that I completely missed an entire sweet corn season. Oh for one (no might as well ask for three and fill my tummy) ear of "perfectly sweet fresh picked and cooked for 45 second and still sweet as southern sweet tea" sweet corn. Spagetti squash....yum, i miss that too. Little red potatoes with soft skins that are just the right size to eat in two "bigger than I was taught to eat at once" bites. I could go on and on...but then I would start to drool.

Before I start to sound deprived and make you want to mail me food...we are eating well here. I have found soya chunks that make a great protien filled addition to our meals. I am managing to keep stocked on chocolate. I will soon start experimenting with making bread in a pot rather than an oven. Living simply with out refrigeration has real rewards and perks. Fresh real free range eggs are much yellower than the ones that I used to buy. I have come to really like fried eggs. I get plenty of garlic. We are basically happy with our food. I am hungry now...time to go.

I do worry a bit about wieght gain when I get back in an area where I can get good cheese. :)

Some house udpates!

We are officially in our house now, with a week under our belts of fighting back the termites, scorpions, and water leaks, and defining for folks that it is now our house, not the neighborhood public porch for everyone to wander in and sit down (or inspect all of our stuff!). As April said, we have two rooms and a large porch. Here is what it looks like from the field (since the last pictures were taken, there was a junta, or communal work effort, and the grass was cut by a bunch of guys with machetes):

Here is all of our stuff, out in the porch, while we were cleaning and spraying the rooms.

Compare this huge pile of how much we have now with the picture from when we came down here (http://ak-panama.blogspot.com/2007/05/training-week-one.html) with just the blue suitcase, blue backpack, grey suitcase, red backpack, and yellow backpack, most of which are actually visible in this image.

We have two neighbors within shouting distance. This is taken from where April was standing in the first picture and you can just barely see part of the closest house in the trees straight back.

We have a path to the water, but not quite a waterfront view. It is down this path that the neighbors (and various other folks) walk to their boats, in a cove about 100 meters away. Again, the picture was taken from where April stood in the first photo, so folks do pass rather close to our house, and since this front room is our bedroom, quite close to our windows and bedroom door. It is a bit different dynamic in Panamá than in the states, as we've taken many other paths as close to houses. We hope to build a wall of bamboo or something between the door and the first column, to define our space and give some privacy to our door.

But for now, we are hoping that the termites don´t return (we knocked down those nests, swept a lot, and sprayed), while we are gone for training and Thanksgiving (most of the volunteers here in Panamá gather in a mountain resort for a taste of chill air - they say we need a sweatshirt - and cook a huge Thanksgiving meal together) over the next two weeks. We'll post more about the house and construction projects in the future.

The Work of Pilaring

After the rice is harvested, typically around August, it must dry. Once it is dried, it is shaken or beaten free from the stalk and dried some more. Then it is husked, for lack of a better work in English. In Spanish, they have a word: pilar. There are plants or factories, almost like a gristmill, for pilar-ing, but many folks do it on their own, in their yard, in small amounts. Here are our first and third host moms, neighbors, pilaring together.

The pilar (the wooden stand in which they are beating the rice) is made from a single tree trunk, carved out inside to hold rice. (The bottom half is the mirror image of the top.) The massive wooden Qtip like instruments they are using to beat the rice weigh probably 5 to 10 pounds each, and they strike in a rhythm, breaking the husks off the rice. It doesn't take too long to get the hang of it and not strike off-center, which sends rice flying out of the pilar to the happy chickens. But April and I certainly tired quicker than they did. After five minutes or so of pounding the rice, you filter it, blowing away the husks and leaving the rice.

This is repeated three or four times until all the rice has been de-husked and all the husks blown away. In this spot, there is a nice breeze coming off the water (out past April in the first picture). If there is no breeze, they put the rice in a large carved board and toss it in the air, catching the rice while the husks fall away, since they are lighter. Not a trick April or I would attempt with the evening's meal in the balance.

So what were the men doing while the women were pilaring (at least on this particular night)?

In the orange is our first host dad, and in the yellow is our third host dad, watching the women pilar.

Grandpa Dierks update...

Thank you to the many people who took some time from thier wonderful lives to send my grandpa a card as he fights lung cancer agian. He was wonderfully touched by all the cards and attention.

Grandpa Dierks is now 1/2 way through his chemo treatments and the cancer is responding to some extent. He sometimes feels worse for the wear as can be expected with any chemo patient, especially when in thier 80s. News is that he is doing ok, but there is still a long road to travel.

Dad recently sent me a photo just to prove that the sparkling personallity that I love in him is not hindered much by this experience....I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

At least now you know that I get my unique personality from my family...it is not just me personally. Mom bought Grandpa some goofy glasses that have flashing lights in the rim...he is planning to wear them to his next chemo session...that should be fun for the hospital staff.

If you haven´t sent a card and would like to, I know he would love hearing from you. If you are interested, his address is:

Paul “Grandpa” Dierks

12140 Rhonda Terrace

Seminole, FL 33772

In your card please explain who you are, and how you know us (April and Kevin that is).

Again, thanks to everyone who touched Grandpa and Grandma´s hearts with your cards and notes. It really made thier day...and thus mine too.

Molas - a Panamanian art form

Panama is a country vibrant with music, many colors, and energy. This is reflected in one of the country´s best known fabric arts - the mola.

A mola is a multilayered fabric art that is used by local indiginous Kuna Yala women as the main portion of the front and back of thier blouses. The two molas making up the blouse are usually two variations on a theme, very simular in appearance but not identical.

The traditional costume of a Kuna woman also consists of a patterned cotton wrapped skirt, headscarf, arm and leg beads that cover the majority of the lower arm and leg, gold nose rings and earrings. This tradional costume can still be seen on the streets of Panama and in the Kuna Yala Comarcas -territories where the Kuna Yala live.

Molas are made with aplique and reverse aplique techniqes... all by hand. Patterns can be geometric or figural. Maroon, orange, red, and black figure promently in many molas.

Many hours go into each mola, and the ability to make a fine mola gives status to the maker. The quality of a mola is determined by such factors as
number of layers
fineness of stitching
evenness and width of cutouts
addition of details such as zigzag borders, lattice-work or embroidery
general artistic merit of the design and color combination.

When Kuna women tire of a particular blouse, they disassemble it and sell the molas to collectors. Since mola panels have been worn as part of the traditional dress of a Kuna woman they often show signs of wear such as fading and stitch marks along the edges of the panels. These"imperfections" indicate that the mola is authentic and not made solely to be sold to tourists. The mola pictured with the ¨dragon head" and fish motif (shown above) shows all the signs of being originally used for a blouse.

Comercial molas are now also being made specifically for tourists. These are notably different in thier style and technique...but can also be beautiful and time consuming to make.

Mola prices range from $10-100 dollars depending on quality of work, design, age, and other factors (including where you shop). Barganing is normal, and prices can sometimes drop dramatically fast...but I try to always keep in mind that this is the live work of the woman selling. While we don´t whan prices to go up just because a tourist will pay more...I try not to haggle so hard that she doesn´t get recognition for her art. If she can´t feed her family with the price that you and I will pay sooner or later her family will provide for themselves in other ways....this would be a loss to the arts here and probably a loss to the local enviroment because most of the other ways to provide food or income are impactful on the local enviroment.

I would like to acknoledge that the above photo of a Kuna woman was stolen from the following webpage: www.wherescherie.com/newsread.php?newsid=199

Insects the size of NY

Ok, not really the size of New York, but impressive...almost worthy of a Japanese film vs Godzilla. Not all of the insects are scary either. The following is a sample of the insects I have seen in Panama. I did not include scorpions because those photos were in an old post.

The beauty below is a big beetle...note Kevin´s fingers to the right.

We have seen kids with beetles (the big ones that don´t sting) tied to string and used as toys...it is fun for the kids to watch them fly in circles at the end of the string. THere are lots of beatiful beetles here of all different sizes and colors.

The below is a photo from inside our future home. I believe that the insect is a type of spider that has addapted it´s front legs in to claws (look carefully at the lower end of the body. it also has VERY (6" or so) long antenna that it swings in all directions. WHen taking this photo it touched the camera and scurried away. Scary looking but not harmful to people.

You knew that there had to be a roach photo or two...so here they are. The lovely speciment below left that looks armored is special. We have been told that he eats scorpions and other roaches. I really want to put on in a bottle with a scorpion and see what happens. I will belive it when I see it...but everyone else believes it enought to not kill it which is saying something. The other roach is your run of the mill giant roach....both of these measured around 4" long....and have been known to get bigger. Yes, we have your normal small and medium roaches too...but by comparison those are just borring.

This was easily the biggest grasshopper type insect I have EVER seen. Let me give you a sence of scale...the leaves in this photo are a coconut palm...each blade is a tad over an inch wide. I estimate that this beauty was 6" or so long.

I have seen a plethera of caterpillars. Panama has around 10,000 species of leperdoptra (butterflies and moths) so the variety of caterpillers is astounding. Some of them sting, some don´t, unfortunatly almost all are killed on site by the people who live here. The photos below show the two most amazing caterpillars I have seen here.

The green one is next to a normal pencil for scale and was easily bigger around than my thumb. Note the hairlike spikes...I be this one stings (I didn´t test that theory). The yellow one is completly covered in inch long hairs....very interesting. Over all he was 4 inches long. I didn´t test to see if he stings either, not willing to suffer too much for my readers. ;)

I mentioned that Panamanians tend to kill caterpillars on site. Sometimes they have a good reason. The butterfly below lays eggs on the maracua (passion fruit) plant at my host family house. The resulting caterpillars have eaten almost all of the leaves on the plant and stopped it from developing the fruit to maturity. In the photo below I am testing garlic, onion, soap, tabasco, and a local natural plant extract to find out in a natural repellent works on the caterpillars. Hey, I don´t wan to kill them...but I do want some passion fruit fresh off the vine!

Lastly, I got to watch a praying mantis lay her eggs. About 30 days later they hatched...about 40 of them....they were all over the frount house window. They were soo small and beautiful. Praying Manis eat other insects of all types, so they are one of my favorites. These babies were so small that when they jumped off of my hand they just floated to the ground. They were also very fast...so moving them to local plants rather than the open windows was a challenge....but the little girl in the host family helped me. To give you a sence of size...the baby mantis in this photo is sitting on my chaco sandal strap...which is only about 3/4 inch wide.

Our House...the first step of many

Hello,

Just wanted to let you know that we have decided where to live for the next two years. We will be living in an unused "office" building. It was build by a NGO that used to be active here on the island called CDS (pronounced in spanish as casa ce-de-s-ay). It has two 10x12 foot rooms with wooden doors that now have our locks on them. It also has a HUGE roughly 30x30 foot "porch" area.

looking out from the house, that is some TALL grass.

The good: The house is in a good location in the community. Close to the one tienda that has a fridge (yup, could occasionally have a cold drink), close to nieghboors, mostly flat (other than one set of stairs that can make most people rest at the top) walk to the school, and easy access to the water. It also has room for a garden. Also, all that porch space means plenty of room to hang clothes to dry.

We have to do some work on it...namely building a latrine (more on that another day as we are jumping bravely into composting human waste), put in PVC water pipes from the aquaduct, install a sink and shower, and (eventually) build a wall to give ourselves a bit more private space. One step at a time.

The house...note the big boat on the porch...hum not sure what will happen with that.

So far we have changed the locks, hauled lots of stuff to the island (including six 100lb bags of concrete and 70 concrete building blocks, and lots of PVC - thanks Kevin who did all the hauling without compalint or my help!) We also, with help from friends, moved the stuff that was being stored there to another storage location. Kevin is scheduled to work on istalling the waterlines on 10/28 so we will see how that goes. Keep you fingers crossed.

Moving stored stuff with help from friends. The beer bottles are because they store them and then redeam the bottles for the next party....it keeps the price down for next time to have the bottles.

Future bedrooms. Hoping our bed is ready Nov 3. Note the termite nests at the top of the room...those are going to be a fun challenge to get rid of...they always want to come back.

This move will not change our mailing address at all...so keep the love coming to Sanitago!