Greetings from the Promised Land! I hope summer has treated everyone well and everyone is gearing for a colorful fall. The past few months have been insanely busy for me, but I’m starting to navigate how to be productive and yet continue to have time to go the river and just hang out in the community.  At the end of July I went to an In Service Training with my entire training group, which was both extremely interesting and mildly entertaining. The training focused on topics such as organic fertilizers, eco-stoves, reforestation, organic gardens, tree grafting and my personal favorite, composting toilets.  I’ve spent the past two months attempting to implement some of these project areas into my community.

I’m excited to report that we are quickly finishing up the planting stage of the reforestation project and as of right now we have planted about 20,000 native trees in the Reserve.  (Some very long and tiring days of caring trees up the mountain in a milk crate were involved). The next step will simply be to continue to monitor that the trees are in fact growing.  I’m also happy to report that we are finally starting to reap the benefits of the school garden. The children are now eating fresh cucumbers, peppers, and corn with their lunches! Unfortunately there is still a lack of interest in the parents of the school who are technically in charge of maintaining the garden. However, after several meetings with the head of the PTA and the director of the school I think we have created a new work schedule that will benefit everyone. (I will let everyone know how that actually goes in my next post). I feel extremely lucky because I believe that my community has a great deal of potential to have some very exciting projects (trash removal, recycling, an environmental education center in the reserve), but I am trying to take things slowly and lay the ground work so that the projects will be successful and sustainable. However, per request of one of the women in the community, I am currently helping to form a women’s group that will focus on making home gardens. (Sissy mentioned that she thinks that I should take this opportunity to empower the women to “break free from the shackles of their controlling husbands,” but I think I’m just going to try to plant some veggies and hopefully the rest will develop organically.  More reports on that project to come in the next blog.

On a more personal note, I had a wonderful 25^th birthday and thank you to everyone who sent their love! I spent the weekend before my birthday camping with another volunteer in the mountain range behind my site. An American has created a massive preserve in this area to help protect an indigenous group from encroaching foreigners who would like to cut down and sell the trees .There were some pretty stunning waterfall s and it was nice to escape into the jungle for a weekend! While returning from one hike we found ourselves surround by a group of monkeys that were not very happy to see us and actually started throwing sticks and rocks at us.  Needless to say, we booked it out of there pretty quickly when we realized those fuzzy little monsters were not exactly the friendliest bunch. We also crossed paths with a massive tarantula the size of my hand that had a huge furry red butt. On the actual day of my birthday some of the mothers in the school collected money and threw me a surprise birthday party with cake and a ridiculous amount of arroz con pollo! (It still blows my mind the amount of rice these people can put down). Overall it was a great birthday week!

I apologize that my posts have been so few and far between, but I am hoping to get back on schedule to sending monthly updates. Thank you so much to everyone who have written me! I am realizing it takes about 2-3 months for me to get the letters, but I appreciate them all the same.

Lots of love and sunshine,

Bridget