Group Work

My conservation group is lacking when it comes to meeting attendance. In fact, there have been a few meetings when I am the only one who shows up, despite the fact that I didn’t even call the meeting. Interesting. Anyhow, I decided I needed a little break and breather from my community and luckily other volunteers had the same idea.

We headed off to Las Lajas, a beautiful, sandy beach lined with coconut trees in Eastern Chiriquí on the Pacific Coast. Ten of us came together to trade stories, play cards, body surf, and plan out projects in each others communities.

I sold off 63 of the chickens at the school for a grand total of less than the amount I paid to keep those suckers alive. Argh. After speaking with the president of Padres de Familia on Saturday and stressing that we need to kill the remaining 10 asap since they were running out of food, she agreed to do it before the Monday meeting of the group. Monday rolled around and before the meeting I popped in to check on my feathered foes. They were still alive and clucking. So during the meeting (which the president didn’t attend), I laid out the loss of money from the project, the fact that there was now no food left for the chickens, and that we need to kill them and pop them in a freezer for the school kids.

Everyone was up in arms that the chicks were just too small to kill now and that we need to keep them alive for another whole MONTH. (That translates to another $60 in corn feed, after this round has already resulted in a deficit of -$65.) Yeah, that didn’t make me happy. Plus, no one would listen to me and everyone was talking over each other. I finally made my point that the project didn’t have the money to pay for more feed and that all the remaining chickens were much bigger than any of the ones people bought since they scrambled for the smallest (aka cheapest) birds. They decided that each family would take a bird and fatten it up themselves.

At the end of the FOUR hour long meeting, the padres came to the school to collect their chickens. In fact, only 6 people came (out of the 23 in attendance). Everyone exclaimed how big the birds were, and how they were ready to eat right now. Geesh, sounds a little familiar. I think someone might have said that in the meeting… Nah. Anyhow, they ended up divvying up the birds, and deciding to kill the four remaining. A small triumph!

(And another reason why the meeting lasted so long was that the Representante came to discuss the progress on the school. They had planned a remodel to let more light into the very dark classrooms. An architect drew up plans approved by MEDUCA (Ministry of Education) and all was set. The first wall was finally completed, perhaps two weeks behind schedule. However, it does not have bigger windows than the original building. In fact, it has NO windows! There was quite a scwabble over who was at fault, but the fact remains that the kids will be having class in the community meeting place for longer. Oh, and since that was the first day of class there, the teachers decided that it is too difficult to keep the kids in their desks and under control. So they proposed to the parents that for the safety of the kids, they need to build a fence around the new classrooms. It will be more difficult for the kids to get out of a barbed wire enclosure during class hours. I wish I thought of that!)

After hiking up and down the community on Monday, I requested a horse for the following day to GPS some points in the park. My wish is their command! At 6am I arrived at the Solis’s house with my horse waiting. Well, it took a while to get it ready, but by 6:30am I mounted the horse and took off into the hills with Chicho walking at my side. Hehe, yep, I am lazy. Anyhow, we traveled up the mountain for two hours at which time I had to dismount and make the rest of the trek on foot. Seven hours of hiking (aka bushwacking on the “trails” and sliding down eroding hillsides) later, we made it to the top of the peak closest to Cabecera de Cochea (8684ft), down to the refugio, and back to my waiting horse. I hiked down to the main road next to the horse, as it was pouring rain and advised not to ride it as I would get wet. Seriously? It is a downpour and my legs are going to get wet regardless! Oh well, I pretended not to be as lazy as I was only got back on the horse after my pants were soaked from an hour more of walking in the rain. It only took about 45minutes more to reach the house again where hot coffee and dinner were waiting. (Though another dinner at my host family’s house was also waiting…)

During our hike, I could see the drastic effects of the major logging campaign that occurred in the park just before its inception. Enormous trees like the kind you’d see in Redwood National Forest in the States were cut and moved with equally huge cables and sold to the US and France. The Solis family owns a big chunk that they used to clear and seed with grass for cattle. They are no longer allowed to do this in the vast majority of the park and those parts are slowly growing back. I sensed some bitterness that they can’t sell off the timber any more, but I didn’t hold back when asked if I thought it was a good idea to protect the land as a park. Along the way we spotted a scat and kill sites from big cats, fungi in all shapes and colors, a Three-wattled Bellbird (really bad pic), countless hummingbirds including the White-throated Mountain-gem, and a Two-toed Sloth. I was certainly please that this habitat is being conserved.

Next Sunday I have a special meeting to plan out the charlas (presentations) and workshops for the Producers group. They expressed a lot of interest in learning how to make organic fertilizers and insecticides. I hope that enthusiasm carries into this next meeting. They decided on both the time and date, so I’ve got my fingers crossed that at least someone will show up! Plus, they seem to be much better about meeting and I’m going to make more pretty signs to remind them. Hehe