So this most recent valley trip yielded some great progress on our base camp.  The base camp is  just about finished with. It looking like a legit structure already.  We have completed all the bamboo and palm walling as well making a great palm roof.  We are basically  experimenting, but i would like to incorporate some more local knowledge into the palm roofing.  Our neighbor Catalino has a great rancho that is perfectly thatched with palm, and I have seen similar designs all over Panama as well as back home in Hawaii.

The next order of business in the “Jungle Construction” field, as well as the Agriculture program, is building a greenhouse using bamboo which will be very exciting as I will be able to replicate it on Hawaii if it is successful.  We also have to finish the last part of our roof in base camp  and few small areas here and there.  Along with these projects I would like to build a toolshed in the same style as base camp.  I believe that a toolshed will motivate people more to return the tools they use as soon as there done and provide some protection for the tools.

The projects I have planned to work on this week in the Valley are to build a vermicompost unit and a bench to put in a clearing on top of the big hill.  My vermicompost unit will be a very simple one made out of a plastic tub and thats about it. I want to have it set up near or next to the greenhouse so the compost material can be used in the starter plants but mostly to extract the liquid that builds on the bottom.  This liquid can be used as a very potent organic fertilizer, and can be formulated with certain other materials to be an organic pesticide, with potential to combat the coffee boring beetle I mentioned in a previous blog.  Now as for this bench, I plan on making a clearing at the top of the hill and putting this bench up there to create a scenic lookout where you look down upon the property and base camp as well as the surrounding region.

My mother has always been a big component of pushing me to write thank you letters, even when I didn’t want to.
Mama always said a thank you letter goes a long way, especially when it is hand written.

Well, this week I wrote thank you letters to some of the women who have welcomed us into San Miguel. These thank you letters were a result from a brainstorming session from within the Hen House (a newly coined term for the San Miguel Community Outreach home in San Miguel). We planned to write thank you notes, including some traditional Gringa cookies and also the recipe for the cookies. Most of the women we were planning on giving these thank you letters to had shared with us a traditional Panamanian recipe; María who showed us the corn tortillas, and Aminta who shared her queso fresco recipe.

A recipe for A recipe makes the world happy and fat.

Well, the challenge was up to me to write a thank you note for their time and help, and translate the recipe into Spanish while the girls made the cookies. Accidentally, my camera was at the same time busy taking photos every second of me writing the cards, so I put together a quick video of the process.

Tiffany and I delivered the cookies, recipe and letter to María. Again we found ourselves EATING patacones, pollo, and limonada on the front porch, speaking Spanish with her wonderful daughters, her mom and her neighbor looking over the valley. So I’ll have to write her another thank you card.

This week we had the annual Rio Clean Up Day and what a success it was! Hannah and I made posters to promote the event and put them up at the school as well as the local store. We met at the Cancha around ten and had a great turn out! All of the kids, as well as the adults were excited and eager to get going on cleaning up their beloved river. A lot of the valley crew and directors came out to help as well. It was great to have so many different groups to come together for a common goals. We picked up a ton of trash and with a brand new soccer ball used as a motivator, the kids were scrambling to see who could pick up the most trash.

We successfully filled up three barrel trash cans as well as a lot more trash that we put into bags. We taught the kids and people of San Miguel the importance of dividing the trash into trash, glass and plastic so that recyclable items could be picked up by the appropriate pick up crews. The soccer ball was rewarded to a great family, all of whom attend our English summer school classes each week. They were all a great help and such hard workers in picking up all the trash.

Overall, this event was a huge success in cleaning up the river and bringing together the San Miguel and Kalu Yala community!

The Crew

Tuesday was Valentine’s Day and there was no shortage of love in the San Miguel house. While Valentine’s Day is more widely celebrated in the United States, we brought a few Valentine’s Traditions with us to San Miguel. The direct translation of Happy Valentine’s Day is “Feliz Dia de Enamorados;” however, in San Miguel they say “Feliz Dia del Amor y Amigos.” It is a day of celebration of both your loved ones and friends! On my way to school it was great to hear a friend in the community say Happy Day of Love and Friends to me!

Fun Fact: Miriam, the librarian at the school in San Miguel, explained that the reason red is associated with Valentine’s Day is because it represents life!

During our summer school session we went over basic vocabulary you typically see on Valentine’s Day cards in the United States including: “Hugs & Kisses,” “XOXO,” “I Love You,” and so forth. We had the children make Valentine’s Day cards for their mother, father, friends, or other loved ones. There were pink, red, purple and white cards decorated with glitter, markers, smaller hearts, and English phrases! Hannah, Lillian and I even played a little of Frank Sinatra’s song L.O.V.E. while all the children made their cards.  This was a great, fun activity for everyone to do during the last week of summer school.

The kids holding up their Valentine's Day cards!

Life is all about balance, as Einstein said “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”. Myself and the interns in San Miguel are balanced and moving forward.

San Miguel girls!

Roles are becoming more defined in the house. Lillian and Hannah are taking on the education of the teens; Tiffany is in charge of the little niños; and Courtney and Myself are teaching the adult classes. The interns all have individual projects too. Hannah is working on a mural for the town;

Tiffany

Tiffany is prepping and planning for a dental education workshop (which we will present in numerous schools); Courtney is continuing the with soccer program, and will be making hoola hoops with some of the girls in the town, and Lillian has been actively working in the house garden, and is planning and prepping for an after-school conservation group. We are busy bees We are also continuing with our spanish studies; and I have been teaching and leading yoga classes for the interns at the house as well.

Seeing my interns blossom and come into their own with their projects and roles makes me feel good… in a maternal in a way. It has been a great new experience to work along side my interns and be present with my boundaries. I am a director and they are my interns; and boundaries are very important. We are all working well as a team and have a lot of fun; and I am also having one on one meetings with the interns – as communication is very important. Living and working and playing together means we have a lot of time together, and sometimes some of the personal issues are not expressed. I have found these individual conferences to be really helpful and the energy at Casa Llena is positive and fun  In times of frustration I re-focus on why I am here, and what I am doing. I am here to make a positive difference in lives of the people in San Miguel; and I am here for my interns in every way they need me.

San Miguel is blessed with a beautiful landscape,  the Pacora River, a dominant feature of the town. This picturesque river regularly attracts both locals and visitors from the city and in turn, trash is often struin along banks.

everyone gathering at Casa Llena for Rio Clean-Up

Although the river is littered with trash, much of the community wants to make a change.  They understand the negative impact both visually and environmentally, so we gave them the extra push and organized a River Clean-up Day.  We hung posters and rallied the kids and adults to come together as a unified community.  Several interns came in from the city and the valley to support San Miguel and about forty kids and adults from the comunity showed up to participate!  Armed with gloves and trash bags we started filling up bags faster than we could give out new ones.  I was impressed by how many kids showed up and how dedicated they were to filling their bags.  It was a fun and productive day that brought Kalu Yala and the people of San Miguel together in perfect harmony.

After collecting and sorting the trash everyone came to Casa Llena for tacos and lemonade, a great end to a beautiful day.

San Miguel girls!

]]> http://www.kaluyala.com/community/the-creation-of-a-culture/limpieza-del-rio/feed/ 0 http://www.kaluyala.com/community/the-creation-of-a-culture/life-on-the-frontier/ http://www.kaluyala.com/community/the-creation-of-a-culture/life-on-the-frontier/#comments Wed, 15 Feb 2012 04:40:39 +0000 Sarah Tyler http://www.kaluyala.com/community/?p=21116 “Life on the Frontier” is a glimpse into the lives of Kalu Yala’s adventure-driven, Spring 2012 Interns as they begin their epic voyage in this unique social experiment — building, conducting research, charting their observations, establishing community relations, and finding comfort in their new humble abode. Once again, we welcome you to the junglescapes of [...]]]>

“Life on the Frontier” is a glimpse into the lives of Kalu Yala’s adventure-driven, Spring 2012 Interns as they begin their epic voyage in this unique social experiment — building, conducting research, charting their observations, establishing community relations, and finding comfort in their new humble abode. Once again, we welcome you to the junglescapes of Panama. It’s like the Oregon Trail but with a twist of lime and all-consuming heat.

We did it again. We’ll continue to. We promise.

We’re lifting the red curtain.

LIFE ON THE FRONTIER

Interested in applying to Kalu Yala’s Summer 2012 semester? Check out our website for more information or email Ashley Davis at: internships@kaluyala.com

For more than one week now, western Panama has seen violent demonstrations and riots between two opposing forces. First are the indigenous community of the Ngobe-Bugle, Second are the national Panamanian police forces. The protesters have managed to shut down a section of the Pan-American highway(which links the country to Costa Rica).  All this has been in opposition to the Government non-enforcement of Article 5 of (proyecto de ley) 415, which cancels and prohibits all national and foreign mining and hydroelectric development within their traditional lands.  Although Panama is accustomed to unrest and demonstrations, always for similar reasons, this time it seems to be more violent than usual.

The recent Indigenous demonstrations have already created important economic losses for the country, as the (blocked)province of Chiriquí is Panama’s chief agricultural centre and a strong tourism center at the same time. Many villages are isolated, so when a majority of roads are blocked, many people are not supplied with basic products. For instance, Some Central American travelers are still blocked in Boquete  without the possibility of exiting. In response to this popular uprising, anti rioting forces have deployed and repression has started.

Police forces are accused of using excessive force: while I am writing this post, dozens of demonstrators have been arrested or injured, and one 26-year-old indigenous man was shot dead by the police. Unfortunately, if this sad situation continues, it is probably going to compromise Kalu Yala’s research trip in Boquete and Panama’s highlands.

All this is showing us how Ngobes (and natives’ communities all around the world in general) are tied to their land. Many of them are ready to fight to death in order to protect it from big corporations which only are focused on profit, no matter the impact on land and local communities. Governments should have this in mind and realize that land is the most valuable asset a country owns, and even if exploiting it will bring short term profit, it is not profitable to destroy it or the people whom it maintains.

Attached are  links that describe the situation in greater detail:

Panama police, indigenous clash over blockade

Indians, Panama gov\’t in deal to end road blockade Read more here:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/06/2628373/panama-indians-seek-release-of.html#storylink=cpy

Sustainability economist and author of the book Prosperity without Growth, Tim Jackson thoroughly addressed the problem of the ecological limits of a finite planet in one of his recorded conference speeches that I happened to find a couple of days ago online. I was fascinated by this public speech and will definitely put his book on my must-read list as number one. Below is a quote from the speech.

”Our consumer society […] It’s the story of us being couraged, persuaded perhaps, to spend money we don’t have, on things we don’t need, to create impressions that won’t last on people we don’t care about or, worse still, who don’t care about us.” – Tim Jackson on the recent rise of consumerism.

Consumer behavior was one of the points he made. Corporate responsibility was another. I’m not saying that Jackson is right in all of his visions but, at least he is calling out consumers and corporations, which both play key roles in future sustainability investigations. In the US and in Europe, we’ve already seen a significant change in how big multinational corporations change their core business values to include environmental and corporate responsibility. This is, in fact, a mandatory approach to meet today’s environmentally aware customer expectations. Corporations, big or small, riding “the green wave” find substantial competitive edge over their business sectors by driving structural change – both in markets and legislation that is more resilient and environmentally friendly.  This has to be done in the face of analyzing and defining our planet’s true limits and future risks.

The danger to humankind from worsening ecological conditions make the re-evaluation of our values mandatory.

It is hard to foretell if this will ultimately be enough to change the course of this overburdened planet. In a way, it has some similarities to the Kalu Yala initiative, which also calls people within the corporate world, governments and universities for a radical shake-up. Opening one’s eyes to see the future ideal of a community being built and managed according to the principles of sustainability is a vital part in Kalu Yala’s mission. The idea of a good community is about citizen participation in development and an equal chance of having a meaningful life.

There are a lot of genuine, good people behind our distant economic systems and corporations, just as there are people behind the enormous infrastructure to cradle almost six billion unique lives on this planet. The time has come to unify people with different backgrounds, no matter where they come from. We need to stop being just consumers only interested in new products, spending money and giving up our free time and freedom to something we can’t control – but instead start living together as full citizens. The recent collapse of our western economic system is a call for people to participate, question and start making an influence.  As Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, expressed publicly in 2009:

“The crisis doesn’t only make us free to imagine other models, another future, another world. It obliges us to do so.” – Nicolas Sarkozy on remodeling our economic indicators to include the health of a nation.

We will always have big cities, we will always have some sort of corporations, but will we also have the right environments to properly provide for our people? People are ultimately the only ones able to take action and create change. Kalu Yala is striving towards commonwealth in healthy surroundings in Panama to show the world that we can do this. We can live according to the rules of a finite planet and actually enjoy it while it’s happening.

In this blog post I hope to continue to expand upon the potential of Agroforestry in the Kalu Yala Valley and specifically investigate a piece of legislation that could be of great help in a push for an expansion of the Agroforestry Project.  However, I must first give a quick recap of the Agriculture Teams progress during our 9 day trip to the Valley. We began to prepare for the building of our Greenhouse, first by collectiong the bamboo stalks that would make up the frame of the greenhouse and then we dug our post holes for the main support beams. The Greenhouse will measure 20 feet by 30 feet and should provide ample room to meet our current needs and still allow for future expansion of our farm and Agroforest. Secondly my Program Director, Ian Chesser, and myself decided on the area where my Agroforestry demonstration plot would be placed, and began to thin the overgrown brush in the area to prepare in for planting. Finally the team egan to brainstorm design ideas and compiled a list of species we would like to see planted in the Valley, and we will be making a trip to a local Nursery to acquire seeds and cuttings very soon.

The long term vision for the Agroforestry plot would to begin to reforest much of the pasture land within the valley property that is not already destined for future development.  What I envision is reforestation based on the principals of Agroforestry, designed in a manner such that it maintains or enhances the functioning of the ecosystem while simultaneously providing products that could be of socio-cultural benefit to the future community of Kalu Yala. This will require investment, both in terms of man power and financially. This begs the question, how do we find a way to uphold our principles of sustainability without breaking the bank in the early stages of development before economic benefit can be derived from the forest products? The answer may come in part from a piece of legislation that was passed by the Panamanian government in 1992. Law 24 was designed to provide economic incentives for reforestation projects within Panama, At the time the law was passed it is estimated that Panama was losing it’s tropical forests at a rate of 79,000 hectares per year. Law 24 would provide several important benefits to Kalu Yala. Firstly any wood harvested within the project is exonerated from Panamanian Taxes and all investments in the project are 100% deductible from the investors Panamanian Income Tax ( Law 24, Article 5). Secondly, and important for a large scale project, any equipment and materials purchased for reforestation can be imported into Panama Tax free (Law 24, Article 6). If my Agroforestry plot should prove successful, Law 24 would provide a means of expanding the project while reducing the cost, this means a better return on investment. It is my hope that Kalu Yala could apply to  INRENARE  in the near future to join the reforestation project and begin to derive the some of the benefits from this legislation.