Last I wrote I was preparing for another business presentation; following up our first talk of missions and visions, with proper goal setting. By the time we had gotten underway with that Friday's "workshop" the only people to show up for my presentation were the three that hadn't made it to the first talk. Taking it all in stride as a Peace Corps Volunteer must, I switched back to my first workshop and spent the day catching them up to speed. Having not accomplished anything new, I never-the-less went into the weekend happy that we were all on the same page. The reason for the absence of the other communities was soon explained to me as we arrived at the annual Cacao Festival down town. Apparently I had scheduled our meeting at the same time as the parade, and these people love parades. So the fault lies with me, and I will be sure to check the festival schedules in the future. That night we went to the Miss Cacao competition which included your standard beauty pageant events (formal dress, swim suit walk, answer a question about cacao...) as well as various performing artists and a hot air balloon!
The following we was spent working in the office and making the rounds to our communities. We drove down river to Ponce Loma one day to help in the community minga to continue construction of the green houses. Upon arrival we saw that more than our standard 8-10 people had come to the minga; we had around 30, leaving very little for us to do so we dropped off the supplies we had brought and returned to the office (the plants are growing quickly in greenhouse 1). That week we also made a trip down to Campo Cocha, an hour down river, to talk to a group of American University students that were volunteering there for about 2 weeks. They seemed to be loving the experience of working with the community and taking part in the day to day life, definitely makes me appreciate where I'm at a bit more.
The following day (Friday the 10th) we loaded up the truck with about 2,000 lbs of chicken food and headed downriver to our last community, Wachi Yacu. In order to get to Wachi Yacu we have to go on a dry day in order to drive through the river when it is very low. The past two times we attempted to get to Wachi Yacu it had rained that morning and we instead left all of the chicken supplies at the river for the community to carry back on foot (about an hour and a half walk). This week however, we were able to drive over the river and down to the community of Wachi Yacu (literally at the end of the road). We helped to carry our 2,000 lbs of chicken feed into the community center and then set out to check up on the various groups of chickens. We have delivered 100 chickens to 9 different families, as part of an income generation project, in 3 groups. As we are planning on selling the first round of chickens in mid July, we set off to visit the houses that were raising the first group. Our hike took us about 2 km out into primary jungle, passed cow pastures, over 3 different rivers, 3 different houses (each offering us a snack and some chicha to drink) and a dried up river bed where we saw an 8-9 foot black and yellow snake (the Kichwa name translates to Bird Hunter). Once we reached the last house we returned back to the community center for a chicha break, a quick meeting, lunch and, of course, another chicha break before leaving.
That weekend I met up with some of the volunteers here in Tena for a quick beer at our local bar. It was nice to see friends and speak English for a bit. Also, we have added one more volunteer here in Tena who had her site switched from the coast, and will be working in Guayusa production just outside of town. We will also be adding one more to our ranks later this week with another volunteer coming from the coast and working here in rain-catch systems and composting toilets.
The majority of last week was spent hanging out in the office and filling time since we didn't have much to work on. Wednesday I attended a workshop at the Provincial Government building, helping to build an agenda for environmental initiatives. The Friday I held another workshop on business planning. This time we had a pretty solid attendance and discussed goal setting, the importance of planning and establishing target markets (we even identified some of our markets and set a few goals). We also reviewed the mission and vision statements I had built following our previous workshops and everyone seemed to be quite happy with them.This last weekend we had a Father's Day party on Saturday down in the community house. The party was for my host family, starting with my host parents at 76 and 75 years old and complete with 8 of 10 kids (with spouses), grandchildren and even some great-grandchildren. The party was complete with some song and dance performances for the dads, an eating contest, a blow up a balloon till it pops contest, karaoke and dancing. And yesterday I made a giant pot of spaghetti and watched movies in between bowls of pasta.
This week we are working around the office and Friday morning my friend Colin Scott is flying in to visit for 2 weeks. My host brother, under protest from myself, insists on cleaning out his room for Colin and move downstairs so that we can have to the top floor.
Lastly I would like to say Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there reading my blog and I hope you all had a great weekend! Cheers!
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