new photos people. go to the my photos link to the right. peace.

hn46.

its funny that i always want to start my journal entries with "its been a while". its as if i feel guilty to you guys, even though this blog is for me as much as it is for you. regardless, my bad. its been a while. maybe im actually apologizing to myself? anyway.

life is the shit. hands down, all is good in the hood. 100%. well maybe not 100%, but close. so let's see...

it seems all the projects i'm working on, from small to big, are making progress. and that's pretty excellent. the worms are alive and well, making fertilizer and living their happy lives of food and sex. they seem happy in their pulp beds, although if i could find some sort of worm viagra i would be real happy too, they need to munch less and bang more. i wish i could tell them. i guess it's my fault for not following a basic rule of ecology. but hey, they're alive and making the best organic fertilizer around, so i'm content.

solar panels are moving along full swing. we collected the first half of the household contribution from all the participating families. that money in turn will be passed on to the contract bid winner, a company that will install the systems up in the mountains. now all that's left is to train the community members in organization techniques, community energy system management, and solar power basics. i think we will also be setting up the monthly bill structure, training electricians in the town, and well...kicking ass. 44 families, 6 public buildings. that's pretty awesome. in november the panels come, by christmas they're all installed, and by new years i can celebrate.

the garden project is also doing it's thing. all of it got a little hectic when USAID tecnicos told me that they are on contract only until Sept. 30, so that means that we need to try to collaborate as much as possible, and have mad training sessions, while the connection exists. supposedly these contracts are frequently renewed for the next cycle, but i don't want to count my eggs too early. so we are going to be doing 10 model gardens, paid for in part by the mayor (supposedly, not confirmed yet...so cross your fingers) and by USAID (trainings, maybe seeds). we just did a day in the field with the latter, viewing some of their installations in other communities, and it seems like they will be an incredible ally in the achievement of our goals.

and then there's always the work with the cooperative, which is moving along slowly but surely in the background. the gps mapping project is rolling again, and now i have trained two local youths how to handle a GPS, so they're pretty much doing it without me. i still make the maps themselves, but i think i'm going to try to teach the basics of some of the locally available software to them. otherwise, there's the upcoming certification in sept/oct, an ecotourism project that's in the works, and the constant effort to improve production techniques among the coffee farmers. i have been somewhat slacking on the last one, but then again, we do talk about it a lot casually, so maybe i'm making some sort of small impact.

and i think that's that for work. sounds busy, but it's really not so bad. i still have plenty of time to see my friends, share experiences, eat some non-campo food, and maybe go out once in a while.

so not only do i feel productive, i also enjoy quite a large amount of freedom. this may be a fluke though, and the whole thing will come crashing down one of these days, but i'm staying optimistic. so far it's only been getting better every day.