Some Thoughts on Weeding

I weed every morning for at least 30 minutes if not an hour or so before Franchesco comes to give me specific instructions. Tired of the music on my ipod, I now listen to the birds as I weed and I think a lot about farming, food, life etc. It's the third week of morning weeding and I have begun to question its practice. We are told to take out weeds but I have begun to wonder if it is actually for the crop's benefit or if it is for piece of mind or some sense of control.

When you weed, you allow the crop you planted to have more water and more of the soil nutrients. Yes you arrate the soil, lossening it up for the roots of another plant that you hope will soon provide you with food. But is weeding maybe harming the soil and therfore not the best for the crops? If you take the weed out, you are taking out a plant that has nutrients in it that it took from the ground and you are therefore taking nutrients out of the soil (just like it would be with any plant that is taken out of the soil, whether it is a "weed" or not). I think it would be best to take out the weeds that are crowding out the crops, and put them on top of the soil, acting as a mulch, both decreasing future weeds as well as evaporation. The weeds would then slowly break down and put their nutrients back in the soil. The weeds that are not near the crops I feel should be left alone because taking them out seems unnecessary. However, this also brings up a larger quesiton about "weeds" (plants that you did not plant and you do not want in that spot--did you know that lots plants people concider weeds are actually edible: dandylion is a prime example) and their regeneration. When you pull them out of the soil along with their roots, is it highly likely that if you put the on top of the soil as a mulch that they will "regenerate"? If you use grass clippings as mulch will you soon have grass growing where you mulched?

Anyone have any thoughts?

Do we weed because if we don't, it will reflect badly on us as gardeners (like having a messy bedroom that's on display)? Do we do it because it is human versus "nature" (though we are just as much a product of nature as the tress and the turkeys) and if we allow weeds in the garden that is a product of the human, then we are letting nature "win"? Do we do it because we think it's good for the soil and our plants or do we do it because we can't allow something to grow in an area that is supposed to be under our control?

Pictures

I thought I would put up some photos that I have taken so far (and were able to upload sucessfully)

The photo above is me planting "Three Sisters". Below are apricots still warm from the sun : )

June 21

I began the day with my morning meditation of weeding and then Franchesco said we were going to plant pumpkins, corn and various flower species. He had somewhat of an idea of how he wanted to plant them but I mentioned the "Three Sisters" technique of planting squash, corn and beans together in a mound and their symbiotic relationship: thebeans grow up the corn and the squash shades the corn, decreasing weeds and deterring pests because of their pokey leaves. He thought it was pretty cool and gave me free reign over planting them. We also planted shallots and lots of flowers. Then we plotted out the garden on large sheet of paper, the data of which will be put on the computer so he can plan next season's crop rotation.

For snack I foraged some apricots that had fallen from the tree, still warm from the sun : )

It is the Fete de la Musique in France, falling on the 1st day of summer. Bands come and play free shows and people are free to bring their instruments and play in the streets. Apparently when it began 30 years ago it was a really cool thing but the music has become worse and people get more and more drunk every year when they go out. I went with two guys who rent rooms here and we drove down. The town was full of people, young and old. The main band was this punk band for a while, which was really bad. Then we decided to walk around a bit. We heard drummers, a really good group playing American and French rock, which was great. Then the Hush Puppies played. Apparently they are very well known, though I have never heard of them. At 1am we headed home.

June 20

I caught the TGV and headed to Aix en Provence to start my new internship. Franchesco picked me up at the station, we drove to the farm, had an Ethiopan luch and I began with planting lettuce and weeding the gardens.

It is extrodinarily beautiful here! I will have to upload some pictures.

Before dinner I went out to meet the other students that rent rooms. I went and introduced myself. They were playing UNO and invited me to join in. They are as we say in france "super syampa", meaning "really nice people". I get to practice my rusty french slang and talk to people my age. C'est bonne ca.

June 19

This morning I got up, bought bread and croissants and a pain au raisin for la fete de peres (father's day) and a french for me to read through during breakfast. Around 12, Anna, Helene and I went to La Fete de Cerise, which has been going on for the last two days. I didn't quite know what it was, but I was happy to tag along. It wasn't about cherries at all, as the name states but is just a big flee market of sorts. I have very little clothing and the clothing I have is for Cameroon and it covers the majority of my body. I thought it might be a good idea to get a pair of shorts and a tee shirt. So for one euro a piece I got one shirt and a pair of shorts as well as a bathing suit and a light jacket for 2.50 euro each.

June 18

I went to the outdoor market in Collombes. I went shopping for Anna and enjoyed the surroundings. There is pretty much nothing I like more than outdoor markets. I watched the people, listened in on their French conversations. One woman was shocked when she found out her son had eaten all the chocolate and she asked him what he was planning on doing when he wasn't hungry for lunch but was then hugry at snack time and there would be no chocolate. He thought the best answer was to purchase more chocolate and that everything would be fine. The mother was not amused.

Then I came back and received a call from Molly, the woman on the farm in Provence. We talked about my internship, what I would be doing on the farm etc. I would work there for room and board so all I would need to do would be to take the TGV. I am waiting to hear back from an NGO that might have a research project for me regarding sustainable agriculture but if they do not respond by Monday, I will head down to Provence on Tuesday morning and do a project on organic agro-tourism and help with a community garden. I will help them with their vegetable garden, with their chickens, sheep and bees. I am incredibly exicted!

June 17

I got a new list together and planned on going out again and looking for an internship but I couldn't seem to make myself go. Morning turned to 11, then to lunch time. At 1 or 2 I turned on the computer and had two e-mails, one from an NGO that is two hours from Paris, asking for more information on my internship and one from a family friend who has contacts in Aix de Provence who has an organic farm, plenty of work and an extra room! I e-mailed them back and waited for replies.

After dinner I hadn't heard anything new. Helene, my cousin and I went to an outdoor art market. There were some people playing jazz and we walked around and looked at the paintings of all types. I learned two new words: smooth and rough--lisse et rougue (not sure how to spell them, just know how to pronounce them). Then we hung out with Helene's friend, talked about the way words sound and what that does to their meaning and ate nutella with french bread. It was a very French evening of sorts.

June 16

We landed around 5:45 AM, I got my luggage, exchanged a bit of money, took a bus and then the metro and walked to my cousin's house. I took a shower to wash off two weeks of grime that never seemed to get cleaned off me during my bucket showers in Cameroon. I washed all of my clothes (three shirts, two pairs of pants and a couple of hankerchifs). Anna made fried eggs, with the yolk still soft, tomato, salad, tea and French bread. I was in HEAVEN!

I needed to find an internship PRONTO so I got the addresses of the NGO's, plotted out my plan for the metro and printed out letters of recommendation and my resume. I was off. After walking around Paris for hours I had recieved 3 NO's. To cheer myself up I bought a pain au chocolate. It was damn good. I was pretty heartbroken with the last one, because it was a community garden in Paris and was my best hope and I went home with a broken spirit.

June 15

We had fried plantains, which tasted like crispy potatoes and omlette with onions, tomatos and Maggi, therefore making it incredibly delicous. We went to Justine's beauty parlor, returned home for lunch. I napped and packed and Justine's daughter and her friend braided my hair. Then I waited until we left for the airport. It poured and poured but the cab still came and we got to the airport with 2+ hours to spare. I watched the latest Ashtin Kutcher movie and then two episodes of Sex and the City, which took place in Paris and I got SOOO excited.

June 12, 13, 14

Long story short, I didn't feel safe in Cameroon, I decided to go to Paris to stay with family until I found a new internship in France.

I took the bus on Tuesday. Pius drove Mispa and Celsea and I to the main road, we took a taxi and they helped me buy a ticket at the bus station. Three hours later I was on the bus. I was worried at the beginning because someone said that the bus we were taking had broken down on the way to Bamenda the day before and the bus driver reassuring me that it was fine didn't really help beacause I knew that he just wanted to leave and not have to fix it. The bus was super slow taking off. It was having a huge amount of problems mounting the hills. But after about 30 minutes and me with my mantra of "I think I can, I think I can", from The Little Train That Could, the bus stopped being extremely slow. 6 long hours later we were there. I had befriended a woman who sat next to me. She decided she was my Cameroonian mother and gave me a grilled plantain to eat on the way and the guy next to me helped me bargain for a really cool hand woven basket. When we arrived in Younde I asked the woman to wait with me until my ride came and she said she had no problem with that. She wanted my e-mail address so we could stay in contact. People here often ask for my e-mail address, even if they themselves don't have e-mail addresses. I found this a lot. Justine, Mispa's family member picked me up. We went around to various family members and friends and she introduced me to them. Then we got to her house and I met her oldest daughter, her relative and the housekeeper. I took a bucket shower and then we had my favorite food for dinner: rice with fried fish and tomato sauce.

June 10 and 11

We went to a workshop for WINCONET, a network of environmental NGO's. The point of the workshop was to asses the network, see what its goals and expectations are and then create a working document for the future on how to run it. The invitation to it did not include either a beginning time or an ending time, so the thought was that you came when you felt like it. We got there at 9:45 and the workshop still hadn't started. At 10 most of the people had gotten there. at 10:15 the white man heading the workshop decided it was time to start, since it was supposed to start at 8....ooops. The only person who knew this fact was a woman who had called into the office the day before and asked. Pius and the rest of the group hadn't even thought about calling in to ask, they all assumed it would just start when it started. That's cameroon for you. .

The man running the workshop is from North Carolina. He's been working with an NGO here for the past 9 months and has a two year contract. Other than the fact that he still wears a suit and tie, he seems to have completely assimilated, eating with his right hand and going out for beers with the people in the workshop.

There was an "opening ceremony", meaning a speech by the head of the office where the workshop was being led and then it was time for a coffee break. We started the workshop and then broke into groups to talk about what WINCONET is and what are it's strenths, weaknesses etc. About an hour later I began to feel a bit off and I noticed I had a fever so I decided to go sit down in the foyer and take a nap. I would have gone home except that I would have had to take a cab and then walk 15 minutes by myself down a dirt road, which when I am feeling well is a challenge so I decided it was best to just nap and wait until the workshop was over. Everyone decided that the next day the meeting was to start promptly at 8am. Whoever was there would begin.

The next day we got there at 8:30 and people were sitting outside--the office still hadn't been unlocked. At 9 we got inside and waited until 9:30 and things began. I was still not feeling well, but I decided it was better to get out of the house so I brought medicine for my fever and food to eat and did some more napping. I had tea at tea time and that's when I realized that it's probably the water than didn't sit with me very well. We finished up the workshop at 1, had lunch and then headed to a bar to share some drinks.

June 9

I transplanted some vetiva grass, which has a very complex and strong root system. You plant it in places to decrease erosion. So I began to work on that when Mispa came out and told me it was "Country Sunday" and that I "cannot work the soil". I had heard about "Country Sunday" before. It is a day once a month (which appears to have nothing to do with Sunday) where you cannot work the soil but have to do other work instead, government offices are cleaned apparently. But I thought she was joking so I smiled. With a serious look on her face she told me I had to stop and do something else. I told her I would need to transplant the one plant otherwise it would die out in the hot sun. It was taking me a while to uproot the tuft of grass and move it to another area. Pius came out and told me I would need to stop with the vetiva grass and seed plants instead because it was Country Sunday and Africans are "fearful of the unknown". Country Sunday seems to be a government created thing but it also seems like there is some aura around it that if you do work the land on that day that something bad will happen. I really liked the job of digging up the grass with this heavy digging stick. I haven't done much manual work and my body was feeling in need of some exercise so I told Pius i would come up and get the seeds. I finished planting the grass and came in about 20 min later. I should have stopped and respected their very unclear "holiday" of sorts but I wanted to continue and finish the job.

I planted some papaya seeds, which they call Popo. Then we fixed the propagator, which is like a small green house made out of wood and plastic. We added new plastic because it has been damaged from time and weather. Then I put 12cm of large flat rocks, then smaller rocks and then covered it all with a ton of sand and saturated it with water. Mirabelle came and the three of us collecting stems from certain species of trees and did cuttings and put them in the new propagator.

June 9

Last night I went to meet the group of Americans and Europeans at a market. The “market” was actually the name of the place, and it turned out to be a restaurant. I ordered a fish, it was quite tasty. The people there were not chatty. I’m not sure what it was, but no one was in a very cheerful mood. My phone is having problems, I can hear the person on the other end, but they cannot hear me. So I have been txting when need be. I would need to take two different taxis back home, plus walk down a dirt road for about 15 minutes in the dark so naturally I wanted someone to come with me, especially because it was my first time outside of the home by myself. Everyone lived near by and no one wanted to take the cab with me. luckily I was talking to a local who works for an NGO that deals with food security. He has worked with NDEF before and knows where the office is. He offered to drive me back in his motorcycle because he lives near by. I wouldn’t ride the motorcycle with him, but he said he would escort me back. So he did. I told him I would pay for his taxi ride back but I wanted to give him something else, but I don’t really have anything. But I do have candy canes that I brought just in case. So I gave him two candy canes and he seemed pretty delighted. i lucked out with Samuel and decided not to go out again at night by myself.

Today we thought we were going to a conference but it is actually Friday and Saturday so we did work around the farm. We fixed the structure that you put cuttings in and then I set it up for new ones. I learned how to prepare cuttings and then I planted them. My new morning ritual will be to wipe down the inside part of the plastic to allow for the sun to shine through and to mist them with water.

June 5

I spent the day in bed trying to get down my fever and eating rice with salt and margarine. My family thought this was very odd, to put margarine on rice. Now that I think of it, it’s a bit bizarre, but it’s the food I was given when I was sick when I was a kid so it’s my comfort food. But I got lots of—“you are putting what?” on your rice looks.

June 6

I was pretty much completely fever free and Pius and Mirabelle were heading off to the rural farm for all of Monday and the majority of Tuesday, which meant that if I didn’t go with them I would have pretty much absolutely nothing to do at home for the next two days, which I felt was worse than feeling a bit under the weather.

We went into town to get provisions such as potatoes, salted fish, Maggi bullion cubes, which they seem to flavour most things with, oil and peanuts which they put in a hand crank. I was quite delighted with it, I like those kinds of contraptions and the woman did not seem to be enjoying herself doing it, so I asked the woman if I could crank it and grind them. She said yes and they watched me grind it, and were quite amused. After getting potatoes I got several women who asked if I would marry their son. I wear a plain silver “wedding” band when I travel by myself. They saw it when Mirabelle lifted up my hand and together cried a rather loud sound of dismay. We got some crackers I could put peanut butter on that I brought from home and some more bottled water for me and we were on our way to the village. We drove through beautiful green hilly areas with streams and a river and lots of huts and gardens growing on steep hills. About three hours later we were there. Pius went into the main village there and rounded up 5 men to work with us. They took dead, damp palm leaves and rolled them up into a flat doughnut, put them on top of their head’s and then mounted a bucket of samplings on top. They gave me the palm leaf cushion and mounted the bucket with plants on top of my head and then we ascended. Putting that kind of weight on your head makes you REALLY feel you leg muscles and your lower back that is trying to keep everything balanced. For the next few hours we measured out where to put the palm saplings, they had to be properly spaced throughout the area. It rained sporadically during the entire time. I learned how to use a digging stick and now have somewhat of a better idea of what a meter looks like. When we came down at 5 our hut had partially caved in because of the rain. I being ALL about safety was not amused and after a dinner of rice with fried fish in a tomato, onion, maggi sauce, I slept in the car for fear there would be a large rainstorm and that the whole house would cave in.

June 7

We woke up with the sun, around 5:30, ate fire re-heated rice and fish and then headed out to plant more. I was in charge of holding the stick so things could be measured. Then Mirabelle and I planted papaya trees and “tree tomatoes”, which as far as I can tell are sour plums. Around 12 or so we packed up and headed back to Bamenda. On the way we saw a woman who needed a ride. She was going to town to sell palm oil so some men from down the road hauled the huge buckets of palm oil into the car. One of them said he was hungry and that I should marry him so he has enough money to eat. Let me tell you, this man looked well fed. But being “hungry” seems to be the main scapegoat for why I am proposed to. Mirabelle told him I was married. He was not satisfied. He wanted to know about this man. I told him he was back in America. Then we had to get back on the road. We picked up a teenager and then later an older man all looking for a ride to Bamenda. Apparently when you live in a village, there isn’t really transportation anywhere so you either wait by the roadside or you know someone who has a car and have them drive you. They compensated Pius; it is like a loose bus system of sorts. When we got back home there was no electricity, there hadn’t been for over an hour. My plan had been to check e-mail and clean up my room but that was no longer an option. However, after I ate dinner, the electricity came back on, I check my e-mail and then at 8:30 I went to bed because I was pretty exhausted from not sleeping very well the night before in the car.

June 8

This morning we went to a sort of fair for World Environmental Day. We were going to exhibit NDEF and what they do with plants as well as make some money for the NGO by selling some trees that had been marcotted, some seedlings and other s that had been grafted. All will bear fruit in as little as 2-3 years. We also sold honey from the hives and a skin lotion for skin ailments made from bees waxy, Vaseline and vegetable oil. I also met a German girl who works for another environmental NGO. She and the Americans as well as a French girl all live close to each other and meet up every Wednesday night to go to a market and get dinner. Since today is Wednesday, I will be joining them and I am very excited!

June 4

I wasn’t feeling great, but I went with Mispa to the market because it is full of stuff on Saturdays. When I got back I realized that I wasn’t hot from the sun, but that I had a fever. I caught something : ( The rest of the day I rested, drank a lot of water and ate plain rice and went to bed ridiculously early.

June 3

Yesterday we prepared plants and the honey for a convention taking place next week. I was in charge of squishing the honey comb between my fingers to break the wax and let it release the honey. African bees are angry bees so I decided to play it safe and put on my bee suit because we put the containers of honey in the office and did the processing in the office and now bees are wild to get it and eat us so we give their honey back. So I put on the bee suit and looked thoroughly ridiculous sitting there and squishing it but I felt relatively safe despite the fact that bees were swarming in front of my face, so that’s good. The bees began to get super pissed and I was done with my job so I left the office. Bees followed me out because my gloves and part of my suit had quite a bit of honey/wax on them. I once again was the weird American walking around looking like I was rushing somewhere, trying to get the 3 or 4 bees following me to leave me alone so I could take of the suit, go inside and wash off. It took me a couple minutes. I took off everything in ten seconds and booked it inside. Lunch was a traditional food that everyone here in Bamenda knows how to cook. It’s called Acho, yes, like the noise you make when you sneeze. It is made out of boiled, smashed coco yam and plantain cooked in banana leaf. Pius’ sister and Linda were making it and they offered for me to try to mash it. It was fun, but if I had to do it for an hour, I don’t think it would be as enjoyable. To eat it, you take it out of the banana leaf (or if you live in a village and don’t have plates you use the banana leaf as your plate) and mould the pasty mixture into a bowl to hold this red sauce with mushrooms and cow hide, which has a distinct flavour that tastes pretty much how you would expect it to—meaty and musky. It was good, but a bit strong. I mostly didn’t like the pasty texture of the Acho—it reminded me of baby food. I decided it would be tasty to dip avocado in the sauce. It was a good combination. At 3 we went to a meeting about Decentralization in Bamenda. There are apparently meetings the first Friday of every month and they invite a speaker. This week it was the mayor of Bamenda. We got there at 3:15 and I walked towards the building and there they were…….WHITE PEOPLE! I have only seen three white people since I’ve been here and it has been from afar. I was excited to talk to these people, wondering what kind of work they were doing here. They were all in their thirties and were working as consultants. Then two women about my age arrived. They are in law school and came to Cameroon for the summer to work with a human rights laywer. I was excited to see them but after a couple minutes I became disappointed when I noticed that they weren’t really interacting with any of the Africans other than greeting them. They were all in a group talking about places to get cherry coke and black tea and talking about tennis. They had all been there a couple years and they didn’t seem to have assimilated. Maybe I’m being a bit judgemental, but I feel like if you live in a place for a couple of years, other than having some things you like that remind you of home, why would you not want to embrace the lifestyle of the place you are living?

The meeting was fine. The mayor talked and people asked questions. Everyone seemed pretty uplifted by his ideas on decentralization and giving more power to the people, but I honestly thought it was mostly talk. On the drive back to the house we gave a ride to one of Pius’ friends. Most men here are not very chatty with me. They greet me, often welcome me to Cameroon and then go on about their business. But this guy was really quite talkative asking about how I liked Cameroon, where I was from etc. Then he told me he knows someone at NMSU who is working as a professor but he has no interest in living in America because it is too liberal and women have too many rights. He had a smile on his face, which most people have most of the time, so it was unclear if he was joking or not. After a moment, since he wasn’t laughing, then he probably wasn’t joking. “Oy” I thought to myself, “Why am I here”?

It rained like I have never experienced. I was afraid that the building was going to wash away. But I had to remind myself that that is normal here and that I would be fine. I am from NM, where a ten minute drizzle is a lot of rain so torrential downpours are something I am NOT used to.

The internet seems to be getting worse. I am not sure if it is because of the rain damaging the phone lines or what but I am having an extremely hard time connecting to my e-mail : (

First Days

May 28th

After two 6 hour flights I landed in Younde on the 28th. I had befriended a woman on the plane to Yaounde. Her name is Carole. She
and I spoke in French and talked. She is from Yaounde but lives in Paris now working as a secretary. I told her about my work at NDEf and my worry about Mispa, the wife of Pius who is the coordinator, not being there to pick me up. She told me that she would wait with me at the airport until she came. As soon as I got through customs there Mispa was, with her two cousins, Melanie and her sister. They had a sign with my name on it. My huge smile tipped them off (as well as the fact that there were only two white people in the airport and the other one was a nun) that it was me they were picking up. They hugged me and welcomed me to Cameroon and then we took a cab to the cousin’s house. I met one other woman who was also living at the house and a couple of the neighbors’ kids who came out to check out
the visitor. The youngest girl who looked to be about 5 just starred at me. She wasn’t sure what to do. We ate boiled rice with a spicy tomato sauce with fried fish in it for dinner. They played Cameroonian music for me and then I went to bed. Throughout the night there were heavy rains, heavier than I have every heard in my life. But no one else seemed to be fazed by it.

May 29^th

We got up at 6 with the sun and I went out of the house to check out the scenery. There were baby chickens outside and people wiping off the mud from the passageway to their houses. The rain had brought in a lot of red mud. I brushed my teeth outside with Melanie because the bathroom was occupied. As people came out of their houses to brush their teeth, wash dishes and do laundry, they looked at me and kept about their business. I think they weren’t so much shocked to see a white girl but wondering why I was there, or who had brought me. Then we went to the bus station and bought tickets. People kept coming by selling perfumes, jewellery and watches. Then almost an hour and a half after the scheduled time we took off. Each time we drove through a new town there would be speed bumps and vendors would take this opportunity to sell coconuts, pineapple slices and other fruits. After about three hours we stopped at a large market where Mispa’s relative sells fruit and we bought roasted plantains and roasted plums. The plums were extremely sour and I couldn’t eat them but the plantains were delicious. When we got into Bamenda Pius picked us up in his car and we headed home. Three children were there to greet me along with Linda, the nanny.

May 30^th

This morning for breakfast was an egg and pasta thing. It was pretty much an omelette with the addition of pasta. It was good but it was a bit strong for that early in the morning. It would have been a great dinner though. So I opted out for two mangos and some green tea I brought from home—this morning just didn’t seem like a dried milk and instant coffee day. I started my work day no more than 30 steps away from the kitchen. The office is right next to the house. We had a meeting at 8, planning for the rest of the week. Pius, Maribelle and I were the only one’s there. Apparently there is someone else that works for them but it was unclear why he wasn’t there. We introduced ourselves and then planned out the week on our time sheet/calendar. After lunch Mispa and I went downtown to get me a SIM card for my phone and try and get to an ATM. The line for the ATM was horrendous so we decided to come back a day when it would be less busy. Then we waited in a long line for a SIM card. Afterwards we headed off to a market where they sell just about everything—bananas, other fruits, women selling food, clothing, flip flops, baskets and things for tourists. We visited Mispa’s mother’s stall and I bought two small baskets. Then we went to go have Mispa’s hair done. While she was getting it done I began to play with kids who were hanging around. I became a tickle monster and chased them as they screamed with laughter. The two children then turned two five and then to seven. There was a whole group of little children waiting to be scarred by the while girl. It was a blast.

Dinner was boiled cassava and this soup with pan fried fish in it. Boiled cassava is a really dense carb so it was a but heavy on my stomach but the fish was delicious and getting to eat with my hands was nice. I miss that from my time in India.

May 31

I wrote a grand proposal for NDEF and how their agroforestry techniques combat global climate change. It was the first time I have written something like that. I wouldn’t want to do it every day all day, but it was kind of cool trying to figure out how to clearly describe how NDEF helps combat climate change—trees create a forest of resources, which because they are not uprooted every season become sinks for CO₂ while decreasing erosion, providing food and firewood. The power shut off around 2pm so we decided to go downtown. It rained and rained and rained. That was the theme of the day.

June 1

Today Maribelle and I emptied pots and arranged the nursery. Then Pius talked to us about the various ways to graft trees and why and then he showed us how. It seemed fairly simple, at least straightforward but I think it was his mastery that made it look easy. I struggled a bit with the angle of the cuts on the plant as well as fusing them together with this long strand of plastic. Before learning how to graft I wondered why people didn’t do it more often because the results are amazing: they bear the fruit you choose and they are able to do so in as little as 2-3 years after being grafted. It was after I began to do it myself that I realized not only it is a pain to do and quite time consuming, but apparently the success rate is quite low. We put our names on each one we grafted to see if we did it correctly. Out of the 10 I did, I am not sure any will succeed. You are able to tell in a couple of weeks, so I will see then, whether I did it correctly or not.

June 2

Today is a Catholic holiday. I was expecting to go to the service with Maribelle but apparently arrangements weren’t made. So Pius and I got an order of seedlings together for a pickup. Pius cut down a passion fruit from a tree on their property, which I ate and then we headed to town to run some errands like buying work clothes and going to the ATM.

Interesting things I’ve noticed so far:

• Because we are near the equator there are 12 hours of night and day. With the relative lack of electricity people get up and start doing things when the sun comes up around 5:30/6. They do things in the morning that we would think of as a post dinner activity such as washing dishes.
• Women sing out loud to songs on the radio, which before this I have never witnessed.
• Women shave off their eyebrows and pencil them on. I find this a peculiar practice because the humidity is so high here that it tends to melt and smudge on their faces. No one seems to comment when eyebrow pencil has made it up to their forehead or onto their nose. The smudges are all ignored.
• TV is on almost all the time in the living room. Music videos, news or some soap opera type show are playing. The bad signal causes there to be many “skips” where there is no audio or visual for a second or two and then it resumes.
• TV shows all have extremely dramatic music and dialogue. They remind me in a sense of Bollywood films except there is no singing or dancing.
• Meals are not eaten together. They are usually prepared in the morning and put in a “cooler” type thing that keeps things hot and you eat whenever you are hungry during the day. At night we eat when the food done being prepared and then when we are done eating we move three feet over to the couches and continue to watch TV.

I tried to upload photos but the very slow computer would simply not allow it. I might be able to find a high speed internet café and add them at some point.