Ecuador Dispatches, 2002
We started out the new year with one volunteer working on the Eco
Ecuador Project. Yijin Woo left in mid-January, after completing
many tasks on the Fanca Produce work. In early February, Peter and three
others arrived to carry on the work. Peter began sending dispatches soon
afterward. Later, in the Fall, a large core of Planet Drum workers had
several projects to finish before the winter rainy season began.
Index of 2002 Dispatches
[Most recent dispatches at top of list]
Fall 2002
Dispatch #2. Governments
International, National and Across the Street (25 Sept 2002)
Dispatch #1. Closing Circles and Emerging Angles
(21 Sept 2002)
Winter 2001-02
Report #4. The
"Bear" in the Bosque and Other Outcomes (22 Feb 2002)
Report #3. Dancing
Public Revegetation onto Private Land (17 Feb 2002)
Report #2. Carnaval Heat (12
Feb 2002)
Report #1. Rain
Included at Extra Cost (7 Feb 2002)
<<<===>>>
Report #1, February 7, 2002
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador
By Peter Berg
A month late, the annual rainy season has begun with a drenching
vengeance. It began lightly, just sparkling the night pavement shortly
before I arrived in Guayaquil, and continued intermittently a few days
later while waiting to pick up new volunteers Darcie Luce and Lisa Kundrat
at the airport. On the six hour bus ride from there to Bahia we
encountered a stretch of mud in the streets of a small town sufficiently
deep to sink the sliding tires to the rim and slow us down to an anxious
crawl. Inching by another bus that had become stranded, I exchanged vacant
glances of the condemned through the muddy windows with passengers who had
sat in that sad conveyance for an unknown number of hours and remembered
the principal role that unexpected hazards perform here. Our calamity
hardened driver didn't respect this particular patch of mud and ground on
through even deeper stuff until we eventually got clear and arrived only a
half-hour late in Bahia.
Downpours since then have been spectacular. Usually only an hour or two
long, they make up for relative brevity with overbrimming volume. Our
first indication that something exceptional was due came with a
still-trembling traveler's account of a massive mud slide that just missed
pushing his bus off the road. Continuing rains have flooded houses, roads
and fields almost everywhere. A roof without leaks is rare, city streets
can have puddles from curb to curb, and some entire neighborhoods are
flooded. There was thigh high standing water in front of our Fanca Produce
project to make compost and grow fruit trees for distribution in a poor
barrio when we first arrived that has deepened to become an impassable,
mid-chest high pond. Sticky clay mud has begun filling the unpaved streets
of the entire barrio as well as Bahia's adjacent city Leonidas Plaza.
But don't take this as a lament, at least not yet. Residents are ready
for a break from the rain, of course, but they also accept it as just
heavier than usual. Planet Drum's two major projects, the revegetation
park Bosque en Medio de las Ruinas and Fanca Produce, have both been
affected. The park has minor mud flows from a few gullies while Fanca
Produce is not only obstructed by a pond but hundreds of seedlings are in
danger of inundation which could kill them. We can definitely use a
respite because there is already damage and delay.
There have been numerous uptimes in spite of the rain. We had an
exhilarating planting day led by Nicola Mears while the water was still
just thigh high, helped by boys who voluntarily waded through with plants
while we wheelbarrowed compost. Fanca is divided into four parts and in a
mild rain we transported everything to Fanca IV accompanied by a
spontaneous volunteer named Sarah and several boys. Nicola made
introductions of our purpose to help plant trees at eight houses which
participated in the program of separating organic household waste to make
compost. This highly fertile soil is then used for growing seedlings, but
since it is too early in the process for our seedlings to be mature we
brought bought and donated ones to take advantage of the rain. Mostly
women were at home at mid-day and they reacted to our unscheduled visit
with a range of favorable responses from excited enthusiasm to coaxed but
pleased participation. A drizzle became a warm shower and then a
full-fledged rain while we sited locations in yards, dug post holes in the
saturated mud, added compost, placed the trees, and filled in a mixture of
clay mud and compost. Fruits of five species, one each, went to everyone
except papayas due to a donation from the mayor of several thousand
seedlings. Those weren't limited and everyone took two or three.
Participants who attended gardening classes and actually helped to turn
the compost also received lemon and mango trees. Nicola glowed with
graciousness toward the people who live in adverse circumstances in this
barrio. Her warmth was contagious for our inexperienced crew as well as
the residents, and we could not possibly have had as enjoyable or
successful a three-hour session in soaked clothes without her. Delays
can't be overcome especially with the sheer volume of rain, but two
sections of Fanca are finished and the tree-planting aspect of the project
is now half-completed.
The park in Maria Auxiliadora barrio has new erosion deposits from the
deepest gullies cut into the hillside that occurred in just the last few
weeks. In four or five places fine particles of clay percolated up from
within the soil and oozed out in four to six inch wide flows from one to
two inches deep in curves resembling slow-moving lava. In two places there
are actual small slides from half a foot to two or three feet high. The
trails were placed correctly in the beginning so they are all passable
even if a bit higher in some places than before. It is all easily repaired
so far but we'll wait to see what further rains bring. It was the dry
season when trails were cleared last time and they have stayed remarkably
wide open and don't need machete chopping along their sides. A few log
steps have been displaced and need to be rebuilt or shored up. The
effectiveness of our previous planting is clearly obvious. In heavily
planted areas there are no flows or slides. In one spot on the hillside a
single tree held back a slide that built up behind it instead of falling
to the bottom of the hill. No soil material left the revegetation area to
descend on houses below. The greatest amount of what erosion there is
filled in a small basin between two trails that still has room for
additional deposits.
George Tukel arrived to start researching renewable energy applications
for Bahia. I took the bus trip back to Guayaquil to meet his airplane, and
we spent some time there looking at tons of water lilies uprooted by
floods floating down the wide Guays River and people-watching until the
return bus six hours later. Between his coming from New York and me from
Bahia, it was an eighteen hour trip altogether for both of us! George has
already begun meeting Planning Department people.
Eduardo "Cheo" has begun acting as a liaison between Planet
Drum, biologist Pedro Otero, and the landowners in the six kilometer area
of eroded hills along the Rio Chone coming into Bahia. It is my personal
obsession to create a wildlife corridor of native dry tropical forest
vegetation to prevent erosion and restore ecosystems in this area.
Hopefully, the owners can appreciate the advantages of those benefits and
donate small parts of their property for use in planting. We're meeting
next week and will have the mayor present to help explain the vision.
People here are even more friendly than before and hospitably helpful
to Darcie, George and Lisa. We have a lot to do before the end of this
month and with a little relief from the rain should be able to accomplish
most of it.
<<<===>>>
Report #2, February 12, 2002
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador
By Peter Berg
The shredded comic strip atmosphere of Carnaval has infiltrated the
city and holds us in a friendly but insistent grip like a grinning drunk.
We aren't always sure what to say because we aren't sure of what we've
really seen.
The invasion began almost imperceptibly on Monday when I saw a man
walking alone in the middle of the street with a parrot on his
outstretched finger and a puppy on a leash. I was intent on observing the
bird as we approached each other when he suddenly took quick steps toward
me and asked, "Do you want to buy the bird?" When I shook my
head and looked away to avoid being pitched he shouted, "How about
the puppy?"
By the middle of the week, people dressed for the beach started to
become part of the mix on the street. They stood out in novelty T- shirts
with towels draped around their necks strolling in front of stores.
Bahians usually don't wear towels to go shopping.
Not everyone is a typical Quito tourist. A slightly bowlegged country
hombre with a worn baseball cap and open work shirt hanging out walked up
with an exaggeratedly suspicious expression to the open air restaurant
where I was having lunch. He left his woman companion who wore a foot high
bright yellow knit hat outside while he combatively walked to the counter
and must have asked how much a meal cost because he reacted as though he
had been shoved and left. I noticed a pointed piece of metal protruding
from the top of one of his knee high rain boots. He came to Carnaval ready
to throw a knife.
Straw hats, fruit in boxes from Chile, sun visors, candies, and even
containers of cooking oil are only a handful of the things for sale on the
street by dozens of locals and strangers. By Friday, the staff of a corner
store tienda where I buy bottled water was too busy stocking entire
shelves of shampoo and coolers full of yogurt to take money immediately.
Many waterfront stores and restaurants have anxious-acting extra help to
accommodate expected crowds on the weekend and the following Monday and
Tuesday of actual Carnaval.
As a side note with potential future consequences, there's an angry
buzz from people directly involved with the tourist industry about a story
that broke in Ecuador's biggest newspaper late in the week describing
flooded and muddy conditions here. They feel that the normal high Carnaval
tourist numbers are somewhat down and blame the journalist. It's not out
of the ordinary for someone to write about a natural event having the
scope of this month's rain (see my first dispatch from this visit,
"Rain Included at No Extra Cost"), and his wasn't the only piece
on the theme of flooding with consequences for impassable roads to Bahia's
Carnaval. But this journalist did the same thing last year and at this
point motives are ascribed to him that border on conspiracy theory.
Critics are still waiting to find out what the final attendance will be
before carrying their disappointment into more than just curses and
shunning.
On Saturday, George and I followed the Carnaval crowd to Bellaca Playa
(nicknamed La Gringa Beach). It's somewhat isolated from the main beaches
in town and that may be the reason why more of the raucous bathers and
their whole families are locals. Wandering away from everyone I was run
down by someone from behind so quickly that I momentarily flinched. It was
a craggy faced beachcomber who surprisingly knew my name and began talking
nonstop about his vision of a museum with "piedras blancas"
(white stones) filled with artifacts he discovered on the beach. I
listened obediently to his forceful description while studying the cluster
of seven black tattooed dots in his left earlobe (the constellation of the
Seven Sisters?) and the seemingy self-administered tattoos of mystical
signs on his forearms. If my ability with Spanish was better I could
appreciatively spend an afternoon hearing about the things he has thought
about and encountered, even at that near- mad level of intensity.
Returning to the place where George and I had separated. I found him
sitting with what from a distance seemed to be a puzzled or sheepish look
that turned out to be consternation about a stick that had punctured the
big toe of one foot. He tried to gouge it out but it was deeper than a
fingernail could remove. A teenage girl materialized who was doing quite
well at extracting small pieces until they became too deep for the pin of
her hair barrette. Looking around for someone with a sharp knife and not
finding anyone, it finally became clear that we needed more expert
attention and should try for a ride to the hospital. Now George's bad luck
at being impaled by the stick turned radically toward the best luck
imaginable. The girl's uncle, Juan Carlos Cedeno, a chewing gum company
employee, waded from the ocean handing off the small child he had been
carrying and almost automatically drove us in his antique jeep to the
hospital in Leonidas Plaza. He waited with me for an hour or so brushing
off several suggestions to return to his family holiday. Juan Carlos
accompanied me to fill a prescription we were handed, and ran off with a
second one before I could stop him from getting and paying for it. When
the huddle of nurses and skillful doctor eventually brought George out
they explained how the stick had gone laterally up the tube of his toe for
a distance of nearly two inches. The largest part was the deepest and
required scalpeling out. Then Juan Carlos drove us back to Bahia,
reluctantly accepting a bottle of rum as a gift from George and my
compliment that he represented the highest fulfillment of Ecuadorian
hospitality.
The following day I went back alone to perform some voyeuristic
anthropology at the Queen of the Beach contest. "Queens" are a
staple of Ecuadorian popular culture who are usually beyond mere beauty
contest winners.. Each barrio in Bahia has its own gowned and besashed
queen to represent the neighborhood community at various events and
parades. Bahia has a queen who sat on the platform when the Eco-city
Declaration was read.
In contrast to those more decorous titles, the Queen of the Beach
competition was a typical contest but a lot sexier, and it was completely
localized with contestants who live in the nearby area despite so many
visitors from Quito and other faraway cities. The first was a petite and
awkward fifteen year old from Bahia, with either a permanent or temporary
tattoo of maybe an angel or a bat around her navel. She completely
surprised me later by performing a variation on pole dancing. Next up the
steps and onto the hot sheet iron platform cooled by pouring bottles of
water was a corpulent woman at least five years older who relished jutting
out well-rounded parts of her body while sometimes sucking on her index
finger. When it was her turn to dance she shouted "Picante!"
(Hotter-faster!) until staccato music came on. She moved her hips in wide
arcs, protruding her ample, near-naked buttocks, while her feet kept the
fast beat. The crowd was joystruck. If sheer personality had been the
object, as perhaps it should have been for this event, she was
untouchable. Contestant three was similar to the first but more modest
since she walked up with brief shorts over the lower part of her bikini.
With encouragement from the judges and crowd she slowly removed the
shorts, providing what might have been the most intimate and innocently
sensuous moment of the afternoon. The final contestant was pretty and
graceful enough to have carried off the prize in a much bigger competition
than this. Hailing from Chone, a city up the river from Bahia renowned
throughout Ecuador for the beauty of its women, she also kept on a short,
transparent skirt and waved her finger imperiously in a "no"
gesture when onlookers demanded to take it off. One judge eventually broke
the impasse by stating that she couldn't win otherwise so the flimsy
garment was dropped in a quick, surprisingly definite move and tossed to
the crowd. To nearly hysterical supporters' cries of "Chone! Chone!
Chone!" she was declared the obvious Queen Of the Beach. I left
immediately not wanting to clutter the memory of such a sweetly funky
experience.
More Carnaval goers came to town jammed into the backs of fruit trucks
and pickups throughout Monday, overcrowding Bahia's Malecon river-ocean
walkway. Outdoor dancers stayed up until three and four in the morning.
Plain-dressed clowns imitating a husband and wife battling kung fu style
performed in the main riverfront plaza, food stands and walking food
vendors were everywhere, the line of vehicles for the overworked ferry
across Rio Chone doubled back on itself.
Tuesday has finally come and Carnaval is relaxing its grip. More
traffic is going out than coming into town. Darcie and Lisa are once again
planting paja macho grass to plug a few fissures in the revegetation park.
It will be interesting to see the shopkeepers and other business people
who exhausted themselves entertaining a good part of Ecuador's pre-Lenten
vacationers finally taking time to relax themselves.
<<<===>>>
Report #3, February 17, 2002
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador
By Peter Berg
Eduardo "Cheo" took on the role of locating owners of land on
the eroded hillsides above Leonidas Plaza to enroll them in revegetation
activities out of his dedication to ecological betterment of the Rio Chone
Bioregion. A high school English teacher by profession, he has often aided
other dry tropical forest restoration efforts and led or sent student
volunteers. Cheo visited each of the many owners and was assured by thirty
or so that they would attend an introductory meeting the day after
Carnaval. Refreshments and coffee were purchased for at least twenty to
actually show up. With Marcelo Luque, he had engaged the spacious Centro
Agricola for the meeting at three in the afternoon, located four Club
Ecologico volunteers ready to assist with extra chairs or any other need,
and enlisted upbeat Patricia from the Civil Defense Corps to take names
for locating participants afterwards. Cheo had set things up as well as
possible.
The prospect of involving landowners has made this a more anxiously
anticipated project than others Planet Drum has undertaken here. Our
revegetation park in Maria Auxiliadora is publicly owned now. Fanca
Produce is a voluntary barrio-wide program but it has a direct
relationship to public garbage collection. Use of by far the greatest part
of the six-kilometer long eroded area from Bahia to Kilometro Ocho is
entirely at the discretion of private parties who must be attracted to the
benefits of revegetation in order to consent. It remained a largely
unknown group except to Pedro and Eduardo, and a great deal depended on
who belonged and how they felt.
At 3:30 there were mainly friends, staff and volunteers in attendance,
but I decided to introduce the project anyway before they would have to
leave. At least they would all know enough about what was intended to fill
in future participants. Three were actually landholders in the area who
had been with the Eco-city movement since the beginning. (See following
declaration for main points of the presentation.) Toward the end of the
talk Mayor Viteri arrived but gestured for me to continue. Rather than
taking questions immediately at the conclusion, I turned to him for
whatever observations he had to further the project.
Surprising everyone he asked what percentage of owners was present.
Learning it was less than a tenth, he rhetorically asked why more weren't
there. "Greed!" he answered. It was mostly useless or marginal
land, Leo ventured, and owners wanted to get rid of it for a price, not
improve it for the public good. Stop wasting your time there, Peter, and
finish up Maria Auxiliadora instead!
If I had been neutral or logical sounding during the talk, an opposite
emotion came over me now. I shouted in a way that could easily be taken as
impolite, although most public discourse here is a kind of verbal volcanic
eruption. Leonidas Plaza was an urgent situation where just this month's
rain had caused mud to block the streets, consider what a full-scale El
Nino would wreak! Preventing a catastrophe would be at a miniscule cost
compared to cleaning up after another tragedy, I seemed to yell at the top
of my voice. Besides, Planet Drum had received small grants toward this
work that could go into effect immediately.
Reacting to what actually might have been reverse psychology by the
mayor, others began shouting that mud slides would be much worse next
time, that native trees could do the job of controlling erosion, and that
there should be an ordinance requiring compliance if more owners didn't
agree. Now Leo changed direction completely and demanded that I write a
statement declaring the city's intent to carry out hillside revegetation.
"Don't say, 'Owners should donate land.'" Tell them you will do
free planting and that they can harvest fruits, seeds and other plant
products that result from it as long as they don't cut down the trees.
Ordinances are the last resort and only support what most of the people
already agree about, he observed. Do a small test patch first so that
everyone can see the work in progress and figure out how it can benefit
them. "Start now ... tomorrow!"
We were breaking up to get a regional speciality of savory-smelling,
potato dumpling snacks stuffed with cheese and coffee thinking that this
would be the extent of a resolution. Then two dungarees clad landholders
finally joined the meeting an hour and a half after it began. Without
hearing any discussion they wanted to get immediately involved just on the
basis of the invitation, and insisted on giving their names and telephone
numbers. We'll go out to see their places next week, as well as look for
possibilities on land held by the Eco-city supporters with land in the
area. Even if the turnout was small, it´s a genuine start. That's success
from an organizer's point of view.
Marcelo Luque found me a day later to make a donation to the project of
a bag of seeds from mixed dry tropical forest tree species. We should be
able to put the first seeds and whatever seedlings are available right now
into the ground before I leave in a week. They'll fortunately catch the
remaining winter rains. Whatever grasses, bushes and trees survive through
the long, dry summer can play a land-gripping role as early as next year's
predicted heavier rainfall conditions and the accompanying threat of
large-size mud slides from collapsing hillsides.
Declaration of Intent
Revegetation of Eroded Portions of Hillsides in Leonidas Plaza, Canton
Sucre from Astillero to Kilometro Ocho
The hillsides facing Leonidas Plaza in Canton Sucre that were
saturated with rain and heavily damaged through land slides during the
1998 El Nino urgently require revegetation in order to assist prevention
of further erosion.
The next El Nino will cause massive damage to this already weakened
area, and according to local residents, will be worse than the mud slides
in 1998 which knocked over buildings, swept away houses, carried people
into Rio Chone, filled the streets and highway with mud to over two meters
deep, and broke bridges. The total cost of that catastrophe is
incalculable. It involved detouring the highway for nearly a year,
rebuilding bridges, building new homes for those destroyed and repairing
those remaining, destruction of institutional buildings, loss of
businesses and jobs, illness from diseases associated with dirty water and
raw sewage, and other calamities.
It is crucial to take measures to prevent reoccurrence of this tragedy
and cost. Revegetation is a principal means to accomplish that goal.
Planting trees in damaged areas facing Leonidas Plaza, the highway, and
Rio Chone can be done at a miniscule fraction of the cost for cleaning up
after the calamity of 1998.
Therefore, the Municipalidad of Canton Sucre authorizes a continuous
band of revegetation at least twenty-five meters wide approximately half
way up the affected hillsides from Astillero in Bahia de Caraquez to
Kilometro Ocho. The roots of plants in this corridor will retain the soil,
and the mass of vegetation will help slow down and hold back slides from
above. Plants will be native species of the dry tropical forest ranging
from grasses to brush, and trees that are both fast and slow growing.
Watering during summer months to encourage growth will be accomplished by
various means. The work will be done through supervision, funds, staff,
and volunteers in association with Planet Drum Foundation, a
non-government, not-for-profit, international organization.
Since all of the land involved is privately held, Planet Drum
Foundation offers to the owners free revegetation of eroded portions that
can be treated solely by planting. (This does not include terrain-altering
techniques such as terracing, grading or land removal.) Benefits to the
owners include harvesting of revegetated plant materials such as fruits
and seeds that do not involve cutting trees, water retention on their
land, and increased natural amenities of many kinds. The amount of land
involved for each owner does not need to be large and will be determined
through discussions with them to identify locations. The most desirable
places are where owned parcels join together so that sections can be
planted on both sides, along boundary lines, and following land contours.
The program will begin with establishment of several sites to test various
mixes of plants that are appropriate.
The community in general will benefit greatly from this revegetation
program through reduced danger, disruption of life, and both public and
private expense from hillside erosion hazards. There will also be
considerable enhancement of river, plant, animal, soil, and other natural
systems in the Rio Chone Bioregion.
<<<===>>>
Report #4, February 22, 2002
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador
By Peter Berg
Since it became unoccupied due to mud slides three and a half years
ago, Bosque en Medio de Las Ruinas revegetation park in Maria Auxiliadpra
barrio has been slowly evolving as a habitat. Our eyes have been trained
on the progress of planted grass, brush and trees with only momentary
interruptions from other life forms. Once there was a small cloud of over
a hundred white and black butterflies that rose when I approached the hobo
tree they were resting under. Tanjero birds sometimes pass through in
startlingly fast, rust and white colored bursts. Wasp nests double the
width of an adult's lower leg can be found wrapped around tree limbs.
Winged species aren't a surprise because of their nomadic ability to
in-migrate rapidly from nearby woods. Ground-borne animals are different
in that they have to overcome myriad obstacles to walking, crawling, or
slithering at a slower pace into a new home terrain. Once arrived they
need a safe base of operations to hunt and raise their young. There has to
be enough food within the circle of a chosen or built den to sustain their
families. The presence of resident wild mammals would establish that a
major step in restoring whole ecosystems had been achieved in the Bosque.
A night-time photograph was taken a year ago in Maria Auxiliadora of an
adult oso hormigiero, the anteater whose long, sharp claws, tapered snout,
black eyes, and hairy brown fur somewhat resemble an oso (bear) cub. It
was on its hind legs in the distinctly bear-like process of sniffing the
lid of a garbage can left outside the once-squatted but now-permanent
house on the ridge that forms a border of the park. From outstretched toes
to the top of the head, it was about a meter and a third (four feet) long.
Mammals aren't numerous in the dry forest. They are akin to populations in
deserts rather than rain forests. Typically, they are smaller than
counterparts in the same family elsewhere, and except for a few such as
howler monkeys and tigres, are ground burrowers. They're bodies are
characteristically close to the earth, and sleekly streamlined in a
rodent-like way. Naturally elusive, in recent times they have become even
harder to see due to continual threats from rifles and traps for food, to
be sold as pets, or killed as pests.
Yesterday Darcie Luce and I were taking photos of plants in the park at
various locations that have been used since the beginning to record plant
growth and landscape conditions. A thick green cloud of leaves has filled
the formerly dry bosque interior, crowding trails with overgrown grass and
solidly coloring in spaces between trees, In spite of nearly continuous
rain since a week ago when we were last there together, very little new
erosion has been added to the few inches of percolated clay ooze or small
slides of residual pebbles that appeared after the first heavy rains fell
a month ago. There aren't any new gullies and the worse ones from before
have been filled in by staff members with soil and grass seedlings that
are all doing well. The surface of a natural basin within the park area
that has fortunately been catching soil material displaced by the rain and
keeping it from leaving the park is not more than an inch higher. Overall
erosion seems to have been slowed by revegetation to a creeping pace that
precludes mud slides for the rest of this year even if there is total
overall rainfall near the top of the normal range. All of the log
stairways have retained their earlier repairs, so the park should
withstand serious alteration of any kind into the dry season beginning two
months or so from now.
At a point in the trail directly downhill from the successfully
squatted shack, I glanced up to see a miniature cave in the middle of a
mud-parenting slide. The semicircular hole was notable for having clean
edges without roots or duff and might be a den. I passed by, then stopped
to point out the hole and slide to Darcie. There at her feet in fresh mud
from the night before that painted over the trail, were two footprints.
Both had four clear toe marks with a nub for the fifth on side of each
palm that faced the body. Each of the four forward digits ended in
distinct, deeply incised claw marks. They were undeniably footprints of an
oso hormigiero! Is it new or last year's "bear", returned for
the rainy season? Perhaps it never left. Darcie eagerly took photos of the
lone prints as an undeniable example of how hospitable revegetation can be
to a wide array of wildlife, even a few blocks from the heart of the city.
This place was formerly called "El Tigre". Can we hope...?
George Tukel has nearly completed the first alternative energy report
for Bahia. It is mainly concerned with two central issues: how individual
homes and offices can be re-designed for cooling and use solar energy for
heating water; and how the municipality can generate electricity using
renewable fuel. Both can be achieved through proven means. If the report
is accepted by the city, we will attempt to find financial aid. The
expense of obtaining up-to-date equipment is an even bigger issue here
than in more economically advantaged countries. It will take truly
enlightened, unusually generous outside aid to make a public transition to
sustainable energy. Meanwhile, George's pursuit of various forms of data
from city agencies and general availability for discussion and
conversation has definitely reinvigorated the Eco-Bahia vision. Residents
enthusiastically grill him about the practicality of various energy forms
and apparatus, and have given formidable assistance when asked.
Lisa Kundrat is undertaking a personalized approach to planting at the
remaining houses in Fanca. Impatient with production oriented and less
interactive methodology, she gets involved with each household in a
holistic way. Together with family members and young volunteers, she
accompanies plants and compost from the Fanca Produce site to each house,
talks at length with whoever is there about the project and particulars of
their individual circumstances, and helps position the fruit tree
seedlings in favorable spots outside individual houses. She will stay on
as the main representative for our projects when Darcie, George and I
leave at the end of this month. A new volunteer, Laura Commike, will
assist Lisa and join her to live in the Planet Drum Foundation
office/apartment for a couple of months. Laura has Spanish conversational
ability and went with me to discuss and look at erosion on one land parcel
in Leonidas Plaza with Georgy Guitterez, head of the estuary agency PMRC.
Today I hope to pick up a delivery of seeds donated by Fundacion
Pro-Bosque in Guayaquil, and tomorrow all of us will visit two new
landowner sites to appraise the possibilities for the new revegetation
plan (see Report #3, Dancing Public Revegetation onto Private Land). We
deserve a day off and will take it Friday in Canoa, the small, funky beach
resort a short ferry and bus ride away, where we can walk on the sand
without rain boots.\
<<<===>>>
Fall 2002 Dispatch 1, Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador
September 21, 2002
By Peter Berg
Planet Drum's new office/volunteer center is a promising three bedroom,
two bathroom, large living-dining room apartment on the second floor in
the city center that is notably inexpensive due to the ravages of 1998's
earthquake. Only $30 in cash and $30 worth of repairs per month. Field
Projects Manager Jeff Goddin and volunteer Laura McKaughan had to tear
down the ruined ceiling, a whole side brick wall needed rebuilding from
the roof peak down to the ceiling level, the particularly hard-hit middle
bedroom was surrealistically missing one wall and two-thirds of the floor.
It's been like repairing bomb damage as new volunteers Kristen Ford and
Chris Haaf, Jeff, Judy and myself grapple with some part of it every day.
The upper third of the back bedroom wall will begin to be restored
starting next week, some windows have to replaced, and the expansive walls
need to be degrimed and repainted. The reality of winter rain splashing
into open rafters hasn't been confronted yet. Whatever we eventually do to
close the numerous holes will disappoint fruit bats who fly solo overhead
in unnerving rapid jerks through the apartment starting shortly after
sunset every evening.
We plan to have a continuous group of up to six volunteers staying here
through my return next January when the terms of the lease are
renegotiated in light of the work that has been accomplished up to that
point.
We've handed out brochures for self-guided visits to the revegetation
park in Maria Auxiliadora barrio that former volunteer Darcie Luce
dedicatedly produced on her own upon return to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Chris cleared the first half of the park for a remarkably increased number
of new visitors who have passed through since we arrived three weeks ago.
One morning, Judy, Jeff and I went there with original park crew Marcelo
Luque and Nicola Mears, joined by Sloth Club inspiration Anya Light and
"Slow Is Beautiful" author Keibo Oiwa with twenty of his
Japanese university students. It was reassuring to see that so many
algarrobo and fruitillo trees had grown over fifteen feet in less than
three years and experimental plantings of trunk-size hobo tree cuttings
had thrived. Patricio Tamariz (about to finish his stint as a government
agency chief for “civilian life” in magnified efforts for Eco-Bahia),
Chris and I accompanied a Japanese documentary crew filming “Our
Marvelous Spaceship Planet Earth”. They sweated and puffed toward the
finish but were dazzled by bursts of butterflies and unfamiliar shapes of
coastal dry tropical forest plants. Since then several people have told
while passing on the street of taking walks using Darcie’s brochure to
direct them, so The Forest in the Middle of the Ruins park is beginning to
achieve its promise as a visited wild urban area. Chris will continue
general maintenance until the rainy season (when nothing except planting
can be done) and replace some steps recycled from floor beams that are
missing from a rear stairway.
Seeds are soaking until next week when they will be placed in growing
sacks and become seedlings for the large revegetation project that extends
from Kilometer Eight to Bahia. We hope 5-10,000 seedlings of a mixed
variety of native trees will be available even if we have to buy some in
time for planting in January. I’ve contacted what could be best
characterized as a village matriarch from the Los Caras collective farming
group up the highway at Kilometer Sixteen to assemble a planting crew. All
of the members will have enough tree-planting experience to lead our
volunteers.
By far the most portentous developments are with the large-scale Fanca
Produce composting project. Fanca barrio residents have separated their
organic kitchen wastes for collection and processing in a large nearby
facility during the past year under terms of a grant through the British
government that was administered jointly by the municipality and Planet
Drum. Since the grant period ends in November, this is the appropriate
time to shift the project’s continuation from city workers and Planet Drum
volunteers to the local residents. Extensive talks with the mayor and
consultant Katty Pazmiño assigned to represent the mayor have resulted in
approval of our plan to meet with residents to explain the situation and
assist in creating a cooperative association for them to administer the
composting process. Since organic waste from the main public marketplace
is now brought to Fanca Produce where it presently increases the amount of
compost by perhaps five times, the new residents’ group can’t lay
claim to all of the compost material available. We gained agreement from
the city for a large portion of it and the right of the cooperative
association to sell part of that to pay their workers for taking over city
jobs.
Planet Drum’s five member staff met last week with over sixty
representatives of Fanca’s 400 or so families who have been involved in
separating wastes that volunteer Kristen Ford had summoned. Jeff explained
the situation and we all fielded a few questions. With so much new
information — how the project worked in the past, how it was changing,
what new products could be made, and what form of business might result
— the new prospect was obviously difficult to comprehend all in one
sitting. Because most of those assembled hadn’t actually seen the
compost-making facility, we marched over to show the twelve existing piles
of working waste piles in various stages of completion, an eight cubic
meter or so heap of finished compost which I took around in handfuls for
people to sniff the rich earthy aroma, and brick beds waiting to be filled
with worms and wastes to make an even richer finished product. Some of the
wide range of uses proposed besides fertilizing personal yard trees and
gardens are: ready to use sacks of compost, seedlings, job training for
composters in other barrios and cities, and even animal feed.
Kristen has since notified more residents and teenage members of the
Ecology Club and another meeting is planned for next week. We expect fewer
people but a more committed group that understands how the existing
process works and wants to act as core “stewards” of the new
self-administered management association. It’s a genuine leap into a
potential future of citizen engagement with many other aspects of the
Ecological City process, but we first need to throw highly increased
effort into each practical step forward. Our responsibilities toward this
end were developed through staff discussion and are as follows.
Planet Drum Foundation's Management of Fanca Produce Through November
2002
I. Operational Needs
a) Check amount of
sawdust and other supplies and inform city when more need to be brought,
b) Check on need for repairs and request city to make them,
c) Initiate worm
bed system and educate municipal workers about maintaining it,
d) Increase participation of residents in separating
household wastes and placing organic material where it can be collected,
e) Daily attendance at patio to observe the composting process
and interact with city workers as
determined by us to be necessary to assure effectiveness, with the understanding
that city workers are required to follow recommendations.
II. Development of Community Participation in Future Sustainability
a) Recruit and
meet with Fanca community members to attempt to create a founding
group for
developing a community management association for Fanca Produce,
b) Discuss and attempt to choose a plan for making Fanca Produce
economically self-sufficient,
c) Attempt to integrate Fanca Produce with
other resident groups.
Planet
Drum Foundation staff and volunteers will be present at Fanca Produce at
times of day that they determine are appropriate for their work.
<<<===>>>
Fall 2002 Dispatch 2, Bahia de Caraquez
September 25, 2002
By Peter Berg
All of Ecuador is in the near-frantic clutch of election fever. There
are over ten political parties (listas) who have been running candidates
for offices from president and first deputy down to city council members
in a time frame of just two months before mid-October voting. In Bahia the
pitch has risen daily since the first week in September when emphatic
speeches were made to inaugurate poster and balloon festooned, recently
painted multi-color storefront offices with caña liquor offered
afterwards in small plastic bags from unmarked trucks to outgrabbing
supporters. At this point there are offices for different listas on nearly
every block near the city center and some parties boast two. Even Marcelo
Luque who supervised the Bosque park plantings is running for Bahia’s
City Council and sometimes appears glad-handing people in the Lista 4
storefront across from our volunteer center. The same pop tunes blast at
top volume from each of these outposts beginning before eight in the
morning until ten at night, so that walkers pass from one zone of music to
the other. Convoys of cars and trucks plastered with signs and dangling
flags honk through the city. Marchers shout slogans as they parade in
front of each others’ storefronts. Small stickers with candidates’
names sprout from doors, windows, light posts, and any other public-facing
surface. The main park in the riverfront malecon is occupied by one loud
speaker equipped group after another while whole sides of nearby buildings
are instantly covered with brightly painted advertisements for various
listas. Two of the presidential candidates flew in today for appearances
before cheering adherents. As soon as one lista pulls a new stunt it is
upstaged by something by another party, and an amazed kind of anticipation
waiting for what will happen next keeps things constantly on edge.
There is a swollen audience for these desperately fervent exhibitions
of political ardor because this is a public day off to celebrate the
patron saint of the city’s annual Fiesta de la Dia de la Virgen de las
Mercedes (Fiesta of the Day of the Merciful Virgin). The party officially
begins at nine-thirty tonight with live music for a street dance in front
of City Hall. Before that peak moment occurs I’ll step out of the
simmering sensory soup to attempt a calm recounting of some previous
events.
About three weeks ago Judy and I rode the bus for eight hours northeast
to Quito, slowly rising above the daily gray overcast of early fall on the
coast into sunny foothills and finally the thin breathless air of the
Andes. We came to complete an essential stage of a new, grandly conceived
Ecological City project that a dozen people have been working on since
last winter. (Cautionary Note: What follows has a technical cast that can
make even me fidgety, so I’ll try to relate it simply without agonizing
numbers or jargon and hope your patience in following along will prove
worthwhile.)
Alternative energy proponent George Tukel visited Bahia from New York
last February at our behest to survey possibilities and write
Renew Bahia: A Preliminary Report on Alternative
Energy Choices at the House, Neighborhood, and Municipal Scales. Since
that time proposals to several international foundations to fund more
detailed research have been arduously written in our San Francisco office.
Engineers need to prove out and certify appropriate equator-suited
means for producing electricity locally. We also need their
recommendations of ways to refit buildings for both energy conservation
and to produce hot water from rooftop passive solar collectors. It would
be a sweeping and expensive transformation, so we also requested money to
pay for major financing of the final phase during which the first
neighborhood-based electricity generating facility will be built
accompanied by a refitting program for buildings.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) promotes a Public and
Private Partnership grant that specifically features local energy
production. Unlike other funding possibilities, UNDP requires an in-person
visit to the relevant country’s office to submit a proposal. It may
already be clear from visiting Planet Drum Foundation’s web site and
following our activities that an institutional source on the level and
type of the United Nations is a startling departure for us. But so is
working directly with a municipal government and seeking what amounts to
over fifty times the usual budget for one of our projects.
We adapted to this unprecedented fund-raising climate for the
benefit of Bahia de Caraquez’s ambitions toward ecohood. Judy and I
surrendered our passports in the United Nations building lobby and wished
ourselves buena suerte (good luck).
To our relieved surprise, a helpful program officer greeted us and the
proposal enthusiastically as the first Ecuador candidate to appear for the
upcoming round of grant considerations. In keeping with the unpredictable
and wildly flexible time relationships that are taken as normal here, we
were at least a month early! The formula for private-public partnership
requires support by the municipal government and a local non-government
organization. Agreement from both of these was already in the works. A
private business such as an alternative energy company with Ecuadorian
experience is also necessary and one has now been contacted.
An impressive series of UNDP’s procedural steps still have to be
navigated which puts the odds for eventual approval of this request at
about one in ten, but at least we’ve become a real player in the game.
We traveled from Quito to the somewhat isolated mountain city of
Cotacachi. Buses stop outside and then it’s a walk or cab ride of
several miles in from the highway. The contrast in social-cultural
atmosphere between the two cities is immediately palpable. Quito has the
sophisticated and diplomatically cool feel of a capital city. Indigenous
people are everywhere but they are subjected by rather than in control of
the tenor of the place. There has been a turn toward rip-off behavior
during the present difficult economic times that was symbolized by a cab
driver when we first arrived who independently manipulated the meter
upward to three times the normal fare. On our way out at Quito’s central
bus station a con man pretended to find a dollar bill in front of our
party of new volunteers. He waved it in our distracted faces roguishly
asking whose it was while his confederates made off with a small carry
bag.
Cotacachi has retained its identity as a proud indigenous community
while moving ahead in contemporary directions. The civic entrance features
a large modern sculpture of the sun in a square shape that is unique here.
Remnants of the original heliocentric culture that built Cotacachi’s
pyramid remain in marking the summer solstice as the primary community
holiday. The city adopted an extensive guiding plan for becoming an
ecological city a few years ago and sponsors an annual Sustainability Fair
to which Judy was invited to perform her Water
Web show and I was slated for the Natural Resources Management round
table. An international organic coffee exposition with representatives
from Mexico, Brazil and Japan in addition to several parts of Ecuador
immediately preceded the Fair and we luckily arrived in time for its
closing Cultural Evening.
Women in Cotacachi-Otavalo tribal
dress with multiple gold chains around their necks, local men in
round-topped felt hats and brightly colored shirts, Japanese college girls
in kimonos, eco-freaks with long hair and beads, and Afro-Ecuadorian women
in long multiple pleated dresses and kerchiefs were abundantly evident.
Over ten music groups ranged dramatically from a dozen-member costumed
marimba folklorico presentation to an older indigenous man who played a
traditional harp fitted on top of a bass violin-like sound chamber that
was continually hand-drummed by a younger player. Their ancient abstract
multiple melodies would have fit perfectly with jazz improvisations. At
one point Cotacachi’s dynamic mayor Auki Tituana (he helped negotiate
terms between the revolt-leading association of indigenous groups and the
government in the most recent civil uprising) was coaxed by his wife to
dance to a salsa band. Enough people eventually joined in to form a conga
line around the aisles of the entire theater. He returned to the floor
later to lead a timeless-seeming shuffling line of mostly fellow
Cotacachi-Otavalo dancers while Andean flutists and pan-pipers played.
At the Fair the next morning there were three sets of four or more
simultaneous free presentations. During the resources round table, I had
the unusual pleasure of fielding a question about bioregional education
for children from an indigenous woman who was breast-feeding her baby.
After Judy’s show another local woman came up and simply held her hand
while wordlessly glowing in appreciation. It was a truly high quality
gathering both in terms of information and the consciousness level of
attendees, taking place in a spot well outside the mainstream in thinly
populated Imbaburra Province. It felt like Ecuador’s future.
Since the last Dispatch we all helped build the missing rear wall in
the office/volunteer center. There has been an initial meeting with Fanca
residents about them taking over the composting project in some form, and
a second, more concrete meeting is being held tonight.
Sacks for growing seedlings are being filled and today we’re preparing
seeds of the notable hardwood tree Black Guayacan for later planting in
the large revegetation project. The Catholic University wants to sign a
convenio (agreement) with Planet Drum about revegetation of some gullies
on their grounds, building a greenhouse for raising seedlings, and some
degree of involvement for their students in the whole process. Copies of
the Bosque en Medio de las Ruinas wild park brochures are being made to
replace the hundreds we brought from San Francisco to hand out, and
markers matching sites on the brochure’s self-guided tour will be placed
appropriately. The present crew of three volunteers will be joined
intermittently by at least four more helpers starting next week. We worked
up to twelve hour days during this month and much more will be
accomplished in the time between now and February when I return.
<<<===>>>
