Of compost and drainage and trees

I visited the Permacultura demonstration farm again last week with Maryknoll Lay Missioners Peg (Margarita) and Darren and with Peg's colleague Reynaldo.  Peg and Reynaldo are working with farmers in Monte San Juan, a colonia of Cojutepeque, not far from Suchitoto. 

We had a fine tour through all the careful, ingenious and beautiful arrangements that make this steep and challenging site fertile after only four years of soil improvement.  Angelica showed us some of the many preparations that are used as natural fertilizers, including this barrel of fermenting ooze (the process is sometimes smelly, but the results are great).

At Permacultura, everything is captured and used: the droppings of rabbits and chickens, leaves, weeds, friendly bacteria, the products of the composting outhouse.  Instead of chemical fertilizers that deplete the soil, their compost enriches and strengthens it.  Instead of insecticides, aromatic plants help keep insects away.  Instead of cutting down trees to plant corn and beans, they plant these traditional milpa crops (using heritage seeds) around and among the trees.  The rocks pulled out of the slope are re-used to create drainage basins and pathways.  And nothing of this comes from the store or from a catalogue: it's all work done with local knowledge, local plants, the shape of the land and the changes of the seasons.

Peg and Reynaldo left, saying that they'd be back with more of the farmers from Monte San Juan.  I'll hope to bring more visitors to this place, which always gives me hope for the future.

Permacultura

I've been a fan of permaculture since the late 1970s when I learned about the concept from the work of Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren.  It's a concept that calls for designing with, not against, the natural condition of the land; for agriculture based on trees and perennial shrubs instead of cleared land; for respecting and incorporating biodiversity into farmland design.  I've always wanted to see permaculture in action, and at last I have, not more than 10 miles away from my Suchitoto house. 

I'd seen the sign about a permaculture site on the highway, but had just been hoping that somehow I'd connect up.  The time for connecting came when one of the volunteers for our health mission in San José Villanueva, Tomás Chavarria, turned out to work there and visited me to tell me about the farm.  Through Tomás I met Reina Mejia, the coordinator, and arranged a tour for Andrea, Judith and me.  In the photo above, Reina is introducing us to the farm's rabbits, whose pellets become fertilizer for the crops, a typical permaculture natural recyling.

The permacultura farm is on a very steep hillside, which I'd have thought almost impossible to adapt for organic permaculture.  I would have been wrong.  The entire site has been designed very carefully with dikes and catchponds and tree rings to hold rainwater and allow it to soak in, so the ground can continue to be moist even during the dry season (now).  When the NGO acquired the farm, it had been used for a monoculture of citrus trees.  The citrus are still there, but now other trees are planted among them that will eventually create the high canopy that is the natural condition of land here.  The land is further enriched by compost, mulches of dry leaves and plant materials, and the contributions of rabbits, poultry, and composting toilets.  They've been working on it for only five years, and already it looks amazingly fertile by comparison with nearby lands.  The group of men and women who work with this land - I think about 12 people - have all been through a year-long course in design, and are all committed to teaching others how to use the permaculture principles in El Salvador. 

The planting areas, around and under trees, included corn during the rainy season, and now includes beans, but there are a myriad other plants, medicinal or nutritive, planted in small patches, with butterflies dancing among them.  When the group has built structures, they've been simple and ingenious, like this shelter for seedlings, shaded with a thatch of grass.

Here's work that brings the hope for all our futures, and for three years I've been driving by and saying "I've got to visit someday."  Thank God that day came at last.  I know I'll be back.

Amazing Amate

Today I drove early in the morning to the port of La Libertad, where some of our November patients from San Juan Opico were going through an eye clinic to see if they would qualify for surgery. There in the courtyard of the Casa Emiliani retreat house was this most amazing tree, an amate, that had put down a secondary trunk and flung up a main limb in midair. It's a tree with the lines of a dancer, a tree with circles and arches and great flowing lines of timber, a tree that hardly seems possible, and is surely unforgettable.

Alas, our three patients did not qualify for this surgery, but all did receive glasses and thorough eye checks. And I am glad to have made the acquaintance of this ancient and glorious tree.

Meeting the Ecocina

During our November eye screening clinic in San Juan Opico, we had a demon-stration of the Ecocina, a beautifully engineered concrete stove with three important virtues: it uses less than half of the wood needed by a regular wood stove, it is so efficient that it produces no smoke after the first few minutes, and the outside stays cool, so children aren't burned if they touch it.

The Ecocina is the work of Stove Team, International, an organization based in Eugene, Oregon - the location of PeaceHealth's Riverbend and University District Hospitals. Nancy Hughes, the founder, and team members have started factories in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. We were delighted to connect with Gustavo Peña, the manager of the El Salvador factory. Unable to come himself, he sent his son Gustavo, Jr. - Dr. Peña - who not only brought the stove and his fiancee, who demonstrated it, but gave a day of free dental exams and cleanings to over 30 young Opicans.

We acquired the sample stove, and it stayed in the parish hall for a while (the stoves weigh about 100 pounds, not so easy to move). The parish cook tried it out and liked it a lot - and so now a bunch of orders are going to the Ecocina plant from San Juan Opico. The sample went to the Rodriguez family on Friday - here's a photo of Dina Duvon showing them how it works. We're hoping it will contribute to good health for the children - and good meals for the family.

Sad days in San Juan Opico

San Juan Opico, site of our February medical mission this year, has been in the news this week for environmental and human catastrophes. I had learned before our mission that because of lead contamination to the environment, the Ministry of Health shut down the Record Battery Company in 2007. Just this past week, the Ministry of the Environment announced an environmental emergency in a radius of 1,500 meters from the former plant. Mobile water tanks have been installed for clean water in the area; corn and beans in the area have been tested, and show high levels of lead; wells and some houses have been closed. In one sad case, the foundation of a house, now closed, had been filled with soil carried from the factory.

What's not clear from the reports I've read is why it took three years to declare this environmental disaster, or what has happened to the people living in the area in the meantime. It's all too likely that they've been drinking the water, eating the corn, walking over the contaminated fields.

Another completely unrelated tragedy hit the Opico community this week, when three students - two girls and a boy - were killed when a tree fell on the schoolbus they were riding in. The other 13 students, the teacher and the driver were all wounded. A natural disaster from the unending rains of this long, wet rainy season. The natural disaster - but ultimately caused, perhaps, by the human contributions to climate change - and the unnatural disaster of lead contamination caused by negligence and greed. In both cases, the innocent suffer.

I wonder if any of those three students were among our patients in February's clinics. I wonder if any of the ill children our pediatricians saw were suffering the effects of lead poisoning.

Light footprints

I'm continuing to think about the difference in carbon footprints for people here vs. those who live in the U.S. Here are some of the reasons footprints are lighter here:

1. Houses aren't heated, for obvious reasons.
   
2. Very, very few people (only the rich) have air conditioning.
3. Washing machines are rare; dryers are rarer; sunshine is available almost every day.
4. Most people don't have computers, though everyone has a cell phone.
   
5. Most people don't drive a car, instead taking the bus or piling on to a pickup truck.
6. Most people have never been on an airplane.

The average Salvadoran, because of climate and because of poverty, is contributing far less to global warming than the average North American. Is this the way we should all be living?

And yes, I have the use of a car and a computer, and yes, I fly back to the U.S. a few times a year. It's hard to imagine doing without those comforts, but it's time to begin imagining how I and we might live differently, might leave lighter footprints.

How sweet the Cross

Monday was the Day of the Cross here - as I learned last year, on this festival Salvadorans display a wooden cross in their house, green wood from a tree grown in the Suchitoto area that can sprout again. The cross is decorated with flowers and fruits and sweets - as Peggy O'Neill pointed out to me, the message is "how sweet the Cross"! The photo here is of the cross we decorated in our patio, not an outstanding example of the practice.

This celebration has its roots in pre-Columbian traditions: this is the time when the rains are supposed to begin, and the fruitful wood is a symbol of the land's fertility, a call for the blessing of rain. This year the rains have already begun. We've seen rain every day since I returned from New Jersey a week ago - an early start to the rainy season which more typically begins in middle or late May. Farmers will be out planting corn in the milpas, hoping that the rains will continue to bless the crop each day until harvest. May there be an abundant harvest!

Earth Day at St. Michael's

Earth Day in St. Michael's, our convent overlooking the Hudson River in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. I'm here for meetings of a commun-ications group, but since these don't start until Saturday, I have a couple of days to enjoy the beauty of springtime - a season that doesn't happen in El Salvador - and to connect with the sisters here. That's the flag of earth, la tierra bendita, flying along with the U.S. flag, among the azaleas and lilacs and narcissus of this gentle season.

May the wholeness and holiness of our earth be blessed and protected this day and always.

Springtime

Springtime in Seattle is glorious, a four-month-long extravaganza in which each week has its specialty and each bush and tree and flower finds its moment to unfold in splendor. A pleasure to be back for three weeks of this long season: we're in daffodil and forsythia and cherry blossom season, shortly to be followed by the tulips, magnolias, rhodedendrons. Lenten festivities of the warming earth.

Springtime and fall aren't part of the seasons of El Salvador. We go from the rainy season, winter (May through October) to the dry season, summer (November through April). I haven't figured out the rhythms of the plants yet, when different plants lose their leaves or put on new growth. The nance tree in our patio seems to lose leaves all the time, and puts out flowers and new leaves while it's losing the old ones.

Here, I understand the rhythms, and I can name the trees and I know which flowers to look for next. What a gift at this time in my life to be learning a new rhythm and order of this planet. And what a gift to come home to the familiar beauty of the cherry trees.

We desire a life free from violence

Peggy and Pat answered my wish to have the Suchitoto bird-and-flower motto stenciled by my door, and here it is. The motto says: En esta casa queremos una vida libre de violencia hacia las mujeres - In this house we want a life free from violence against women. You see this stencil all over Suchitoto, a town where women's organizations and women's organizing thrive. But I'd like to amend it slightly as my wish for the new year: In this house we want a life free from violence. In that wish, I join all my Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, working and praying to make non-violence the touchstone of our lives.

There has been news of terrible violence in this week's papers - two men ran into the waiting room of a pediatric clinic in Cojutepeque, the town that's the capital of our district, threw a grenade and ran out. Two children were killed, others badly hurt. There's been news of organized violence against the people who have been opposing mining interests in the neighboring district of Cabañas - two community activists have been killed, and the day after Christmas a woman environmentalist eight-months pregnant and carrying a two-year-old baby was shot and killed. Little seems to be done in any of these cases to bring the guilty to justice.

So, on behalf of the people of El Salvador who enter this new year full of hope and full of fear, in this country in 2010 we desire a life free from violence.

Critters

Living with your garden in the middle of your house, as most do here, means living with a few more critters than most North Americans are used to. Tonight Pat and I came back to the house and found a toad sitting in the dining room. How he got here is a mystery - I can't imagine a toad climbing the roofs to get into the garden, and the drain openings seem a little small for this good sized amphibian - but here he undoubtedly was. Pat turns out to have experience in toad removal, fortunately, and trapped him under a yogurt container before decanting him onto the street.

Last night our visitor was a gray and white cat - and she, I know for sure, came and left via the roof tiles. Meanwhile, there are a good number of permanent residents. Among them, when I first moved in, were black bats - and they liked to find a quiet, dark bedroom at about 4 AM and take up residence. We found a little machine that puts out noises that are said to repel bats, and plugged it in. It's worked like a charm, but now a cricket has taken up residence next to the bat repeller - it's probably attracted to the noise, perhaps it's an interspecies romance - and chirps there all through the night.

There are always ants and bees and small bugs (including some that look exactly like green leaves with legs) and no-see-ums around, and because of them we're happy whenever we see or hear one of the family of geckos who live here and snack on them. Birds and butterflies come and go, to my delight.

And then there are the critters who are only heard: the dogs who enter into huge barking contests at night - last night they were howling, the cats who sometimes stage battles on the roofs, the cocks who start calling for sunrise at 2 AM. I'm more conscious here than I ever was in Bellevue of being part of a shared world, one among the creatures who use this tropical space.

San Juan Opico

Yesterday Kathy, Ken and I picked up Dina at the Arzobispado offices and drove out to San Juan Opico, a potential site for next year's general medical mission. Dina, who has been working with the Archdiocese of San Salvador for 25 years, knows our Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace well - she worked closely with Andrea Nenzel and Margaret Jane Kling when they were accompanying the people who went to the Calle Real refugee camp.

Now Dina works with San Juan Opico and Ciudad Arce in the Pastoral Social - the social services wing of the Archdiocese - promoting better health care, better social services, and environmental awareness. Environmental awareness is a key issue in San Juan Opico (located northwest of San Salvador) because a local battery manufacturer allowed toxic materials to pollute groundwater and earth near its factory, causing lead poisoning in a number of families who lived nearby. The factory is closed now, but the pollution continues.

San Juan Opico is a big, lively city with over 90 associated communities in its municipality. We met with Padre Miguel, the doctor who runs the local Unidad de Salud clinic, and a number of health promoters who would be our key connection to the smaller communities. We toured a couple of potential clinic locations - in the photo above, Dina (left) shows Kathy, Ken, and Carmen, one of the health promoters, one possibility.

Today we'll be visiting San Cristobal, the other community that's been recommended for next year's mission.

Garbage and flowers

For gringos, maybe especially for those of us from the west coast where clean streets are the norm, the amount of garbage found on the streets and sidewalks and by-ways of El Salvador and Latin America is an initial shock. When you've been here a while, even a little while, you begin to see a little more. First of all, you see that Salvadorans must be just about the cleanest people in the world when it comes to their persons and their homes. Clothes are washed and hung out to dry daily; people present themselves in the very best attire they can manage for an occasion. Houses are swept and mopped and picked up daily. People may be very poor and have only torn clothes, but those clothes will be clean.

So why all the garbage in the streets? Here's what I've noticed -

• There are almost no public garbage containers.
• Garbage, like graffiti, piles up in areas that don't seem to "belong" to anyone.
• The structure of houses, with walls enclosing all the private space, makes it easy to ignore the sidewalk and planting strip outside, which can easily begin to collect throw-aways.
• Almost everything anyone buys - including soft drinks - comes wrapped in plastic.
  
• I'm guessing there's an attitude among some that the public spaces, streets and sidewalks, are fair game for dumping rubbish.
  

Garbage collection now is much better than it was in 20o1, when I first visited El Salvador, and you do now see men collecting rubbish from the streets and public places. El Centro is much cleaner than it used to be - that's not to say it's clean!

But if there's more garbage to be seen here (particularly in the dry season - in the wet months, the rain does a great job of street sweeping) than in Seattle, there are also the flowers, amazing flowers. Just down the block from me on the other side of the street are two trees and a vine - yellow and lavender and fuschia flowers. And in the other direction, just a few houses away from ours, this house with its gorgeous clusters of vines: what could be more beautiful?

Summer and winter

Even though El Salvador is north of the equator, this season is called verano, summer, by Salvadorans. Summer is the dry months, from November through April, and some of the things we associate with summer happen then. The school vacations are in November and December, and it's a favorite time for travel and fiestas. These first months of verano are the coolest time here (a relative term - it gets into the high 80s, but cools down nicely at night), especially because there's less humidity in the air. Most people say that March and April are the hardest months because it's very hot and very dusty and there's no rain.
The wet months, from May through October, are called invierno, winter. It's easy enough to get around in the city during the rainy season - everything here is built to handle the rain - and the rain does a wonderful job of sweeping the streets and cooling down the day (as in this August photo from a PazSalud Eye Surgery mission). But out in the campo, the countryside, rain means isolation and difficulty. Unpaved roads turn into swamps. It's hard to get anywhere, and the mud is everywhere. And it's the fungus, mold and mildew season. And the mosquito season. And the hurricane season. So it's winter.
There's no spring, no fall, just the dry summer and the wet winter, and these two seasons we share with countries all around the world at these latitudes: dry time, monsoon time.

The opposite of organic

Today Eleanor and I drove up to Comasagua for a meeting with Mercedes, who's in charge of organizing the communities, and several of the women who will be volunteering to help. We went first to the finca San Antonio, a community-owned coffee plantation. While we were waiting for the women who would ride into town with us, we had time to talk with Remberto about the finca and the work of growing coffee. They are growers only, harvesting the coffee and then delivering it to the local beneficio (coffee processing plant) where the berries are stripped down to beans and the beans are dried and roasted.

I asked Remberto whether the finca's coffee is organic. No, he said, they had started to set aside some 23 manzanas (one manzana=1.75 acres) as organic, but when they discovered that they would have to grow and harvest the coffee without using any chemicals for three years before they could sell it as organic and get the higher price, they got discouraged, and went back to chemical coffee.

I've often wondered what the opposite of organic should be: inorganic never seemed quite right. Now I know: the opposite of organic is chemical. Think about that the next time you buy some chemical apples or some chemical coffee. I wish the finca San Antonio well all the same, and I wish strong backs and great courage and endurance to the men who walk the coffee up the long steep road that leads to the finca.