Our days often end when the hot sun has drained most of the energy out of us and the pressing need to pasear (visit community memebers homes to chat)is over taken by the more pressing need to recover for heavy sweating and lack of stick with you calories. The rains have been on and off giving us a glimpse of what summer here (winter there) will be like with not a cloud in the sky and the intensity of the sun close to the equator. It feels as though we should have a constant flow of water to our system in order to maintain an immune system that can word off a cold.

I have been excited about the interest that people seem to be taking in our work but a bit nervous about how our tropical agriculture skills will pan out in the near future. There is a keen interest in planting tomatoes to diversify diets, yet with the rains and humidity fungus rules and the tomatoes seem to be the first victims. We spent a bunch of time trellising and pruning plants at our community farm only to return a week later to rotting green tomatoes. However, our first compost pile is ready to add some life back into the red chemical laden soils and we have people asking for more.

As you can see from the photo (Isaac) we have been picking up the manditory machete skills, learning a lot from the groups of 5-10 year olds mowing lawns in large groups with machetes longer than their legs. This photo at the house where we will be living when we are out on our own.


We will be moving into a house at Nutre Hogar. It is an NGO working to improve the nutrition of children and mothers in the poorest areas of Panama. They provide food to the community and facilities in order for the community to organize and cook for the kids. Ideally there would be demonstration gardens and agriculture systems to encourage food diversity in the community. Our town has little interest in the extra work and it just works out for us that they have all the need resources to build ggardens and have chickens and so we can provide the demonstration and any extra food will go to the kids. This is the front porch. It just so happens that the house in also in a beautiful spot.

We planted our first rice tank this week actually sharing a lot of the technical stuff we have learned during our time here.