This is our adopted father, George. George and his family are constantly feeding us, taking us out into the "Chacos" (farm fields) and really making us feel part of the community. This is a throw net and we ended up catching our dinner for the night.
These are the buggers we ended up catching, couple of piranas a pacu or two and I'm not going to even attempt to name the others. On average they were approx. 3-4 inches long and never more than 6 inches. For dinner we de-scaled and gutted them and then Tomoko (our adopted mom) fried them up whole, that was the first time we ate a full fish, head, fins, bones and all. It was like a really crunchy fish stick.
This is Anna doing the "pee pose" that us men know. Now I'll fill you in on the background.... Anna and I had attended a meeting in which we discussed with various other development agencies, health departments, and NGO's about sanitation issues which the main topic was sustainable bathrooms. This particular picture was at the end of a four day meeting (we were pretty tired of bathrooms by that point) and Anna volunteered to try and explain a homemade urinal to the group. This picture was part of the explanation and there wasn't a dry eye in the house, it was absolutely hilarious. She won a t-shirt as a result.
We live in a town with other volunteers "the catholics" is there collective name. The two ladys in the group asked Anna if she wanted to help them explain the concept of "natural family planning" to the women who live in and around Okinawa. This was there first meeting in which they informed the women of the community that classes would be held on a monthly basis and all were free to come. It was impressive to see Anna, Marie and Elizabeth talk to over two hundred people in a second language for more than three hours.
These are the buggers we ended up catching, couple of piranas a pacu or two and I'm not going to even attempt to name the others. On average they were approx. 3-4 inches long and never more than 6 inches. For dinner we de-scaled and gutted them and then Tomoko (our adopted mom) fried them up whole, that was the first time we ate a full fish, head, fins, bones and all. It was like a really crunchy fish stick.
This is Anna doing the "pee pose" that us men know. Now I'll fill you in on the background.... Anna and I had attended a meeting in which we discussed with various other development agencies, health departments, and NGO's about sanitation issues which the main topic was sustainable bathrooms. This particular picture was at the end of a four day meeting (we were pretty tired of bathrooms by that point) and Anna volunteered to try and explain a homemade urinal to the group. This picture was part of the explanation and there wasn't a dry eye in the house, it was absolutely hilarious. She won a t-shirt as a result.We live in a town with other volunteers "the catholics" is there collective name. The two ladys in the group asked Anna if she wanted to help them explain the concept of "natural family planning" to the women who live in and around Okinawa. This was there first meeting in which they informed the women of the community that classes would be held on a monthly basis and all were free to come. It was impressive to see Anna, Marie and Elizabeth talk to over two hundred people in a second language for more than three hours. Other goings on...................................
Anna and I had a fairly successful meeting the other day. This may not sound very successful but we have different scales of success here. The other day we established, thru an informal meeting, that we will have a formal meeting (with invitations) next month in which we will form a formal committee who will be responsible for issues of sanitation in the municipality. However slight this may appear (and I'm sure it does) this is a big step in a good direction. Our main goal here is to establish projects that will be sustainable, basically, we want to work ourselves out of a job and to do this all of our projects should be able to proceed without our presence and this formation of a formal meeting to appoint a committee which is responsible to paid government employees is a step in the sustainable direction. Cross your fingers.
Next week we plan on going to Cochabamba. I'll be invesigating a new bathroom construction which seems promising but expensive. Anna will be having meetings with PC management about the cancelation of the next training group, sounds like political strife is growing enough that PC canceled a whole group of new volunteers who were supposed to arrive the first week of May. After our trip we will be entertaining Alison and Leah Montgomery, Anna's mama and sister for a couple of weeks so we should have some great pictures of there trip here. Stay Tuned! Tom.
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