home for a spell

I just drank some water straight from the tap and flushed my toilet paper down the toilet.

I am in America.

God I love this place. Just got in late last night, Tom picked me up at the airport in DC looking even handsomer and sweeter than i remembered from a week ago. Now I'm off to give my ma and pa and squeeze and take in all the beauty and familiarity of this gorgeous country. Albemarle county. Home sweeeeeeet home. It feels good to be here again.

safe travels my love!

Tom took off last night for the good ol' US of A. I'll be heading that way myself next week, but he has a number of classes to take to renew his paramedic certification, so he went ahead of me.

We've been dreaming about this trip home for weeks, looking forward to seeing our families and our friends, being in the mountains, eating delicious food, swimming in the river, grilling out with friends, and being a part of Maggie and Matt's wedding. Can't wait. If you're around c'ville, let's play! I'll be home the 28th. And Tom's there now. Lucky dog.

Shucks, I miss you already, hon. But I'll be there soon enough. Drink a guinness for me!

autonomy’s poster child

The vote for autonomy (economic independence) in Santa Cruz was held on Sunday, May 4th. It passed with flying colors (86%), due in good part to the very effective advertising campaign paid for by the government of Santa Cruz (the state Tom and I live in). They plastered their propaganda on the walls, televisions, radios, t-shirts, and ball caps of every village and city of the region. The picture above is a billboard they put up outside of Okinawa to encourage people to vote Si, in favor of the referendum that made Santa Cruz an independent state. Ah, a smiling, prosperous family of four on a motorcycle.



No one knows just how this referendum will play out, but people are excited about being autonomous. Whatever it means. The president, Evo Morales, whose party was adamently opposed to the referendum and at one point threatened to send the military to prevent its passing, now calls the referendum nothing more than "a very expensive poll." So it goes in Bolivia. Everyone was up in arms for months prior to the vote, and the Peace Corps group that was due to come in May was cancelled for fear of massive violence and general chaos. Alas, the vote came and went more or less without incidence, and now all is back to normal. As it were.

and we have liftoff!

After what seems to have been seven long months of meetings, passing unfathomable hours waiting outside of the offices of the big wigs in town, giving power point presentations, meetings, and then, just for fun, a few more meetings, it seems our work is finally taking off. Tom is well on his way to getting the water lab that will help ensure that we’re all drinking good clean water here, and I’m finding myself busy every day with my projects, the first of which is starting a trash program for our town of Okinawa and its 6,000 inhabitants.

Currently, no trash pick-up program exists here, and families either burn their trash (plastics, tires, diapers and all) or they toss it in a nearby lagoon (or, in the case of diapers, our front yard) which, you probably guessed, isn’t very good for anyone. My initial goal in implementing a trash program is to start a sanitation committee to head up the project, and then, with their help, start a municipal wide composting program, to be followed by a plastic recycling program.

Last Thursday we held our first trash meeting, to which we invited all the Mr. and Mrs. Importants of the town. With a good crew in attendance, we played some games to identify and categorize what’s in our trashcans (or burn piles, rather), listened to the opinions, concerns, and ideas of the town’s leaders, and proposed some viable and sustainable solutions to the question of what be done with all this trash.

We’ve figured that over 70% of the trash produced in the community is organic (mostly leaves and kitchen scraps) and can be turned into valuable compost which the community can then use for gardening and reforestation projects and prettying up the local parks. Another 15-20% of the trash is plastics, most of which can be recycled in Santa Cruz, the big city two hours from here. There is no landfill for Okinawa yet, which means there is currently nowhere we can take our trash and dump it. To me, this is a bonus.

Here at this beginning stage of the process we have the opportunity to get people in the habit of separating their trash into organics, recyclables, and ‘other’ –that 10%-15% that has no better destination than the landfill. By starting a trash program with organics and plastics we can greatly diminish the amount of waste that will eventually find its way to the landfill, reducing the environmental impact on the area and cutting costs. Selling trash will probably never bring in the big bucks, but it makes good sense to turn the recyclable components of our waste into profits or reusable products instead of spending money to haul them to a landfill, which would fill quickly and, undoubtedly, have a negative impact on the ecosystem surrounding it.

The people at our meeting were receptive to our ideas and eager to get started on creating a trash program, educate families, and involve people from all sectors of the community. I didn’t realize it until a few days after our meeting, but this is grass roots in the works. Through community participation, creativity, and the use of the limited resources available to them, this is a small group of people working to change their world for the better. This is why I’m here. This is awesome.

On our plate for this week my work partner, Seberiano, and I are scoping out places to build the composting center and are planning our second trash meeting for May 15th, when we will hold elections to make the sanitation committee a formal entity and get this party started. We’re also talking about building a biodigester in a nearby community, an amazing contraption that turns poop (from cows) into fertilizer and captures the methane gas that is produced in the process, which can then be used as fuel for stoves and lamps. Incredible stuff. Innovative, environmentally friendly, cost-effective, and a huge boon to the sanitation and health of a community.

When I got the invitation to be a basic sanitation volunteer last March, I admit, I was skeptical about taking a job that entails managing poop and trash. Ah, but here I am, my hands deep in both, and I’m having a ball.




Here´s some pics from the communities where we´re working:

Sister Nora, head of the nuns and power house of a woman.

Some of the ladies we work with at the mom´s clubs

And the kids. So cute.

And this is a picture of a meeting. Neither cute nor interesting. But it´s my life.

This is my preferred outfit and office:

foco en el moco

My second main project is working with the mom’s clubs here in Oki and in the surrounding communities. Every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I travel with my good buds, the catholics, to the rural communities outside of Okinawa. These little pueblos have anywhere from 80 to 500 inhabitants, and we go to meet with the mom’s clubs where we teach classes on nutrition, women’s health, self-esteem, hygiene, and trash, of course.

We talk about malnutrition and the importance of the proteins and vitamins found in meat, soy, and vegetables, we talk about the value of women and how we support and depend on one another as family members and friends, we talk about hygiene and how washing your hands keeps you healthy and can save your kids lives, and we talk about mucus. And not the kind that comes out of your nose.


The ladies, chatting about how they each contribute to their community.

Debatably our most popular topic, the catholics and I go into great detail with these shy and giggly women about women’s fertility cycles, blood, mucus and all. It’s an absolute riot. We call it Foco en el Moco, which translates nicely to Focus on the Mucus. In addition to learning about their reproductive systems and understanding their menstrual cycles, women learn the signs of their bodies to know when they are fertile and when they are not. While, out of cultural sensitivity, we don’t encourage anyone to make fewer babies (or more for that matter) these women are definitely interested in understanding where all these kids came from. One woman at our meeting yesterday is a mother of fifteen. Another has eleven kids. Neither knew why she has her period or when she is fertile (frequently would be a good guess). Our goal with these classes is to put more knowledge in the hands of these women to serve their health, self-esteem, and decision making power. And, as it turns out, getting into the nitty gritty of how stretchy, sticky, or slippery you’re feeling on any given day is a universally good time amongst the ladies.

Me and the catholics explaining the mysteries of the menstrual cycle

tippy tops!

Perhaps the second most popular thing with the ladies at the mom’s clubs are the tippy tops. These are hand washing contraptions made out of two liter plastic bottles that I teach the moms, teachers, and kids how to make. I explain why it is dangerous to burn plastics (the usual fate for these ubiquitous bottles) and how important it is for us to wash our hands after we go to the bathroom and before we eat or prepare food. Not exactly a novel idea to most of us, but man, you should see the grub on these kids. Looks like they ran out of soap a few months back. Tippy tops are a good solution to two problems: what to do with these empty plastic soda bottles, and how to keep my kids from getting sick all the time. They’re easy to make, and every demonstration turns into a frenzied competition amongst the kids of who can get their hands the squeakiest and cleanest.

Here’s how you make one!

Rinse out a two liter bottle and cut off the bottom at the line in the plastic (about two or three inches up from the bottom). Poke a hole on each side of the bottle an inch from the cut you just made. You’ll use these holes to put a string through, which will hang the bottle upside down. Make a string out of whatever is around (the label from the plastic bottle works great if you can get it off in one piece. If not, cut up a plastic grocery bag in a spiral –a lesson for another day-, or use a piece of real string if you’re feeling conventional). Tie the string through the holes in the bottle to serve as a handle so you can hang it. Fill the tippy top half way or so with water (upside down, with the cap on). Put the bottom piece back on top where you cut it off, but inverted, to serve as a soap dish (it’ll fit right in there). Put a piece of soap in the dish and hang it up at a good height for hand washing. Twist the cap just enough to let a small stream of water out, and have at it! It’s amazing how little water you need to wash your hands with one of these. I tell the kids to wash their hands with soap for at least ten to fifteen seconds to get them good and clean (there’s a song to go with it, but I’ll spare you that part), and I talk about the importance of conserving water, too.

Families hang a tippy top by the bathroom and one by the kitchen so it’s easy to wash their hands when they need to. I guess most of our blog readers back home probably have kitchens and bathrooms inside their houses, and they probably have sinks and even soap in there, too, come to think, but maybe you can find a good use for one of these –by the garage or outside your garden shed maybe. Even if you don’t need one, they’re fun to make, it’s a good way to recycle a plastic bottle, they help conserve water, and it’s always a good thing to see kids excited about washing their hands.