This is the wonderful meal that I had for breakfast Wed. morning. It is their traditional beans and rice dish as well as fresh tomatoes and half an avocado. I have learned to just mash up the avocado and put it in with the beans and rice and it is quite yummy. They have had avocado for breakfast every day this week which is really spoiling me as well as adding lots of fat, but its healthy fat right? :-)
The tours we took today involved going out into the community. Before we even went out into the community we sat down with the community development professor and she told us all about their community experience module. All four years students study here they are involved with some aspect of the module. The first year students just take short field trips into the community to see what goes on. The second year students actually work out in the communities every Wednesday from 6:30 am-5pm. The third year students work both in the community and on the campus helping to develop plans, while the fourth year students supervise and manage the projects. The main goal of this module is to help promote social awareness by allowing the students to work hand and hand with the community. There are five skills they hope the students all learn while working with the community and these include: communication, creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, and working with teams. Below you will see pictures of our community visits!
This was the first farm that we went to and this farmer has gotten assistance with building a small scale greenhouse, setting up garden beds, as well as setting up a bio-digestor. Here in the bottom of the picture you can see cucumbers that he has harvested as well as corn in the background. He said that the problem now is that he has too much produce so now the students are helping him try to find someplace to sell his produce. He is also looking to get a very small loan to buy a old truck so he can take his produce directly to the market. Right now with a middle man he only makes 200 colones per kg where if he can get it directly to the market he can make 500-600 colones per kg.
This was a beautiful flower that we saw along side his garden.
This is the farmer pulling up cassava. In this picture you can see the plant itself which is just like a small tree which grows for about 9 months. When the trees start to flower out you cut to top off the tree and just pull out the root system which is the part that you actually eat. He can then put the plant tops into his compost facility to produce fertilizer for his next crops.
This is the second farm that we went to for just a few minutes to talk to the students about their experiences. This kid was actually in the little dog house behind me tied up and I bent down to get a picture but the farmer decided that he should hand me the kid and get my picture taken with it, which I willingly did!
This is one of the many beautiful waterfalls that we saw on our trip into the communities. Many members of the community are working with EARTH students to try and develop ecotourism in the area to try and get people coming into the town to see the waterfalls which would bring more money to the town and would help them better conserve this water resource.
One of the other places we visited was the local school. Here EARTH students were helping to teach the students English. Not only were the teaching the students but they were also teaching the professor who seemed to be a lot more interested than many of the students and he was telling us all the words he learned that day like colors and animals, and he was so proud!
This is one of the beautiful murals that was painted on the side of the school. At the school we visited they had three different paintings all depicting what they want their community to look like in the future.
Here the students were posing for us on their recess break. At their school the younger kids go to school in the morning while the older children come in the afternoon. These students are the younger children.
The fourth stop we made was to a dairy farm. This guy has 14 milk cows and he makes cheese as a value added product. This guy is working with EARTH students to try and set up a local co-op where all the local dairy farmers can sell their milk to make this cheese. It is an unpasteurized cheese that evidently has a very local flavor. We tried some of his cheese and it was quite delicious.
Also at this farm they have a pet parrot. They do not force the parrot to stay there or clip its wings or anything but rather it has decided to call their house home.
Here is a picture of some of the protest that is going on where these citizens decided to shut down the main highway by blocking a major bridge. Also notice Dr. Aguilars wonderful expression in the mirror! Like I mentioned in a previous blog these people are mad because the utility company wants to install water meters at their individuals houses so the people can pay based on how much water they used, which sounds completely fair to me. Evidently the problem is that currently many people don't pay anything or they just pay a set amount no matter how much or how little water they use. So they have tried to gain media attention (which has worked) by shutting down this main road from San Jose to the port city of Limon. More on this in Thursday's blog because the government has finally stepped in because it is hurting commerce.
Once we finally got through the roadblock we visited a pallet mill. This was my first time visiting this sort of facility and I learned a lot. This is a picture of the pallet label which shows that it has been heat treated which is needed for export and also shows the country of origin as well as the companies information.
This is a picture of three of the people from our group: Dr. Hank Steltzer, Steve Jarvis, as well as Dr. Aguilar. Here they are talking with the pallet owner with his daughter in the background. This mill and plant is a family owned plant that is one of the largest in Costa Rica due to their partnership with Chiquita bananas.
This is a system that the owner created himself which will take a pallet and will run in through the system to spray a fungicide on the pallet. This is not done to every pallet but he has one small customer that requests this special treatment.
That night we stopped at a local restaurant to eat dinner. Here I have talipia, beans, rice, and a very good cole slaw. I ordered the garlic fish and got garlic as well as A LOT of butter which wasn't very good so I didn't end up eating most of it because it was just caked with butter :-(
After we finished eating we were stopped once again in the protester's traffic for about an hour before they finally let us through. I like the fact that people are expressing their rights but at the same time shouldn't shut down the main highway in Costa Rica.
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