quick update
Hi all,
Well, I know I claimed that I would not have access or contact until November, but, I lied. (Still, I haven't got time to write to anyone, or even read the 100+ messages I have here, so I am writing this short note instead) Turns out that our plans changed suddenly and we had to come out of the field one day early and stay the night in San Jose for our changeover of projects. Early in the morning tomorrow we're off to Quebrada Arroyo. All seems well there, the community has started the project and is eagerly awaiting us.
As for where we were, we spent 3 full and busy weeks in Guayabo. In 3 weeks, we logged more than 750 person hours of work (halted many days early by the rain), hauled gravel into 470m of trails, built a 6m cement bridge, 2 sets of cement stairs and had at least four people who had serious blisters on their feet. Actually, our most serious medical concern was a cold/flu that hit 10 of us in the group - 5 hard enough to cause us to miss work for a day or two. I personally took 1.5 days off. It was very hard work, but I think it is just the beginning and we will see even harder work starting for us on Monday...
Another interesting incident involved a white faced capuchin monkey - it showed up one day when I was on homebody duty (cooking and cleaning for the day) and people started running to get their cameras. As they snapped away, one of our participants, who was without her eyeglasses, thought it was an armadillo, since we had seen one a day or two earlier, so she turned around to get a better look and was attacked by it. Fortunately, it only scratched her as near as we and the doctors could tell, but I still had to get the park rangers to take us to the hospital for 2 stitches for her. She is healing up nicely now, but it gave us a bit of a scare, especially when the monkey banged on the house door, after we had all retreated to safety...
On a more positive note, we had a lot of fun interaction with the community. One of the parek rangers had us over for dinner one night and we had another big dinner of farewell with everyone in the local bar. We also had a cooking lesson with a community member, and a big soccer/football game against the community. Within our little group of 8 Australians and 6 Canadians, we are also having a lot of fun discussions about personal development and globalisaton and international development - it's going really well and I am pleased with everything so far, even though living with 14 people can drive one up the wall at times - not to mention the feeling of responsibilty one has. It is a bit tiring at times, but I am taking lots of breaks especially when I was sick and when I (possibly) broke my toe playing soccer.
Anyway, I've gotta to go repack and get to bed for another early start. My usual rising time these days has been 5:30am, usually the earliest in my group (so I can be first to do laundry everyday) but in Quebrada Arroyo we will be starting at 6am, so it looks like we'll have to eat by 5am every day - we'll see how it goes... It's way past my bedtime now... So good night, talk to you all in 6-7 weeks.
Un abrazo,
Rob