Bearing Fruit!
Hey All,
I hope, as always, that this letter finds you all well and comfortable in whatever lives that you're choosing to lead, wherever you are choosing to lead them. Special shout outs to my fellow world travellers spending semesters in Spain and Italy and Costa Rica and Australia. Told you that the time would pass faster than you could have imagined possible. I hope that you're all having the time of your lives! For those at "home" remember that the routine is easy to take for granted and worth a lot more than we often give it credit for. I thought about that as I heated water on the stove to dump over my head so I could call myself clean.
March has wrapped up and moved on to April and with it winter has faded away to become another memory. Spring has sprung pretty much country wide... meaning that its downright pleasant in my village and downright HOT in Oz! At least it isn't time yet to soak the sheets in the shower to sleep but I can tell that its rapidly approaching. New leaves are forming on the trees of my village and we went a few weeks recently without seeing a cloud in the sky. I think that I will miss the winter as summer time approaches and I can't escape the heat any longer but right now its hard to find anything to complain about... at least as far as the weather is concerned. Actually it turns out that March was an extremely productive month for me project wise and I'm feeling better about this whole experience as a result so there isn't much major to complain about on any front.
The major highlight of the month was the completion (except for monitoring and evaluation phases) of the tree planting project in my village. This was not accomplished without the usual collection of Moroccan issues. Since I couldn't go to my birds project meeting in Rabat (for reasons that I still don't understand) I met up with a friend there instead for the weekend before agreeing to meet my villagers in Marrakesh with the truck to pick up the trees on Tuesday. This process in itself was an adventure.
After finishing up my weekend I returned to Marrakesh and met up with my language tutor who spends much of the year in the city attending school for economics. This part went well. Then I stayed Monday night with a member of my host family who lives and works in the city and owns his own plumbing supply distribution company. My host family is pretty rich for my village but this was taking it to another level and he seemed anxious to show off his "wealth" as much as possible. He drove me around the city and gave me the Moroccan guided tour of sights and sounds in his own private car, offered to let me use his phone to chit chat with my friends, and brought me to the the Moroccan equivalent of Wal-Mart where we comparison shopped for computers and appliances and ended up buying four containers of yogurt and a liter of cooking oil. It was definitely interesting to see the different spheres of affluence and remember that it was all part of the same family.
We had a delicious dinner at around 11 pm Monday night at which I learned that the truck was not coming the next day. I began to make frantic alternative plans in my head but it turned out that I needn't have worried because the members of my community that I was supposed to meet showed up the next morning at the appointed time anyway. The problem was that they had with them only one small tranzit van (think 13 passenger van back home) with a roof rack to pick up slightly over 4000 saplings. They seemed to think that this would work fine. I certainly had my doubts but I did my part anyway. Or tried to. The man who we were buying the trees from failed to respond to my repeated efforts to reach him for most of the morning and into the afternoon despite my calling to confirm the previous day...
Eventually though this was all sorted out and we got our trees! After a very long packing process we even got them all on top of the car. Getting back to the village was accomplished in stages and once there the village association took the project out of my hands in a way that I was beginning to doubt would ever happen. They scrapped my original distribution schematic and divided the trees exactly equally between all of the members of the community, arranged to pay for transportation, started classes on planting methods and arranged for storage of the trees until such a time as they could all be planted. I was certainly excited despite the fact that I was left with nothing to do except sit back and take pictures for my project completion report!
In a few days all the trees were in the ground and the village was 4200 trees richer (mostly apple with a few hundred each of cherry, peach, pear, and almond) providing a fair number of them survive. In 4-6 years the income of 47 village families (527people all told) will increase by as much as 40% based on the current price of fruit and a bunch of other math I won't get into. Sweet.
After a few weeks working on that project at the beginning of the month I once again turned my attention to the birds project. We (being the project team) managed to find some equipment to borrow to start doing surveys. Interestingly enough we are getting some serious cooperation from our Moroccan counterparts because they are all worried about bird flu. Of course this doesn't really match our own goals and objectives but as long as we can get what we want at the same time its all the same!
I traveled to Rich where the project team met and we hooked up with several forest techs(think rangers) and a couple of members of various associations who were participating in a trial survey of several lakes in the Eastern High Atlas National Park. The lakes were a RAMSAR site which is an international convention on the protection of wetlands and wetlands wildlife. We made the 3-4 hour drive to Imichill (where I did my field trip to visit a current PCV during training) where we were staging for the survey in the back of an association car with a very excited project manager who pointed out all of his projects along the way. He turned out to be the best potential bird watcher among the bunch and happy to help us out in any way he could... including arranging hotels and transportation for the entire week.
The survey itself went well, despite being hampered by an early spring blizzard which dropped several centimeters of snow on us over the first few days of the project. We learned a lot that will be useful for future surveys and made some good connections. For instance, while the E&F is great for driving us around and are interested in the project for their own reasons they are terrible bird watchers... often getting ahead of the group and scaring away birds. More education in advance about bird watching etiquette is going to be needed. Also we are working on developing environmental education curricula and techniques to use in the villages we are doing surveys in. This would be the role of the PCV that lives in that site ideally but we really don't have that system in place yet so we didn't do anything like that this trip. I was also sick (Again!) which didn't help... but I tried as much as possible to solider on and get the job done. In the end we spotted about 35 different species, both migratory and non migratory. Its not a lot for the region but not bad either for just a few days work and not a lot of experience.
We also got the actual grant for equipment pretty much finished, though we are still working on minor changes. We are looking for monetary donations for travel and for bird books and we are writing to optics companies to see if they can get us some free binoculars and scopes. If you're interested in contributing there will be a web site you can go to. Its tax deductible. *wink* I'll let you know as soon as we get it through all the red tape and it gets put on-line. Alas it will probably be a couple of months... sigh. Something to look forward to in the future. In May we hope to do another survey, this time with a professional ornithologist from one of our partner organizations up near Rabat in the north. This will be another trial run and a learning experience for us. Hopefully he'll be able to teach us more about birding in morocco and birds we can find here specifically. Hopefully that will work out.
For the future in my village I've started work on the grant proposal for a water tower that will provide drinking water to 3/4 of my town.(1/4 has piped and safe drinking water already) It will cost much less than I had originally thought but still much more than it will be easy to come up with so wish me luck. I'm also doing a lot with the group of new volunteers that just arrived. I'm doing a lecture on stress management (which made my dad laugh but I'm a pro compared to a lot of people!) and perhaps one on biodiversity as well as hosting some trainees on a learning field trip to my site. (Already done this but you'll have to wait for the April E-mail for details). I'm also working to convince the members of the community association that they don't need a new building for a women's center because they can just use some of the various tourist hostels that just sit unused all winter to house workshops and classrooms for 3/4s of the year. Not going well so far but I'm hoping to get some help with this in a little while.
Personally my future plans for April include some vacation time with a friend and her parents down south. We will meet many others along the way and I'll see all the southern sights that I still haven't gotten around to seeing before staying at a really nice place in Marrakesh for a couple of days... Also have some camping and bird watching trips in the not to distant future that I'll explain further as details develop. Life's going well and I'm enjoying my time off that I spend with friends despite the PC organization remaining extremely frustrating most of the time. Can't win them all I guess!
Anyway... That's it for the month of March. Happy Easter (and happy birthday to me at the same time... April 16th!... my second one in Morocco)
Stay well!Love and Luck in Everything
Cheers!
-Andy
I hope, as always, that this letter finds you all well and comfortable in whatever lives that you're choosing to lead, wherever you are choosing to lead them. Special shout outs to my fellow world travellers spending semesters in Spain and Italy and Costa Rica and Australia. Told you that the time would pass faster than you could have imagined possible. I hope that you're all having the time of your lives! For those at "home" remember that the routine is easy to take for granted and worth a lot more than we often give it credit for. I thought about that as I heated water on the stove to dump over my head so I could call myself clean.
March has wrapped up and moved on to April and with it winter has faded away to become another memory. Spring has sprung pretty much country wide... meaning that its downright pleasant in my village and downright HOT in Oz! At least it isn't time yet to soak the sheets in the shower to sleep but I can tell that its rapidly approaching. New leaves are forming on the trees of my village and we went a few weeks recently without seeing a cloud in the sky. I think that I will miss the winter as summer time approaches and I can't escape the heat any longer but right now its hard to find anything to complain about... at least as far as the weather is concerned. Actually it turns out that March was an extremely productive month for me project wise and I'm feeling better about this whole experience as a result so there isn't much major to complain about on any front.
The major highlight of the month was the completion (except for monitoring and evaluation phases) of the tree planting project in my village. This was not accomplished without the usual collection of Moroccan issues. Since I couldn't go to my birds project meeting in Rabat (for reasons that I still don't understand) I met up with a friend there instead for the weekend before agreeing to meet my villagers in Marrakesh with the truck to pick up the trees on Tuesday. This process in itself was an adventure.
After finishing up my weekend I returned to Marrakesh and met up with my language tutor who spends much of the year in the city attending school for economics. This part went well. Then I stayed Monday night with a member of my host family who lives and works in the city and owns his own plumbing supply distribution company. My host family is pretty rich for my village but this was taking it to another level and he seemed anxious to show off his "wealth" as much as possible. He drove me around the city and gave me the Moroccan guided tour of sights and sounds in his own private car, offered to let me use his phone to chit chat with my friends, and brought me to the the Moroccan equivalent of Wal-Mart where we comparison shopped for computers and appliances and ended up buying four containers of yogurt and a liter of cooking oil. It was definitely interesting to see the different spheres of affluence and remember that it was all part of the same family.
We had a delicious dinner at around 11 pm Monday night at which I learned that the truck was not coming the next day. I began to make frantic alternative plans in my head but it turned out that I needn't have worried because the members of my community that I was supposed to meet showed up the next morning at the appointed time anyway. The problem was that they had with them only one small tranzit van (think 13 passenger van back home) with a roof rack to pick up slightly over 4000 saplings. They seemed to think that this would work fine. I certainly had my doubts but I did my part anyway. Or tried to. The man who we were buying the trees from failed to respond to my repeated efforts to reach him for most of the morning and into the afternoon despite my calling to confirm the previous day...
Eventually though this was all sorted out and we got our trees! After a very long packing process we even got them all on top of the car. Getting back to the village was accomplished in stages and once there the village association took the project out of my hands in a way that I was beginning to doubt would ever happen. They scrapped my original distribution schematic and divided the trees exactly equally between all of the members of the community, arranged to pay for transportation, started classes on planting methods and arranged for storage of the trees until such a time as they could all be planted. I was certainly excited despite the fact that I was left with nothing to do except sit back and take pictures for my project completion report!
In a few days all the trees were in the ground and the village was 4200 trees richer (mostly apple with a few hundred each of cherry, peach, pear, and almond) providing a fair number of them survive. In 4-6 years the income of 47 village families (527people all told) will increase by as much as 40% based on the current price of fruit and a bunch of other math I won't get into. Sweet.
After a few weeks working on that project at the beginning of the month I once again turned my attention to the birds project. We (being the project team) managed to find some equipment to borrow to start doing surveys. Interestingly enough we are getting some serious cooperation from our Moroccan counterparts because they are all worried about bird flu. Of course this doesn't really match our own goals and objectives but as long as we can get what we want at the same time its all the same!
I traveled to Rich where the project team met and we hooked up with several forest techs(think rangers) and a couple of members of various associations who were participating in a trial survey of several lakes in the Eastern High Atlas National Park. The lakes were a RAMSAR site which is an international convention on the protection of wetlands and wetlands wildlife. We made the 3-4 hour drive to Imichill (where I did my field trip to visit a current PCV during training) where we were staging for the survey in the back of an association car with a very excited project manager who pointed out all of his projects along the way. He turned out to be the best potential bird watcher among the bunch and happy to help us out in any way he could... including arranging hotels and transportation for the entire week.
The survey itself went well, despite being hampered by an early spring blizzard which dropped several centimeters of snow on us over the first few days of the project. We learned a lot that will be useful for future surveys and made some good connections. For instance, while the E&F is great for driving us around and are interested in the project for their own reasons they are terrible bird watchers... often getting ahead of the group and scaring away birds. More education in advance about bird watching etiquette is going to be needed. Also we are working on developing environmental education curricula and techniques to use in the villages we are doing surveys in. This would be the role of the PCV that lives in that site ideally but we really don't have that system in place yet so we didn't do anything like that this trip. I was also sick (Again!) which didn't help... but I tried as much as possible to solider on and get the job done. In the end we spotted about 35 different species, both migratory and non migratory. Its not a lot for the region but not bad either for just a few days work and not a lot of experience.
We also got the actual grant for equipment pretty much finished, though we are still working on minor changes. We are looking for monetary donations for travel and for bird books and we are writing to optics companies to see if they can get us some free binoculars and scopes. If you're interested in contributing there will be a web site you can go to. Its tax deductible. *wink* I'll let you know as soon as we get it through all the red tape and it gets put on-line. Alas it will probably be a couple of months... sigh. Something to look forward to in the future. In May we hope to do another survey, this time with a professional ornithologist from one of our partner organizations up near Rabat in the north. This will be another trial run and a learning experience for us. Hopefully he'll be able to teach us more about birding in morocco and birds we can find here specifically. Hopefully that will work out.
For the future in my village I've started work on the grant proposal for a water tower that will provide drinking water to 3/4 of my town.(1/4 has piped and safe drinking water already) It will cost much less than I had originally thought but still much more than it will be easy to come up with so wish me luck. I'm also doing a lot with the group of new volunteers that just arrived. I'm doing a lecture on stress management (which made my dad laugh but I'm a pro compared to a lot of people!) and perhaps one on biodiversity as well as hosting some trainees on a learning field trip to my site. (Already done this but you'll have to wait for the April E-mail for details). I'm also working to convince the members of the community association that they don't need a new building for a women's center because they can just use some of the various tourist hostels that just sit unused all winter to house workshops and classrooms for 3/4s of the year. Not going well so far but I'm hoping to get some help with this in a little while.
Personally my future plans for April include some vacation time with a friend and her parents down south. We will meet many others along the way and I'll see all the southern sights that I still haven't gotten around to seeing before staying at a really nice place in Marrakesh for a couple of days... Also have some camping and bird watching trips in the not to distant future that I'll explain further as details develop. Life's going well and I'm enjoying my time off that I spend with friends despite the PC organization remaining extremely frustrating most of the time. Can't win them all I guess!
Anyway... That's it for the month of March. Happy Easter (and happy birthday to me at the same time... April 16th!... my second one in Morocco)
Stay well!Love and Luck in Everything
Cheers!
-Andy
posted by Andy & Erin | 2:59 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home