What can I do with chicken poop?

That thing above? He is my arch nemasis. He keeps me up at all hours of the night, and annoys me with his "cock"yness all day long.

Well, this has been one big week and a half. All I have to show for it is lots of sunburns, blisters, and back pain. I am really out of shape and apparently I am not the only one to notice it. According to my nica friends the first thing they noticed about me since I have been back is, how fat my arms have gotten! I also got asked if I was pregnant the other day...how special. No I am not pregnant, I just have a tire around my waist. Or a muffin top as we call it..but they don't understand what that means because they don't have muffins...but tires are plentiful.So lots of things have happened, I don't have any particular order so I will just start from the top.

I went to this glorious canyon of somoto with my friends last weekend, and It was absolutly incredible. It was like a grand canyon that you could climb around in and jump off at any point to swim in the water. I went with a group of 7 including myself, unfortunetly I was one of two girls amongst the group of idiots that are my friends. We woke up early saturday morning, got loaded up on bread and gatorade and headed out for a hell of a day trip. We crossed rivers, and completly fell and submerged ourselves at various points during the hike. We jumped off cliffs into crystal blue streams of warm river rocky water. And climbed more cliffs, and sang folk songs at the tops of our lungs. It was really special, and I am anxious to go back.

Lets see, My goat had babies, and they are too cute. A chicken tried to lay eggs in my bed 3 different times in one day. I had to whip her into shape. It was not funny, of all the beds to lay eggs in, why mine! ? I already have enough troubles with mosquitos and lice, and sleeping in general. Oh, the joys of living in the country! I also woke up the other morning to my host brother skinning a pig, all that was left was the head, fully in tact and the eyes bulging. Heres a photo! Just some of the daily pleasures I take part in....

This was to make a typical nicaraguan food called "nacatamale" its corn meal, veggies, and pork all wrapped up in a bananna leaf and then boiled until its delicious. I have the luxury of enjoying one every week since my host mom makes them as another means of income. Speaking of income, it is becoming really apparent to me the wrath of the poverty that occurs in the dry season. In other words, if the farmers have nothing to harvest, then they are without any means of income. They are working for pennies in the tobacco fields during the dry season. Anyawys... I have spoken to various students who cannot afford the bus fare to ride to and therefore aren't able to go to school. For a measly fare of 50cents. And my first instinct is to give them the money, but then I think about not wanting to become a source of income for every person who cannot afford something. Although the money is not an issue, its the greater issue of sustainability that is at hand here. I had another issue, a host sister told me that she can't go to school because she has no backpack, pens or notebooks. Her mom is a single mother and cannot find work at this time. So, without thinking I gave her a drawstring adidas bag, a couple of MDVIP pens (thanks mom), and the only notebook I had without any writing in it. I don't know if this was the right thing to do, but my impulses couldn't help themselves...an education over a couple of notebooks and pens? It is complexes like these that I am going through each day. I wish there was something I could do....I guess that is the whole trouble with development..You can't just "fix" it.

Changing subjects, during the week I had a date with my friend laurie who lives just up the road from me and luckally has her own place. We had a much needed girls night, and made some serious food in the kitchen! We made saag paneer, which is a typical indian dish consisting of spinach and indian cheese. But we used the things we had at hand which was the swiss chard I had grown in my garden. ( Look at my harvest! )

and the cheese the old lady up the road had just made. It was a success! We made garlic naan (indian tandoori style flat breads) to go with it. We paired the spicy dish with passionfruit-mandarin and lime rum-ritas. Delicious to say the least. The next day we made handmade pizza, homemade pizza sauce, and topped with freshly made cheese and basil and parsley. We watched sex and the city, and another awesome movie called Charlie Bartlett. It really felt like a sunday in the states; rainy, grey, and with the greatest company of all, your girlfriends.

Below is the rainbow that came after the rains, and the pizza that we mastered, from scratch.

The week to follow was a great one. I got knee deep in cow poop and chicken droppings, all for the sake of a compost pile. My host dad loves doing projects and because it is the dry season, he is left without much to occupy his time. He has told me that he is really interested in working with me in making a medicinal plant garden filled with garlic, ginger, onion, oregano, aloe, dill, etc. But first, we needed to make some compost to improve our soil quality.

A compost is an equal balance of:

carbon sources (browns)--like leaves, nut shells, sawdust, corn cobs husks or any other husks, and nitrogen sources (greens)-- animal poop (cow, chicken, goat, pig, NOT human), egg shells, ash, fruit and vegetable scraps, etc. and sunlight, and water of course to keep things moist so that microorganisms can break down all the nutrients and turn them into usable, incredible soil to improve the quality of the plants one is growing. Our soil happens to be very clay-ish and therefore hard for roots of plants to pass through and develop properly.

So, my host brother has a chicken coop where he raises chickens to sell as a secondary source of income. So the chickens need "beds" in which he uses rice husks. Anyway the rice husks, get thrown away every 44 days, and they are beautifully coated with chicken poop by the end of the cycle. In other words we have a PERFECT balance of ingredients to make a compost. We started by preparing a giant 2x2 meter bed, about 2 feet deep. unfortunetly the land is what they call, 'pura piedras'-PURE ROCKS, and our first 2 days consisted of digging out the clay filled soil to remove giant boulders and rocks from our hole. It took all morning and afternoon, and I couldn't help but notice the profound strength that my host dad possessed. I wanted to ask him, "Dont you ever say to yourself, 'boy I am getting too old for this', or ' wow, my back is really starting to hurt from all this physical labor' ". But no, he is trooper, and I felt like I had to keep up with him seeing as though I was a third his age, and he was still trucking. I am hanging with the big dogs. He, unlike me came prepared for the sun and unfortunetly I forgot my sunblock, hat and long-sleeved shirt. So I was hurting the next morning.

Thats my host dad- what a guy!

Anyways, the next day was the day we made the compost pile. First we had to collect 125lbs of cow poop, and boy was it HEAVY! I had a bucket full that must've weighed 50lbs and he had a saco of fresh, wet cow poop. We were quite the duo in the cow pen, literally picking up the poop that had just come out of there butts. All of the cows took a liking to me and sooner or later I was surrounded by 15 huge mama cows. I got scared but all my host dad said to do is give em a grunt (ruuhh) and bop them on the head. So I did, and it worked. The cows got back to being milked by there young. Heres a little picture of a mother and her lil guy---

So after our grand haul, we made it back to the site of construction. Basically the pile consisted of layers, rice husk, then dirt, then ashes, then cow poop, then water. Repeat 8x and there you have a compost pile. So around noon we finished up, tired, and covered in feces. It was a real day of work and it felt good. Everyone had a good laugh about how dirty we were. It attracted a lot of attention from the community. They wanted to know what was the purpose of what we were doing, and wanted in on the action. Hopefully more people will want to get involved in this potential community project.

Turning pages a little, there seems to be a surplus of this rice husk/chicken poop combo and even with our huge pile of compost we were left with tons of extras. So I asked around in the community and found out that you can take this and mix it with salt and molassas and turn it into cow feed. So the next project I do is experiment with this and maybe it can become a small buisness oppertunity.

Last thing that happened this week, was my host sister and cousin took me to there secret swimming hole that is on their family property. It was a little afternoon adventure that turned out to be a blast for all of us. It was my 17 year old sis ingrid, and my cousin 8 years old, paola. Little 3 year old linda wanted to come but we couldn't bring her because it was too much hiking. We explored the creek by our house and then followed it to the land that belongs to my host dad and then decided to go to this swimming hole. It was so much fun, as we walked my sister showed me the coffee plants and the mango and avocado trees of our family. She told me different uses for different plants that we saw along the way..She also told me stories about coming here when she was a little girl. So we get there, and it looks like a secret cove that is in the middle of a paradise! huge rock walls surrounded this little sun-kissed hole of clear water, that looked too delightful to pass up. We decided to take a dip, and ended up staying for hours...playing tag in the water, jumping off rocks, pretending we were models in a soap opera. All in all it was a great laugh, and I could tell I wasn't the only one enjoying myself. We were all giddy for the rest of the day, and all the other girls and I decided that we needed to go back and have a girls day at the "redonda" as it is called.

Well, That is all I have to report for this weeks little jammer. I hope you all aren't freezing your butts off in the snow-ma-gadden or whatever they are calling it. Oh by the way, I have a funny little story about that before I go. So my host brother calls me in the living room the other night and tells me that "maryland is on the news" I couldn't believe my ears, so of course I run in to find out that they are reporting on the snow fall. Well, there must have been a glitch in the system because what was reported was that "14 FEET of snow had fallen". I about died when I heard this; I knew it had been snowing a lot but I couldn't believe this . My heart fell when I thought of my mom and alice stranded at home with roof high snow. I left to call them immedietly the next morning only to find out that about 4 feet had fallen during the whole storm. WHEW.