Notes on a garden, and other thoughts

I got malaria. Now I can check that off my list of things I'd hoped would never happen to me.
It wasn't all it was cracked up to be... Just a fever that came only at night. Nothing a little chloraquoll cant fix! It has been a long time since I have last blogged, but there hasn't really been too much going on. I hosted a training in my site and in return was given 4 Drip Irrigation Systems for individual producers in the community. A drip irrigation system will work wonders, because it provides a steady source of water, even during the dry season, so that people can have gardens in the dry, unproductive months of Summer (Jan-May). I am working with each of the four families to quickly break ground and plant this week, so that we can harvest before the first rain in May. I went around yesterday, checking the progress of each family and was pleasently suprised to find that all of them had prepared the land, and were just waiting for me to bring seeds and help them make planting beds. I was VERY impressed with their iniative, and cannot wait to see how they turn out! We are growing zucchini, cucumber, melon, watermelon, tomato, chili pepper, and sweet bell peppers, beets and carrots..and one very brave soul wants to tackle head lettuce which I say brave because it is sucesptible to plagues and pests. Well, the easy part is over, (the planting of seeds). Now I just await the world of growing and producing vegetables that lay ahead. I am working with 4 families who have each recieved one of the Drip Systems. We are testing it during these final months of dryness, and once rains come they won't need to use it....

I never thought I would ever say, in my life "How beautiful is this fencing", until I made one. To be able to stand back and look at the final product is truly an awe inspiring experience. From the cutting down of posts with a machete, to digging the 2 feet deep holes that hold up the giant tree trunk posts. Thats not all, then there is the hanging of the chicken wiring.... 7x7 meters squared, this area needed to be protected from the pests, formally known as patio chickens....They will eat everything in your garden, so it is for this reason we come prepared with 2meter high chicken wire...They'll be no flying over our fence and stealing our vegetables, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Oh this chicken wire, needed to be tightened, lifted, hoisted, pulled and stapled in every which way...a way that kept me fully occupied all day long. We are preparing this area for a couple of seasons of growing vegetables, all depending on how quickly it rusts...But Oh, the grandure. When the sun is setting, making everything look siholuetted, the metal is glimmering, while the fence stands tall and sturdy, beaming with its posture that we have created. This tanglible, work of art...and now we are only at the skeleton in this grand whole that is a garden. The sum of its parts are certainly grea, but the whole is what we are counting on. Two long months of watching, and weeding, caring and hopefully if all goes as planned, a harvest to follow.

Other thoughts, on personal space. Well, it really doesn't exist here. When riding on the bus, if I am lucky enough to find an empty seat, my eyes light up, and I cherish it for the slim moments I have, alone, fully stretching my legs and arms, and lifting my head out the window for some fresh air...For I know what the next bus stop brings...Somehow with my luck my seat always gets picked by mothers heavily baggaged with infants, diaper bags, and a handful of other children, all which she stuffs into her lap and soon after spilling onto the last bit of dividing space that existed between my seat-mate and I. So there we are, the 5 of us, smudged into a 2 seater in the newly renovated school-busses we all used in elementary school, to take us to god knows where.... Sweaty arms pressed against one another, maybe the kid is eating a juicy mango, well sure as hell is hot, that mango doesnt stay on there side of the seat. Or maybe the other kid behind me is eating a popsicle. How do I know? Oh, its kind of a suprise... Not til I lift my head up off the seat to discover that her sticky hands preceded my newly showered main of hair, and now I must go to the city with fudgsicle matted in my ponytail. Imagine, sweltering heat, loud ranchero music blaring, useless, solely-for-the-asthetic-value window curtains that blow into my face every 2 seconds because there is no way to tie them down; maybe the baby is hungary next to me, or tired, the only thing I can tell is that they are unhappy. How do I know this? Oh the crying, screaming, kicking and wailing that takes place in the very seat next to me, and more often then not, on top on my lap.

Or sometimes, when luck really slips by and I am left to take a half-occupied seat, me being on the outside, the real fun begins. The next stop, of course, yields a handful of passangers left without seats. One might think, oh, the next bus passing will scoop them up, for certainly there is no room left on this one. Well...Let me clear it up for you. They let those passangers pile on in...Aisles are fair game too. And When I say cram, I don't even have the literary capacity to full engage you in what I mean. I am going to say this in a way as politically correct as possible, but you know those descriptions we have all read of the accounts during world war 2? the tight conditions of the cattle cars that transported victims to the Concentration Camps?? I am sorry but I can't think of a better image. One can't help but feel like cattle, 3 people wide, each space in the aisle, in butt to butt, bag to bag, packed in so tightly that if there were an accident and the bus tipped I feel safely assured that the injuries would be minimal, and the people would be safely rotated without falling out because of how tightly we are packed in. Even the cobrador (the man who you pay for your bus passage) has to literally wedge on his tippy toes through each pair of standers. For those of us that are sitting , I think you can gather what that means. It means hips, and butts, and other organs from the waist down smushing your arm and in actuality the whole side of your body that is outwards toward the aisle. I want, so badly to nudge them, to reclaim the space i have claimed as my own. But then I remember, this is not a airplane where everyone gets there own arm rest and recliner chair. Any available space is fair game.

Every time I ride one of theses "rush hours" if we can call them that..I think, oh no..there is absolutly NO way in hell that one more person is stepping onto this bus...But to my disbelief, each time, they are picked up. And in the small, very rare chance that the aisles reach the point of absolute suffocation, the just stick the remaining passangers on the roof! I am serious! (luckally being a woman has its benefits, because being the "helpless and weak" women, we mostly always are offered a seat, or at least a pocket of free space in the aisle to post up during our ride..the roof is left to the young, striking adolescents who live out there macho, I am the king of the world scenarios while riding atop of those busses (they have racks up there you know) Luckally, the route buses I take are only for a 1/2 hour at most to take me to the nearest city..But there have been times where I have been the unlucky passanger, and have stood in an aisle for 3 hours to get to my ideal destination. So in conclusion, anyone who is planning on visiting me, don't forget to pack your patience! or Xanax!

"Action is about living fully. Inaction is the way we deny life. Inaction is sitting in front of the TV everyday for years, because you are afraid to be alive and take the risk of expressing what you are. Expressing what you are is taking action. You can certainly have many great ideas in your head but what makes the difference is the ACTION. Without action upon an idea, there will be no manefestation, no results, and no rewards" - The Four Aggreements.

I am trying to live out exactly what this passage is saying. It is one thing to think and talk about the things you want to do, but actually doing them, whether fail or success, is the divide.