Life Since Samox

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of computer work. When I first got back I spent a week typing up my notes from the 10 day journey, following up with the community on some internet research, writing my the blog, and trying to start my report.

Volunteers' House Project
In the second week, I found myself unproductive with computer work and started to get antsy to do something. So, I spent the beginning of the week hunting for materials for and making a present (pictures to come after the gift has been delivered). Then, Danielle, a new housemate, and I started making plans to build a compost box and vegetable garden in the CasaSito yard.

Compost:
Here in Antigua fruit and vegetables are soooo cheap that it's hard to not eat fresh produce for every meal and snack. However, as a by-product of this healthy eating, we also produce a lot of food waste when we peel our bananas, core our apples, scrape seeds out of our papayas, or find an unrecognizable rotted eggplant in the back of the fridge. Being accustomed to having a compost pile, it pained me every time I had to throw perfectly decomposable food waste in the garbage (I don't even know where the garbage here goes when it leaves our front door). Danielle had the same trouble throwing away food. Together, we decided that we were in desperate need of a compost pile and we started researching how to get the worms and how to build the box.

Garden:
But what would we do with all the compost. We could sell it as a CasaSito fundraiser...who's going to buy rotten food? Well, what can you do with compost other than fertilize a garden anyway...we decided to also build ourselves a garden so we could grow staple fruits and veggies like limes, beans, tomatoes, and strawberries. I had been really excited about the plastic bottle wall I had seen implemented in Santa Cruz and wanted to use that as the model. After starting to think about materials and how we would have to buy wood anyway to make the mold to pour the cement (defeating the purpose of only using recycled materials since we could just use the wood to build a box instead of using the bottles and cement), we decided to change the method a little bit. In the end, we decided to alternate between wine bottles and cans. The wine bottles would be filled with trash and the cans would hold flowers intended to keep the bugs away.

Recycling:
We were so excited to get started that we went out to all the bars in Antigua in search of their empty wine bottles that would have otherwise been thrown away. I am going to pick up all the bottles today. We also went to the local vivero (the English Gardens of Antigua) to start pricing plants and soil. We also visited a local construction site rumored to have a mountain of used wood that we could use to construct our compost box (sure enough...literally a mountain). Danielle is going to hunt down some worms while I'm home for a month.

Proposal:
In the midst of the excitement we submitted an official proposal to Alice and Amanda, the CasaSito team and they loved it. In the end, the only garden materials we will need to pay for are the wire to attach the bottles, the wire mesh for the compost box, the plastic lining for the garden, some nails and staples, prepared dirt (although we will get most from the construction site), and the plants themselves. The whole project should cost less than $40.

Unfortunately, the project may be put on hold while I'm home for a month but hopefully we can get the compost box started so the worms can start working.

Moon Festival
Yesterday happened to be the Chinese Moon Festival which is celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the year. Therefore, there is a full moon. The story is that a woman stole her husbands elixir and flew to the moon where she continues to live in a palace with a rabbit and can be seen dancing on the moon during the Moon Festival.

The celebration is much like 4th of July with family gatherings, grilling, and fireworks. We started cooking at 5PM and the celebration went on for hours. Melissa, my Taiwanese housemate invited her friends and I invited Julio. We grilled veggies and meat and stuffed peppers and followed up the meal with way too much sugar. It is tradition to eat Moon Cake while watching the full moon. It also happened to be Agnes' birthday so we had cheesecake and chocolate cake too!
I am really excited to be going home tomorrow for a month! I will be able move forward with HiA so I can go back to Samox in November with a proposal to move forward with a project.