I had a chance to visit a microwatershed project being taken on by on of the community groups where we are collaborating. The group is planning, on their own initiative to reforest 10 acres of land that border the Kilimanjaro National Park. So far they have planted over 4000 seedlings on 2 acres. You can see in the photo below, the large trees in the background, which are on the other side of a stream and are actually in the park. The side where folks are standing is on private land, land owned by farmers who are part of this particular group. If you look closely you can see a few of the 4000 seedlings scattered around. People in the photo are a mixture of community members and our staff. I took this shot with a zoom lens so  I  was pretty far away, but I tell myself they were talking about about a better future.

Tracking what happens to trees after they get planted is kind of difficult. So  many things can  happen, drought,  goats, machetes. We estimate our survival rate is probably somewhere between 50  to 75  percent,  but once I tree is in the field it is pretty much  on it's  own. So it was encouraging today to return to a farm where 5 years ago, some visitors, including the director of our organization, and myself had planted seeds  in a tree nursery, which this farmer in Tanzania (in yellow) then went on to transplant on his farm and are shown below. 

Alright, apparently I have 15 minutes free courtesy of the Charles DeGaulle airport. So I will squander that time talking about the guy sitting beside me on my last flight. I think it may have been his first flight ever. Or maybe his first day ever. First he was watching an episode of Friends, the TV show, and laughing hilariously like it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. Then we got into a little, just a very little bit of turbulence--enough to make you careful with your drink, but not enough to stop you from drinking. Except this guy. He had a tight grip with both hands on the seat back in front of him and had his head down like it might all be over in seconds. I was actually concerned that if we did get into some real turbulence that he would have a panic attack (well, a bigger one), and how that would interfere with my dinner--chicken and pasta, with baguette, cheese and wine. Air France I guess, makes sense. The baguette I mean, I don't know about the panic attack.

Leaving 2 days between trips is clearly  not ideal. I could have used a couple more to rest and get prepared. Maybe I can sleep on  the plane. 

More exciting shots of plants. Still in the border region, this time in  the DR. The first photo shows an agroforestry plot, which you can see is a somewhat complex mixture of multiple species including taro, castor, coffee, bananas, and a shade tree, in this case Guama (Inga spp.).  A system like this imitates natural forest in many ways, allows multiple products on the same piece of land, makes better use of resources since each plant has it's own niche, reduces soil loss, and improves soil quality. In the second photo, you can see one of these plots right next to the conventional corn/beans field.  Corn/beans is fine until the crop is done, and the field is bare, often  because the farmer has burned the remaining stubble, leaving the soil exposed to rain, wind,  etc. I think you  can get a sense of how much damage a heavy tropical rain might do in the field pictured. Fields like the coffee agroforestry plot you see pictured are popping up all over the place  in this area, I'm quite happy to say, thanks to the hard work of our staff here,  and of the farmers who are changing their fields.

I didn't know which other picture of plants to show you. Here is a living barrier in Haiti in the border area. The grass like plant you see is sugar  cane, and the white and brown  stem you see in  the foreground is eucalyptus. There are several  trees  planted along  the barrier.  An  earth barrier is  dug along the contour  using  an implement called  an A-frame (which maybe I'll describe in another installment), and then a  grass or sugar  cane is planted along the contour. Trees are planted on a wider spacing to help reinforce the barrier, and provide additional products  and organic  matter. The barrier helps  retain soil  in the field, while at the same time improving the  quality  of the soil, and providing multiple products beyond just the standard beans  and corn. So  it's a win-win situation. One  of  the small but important details  in this case,  is that sugar cane is considered  people food, so people are less  likely  to allow their  animals to graze  on a living barrier, thus keeping it from being destroyed. Sugar cane can also be used as animal forage,  but little details like that can make the difference between a field successfully being protected and not.

Had a bit of a scare yesterday when I couldn't seem to retrieve any pictures off the memory card on my camera. Somehow through the last week, the card itself had suffered physical damage, and coincidentally acquired a virus. After a few moments of panic, some creative use of scotch tape, and following some obscure instructions from the internet, I'm happy to report that all those photos of corn and trees have survived. 

Yesterday I visited the Dominican museum of modern art. All these years of coming here, and I've never once visited a museum up until now. Kind of sad, I admit. It was pretty interesting too. Below is a photo of a painting called "El Sacrificio del Chivo" by an artist named Pichardo. What's interesting is that the goat (chivo) symbolized Trujillo, the brutal dictator of the DR from 1930 to 1961. This painting was done in 1958, and was intended to symbolize the Dominican people rising up against oppression. All in secret of course. Had Trujillo known the true meaning of the painting, I suppose Pichardo would have been the goat.

I don't which of my 400 pictures of trees and other plants to show you.  But this one is pretty exciting to  me. These are pines planted in the border area in Haiti in a community called Savane Bombe. Two things about this are surprising to  me. One is that they are being planted  at all.  The local pine, Pinus  occidentalis is disappearing in Haiti,  and  there are very few forests left which contain the species. It is endemic  to the island, so once it is gone, it's gone. Fortunately there is still lots of it on  the Dominican side. However, to see people planting it in  Haiti is a  big deal for me. Turns out that people at  least in this  community  like planting it. It doesn't demand much water from the field,  or create much shade, so people can grow other underneath, and eventually  it produces timber which makes the farmer  a profit. The second surprising thing for me is how fast it grows. These trees here, which are 2-3 metres tall are about 3 years old. Not too bad for a tree which is supposed to be slow growing. So maybe there's hope for pine in Haiti after all.

So I'm  back  from my trip to the border area (where we have a project). This is me standing by a concrete border marker between the 2 countries. RD=Republica Dominicana, RH=Republique d'Haiti. In other words, the top picture, the RD picture shows Haiti in the background,  the bottom picture, the RH picture shows the DR  in the background. My question is, in which photo do you see more trees?

Today,  the final results of the presidential vote were officially declared and  then some celebration ensued. This is Piedra Blanca, a small town of maybe a few thousand people. But there was enough noise to make it hard for us to continue our office meeting. So I took the opportunity to duck out onto the office balcony and take some pictures.

This afternoon, I'll be heading for the border region near Haiti. This is about a 6 hour drive and I'll be there for a few days. No internet, no blogging sorry. The border area, which I think I've talked about in the past, is pretty interesting. There's this blending and clashing of cultures and economies and beliefs that make it pretty complicated and fascinating. Sort of a wild west scenario in someways. Would make an amazing Ph.D thesis for somebody. Anyone?

Today, my arrival, just happened  to be presidential election day. An apparently peaceful and orderly event. However, this evening everyone seems to be staying off the streets, I guess in case  something does happen. 

So I pulled the old stay-up-really-late-the-night-before-an-early-morning-trip stunt. This I actually think is a good strategy, because then on the travel day you're so tired you keep falling asleep all  through the flights and layovers, so the day doesn't seem nearly as long. The obvious drawback is that if you need to be alert for any reason during the course of the journey, well, you're kind of out of luck.  

I've got all these little plants on my balcony which now are going to go unattended for a bit. I hope they make it. 

I'm in a really good  mood tonight, and I don't even know exactly why. Maybe it's because I got to go canoeing with my Dad this  evening, which was really great, and we got to see a whole bunch of wildlife right in the middle of the city. Or maybe some other reason, I don't know. Probably shouldn't over-think it.

On the plane on Saturday I hit the jack of my headphones with my knee, which broke the jack. I bought a jack replacement at an electronics store for 1.27, and found plenty of helpful videos on line, but this particular earbud set, SE115m, which is no longer being sold by Shure has a more confusing wiring scheme than regular headsets. So after some trial and error I figured out which wire goes where. So maybe I'll save someone else the hassle by saying Pin 1-Blue wire, Pin 2-Red wire, Pin 3-Black, Grey, Ground wire. The yellow wire I think is for the switch or mic, and doesn't seem  to need to be hooked up if you're just using it for audio.

After all these years of travelling, I finally get to Japan! I have an 11 hour layover here,  and took the chance to get out of the airport and take the train into Tokyo. Shown below is the Sensoji Temple in the Asakusa area, apparently Tokyo's oldest temple. I apologize if the image is a bit hazy, since it rained  most of  the day, and I was continually trying to keep raindrops and condensation off the camera lens. Tucked away in a corner of the temple property far from the hundreds of visitors, I found the oldest building at the Senso-ji site, and the only building with an English explanation. This almost felt like a discovery to me in the midst of all the crowds, and there was even enough space for me to set up a self-timed tripod shot.

For those who  may want to do something similar on a Narita layover, I found this relatively easy to pull off. If you do a websearch for transport from Narita to Tokyo, you  will find that the train system is described as being rather intimidating, and I would have  to agree. However, there is pretty good signage in Japanese, Korean, and English, and I found the train and airport staff to be extremely helpful in getting me pointed in the right direction, even if our ability to communicate was limited. 

At the Asakusa station in Tokyo, the station attendant knew little English, but when I said, 'Narita?', he replied, "Narita airport?" a word he appeared to have memorized precisely for this kind of situation. He then looked at his watch and said, "11:50", jumped up, escorted me to the ticket machine, and punched in the correct options. This left me with just the task of (very quickly) putting in the appropriate amount of yen--1250 by the way--an grabbing my ticket. I thought about pulling out my cell phone to check the time, but based on the station attendant's air of urgency, I figured that might waste precious seconds. I grabbed my bags, checked through the wicket, and took about a half a second to scan the signs directing me to the right platform, before I felt a train blowing into the platform below. I ran down the stairs, and there it was. Jumped on with the doors closing seconds  later. One hour, fifteen minutes later, I was  back at the airport.

The other fortunate thing is that, completely by accident, I ended  up here on a Saturday. This meant the trains were mercifully uncrowded as you can see. Quite unlike what I had envisioned.

 

By the way, it is freezing here. I've got a toque on and a fleece jacket, and I'm still cold. OK realistically it is probably about 15 degrees but I am not warm. By afternoon the toque will come off and it will be pretty pleasant, but mornings are cool this time of year here. Also, another by the way, the thing I was afraid of has happened. That is that all that smoke in the air has somehow worked  its way into my sinuses, and I feel like my head is a balloon with too much air. A lot of complaining for one blog post, I know.

If you like street food, you would enjoy the thing I went to last night which is pretty much a weekly street food festival with dozens of vendors and hundreds of hungry people wandering up and down buying satay, fried noodles, soup. This particular vendor was selling a sticky rice pastry with mung bean, toasted on charcoal grill. Very tasty, and actually reminded me of something my grandmother used to make. There was even street food sushi. Although I don't know about eating street food sushi...

One of the many plants at the centre here which is used in agroforestry, in this case a young  fan palm.  It's like a little botanical garden here.  Very beautiful. The people are very nice too. And there's wifi all the time. Not really a very challenging place at all. For me in terms of living conditions that is. A huge amount of work has gone into building and maintaining this place. I just happen to be fortunate enough  to benefit from the result.

Today was a training day on participatory methods. This is a shot from the corner of the meeting area where we held the workshop to give you an idea of how things look from where I've been standing most of the day.

I  got to the meeting and back without any further head injuries. The meeting was with a  commmunity made  up of mainly migrants from Burma who have escaped their homeland because of war and injustice, only to  find themselves  in trouble with authorities here. People have been  arrested,  ways of earning a living are few. Many find themselves in day  labour jobs on large industrial  farms spraying dangerous chemicals or otherwise working under difficult conditions. Our partner here is working with an network of  NGO's to help this community gain  some kind of stability and legal status.