In which Tim updates you...

I descend from my mountain abode to update my faithful readers. I rode on the back of a motorcycle through a rain storm, and waited on a street corner for half an hour to squeeze myself into a van to ride along the sea shore for another hour, and now I am here. I have been living on my mountain for about two and a half weeks now, and I am learning how to adjust to life way out there in the country. Forgive me if my English is a little sticky. I have not used it for about a week.

Many of you have asked for more details regarding the work I will be doing, so here it goes. I am partnered with a small NGO that tries to help poor rural farming communities improve their situations a little bit. I am living in one of the main communities where they work, and I think my job will be to sort of serve as the eyes and ears of the organization, looking for new opportunities to help them do what they do. I am connected with a local farming association, and will probably use that as a jumping off point for work with soil erosion, organic fertilizers, and environmental youth activism.

For the first few months I am working on a diagnostic project. I am trying to go door to door in my community, meeting with each family to introduce myself and get to know them. In the process I am tabulating things like level of income, source of income, number of kids, level of education, etc. When I finish getting the numbers together I will probably post it all so that you get some kind of idea of what the basic situation is here.

Most days I get up around seven, drink some strong coffee, and visit with the family for a bit. Then I might go for a walk, or out with some of the farmers to learn about pruning coffee trees or harvesting cocoa. I have seen a few pigs butchered already. When the sun is nice and high I go back to my house and try to get some work done. At night there is usually a game of dominoes to be won. It´s not a bad little routine. We´ll see how it evolves as I find things to do.

Stay tuned!