L´Chaim!

I am at my favorite internet cafe in San Telmo, eschewing the stuffy computer room at my current hostel for a bright lights, big city kind of blogging experience. The past 10 days or so have been filled with a glorious end to my vibrant month on the jungle farm. A caravan of Kimberly and Marcelo´s friends showed up unexpectedly on Thursday, the day we had planned to have a party to celebrate the end of this month´s internship and my departure. Suddenly, we had a crowd including two young kids and a baby! It was awesome. We uncorked our fresh lemoncello, made sangria with jungle fruit, made naan and chapatis, turned our fresh ricotta into a delicious herby dip, and their friends made a bonfire and slowly barbecued ribs, steak and chorizo all evening. We had a dance party, Marcos came from up the road a few kilometers, and a lively time was had by all. Soledad, the mother of baby Estrella Azul, who is also a psychologist and a spiritual healer, informed me that she can ¨see¨my babies on my shoulders. Interesting, eh?? I went to bed before further party hijinx ensued and slept a delightful 10 hours. The next day it was POURING and everyone was stressed because we had done laundry the day before and nothing was dry, so there were no clean dry clothes for our trip to Puerto Iguazu. In spite of this moaning and groaning, the five of us ladies plus Kimberly embarked on a ladies spa day where we scrambled up to the waterfall, covered ourselves in medicinal mud, engaged in a hilarious photoshoot and giggled like little girls. It was awesome. We came back and their friends had decided to build a sauna. BUILD A SAUNA. Yep, just like that. Apparently they engage in regular sweating as part of a spiritual cleansing process. The sauna was up and working in about 6 hours! They built it out of wood and plastic (eck), covering the mud floor with thick grasses and ginger flowers. Outside they built a huge fire over a number of big stones. When the stones were sufficiently hot, they moved them inside. Each episode of sweating lasted 20 minutes. Alvaro would use boughs of rosemary, eucalyptus and ginger flower to sprinkle water on the stones and on the sweaters inside. All in all, a great last day at mama roja. I felt sad and excited to say goodbye to Kim and Marcelo, the kitties and dogs and green glowing beetles. K and M become friends and caretakers so quickly. Kim gave me a very sweet going away present of balms she had made in a beautiful pouch and a letter. I am going to work on getting CJ to go back with me one of these days...

We still had many hours to kill in town before our bus to the corner of the country, at Puerto Iguazu. So we spent them alternately in the gas station cafe and the casino, the two places that are open 24 hours in this tiny town. Oh casino, you suck royally. However, we did end up bowling for a while, which was a great way to pass the time. Our bus to Iguazu showed at 4am and we slept our way there. When I woke up at 9am i was COVERED with new bug bites. My left foot was quite swollen and it was a challenge to bend my right leg at the knee. (Of course today i met a cab driver who told me that Chagas disease is endemic to the Misiones area and so I should be careful building with mud and adobe. Now I probably have Chagas disease. Shit.) Choosing to ignore the incredible grossness that is sleeping on a filthy, bug infested bus, we set out in the heat of the morning to find a hostel. I will not say too much about our time at Puerto Iguazu, save for these two highlights:
1. Have you ever gone out with a 19 year old girl from the USA who doesn´t get to go clubbing at home?? Let me tell you, it´s an experience. Stamina like I do not have. On the first night, Hannah and I crashed around 2am, to be woken at 5am and 7am when our dear friends returned from a seriously debauched night. Undergarments and shoes were lost. Everyone was ok. I felt like a mother hen.
2. Iguazu Falls is an incredible sight. I have never been too impressed by waterfalls, but these babies are so much more than waterfalls. The sound! The feel! The rainbows! The mist! The monkeys! The coatis! It was much cooler than I expected.

I am so excited to head for home tomorrow!!!
lovelovelove you all.

Let´s talk about nature. Gorgeous, bizarre, noisy, vibrant nature. I haven´t been inside, really inside, for a month! Besides this delightful internet cafe, that is. I am always exposed to the elements, interacting with insects, feeling the rain and the humidity, the sun and the moonlight. It´s interesting to think about how we are so secluded from these powerful forces, creating our own days, nights and climates in our houses, cars, buses and offices. This past week all 5 of us have felt tired, really experiencing the pull not only of hard physical work, but also that of the rapid, almost manic changes in temperature and weather that the sub-tropics are known for. I feel very healthy but sort of out of whack. I look forward to hearing from my compatriots how they change and feel over the next two months. I am the only one leaving after just one month! A part of me would love to stay, in fact I planned on calling Cj this morning and letting him know that Kim and Marcelo have invited him to come and recommend that he just pop down here for March and live in the tent with me. But it´s a bit fantastical of a suggestion, I know. And as much as part of me would love to stay, a bigger part wants to go home and be me, this less anxious, more open, less frightened me with all of the people I love so much. PLUS Harper looks so much older, Julia has gone from wanting to be a ballerina to a scientist, Josie laughs and sits up and has teeth, Mary, Stephanie, Sharon, Annie, and Katie are all having babies, and Seattle is moving closer and closer to spring! Things change quickly. This comes to me everytime we plant seeds and in this intense climate, they sprout three days later. I can´t wait to go home and start seed beds in the basement! I have decided to start saving seeds as well and would love to do seed exchanges with any interested folks. I refuse to let Monsanto own all of the seeds in the world.






Making mortar to cover the bricks on our bathroom. The first time we did this we were all barefoot, gleefully stomping in the mud. However, I did not realize that the almost orgasmic feeling of the mud and sand and pine needles scratching my 27 bug bites would lead to oozing pain only moments later. Now we stomp with boots:








The bathroom is coming along! Check out the sweet brick arches in the back. This picture is a bit old, the wall is now twice as high and we will hopefully be laying the floor tomorrow. These two chambers are the composting chambers. We will build stairs out of earthbags around the side, and you will climb up to the height of my shoulders and walk into the room which will have a wood floor. These chambers will be underneath, 1-3 full of sawdust and leaves. Poop goes in till it´s full, closed off at the top and allowed to compost for a year while the other side is used. And so forth. Genius!! Plus there will be beautiful glass bottle designs and views into the forest from the pooper. I love beautiful bathrooms. The picture below is one of our dry composting toilets that we currently use. I am standing in the open doorway with jungle behind me. The walls are painted with natural paints and tiles are inlaid in the mud floor. The roof is green, hence the unearthly glow.

However. This tarantula lives in the bathroom. And just last night, Maggie informed us that there are now three tarantulas living in the bathroom. They slink into their little hidey-holes during the day and come out at night. Apparently they are harmless, but have been promoting constipation among the ranks.

A trip to the river with Marcos, and a picture of tobacco drying in his family´s barn.

As a continued tribute, below is Nestor, the late rooster. That´s Hannah holding him after we fed him whiskey. The second shot is plucking. I left the killing off the blog.



I couldn´t believe this butterfly. It´s not even the most patterned or complex, but it looks like Julia took him and spread green glitter glue all over his back and wings. So many beautiful creatures.

And this spider looked like Tim Burton´s inspiration...the photo does not do her justice.

Four more days on the farm and then the five of us are going to stay up all night bowling at the casino in Obéra before getting on a 3am bus to Iguazu Falls (enormous waterfalls - one of the new wonders of the world!) on the border with Brazil. We will spend three days there and then I will bid them adieu and head back to Buenos Aires on my final 20 hour bus ride.

And then, Seattle!

lovelovelove.

I cannot make this picture go away. I don´t know why. It´s just going to sit here, sideways.

A Tribute to Nestor

Nestor is the rooster we slaughtered yesterday morning. (Warning: some may not want to read this first section). A bit about his life first: Nestor was born at Mama Roja farm and attacked by another animal when he was very young, leaving him blind in one eye and particularly aggressive towards the other chickens. He was nursed and tenderly cared for by Kimberly but because of his aggression, had been kept in a cage, separate from the other chickens. Thus, Nestor was picked out of the 23 chickens and 4 roosters to go. We fasted him all day Wednesday, and got him drunk on cheap whiskey Thursday morning. Hannah was quick with the knife while Marcelo held him down against the board. He flapped terribly, but reportedly much less than when chickens are hung up to have their neck slit without being held. I was glad Hannah was interested in actually doing the cut, as I was afraid I would be timid and then hurt him more, since I have never seen or participated in the slaughter of an animal before, though I eat meat regularly. She appeared very fast and decisive but later showed me her raw, bloody finger from where the knife handle cut her skin from pressing down so hard, worried as she was for the same reason. I assisted in the immediate postmortem plucking, which is easy to do while their body is still warm. Some folks will immerse the chicken in hot water but this must smell terrible because they have a really foul, odor-producing glad on their tail. The dogs and cats circled with excitement, smelling fresh blood. Afterwards, Marcelo showed us how to clean out the body and identified all the organs. It was interesting to note the vibrant yellow of Nestor´s fat, reflecting his super healthy diet...it also made me think about the pale, greasy fat of the chicken I buy in the store...even organic chickens. The air felt heavy all the while as we contemplated what we were doing, recognizing the change in energy as well. It felt clinically interesting and simultaneously like a violation to be seeing all of these things inside his body even though the process of caring for and killing him felt particularly respectful. My lesson is still brewing.

I ate chicken liver and hardboiled eggs for lunch, ala Emily Holt, and was transported back to being 10 years old. Hannah, Maggie and Kim all tried it and declared it tasty. We made chicken soup for dinner, saved feathers for decoration and fed the dogs the innards after cleaning them well. We gave many thanks to Nestor yesterday.

I do not have a picture of Nestor yet, so I will share with you, Hubert, the kitchen toad:

That being said, our long-drop toilet is coming along well, we have almost finished the walls, which is SUPER exciting! I am hoping to get to see the completion of the main part of the structure before I leave next week. NEXT WEEK.

Endlessly sifting subsoil to make mortar:


Below is a picture of the earth bag base before we started building the brick walls:


Sasha, a new intern, came this week, after having to get her tonsils out and being waylaid a few weeks. We have been getting to know each other in new configurations and spending more time with Marcos, the Misiones local who is interning as well. Yesterday he took us to his family´s home where they grow maté and tobacco. He showed us how they dry tobacco and we met his ancient abuelo. His mother came out and looked at us in wonder, then said ¨Marcos, tenés TANTO compañeras!¨which means, ¨Marcos, you have so many female companions!!¨ He chuckled (he´s about 19, has never been out of the Misiones province, and already thinks the five of us are about as nutty as they come), then took us to the river where we danced and splashed and all tried to speak Spanish. In the afternoon we gathered eucalyptus leaves to add to the infusion we are currently making for a new insect repellant that has citronella, pennyroyal and eucalyptus. All of these things are so simple when you have access to the bounty of the jungle!

It´s so humid today, the internet cafe is a welcome respite from the feeling of sweat dripping down the backs of my legs. We are, however, going to go explore a local bird sanctuary and reptile center to learn about the fauna in the area. This week Kim saw a 2-meter long snake on the path to the waterfall, which definitely piqued my interest in learning who we´ve got in this area and how they behave. There is a bat that lives near my tent and my wolf-spider still crawls up under the rainfly to catch trapped moths at night. Luckily he has been staying OUTSIDE the tent, so we coexist peacefully. Once of the most bizarrely beautiful things I have seen happens when you shine a light (usually cj´s headlamp) onto the grass at night and you see dozens of glittering blue gems that, on closer inspection, reveal themselves to be the eyes of spiders! It´s really lovely. Hannah stumbled across one that had way more sparkles than usual and realized that it´s back was completely covered with babies! Little sparkly-eyed spider babies.

This is the town of Obéra, where I sit typing:

Most farm days are still full of building, planting seeds in the garden, reading, swimming, cooking, chatting, and swinging in the hammock. This week we made lemoncello (italian lemon liquor), banana bread, olive and sundried tomato bread, and many, many terérés. Teréré is the maté drink of Northern Argentina and Paraguay, and it´s COLD. Oh yumyumyum. Instead of just pouring water over it, we pour fresh squeezed orange juice. It´s awesome.

All photo credit goes to Hannah, who diligently uploads her pictures to her laptop and allows me to borrow them for this blog, as my camera still refuses to play nice with Argentinian computers. Thank you, Hannah. More pictures to come!

I love you guys.

A rumble from the jungle

The jungle is so outstandingly alive.

I am not used to coexisting so close to so many different visible forms of life. It´s becoming increasingly amazing, now that i am less afraid of snakes and spiders and burrowing bugs. Last night as I went through my bedtime routine of shaking off the tarp that covers my tent by the light of cj´s headlamp, quickly undoing my sandals, unzipping the tent partway and diving into the safety of a bug free sleeping area, I accidently allowed a ginormous wolf spider in with me. I turned around to put on my jammies and saw him hanging out on my sleeping pad. Instead of screaming and creating a world of trouble for both of us, I just unzipped, thrust the sleeping pad out the door, and he crawled off into the night, thankyouverymuch. Those of you who have experienced my relationship with insects will appreciate the growth indicated by this interaction.


That being said, the bites on my body are out of control. I have learned to love plantain balm (not the banana kind of plantain but a green plant that grows down here and is very soothing on stings and bites) and to stop scratching.

It feels overwhelming to post because so much happens every day on the farm. This week we have begun building our long drop dry composting toilet. We spent a day digging soil to fill polypropylene bags, which we then laid out and tamped down to create a very solid foundation. We then spent many hours sifting soil (wet and claylike because of all the humidity), then mixing with sand and dried needles to create a mortar. Using leftover adobe bricks (unbaked, just sundried), we built the wall that will separate the two lower composting chambers of the toilet. Then it started raining. Next week we keep building up! Stairs and pooping seats (and pictures), here we come!!

I found a tiny egg the other day. Thank you, chickens.

In addition to the learning and the working we have been resting and creating...teaching each other songs, sharing interesting books, climbing waterfalls, naked bathing in the river and mushroom hunting.


I have fallen in love with a kitten named Conan who is a sweetheart but becomes rabid when hunting butterflies and mice. Can you imagine him with a blood-smeared face??


To the left is our neiThis sweet beast is Lulu. The eternal puppy.



I still haven´t seen an armadillo. I do not appear to have any botfly larva.

Rainy day from the Mama Roja kitchen

Maggie, Hannah and Kayla. While I napped in the hammock, they wove hats out of long grass. Such lovely women:

Fence building

It is certainly being an eye-opening adventure. In addition to flowers, medicinal plants, insects and animals, my eyes have been opened to the delights of things like mushrooms:





And, synergistically, the day after these photos were taken I spoke with CJ who informed me he had just gone mushroom hunting with a group of friends. I love these quasi-coincidences...we are planning to take a mushroom class when I get home. Then I will have to ask some of my former workmates to take me foraging with them!!

Town days are sweet in their own way, I finally got to talk with mom and skyped with Cj, which is always hilarious and loving and makes me miss him and home while appreciating this time even more.

Till next time!

¡Mama Rojaaaaaaaaaa!

Mama Roja.


Paradise.


Eden.

Heaven on earth.



Whatever you call it, here life is so simple and so beautiful, i am in love. In love with Mama Roja. All my fears were for naught, I never could have anticipated how much I would enjoy this lifestyle. Three of the interns canceled so it is a small group of lovely, intelligent north american women, four of us in all plus an Argentinian guy who is becoming a park ranger and will be working with us to build a long drop dry composting toilet next week. Plus Marcelo and Kimberly, Mama Roja´s keepers. They are vibrant, passionate, and hilarious. We also share the farm with a mama kitty and one of her kittens, Amacita and Conan, and two dogs, Lulu and Rambo (who has no teeth and thus leaves his tongue hanging out all day). There are 23 chickens and a few roosters, thousands of butterflies the size and beauty of which i have NEVER seen before, dragonflies in green, blue and red, birds, ducks, armadillos (yet to be seen by my eyes), and some of the most insane insects I have ever been near. But very few mosquitos!!!



Lessons:

1. Poop is amazing. The bathroom is this beautiful adobe structure with recycled glass bottle inserts and open air on top and side. The floor has beautiful tile mosaics. The toilet is a 5 gallon bucket (ala Christian camping trips), that you put a bit of sawdust in. The bag of sawdust lives next to the toilet. You do your pooping and peeing, cover with sawdust. There is ZERO smell in the bathroom and no flies. It´s incredible. When the bucket is full, you take it out, cover it and walk it over to the HUMANURE compost pile. There are two bins. One is active, where you dig a hole in the middle with a shovel (steam pours out), open the bucket and dump in the hole. Then you cover with dry matter like leaves. Once again, no smell. The second bin looked to be about 1-3 full of gorgeous, rich compost. They let the active bin sit for a minimum of 6 months after it is full of poo and dry matter in order to go through the three stages of composting. Kimberly says they actually let theirs cure for 1 year. Then they use it to fertilize their amazing gardens. I LOVE HUMANURE. All the possible pathogens are broken down in the super hot thermophilic second stage of composting. They also put all the food scraps in this compost pile, or sometimes in the non-humanure piles near the garden. I read a book yesterday called ¨let it rot¨which is all about composting and a great read.



Bugs. There are bugs here called Botflies. Ever heard of them?? I hadn´t. Emily Baier, this is for you: These flies generally live on dogs that lie around all day like Rambo. However, they also like stinky clothes. The kind of stinky clothes we each generate daily sweating like little piglet girls while we work in the sun. If you hang your stinky clothes on the clotheslines the botflies like to land on them and lay their eggs. If you then wear your stinky egg-filled clothes, they BURROW INTO YOUR SKIN AND HATCH INTO LARVA THAT YOU HAVE TO SQUEEZE OUT. Apparently a previous intern got them in her labia. In her LABIA (or shamelips, in Holland). Needless to say, I am washing the bejesus out of my clothes before hanging them up and then closely inspecting my panties before putting them on. Ew. There are other bugs that burrow into your toes near your nails but there is no hatching larva so they worry me less.



Plus the amazing jungle humidity heals everything quickly! At home my bites last days and here they are gone in a day. My hair is super curly and my skin very glowy and moist.



Five days with no coffee, meat, booze and I feel pretty good. I had a headache the first few days (coffee), but feel like i have detoxed from buenos aires. Now that we have made this trek to town to email and call our loved ones I think I will stock up on chocolate to share. We eat all our meals together, beautiful food from the garden and from other local farmers. Yesterday we made yogurt from fresh warm milk that our neighbor cow gave. We have eggs from the chickens and may even slaughter one this week and have chicken soup!!

Oh, yes. The chickens. Yesterday I learned how to tell if a chicken is laying eggs yet, or stopped laying eggs (we are going to slaughter one that has stopped). You turn them over and look at their ëgg hole¨. If it´s moist and pink and open, they are laying. If it´s yellow and dry, they have stopped laying. If it´s really little and dry, they haven´t started yet. It felt awfully invasive but also really interesting .



Also (sister!!), thanks to Cj´s leatherman, i whittled my own set of new double pointed needles. AND THEY WORK. I think they are beautiful. So it doesn´t matter that LANChile took my knitting needles. Because i can make my own. Which feels amazing, amazing, amazing.



This week the plan is to build a new foundation for the little house on mama roja and then insulate the walls. IT was built out of wood leavings a few years ago and thus has very poor insulation. We are going to use some cement to make a vapor barrier between the earth and the floor of the house (since it´s so humid), and then remove every other wood beam and pack the space between the walls with mud and sand. Exciting!! Then we are going to build this long drop tower toilet where instead of having to dump the buckets in a separate compost bin, you poop on top of the compost pile but it´s really far below you so not too gross (ideally). It´s built with two sides so that when the first fills, you just seal it off an dlet it work it´s composting magic while using the other side. IT has little doors at the bottom so when the compost is done, you just scoop it out! We are also going to make some balms and liniment for cuts and stings, liquor out of TOMATILLOS (what!!?), learn batik and go to an ëcological festival¨tonight, which actually sounds like a big outdoor party with bands and beer. So much for detoxing :) The only minor disappointment is that since we are all from the US, everyone is speaking English! I am hoping that now that we have spent some time getting to know each other pretty well we can slog through the process of learning spanish together, because everyone says they want to. Marcelo, who is Argentinian, has recommended that we have dinner and evenings in spanish only, so that should help.



In five days I have learned so much about how to live without all of the things I formerly thought were necessary. Cj and Bre and I have talked a lot about buying land together in Washington and building a home. Now i know this is possible and will not involve half the hassle we anticipated! I feel really excited to create a mama roja-esque home for myself, my family, friends and everyone who appreciates this way of living or wants to learn. Who´s in???!!



I love you.

Last few hours in the big city

My sweet housemates took off this morning. One has left to fly home to Denmark, and the other is now on a bus to continue her 5 months of travel through Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Brazil. It feels so melancholic and beautiful to make a new home, get so close, and then leave it all to go on to something new. Fittingly, it´s cool and raining today, and the city feels sleepy after the hot madness of Sundays in our barrio of San Telmo. I finally realized that the concert I hear every Sunday morning until 12pm is actually the very musical and devout congregation from a huge Mars Hill-esque church on the other side of my street. Mystery solved.

Lessons from this week:

The word ¨che¨in Argentina loosely means, ¨hey, you, guy!¨As such, Che Guevara being a man of the people, was regularly addressed with this slang. It stuck, forming his nickname.

The word ¨labia¨in Dutch directly translates to english as ¨shame lips.¨And ¨placenta¨? That´s a ¨mother cookie.¨

I get way too excited when speaking in Spanish to remember all of my grammar but people seem to understand me anyway.

It is possible to get sick of steak, even if it is the most incredibly succulent steak you have ever had.

The Delta of Tigre is a fabulous place. Don´t let anyone talk you out of going there. Take a boat out to the island of Tres Bocas with a picnic and just spend the day enjoying the closest place BA has to paradise: the porteño vacation spot of gorgeous sun, verdant greenery, murky hikes, and refreshing silty river swimming.

I have a new addiction to Dulce de Leche (caramel. Caramel. CARAMEL), smeared on anything, eaten with a spoon, as an ice cream flavor, stuffed in a croissant, on my fingers. Oh lord. It´s the sweetest stuff in the world, and so, so good.

Being able to laze around in your apartment reading, writing, and drinking iced bubbly water until someone rings your doorbell and invites you out to dinner is a freaking SWEET way to live.

I love school.

I love hearing about all of your beautiful adventures. How many new homes, babies (and babies-to-be!), new friends and partners, achievements, excitements, and all the boring stuff that makes a day. Thank you for continuing to share your lives with me. It helps me feel so much closer!

I have a second job interview when i come home in March! :)

I love you guys.

Farmtime!

The city shakes at 6 o´clock!

The posts start to trail off as the days become more routine and the quotidien doesn´t feel like anything to write home about...Things of course have become more comfortable and usual, even though with the eye of a traveler and an outsider, even the smallest things still feel exciting. It´s so much easier to have constant curiosity about everything while away and take it all for granted when home. I am a curious person in general, but I feel like I´ve been clammed up for a few years, taking things in, observing, analyzing, and protecting myself without offering in the way I would like. This trip, thus far, has been exactly what I was hoping for: an opportunity to get out of myself and my own world and just let down some walls. I feel so excited. SO, so excited to be me, here, now, which is a delight, a surprise, a gift, and a privilege. I am hoping that my time on the farm, which is fast approaching, will allow me the space to think more about how to maintain this better balance of myself in my cozy, beautiful, home.

Last night was magnificent. My housemates, a local couple, and a few of my classmates took a train out of town to Olivos to attend my first Peña Folklorica; a big, happy festival celebrating the roots of Argentinian music and dance. The buildup to the event made it all the better: A long train ride, a walk by the river, dinner and drinks...post dinner fatigue, meeting up with another group of new people by the side of the road, the dark walk to a dingy looking playing field past which we entered a small building and burst out into a beautiful courtyard strung with lights and full of people who love music, dance, and Argentina. We learned a number of dances like the chacarera and el gato, drank wine, talked to dozens of people (in spanish!!) and danced, danced, danced until 4am. The dances were often partner dances but done in large groups, sometimes circular, sometimes it felt like we were just running around wildly, laughing and losing our breath. But out of this kind of dancing comes the most delicious energy.

It was very weird to wake up at 2pm to the sounds of the San Telmo street market. Now, at 6 o´clock, there are more bands in the street and everyone has come out to explore after the heat of the day has passed. 32 celsius but it feels atrocious in the afternoon.

School continues to be fun and interesting, my teacher, Alejandro, is pretty hardcore and simultaneously funny, but most importantly a great teacher. I only have 2 classmates which means we each get a lot of practice time and individual instruction. My grammer improves daily.

ALSO, I have a job interview! For a job in Seattle that sounds so, so perfect. I am trying to set up a phone interview with them this week, so wish me luck!

love and socks.