We have arrived safely on Sunday in our new home for the next 6 weeks, and today we began our first day of work! The field station is great, it feels like we’re basically in camp — 5 of us bunking in one room and 3 in another. The only difference is the mosquito nets to stop malaria… We also have a wonderful Brit along with us, Zoe, who is here to implement a vitamin program. Today we cleared a large area of jungle around the clinic in order to begin our tree nursery and grow medicinal plants around the area. We all wielded our first machetes and what a sight that was, (except Krislia who was a pro of course), but we actually made a lot of progress chopping down all of the larger plants. On another note, we’ve seen and held two snakes thus far (only one of them poisonous, don’t worry), and several tarantulas (we named one Celine). Walter is another huge spider who keeps watch over us in the Eating Palace. We also met the gracefully humble Doña Alicia, a sweet woman who will be imparting onto us her wealth of plant knowledge and different medicinal recipes. As a new addition to our project, we may be able to collaborate with WiRED International, an organization that creates and spreads learning modules on basic health and many different diseases or infections throughout developing countries completely free of charge. Gary, an accomplished and also humble man who came down the river with us for a few days is the founder, and he proposed that we create our own module on several different plants and their medicinal uses that could be both translated into several languages and used worldwide! ¡Que Suerte! (nuestra español está mejorando como pueden ver).

 

Alec & Krislia

 

(pictures to come if the internet will allow it 😉 )