Entries about people

Another month down, and I’ve come to own up to the progress we’ve made on our permaculture project in Panama. It seems each week Glenavon on the Lake takes more shape, becomes more inspired and inspiring at once, and provides us with great senses of accomplishment, surprise, wonderment, sweaty fatigue and camaraderie.

In late May/early June, some major things happened around the place, both agriculturally and communally. We began taking in both crops and volunteers regularly, including Emma’s father, a man with a paintbrush always in hand. We’ve widened our scope of what we can already use from the property. We’ve survived mango season. I’ve begun a new writing gig for the site of permaculture legend Geoff Lawton. Things are officially in full motion.

Thusly, to limit my ramblings, I will do something all online writers must become accustomed to doing: I’ll report this progress via list, a la David Letterman’s Top Ten.

1. Started eating leaves.

Salad greens do not readily grow in the heat of the tropics, so we’d been largely lacking in the salad category, which is perhaps odd for vegans. As a result, Emma has become a leaf wizard, scoping out everything from bean leaves (used like spinach) to papaya leaves (medicinal tea) to several salad leaf substitutes, like hibiscus, cranberry hibiscus, moringa and okra—yes, okra—leaves. And, we’ve also gone crazy with the fresh herbs from last month’s herb spiral. We eat fresh herbs every day now.

2. Volunteer much

The volunteer program is in full swing now, with spots booked up through mid-August. We are currently on our third couple in a row, which will make for six weeks’ worth of volunteers. So far, we’ve had Matt and Charlene from France (experts in kitchen and titans of the cashew nut); Luke and Julie from England and France, respectively (swimming gurus and premier sidewalk cleaners); and currently George and Grace from Cornwall (masters of hard work and now worm bed specialists). It’s been really fun hanging out, sharing a little chitchat and veganism.

3. The Food Forest(s)

We are building two small food forests, one in the front and another in the back of the property, and they are both really showing progress. In the back, what we call the garden gully, we know have five magic circles, two for plantains, one for papayas, one for bananas, and one unclaimed as of yet. They are stuffed with other crops as well, including yucca, sweet potato, ñamé (a cross between yucca and sweet potato), pepper, taro, and hibiscus. In the front, the beds we’ve constructed between existing trees—lime, macadamia nut, moringa and water apple—are bustling with activity and bearing fruits and beautifully full plants.

4. Writing On

I did not expect that Panama would revolutionize my writing career, but it has. Veering off my travel-writing tableau, I’ve landed two great gigs in new invigorating genres. Last time we were here, in February, I managed to land my gig with One Green Planet (over 50 articles now), still one of my favorite websites, all about veganism, activism, conservation, and animal rights. It really feels like writing with purpose. And, now, upon our return, I’ve become part of one of the great permaculture websites out there, and it looks like I’ll be able to contribute regularly to Permaculture News as well. Suddenly, the money I’m making writing is becoming an actual wage.

5. The Communal Area

We’ve worked very hard to create a cool communal space for us and the volunteers to hang out in. It has become more and more what we want. There are drying leaves hanging around, a ping-pong table, different funky colors for each wall, plantlife encroaching from all sides, a WiFi hotspot, couches and easy chairs, a beer fridge, a book exchange, a psychedelic mural in progress, great views in both directions, a semi-outdoor kitchen area, jars of snacks everywhere (dried mango and coconut bacon), and more and more every week. It’s working.

6. Lawn Mowing Success

We have a unique agreement with Alan and Angelika: The property is divided in half by a sidewalk, with one side being free reign for our experimentation and the other being maintain like a normal lawn. After they left, I discovered the lawn mower (which I didn’t want to use for fossil fuel reasons anyway) was in bad condition. Consequently, we splurged with our first budget and bought an old-fashion roto-mower. It cuts the grass in an appropriately wild way that I like, and we’ve been able to make composting/mulching use of the clippings from it. The lawn looks good, but even better, it’s serving the gardens.

7. “Ice Cream”

With our crazy abundance of mangoes over the last couple of months, we’ve had to get inventive with them. Jams, chutneys, smoothies, salads, and juices just weren’t getting it done. Emma came up with an awesome ice cream that has stolen the show over the last couple of weeks. Lots of mango blended with one banana then frozen. Take it out to thaw before dinner and blend it one more time before eating it. With or without coconut milk, I’d say it stacks up, only its 100% raw fruit.

8. Parental Visitation #1

Emma’s father Tony came to visit for three weeks and really got into his inner hippie, which is a lot for an ex-military man who still irons his Bermuda shorts. He stayed on a true vegan diet the whole time, even when meat was available on our outings to Panama City. He chipped in to the communal effort, volunteering for his keep and consorting with the riffraff (us). At the end, he even went full on wild child and painted our outdoor fridge and freezer in a multi-colored swirl straight from the 1960s, even though he said, in the 1960s, he hated the 60s.

9. The Greenhouse

The greenhouse in the front of the property has been in a perpetual state between somewhat finished and chaos since the first week we arrived. It is finally shaping up into something fantastic. There is a roof. Compost bins are rolling. We have beds everywhere, and they are full of food—black-eyed peas, mung beans, brown beans, cucumber, hibiscus, tomatoes, kale, passion fruit, Malabar spinach, and whatever else Emma has conjured up (one strong-willed chia plant). The tables are stocked with seedlings, including several fruit trees for our food forest. There is fencing around it to keep the dogs out. And, the latest addition is a worm bed, something we’d put off but that has been in the plan for months now.

10. Harvesting!

We are actually starting to really get food from our garden. We eat fruit from it everyday, and sometimes our entire bowl of morning fruit comes from Glenavon! We are collecting okra, jalapenos, beans, mangoes (still), water apples, avocadoes, cucumbers, cantaloupe, papayas, peppers, the occasional tomato, watermelons, the aforementioned leaves and the occasional sweet potato. We are actually growing a noticeable portion of our own food well before we expected to be. Granted, some trees were already in place, but we’re only two months in. It feels like it’s off the ground and real.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed the rundown. I’ve certainly enjoyed living it. Don’t be afraid to drop us a line or even to invite yourself on down if it so suits you. We accept volunteers, but I do recommend contacting us first. Until then, maybe just join us on Facebook at Glenavon on the Lake and keep yourself in the know.

We’d gauged the time a little loosely and arrived at the bus station, Ofelia, in the north end of Quito, with less than ten minutes to find our bus to Las Tolas. The stakes were high because, unlike other places, buses for Las Tolas leave once a day at 5:30 pm (they depart Las Tolas once a day as well, at 6:30 am) We asked the turnstile attendant, who pointed us towards a waiting line of coaches, with probably five-plus minutes to spare.

However, our problems were not over. Standing on the sidewalk, I stared back and forth from the placards in the buses’ front windows to the scribbled directions—on the back of a supermarket receipt—in my hand. We were supposed to take the Las Minas bus until its last stop: Las Tolas. To my left was a bus with a “Minas” placard. To my right was a bus with a “Las Tolas” placard. Neither Emma nor I knew what to make of it all.

With time short and a-wasting, we opted for Las Tolas. Sitting in the bus, we discussed in strained whispers whether we’d made the right choice. Then, at the last minute, we leapt off, deciding the “Minas” bus was better. Then, thirty seconds later, after grilling the bus attendant and driver, we boarded the Las Tolas bus again, watching the “Minas” bus disappear. There was no turning back.

When you … when one … when we hop a bus to a distant (two and a half hours) rural village in the cloud forests of Ecuador, not knowing where exactly our “last stop” is going to leave us, or with whom, it’s hard to not spend the next two and a half hours worrying, especially when paved road gives way to bumpy gravel—let’s call them—bus/wagon trails that the massive coach is cornering about plunging cliffs in the dark.

At the penultimate stop, a lady came up and asked us if we were going to Las Tolas. She was Cecilia, the matron of the family we were traveling to meet. Emma and I looked at each other, exhaled into smiles, and finally unclenched our tightened gluts. Later, we admitted we both been playing out what-if scenarios in our heads, mine involving pitching our tent alongside the road, hers being taken by some kind local.

Whatever the case, it was official: We were headed in the right direction. Thank Dios.

Cultural Connect[: We were later informed that the name of the bus company we used was “Las Minas” and that the instruction meant to take the Las Minas company bus to Las Tolas. No one seemed to know there was, in fact, a town called Minas. Another end of the line country town, likely as remote and small Las Tolas, it’s no wonder they had no idea that the neighboring bus would have caused so much confusion.

Forget How to Get There. Why Were We on that Bus?

For those who have not happened upon the website of a tiny NGO affiliated with the village of Las Tolas, there is little to no reason to have heard of the place. Truthfully, as we’ve established, it is at the end of a bus ride to the middle of nowhere in the mountains of northern Ecuador. There is no sea nearby, no hot springs or markets. There are no hotels, only one tiny restaurant, and neither WiFi. nor ATMs to be found. However, I’d been really looking forward to seeing the place.

For most who follow this blog, or the Jonathon Engels travel train in general, you are aware that about six months ago I launched a website called The NGO List. On this website, an NGO is featured each month. In the beginning, I wrote these features but have since been encouraging NGO affiliates to write their own accounts of organizations. In early March, just about a month before my first trip to Ecuador, a representative submitted a profile of her experience of Las Tolas.

Within a week of reading it, I’d signed us—Emma did agree—up for a week—in fact, our last week of vacation*—of volunteering.

*Though the expat, long-term traveling life does seem a bit like a permanent vacation, we do get jobs quite regularly and often juggling fairly demanding positions. We just typically do it in really nice place, like our upcoming (15 April-15 Oct) lakeside caretaking gig in Arenosa, Panama. We’ll be transforming a beautiful property into a food jungle. And, we are accepting work-trade volunteers interested in helping.

Back to Las Tolas: When the bus finally stopped for good, Cecilia led us a little further into the darkness, along a road turned muddy from invierno (literally translated as winter, equatorially meaning rainy season). Her house—our house for the next week—was a small wooden abode, with a kitchen of the front and a bathroom out of the back, with living room devoid a furniture save a plastic patio chair facing a small TV, and with a husband (Edgar), two teenagers (Alexis and Pamela), and a Chihuahua (Cookie). Upon our arrival, Edgar was laboring over a pot of soup. We were shown to a private bedroom where we could unload our bags. It was good to be temporarily home.

Cultural Connect: As vegetarians before and now as vegans, Emma and I generally avoid homestays; however, we were assured it was no worry. Though slightly bewildered by the no dairy aspect (a lot of local income is from milking cows), Edgar and Cecilia understood well and quickly. Our diet and concern of what to feed us, nevertheless, became the talk of the town. By Friday, we witnessed the neighbors across the street escorting a pig to its death. The squeals were frantic but quick. As we walked down the street a little later, the corpse was in the yard, a man with a blowtorch burning the hair off it, strengthening our resolve all the better.

A Little Slice of Life Laboring in Las Tolas

In Las Tolas, the mornings are a not unwelcomed cacophony of cockerels, fighting it out for territory. Each house seems to have a multitude of roosting boxes for the free-running fowl that chase each other in and out of the downward slopping backyards. Seeking morning bladder relief, it’s hard not to stop and look out over the clouds misting through the treetops as the sun burns off the veil of night…really dark night.

Breakfast was an interesting variation everyday. It usually consisted of Edgar and Cecilia running a little late for the bus (they work out of town), but they’d taken the time to prepare us something. The something was usually atypical breakfast food: mashed potatoes and salad or sautéed cabbage with peas and carrots. It was a sincerely endearing and much appreciated effort to feed us well, and honestly, Emma and I are seriously considering making breakfast with a wider range of ingredients in the future.

Cultural Connect: The funniest breakfast dish actually was a bit more traditional, for both cultures. In Ecuador, it’s common to prepare oatmeal as a thick breakfast drink, boiling it then filtering the oats out. It’s custom to ad a little citrus, cinnamon, and panela (a local sugar thing). When we asked what it was called, Cecilia told us Qua-care, pointing to a package on the shelf, a little man in a black and white suit on the front. We knew him as the Quaker man. There was no other name for the drink.

Daily task vary, from projects that seem solely for the travelers experience to laborious adventures in volunteering. They take place in the mornings, organized somewhat loosely the night before and rearranged by the time they get underway.

• Day one found us filling about 400 bags with soil—beautiful, rich soil with a fine mix of organic matter—to aid a reforestation project. The community’s main source of income used to be wood. Now, through the community is working to plant trees to connect to sections of jungle that were separated. While working, we had rousing games of memory and taboo, in Spanish, with our local little sister, Pamela, and the other volunteers.
• On day two, Emma and I hopped in the back of a milk truck with massive metal storage tanks rattling and tilting all around us. We arrive some thirty minutes outside of town to Luis, our boss for the day, milking Frisian cows along the roadside. Later, he leads us into the jungle to work on some trails his making in hopes of guiding tours for bird-watchers. Las Tolas is in a cloud forest well-stocked with notable birds, including quetzals.
• Day three, we spent the morning at an event at a nearby village, a joint effort of all the surrounding pueblos to come together. To our delight, the culminating activity was a contest to see who made the best outfit from trash. In the afternoon, we got work with a local artisan who collects, processes (milling, coloring, polishing, etc) her own seeds for beads. We made our moms souvenirs.
• On Saturday morning, we followed Edgar, the paterfamilias, down to the community vegetable patch where we—Edgar, the children, Emma, and I—tilled up a steep hillside of earth, sorting through seeds and ultimately planting a row of potatoes and a bed of mixed salad vegetables. When we asked about who would get to eat it all, we learned the garden was to feed future volunteers.

Cultural Connect: For some reason, I always imagine the life of a Latin American campesino to be one of endless toil and struggle, a no rest for the weary existence, but on Saturday afternoon, Edgar set of to play an extremely odd game called National Ball with a regular group of friends. That night, our last, we shared a couple of beers with Cecilia. Edgar came home a little loopy from after-game festivities and delighted in the fact that we could all sleep in the next day—until 8:00. We woke up to plantain empanadas for breakfast.

Friends Forever

Facebook gets a bad rap, and I have to say it is probably sometimes deserved. Friendships have become a little more passé, reduced to status updates and Likes of encouragement. However, as a traveler, the site has been an amazing bridge for maintaining passé friendships that would otherwise likely dwindle away. I’d heard Facebook mentioned around town a few times in our week at Las Tolas.

As we waited for the bus—keep in mind, there is only one a day to keep the town connected to the world—Cecilia gave us a card thanking us for visiting. She included her Facebook contact. And, on the bus, on his way to some other tiny town nearby, Luis sat across the aisle, finally inquiring: “Tiene Facebook?” And, I guess that’s how life is rural Ecuador these days: Physically cut off but newly plugged in.

First, as is the protocol with my new blog theme, let me establish my age, hence inherent wisdom, by making note that I remember when the Michael J. Fox film, The Secret of My Success, was in theaters, after which it was released on both BETA and VHS video systems, after which it was a regular feature on USA cable network as a Saturday afternoon cinema feature. To have survived this long, to have survived what would seem to be several viewings of The Secret of My Success, I must have some insight into this world, into the very fabric of life, and, indeed, into success itself.

Of late, there has been a lot of talk around our dinner table about Ming’s next step in life. Ming is the 21 year-old volunteer with whom we’ve spent the last few weeks. She is set to graduate in the coming year, possibly with a minor in communications if her scheduling qualms can be smoothed out. Either way, she is caught in a huge internal (and, it would seem, external) debate as to whether she should take a job at a company she really likes in her hometown or pack off to live in Nashville for a while (she has a friend there and is an immense country pop fan).

I have weighed in heavily on the side of Nashville, encouraging her to spread her wings before nestling into a career type position somewhere, the idea being that once you start a career in California it’s difficult to take off for Nashville for a few months to a year and a half. I’m in a privileged enough position that Ming actually respects my thoughts on her future, though I’ve known her for only a few weeks and, until I began housesitting a couple weeks ago, I was living in a pretty filthy open-air loft above a communal kitchen, where she stays now.

So, that got me to thinking about success, as I would assume that’s what Ming is chasing and what I meant to be steering her towards. Just what is it…success? It’s a question most of us have been pondering since we were first accosted by guidance counselors in high school. It’s a question that eludes crisp answers, an answer that defies uniformity, and a ponderance that only reinvents itself throughout a lifetime. Still, it’s something we all must consider because...well, why else would those guidance counselors have jobs?

Oddly enough, I consider myself successful, and somehow Ming must, too. I say odd because I’ve currently got no income, no job, and no prospects of acquiring either any time soon. I’m wearing a pair of shorts so old I’ve had to give up sewing them back together, yet I’m still wearing them and in public at that. I’ve never made more money than the year I spent serving tables full-time in Memphis when I was 22. I’m typing on computer that was hand-me-down from my mom, which she paid to ship to me. I have a beard that hasn’t been trimmed in months. Yesterday, one of my household duties was emptying a bucket full of my own (and Emma’s) feces. I have about 10 tattoos of lizards because, at 16, I wanted to be Jim Morison (“The Lizard King”) and, at some point when I was over that, I couldn’t decide on a different tattoo theme. Point being, on paper (or via blog), I can come off looking pretty low on the totem pole of success.

So, then, what’s with all the cockiness? Here’s my secret: My one great success is that I’ve avoided all the trappings of “success”. I’ve managed to live out the idealistic fantasies of college sophomores in which life is never reduced to a cubicle, choices are not based on money or mortgages, and I don’t have to wear a “monkey suit” (Just ask Bryant, my last boss, who has hired me multiple times despite my belief that new Crocs classify as dress shoes.) Most of my possessions are in a couple of backpacks that can be flung anywhere to set up home, and they can be repacked just as quickly. I have a wife who, not only tolerates such an existence, but also she actually encourages it and wears clothes in much worse condition than mine (and in horrendous combinations). In effect, we never grew up, not in the traditional sense of successful adults.

Despite a lifetime of adolescent hijinks, and even though I do on occasion stop to work so that I can afford not to work for a while longer, and although I haven’t had an air conditioner or reliable hot shower or my own mode of transportation for years (I did have a bike back in 2008), and in spite of a fashion sense on par with a bum with a bag full of used clothes or the fact that maintaining a blog is one of my most serious undertakings, and though I’ve given up meat and factory-farmed dairy products (basically all of it!) because I still maintain the political scrappiness of a university student, I thoroughly enjoy my life, feel intensely fulfilled and when it bottoms out, don’t even have to stretch the truth to mean it when I say that, for me, it’s better than any alternative I’ve ever seen. And, believe me, I’ve seen a lot.

Unfortunately, at times, I’ve caught myself being too heavy-handed in our lunch and dinner discussions of Ming’s next step, and no doubt, it is deeply rooted in my sense of success. Hell, at different points in my life, I was a couple of years away from being an engineer at Exxon in Baton Rouge, a freshman comp teacher at a junior college in Mississippi, and even—impressed with prolific income back in 2002—a professional server in Memphis. I suppose when I look at her considering a job based in her hometown, I can’t help but imagine myself along one of those other routes in life, routes that aren’t so obliging to strapping on the backpacking and walking into something new.

However, as we say, success is different for everyone. In The Secret of My Success, our hero learns that climbing the corporate ladder, even when skipping a few rungs, isn’t all its cracked up to be, and I suppose, when looking at my current state of affairs, I took that lesson to heart. I guess, with Ming being a little too young for the great life guidance of 80s cinema, I’ve found myself in the precarious place of having to relay those messages, only without funky soundtracks and feathered bangs. This poor generation, where are they going to learn to be homeless, jobless nomadic penny-pinchers with poor grooming habits and the ability to cook from scratch? This world has gone to shit (quite literally here at Totoco Farm), and poor Ming, she’s the one holding the shovel.

On that note, stayed tuned for next week's installment: Composting Complexities.

I’m getting older. Not old, but older. Generally, when I’m in a hostel, unless some old creepy guy is hanging around (which possibly could be me—I don’t know) or there is a family, I’m likely the oldest person there, sometimes somehow by about a decade. The age disparity is usually enough to either make me keep my distance and say a small prayer for a little quiet when it’s bedtime, which for me is often early enough to hope no one notices me slip off. Or, it puts me in the position of being discovered and immodestly distributing facts in sage-like fashion, siting how things were “back then” or “when I was there”, like an out-of-date Lonely Planet.

Just before Emma and I left Guatemala this autumn, we spent two weeks helping out around Earth Lodge, which the owners Drew and Bri have generously let us consider home. The crop of reception volunteers there at the time were amongst the youngest we’d seen, with two of them fresh out of their teens. One of these two twenty-year-olds regularly developed crushes on local bad boys (tatooists and musicians), and the other kept making reference to Emma and I being like the parents of the bunch, so far as to say that she wished we were her parents. It was horrifying to calculate that it would have been a shotgun situation but entirely possible.

This place I’m in, reaching mid-life and having not yet settled on much beyond not settling anytime soon, is precarious. It’s a spot that often makes me paranoid. Maybe my peers—old friends back home or expat business owners—look at me and think this lifestyle, the constant resistance to adulthood, has gone on far too long. Maybe my fellow backpackers are looking at me and are thinking the same kind of thing: What the hell is a middle-aged (Emma says 35 is not middle aged anymore, but for our generation, it was. Life expectancy was 72.) man doing working for room and board on an organic farm in Nicaragua? Either way, I have no excuse for myself: I love traveling, love coming and going, and love not having a career, not having a house, and not having bills.

In other ways, it’s a spot that often makes me proud. Rarely do any of our peers not express some degree of envy over the fact that another trip is on the horizon. No matter how happy they are in their current lives, they know the days of doing what I do are over for them, and in some sense, it makes me feel like a wild animal coming in for a visit then jumping the fences again. As for fellow backpackers, I usually feel fortunate to be done with the wide-eyed insanity of what they are doing, happy to not be in that small space of time that requires me to get it all in before giving it all up. I’ve managed to hold too long to need to worry about getting caught on the career path, so what’s the rush? I love being a traveler whose not exactly traveling, not worrying about the attractions necessarily, and being the guy that’s been around for a while, knows some how-to about the place.

Setting out on this backpacking trip, what will be the longest outright length of time I’ve gone without a final destination, has been both scary and exciting, just like the trips of old. Where it’s been different is in my confidence to let things ride a little softer, the willingness to plan to stop and simply soak, as if bathing in the atmosphere of a places rather than slathering myself in as many activities as possible. I’m happy “working” in a garden on a tropical island for a couple of months as opposed to spending a few days in different spots all over Nicaragua. I’m happy knowing that I’ll quickly stop, out of necessity, in one or two spots in Costa Rica on my way to my next farm, this time on the Caribbean coast.

When Emma and I traveled Southeast Asia in the 2000-naughts, we never stayed anywhere more than a week. We had a great time: three days wondering markets and temples in Bangkok, three days in the Malaysia jungle, four days clambering around Angkor Wat and its accompaniments, a two-day rain-soaked trip to Singapore. Other times, we hopped Easy Jet-style around major cities in Europe, spent two weeks in scooting across Panama, car-camped up and down the Pacific Coast of the US, skipped around northern Vietnam, eastern China, southern Mexico… Amazing things to do, places to see, ticks to tick, but everything happened so quickly that my memories now (let’s pretend not due to my middle-aged mind) are fewer and farther between for these places.

On the other hand, we settled for a while in other places across the world: Korea for two years, Guatemala off and on for five years, Istanbul for 10 months, Palestine for three months, Moscow, long visits to the States and to England. These were times when we developed routines, when we had regular haunts, habits particular to availability and location, where traveling and life became a joint experience and cultures merged and bowels moved regularly (for some time sometimes). This is more like the traveling I want to do now, where I just am somewhere and I’m there long enough for making friends I might keep in touch with and finding spots I might return to for a while and adjusting my insides to the local fare. I’d rather give myself the time for that than to see another colonial town or traverse another jungle.

And, so far, despite my expired place around the backpacking beer funnel or my unreserved spot on an expat barstool, that’s the biggest difference I see this time, being older, more settled to the fact that I’ll either be around again or that I’d rather experience one thing well than twelve things half-assed, I’m happy seeing a specific part of country and traveling as if I’m going to settle everywhere I go, and I’m happy not to be truly settling anywhere for a while.