La Selva: last episode

After five days of waves, waves and waves, turtles, delphins and pequeñas fiestas we returned to San Cristobal. Two weeks ago I said goodbye to Michel and Machteld and embarked on my last ´expedition´ to La Selva Lacandona.
To be sincere I was so afraid to fall ill again, that I already felt short of breath by the pure fear upon mere entering.
We entered by small airplane again, which always makes me feel guilty, although I know that I am not the one deciding and the plane would fly anyhow as Carolina goes. But it is so much money that could be used for other things and contamination. This time we enter to Corozal which would mean one day by pick-up truck and two days walking through the mud. Knowing that we loaded the plane full with all the people wanted us to bring makes me feel a little less bad: 25 kg of salt, 10 kg of soap, 10 kg of spikes, 25 kg of tubes, 30 kg of barbed wire, 40 kg of grass seeds, medicines, chimney pipes for the stoves I want to construct. They actually seem very happy not having to come for us and to have all the orders transported to them.
Corozal is a very small ´family village´, made up by ten families headed by ten brothers Gomez, funded in 1992 by their father looking for land for his sons. It finds itself in the midst of the Biosfera de Montes Azules and is thus threatened with eviction. The majority of the families of nearby Israel have already left in exchange for a substancive sum of money (but will it be enough to build up a decent life in another place, as in the city ¨everything is bought- puro comprado¨ as the people say here and as there are many more temptations once in the ´civilisized world´?).
This is the real rainforest with high old trees, here you hear the saraguatos (apes) roaring and yelling, the guacamayas (parrots, see photo) and loros (green small parrots) fly around. We bath in the beautiful river, that gives fishes, cangrejo/kreeft and caracol/slak to diversify the usual diet of beans and maize. We eat hierba mora, a spinache-like edible weed from the milpa (maize field) everyday and thus I miss the vegetables less this time. Even so, I will later in Salvador Allende be happy I have brought on my seeds, raisins, cookies and tea...
Like in the other communities, cattle are seen as the only cash option in Corozal and that means a big pressure on the rainforest: to keep cattle big meadows are opened up by cutting down the forest. The farmers understand they cannot go on with that forever, as they themselves can see the soil and water situation deteroriating (in some places rains stay out or the rivers fall dry) and more, they know that the government will not permit them to open up land again when their sons grow up. On the other hand, as I see teacher Alejandro, a lovely guy, but with very deficient spanish, not even having finished his secondary school (which should take up to 15/16), not knowing where Europe or even Mexico City lays, asking me with unbelieving eyes why it is seven hours later in the Netherlands, I wonder if the children he teaches will have any other future option that to become campesinos (peasants) as well or to migrate... Might improving education be the best way to convince people to leave the protected areas or at least make a more sustainable use of them? How many would stay if they were educated sufficiently to have interesting options for a life somewhere else? May sponsoring the education of one of these children be the biggest contribution a nature lover could make?
Anyhow, CETAMEX is trying to do its bit and Carolina gives a workshop on forage banks: a more intensive way of producing feed for the animals. The farmers here are used to feed their animals by pure grazing of African star grass (Cynodon nlemfluensis and C. plectostachyus), one of the grass species that my maternal grandfather studied on the African savannah some fifty years ago. It establishes well in a wide range of tropical areas and leaves little space to weeds. However, it does not produce well under shade, which means having to cut down nearly all trees. Besides feeding on star grass alone is not a balanced diet, and for this type of grazing you easily need one hectare per cow. If using a forage bank with some ten different species of grasses (including the very energetic sugar cane and maize sown close by, very strange for the people here to give maize to your cows instead of eating it yourself!), trees and leguminous (like the Leucaena leucocephala that you can see on the photo, here called xaxib or goax, and after which the state of Oaxaca is named, where they call the trea huaje) for cutting or light grazing only one hectare will be needed to feed a cow sufficiently. This more intensive way of forage production costs more time, but a lot less space and will result in fatter cows. Since the soil nutrients in one place are used more intensively, it does require fertilisation with cow dung. So common in our lands, so uncommon in the tropics: as tropical areas with their high humidity and temperatures have such a high regeneration, fertilisation is warranted by natural biomass growth if used extensively. So the next workshop will be the construction of a wheel barrow to transport the dung...The brothers Gomez had already prepared a piece of land to establish their bank, but they had not realized that walking nearly an hour back and forth each day crossing a hill to go cutting the fodder (which in a good bank can be up to 40 kg a day!) and bringing back the cow dung, will not be very likely. When we explain we want a bank not for decoration but to be used daily, some discussion takes places (the place seemed to suit Javier as he was thinking of establising his meadow near the bank, although it was meant to be collective...) and it is decided to prepare another piece of land closer to the comunal meadow. I would invite anyone who shouts that farmers should stop practising slash-and-burn-agriculture to come along and help in the clearing with a machete once! This was an easy terrain as we took only half a day, but I still had a blister on my hand even though I had hardly advanced. Carolina´s experimental milpa (try-out of some forty different land races from the region and from outside) is sown in Salvador Allende after clearing a five year old acahual (secondary forest growing back when the land is lain fallow). Clearing this quarter hectare took several men working several days to clear and walking around in the milpa is a true adventure: you either fall over trunks or suddenly sink away in a big heap of humus. But Don Chebo remains optimistic: this year not even half of the maize sown established (as some places are so burried in trunks and branches that the maize cannot sprout) but next year you should see how well it grows with all this natural fertilisation.
I am in Carolina´s work shop to give feedback and conduct the evaluation with the farmers, but all of them are working happily and with great enthusiasm. Besides, I am once again the entertainment of the village and rediscover with them again the wonderful nature of this world: how it is possible that the sun shines here, while the moon comes up in the Netherlands; that there are waters so big you need several weeks to cross them by boat; that there are homes so far away that it takes you up to a day to fly there and that the plane does not stop to take your meal; that there are places where maiz is given to the cows, where they do not eat pozol (maiz drink that I still struggle with drinking); that there actually exists a medicine against those itching fungi on your feet...
Ocasionally we are asked for help in writing letters, official documents or to make some calculations.
At night my stomach aches and I have to find my way several times in the banana field by flashlight, scared to cross with a snake or even a jaguar (they just killled one, because it started to enter the houses). I am a startled by the skinny, scruffy dog who follows me as soon as I seem to go to the toilet, since one of their favourit food is... yes its disgusting. These are the moments I dream most of being back home or at least in the ´civilized world´, excusez-le-mot.

After some days we go on to Salvador Allende which I know so well know. After one day in the milpa my eyes swell up, the dermatitis atopica (sounds more impressing than eczeem doesn´t it?) colours my eyelids red and scruffy, my nose is leaking and my bronchis protest. You travel half the world, thinking you might have found a completely different vegetation, but you are hit by ordinary hay fever once again ;-)
Still I can help Carolina a bit with counting here maize plants and more important talk to the people about the stoves and battery project. Even though the last stove we made was a disaster, the base still stands and several are still interested (others have only firmed their disbelief) in trying out an hopefully improved model with brick stones and the mixture one of the woman used to build a little bread oven (with earth from another part of the rancho). Unfortunately, there are no brick stones in the next village and we have to order them, so that we cannot start building while I am there. Now I just have to trust I have given them the ´building stones´ (ideas, some instruction and financial means) and that now it is up to them. In the end it is their development not mine! And they can always ask help again through one of Carolina´s contacts .
What a good experience for me to lead this tiny development project and struggle in practise with the things I studied in theory! Themes of trust, convincing power, the danger of financial incentives, the failure of a mere tranfer of technology by a so-called expert against the necessity for participatory technology building (needing the local knowledge of the women, to see what the right building materials are for this place and climate) etc.

to be continued