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Expressions from the Rainforest |
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At 7 am the "GOOD MORNING" wake up call of Sierra tore me out of the theater of my Nighttime Dreams. Today we would be spending a whole day discovering the rainforest of Las Casas de La Selva. Of course, the paths we walked on had all been marched on a thousand times before, but I was discovering them for the first time. It was already 8:30 by the time we hit the road to the path that would soon be lined densely with Mahoe, Mahogany, coffee and many other trees. The trekk to the shed was easy, and we marched in silence carrying heavy backpacks on our backs and unused machetes by our sides. We were just sucking in the beauty, letting it all seep in and not disturbing Nature with loud talking. Every now and then, we would "oOh!" and "aah!" at the plants we saw, or we would share our knowledge with the rest of the group, exclaiming the name man gave to this plant. After a while of walking this way, we reached the shed, a little tin shack behind which the frog studies and the search for the believed-to -be- extinct golden coqi frog took place. We stopped for a small swig of water before marching on toward the tiny trickle of a waterfall on "Old Man's River". The first thing we saw of the Old Man's River was a big bearing cluster of banana trees that reached up into the sky. We stretched our tired bodies across the soft sand and sipped the fresh spring water as if it were champagne. According to the bananas, the soft sand and the spiky edible jungle nettle, the area around this stream had once been inhabited. The river was named after an old man who used to get his water from this spot. Apparently, his name has been, like so many others, forgotten, and he is only known as Old Man(as in Old Man's River). We kept going deeper and deeper into the forest, machetes flashing in our hands like swords ready to fight any obstruction. At places, the hurricane had blown over full-grown trees and the path was no longer visible. We fought our way through fern banks and tree covered roads, past edible jungle nettle and poisonous dieffenbachia, carefully dodging out of their way. At last, after hours of huffing and puffing and sawing blown over trees, we reached the old coffee mill. Overlooked by ancient, once bearing coffee trees, the old coffee mill was now no more than a cement skeleton overgrown by a plant called sorosi. It happened to be that this plant is an old friend of, ours, which had thrived on our ³Blue Planet Farm² in Belize, and that it¹s medicinal purposes are to cure skin rashes or to be drunk as a bitter tonic against intestinal parasites. The reason why it was good that we found this healing plant was because Reka had a very bad skin rash that was overgrowing her body as quickly as the sorosi overgrew the cement. So we gathered up a big load of sorosi and packed it in our bags. Mahoe trees shaded us as we ate our lunch and relaxed, dreading the march back to the homestead. But soon we had to start walking back, and all that we left behind was a small mound of eggshells. The walk back home seemed much
shorter and was definitely easier, since we had cleared the road of
all its obstructions. We halted again at the small trickle by Old Mans
River before heading back at our own speed. Reka and I stayed at the
mini waterfall a little while longer, lying in the soft sand and watching
a lizard perched as still as a statue on Reka's leg. We walked back
through the Green and swam in the swimhole closest to the homestead,
before walking up the overgrown hill past Sierras shelter. by Priska Komaromi 2005 |
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| An Earthwatch Adventure One sunswept day in the middle
of December, a small white bus parked in front of the homestead and
let out a crowd of six earthwatchers. After a brief welcome feast of
Molly’s home made salsa, tortilla chips and orange juice, the
Earthwatchers unloaded their luggage and made themselves a cozy den
in their tents. The rest of the day passed by with a lot of handshaking
and hammock swinging. 2005©Priska Komaromi |
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Close
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The drunkenness of the moment 2005©Priska Komaromi
April 2005 by Priska Komaromi A small rental car with an exhausted engine crawled up the hill at about midnight. We greeted the excited passengers who jumped out of it tiredly, but nonetheless enthusiastically and led them to the kitchen, where steaming Puerto Rican fast food from the Lechonera (Pigery) exuded mouthwatering aromas. By the time the first group had settled in and taken the best sleeping spaces, another pair of headlights blazed up the driveway and made the stars seem like almost burnt down candles. After a plate of delicious Caribbean Grub, the second group of arrivers marched off into the land of dark slopes with flickering headlamps and sandals. Meanwhile, the other 20 members of the group slowly trickled in, all of them with worried looks on their faces, explaining that they were held up by car rental problems. We nodded knowingly and led them down to the food. The lodge, which Reka and I had cleaned and set up, was transformed, alive with new energies and soaking in the new essence of these excited people. Shortly thereafter, we heard loud shrieks and yells from the river, but soon they died down and after a while the crazy night hikers emerged from the forest soaking wet and covered in razor grass cuts, with huge smiles on their faces. The homestead area filled with twinkling headlamps, laughing people and the shuffling of tired feet carrying tired bodies. The excited hustle went on until the first rays of the sun kissed the horizon. They left for the weekend, giving us some more time to finish off the last cleanups and setups. It seemed to go by in less than a blink of an eye, and as Sunday rounded the corner to the new week of adventure, everyone was back and ready to work. Our newly created chimes sounded the new day accompanied by the many groans of sun burnt college students and the delicious breakfast smells. In a quick but deep briefing, Reka gave insight into the history of our rainforest enrichment project, the sustainable forestry program and explained the work projects lined up for the week. Soon the whole place was buzzing, the ruin of a cement foundation that stood in front of the homestead was being hammered down to create space for a new shower block. The trees that had been cut down to avoid overgrowing the pot hole littered road were being hauled up to be reused as firewood or in other projects. A safer and bigger pool was being dug out in the river, and a path through the forest was being made to reach it. The other projects had yet to be started, and the great enlightenments to make things easier were still being formed in peoples' minds. In the meantime, I potted plants in the calming shade of the nursery and sifted soil with the badly sun burnt Melissa. After lining her out on the job, I left on a documentation round and took pictures and video footage of the ongoing projects. In the workshop Tyler was using
brains over muscles to construct a sled out of pieces of scrap wood
to facilitate the hauling of cut down trees on the road. This marvelous
new tool was tied onto one of the many rental cars to pull up the heavy
loads of wood debris and saved the road crew from breaking their backs.
It also served as a pre-grader for the road. Early the next morning, the wake up chimes once again sounded the beginning of a new day of work. After breakfast every one joined their groups and went to their work places to accomplish more things. Some people moved around between the groups, and a new group was formed to help our friend Omar (a Puerto Rican sculptor) clean up the sawmill were he was going to move in soon and hopefully hold many art workshops. Down on the trail to the river, Tyler and Jordan were busy building a bridge over a crack eroded into the side of the hill by rain and time. Further down in the river, Victor and John were still sawing away at the roots of "The Log" and Erica and Echo were building a watergate to raise the water level even more, since the dam was starting to leak slightly. Up by the homestead Ken and Eibes, assisted by Mckenzie and Amber slowly but surely, and very beautifully put up the frame of the Shower Block Grande. Meanwhile, the road crew was hauling up more wood and scraping out the potholes to fill them with gravel the next day. As the sun set over the many mahoe, mahogany and other trees and plants our crew of hard working people and newly made friends covered in sweat, dirt, grass, mud, clay and plant sap, lazily swung in hammocks, waiting for the showers and thinking about where they would party tonight. The third day started like any
other here and as today's group leaders organized the day, people already
started hammock swinging to the chirping of early birds punctuated here
and there by the singing of a coqui frog. I once again set out with
every one to film and take pictures of the work. Up at the sawmill Tricia
and Rebecca were cutting the 4-foot tall grass that looked more like
trees with saws and urgently needing to be sharpened machetes. Shawn
and Cassie cut the smaller more grass-like grass with loud weed-whackers.
Huge piles of grass and weeds stood ready to be burned. The road crew
was cleaning out the drainage ditches, so that the rainwater could drain
and wouldn't cause more potholes or landslides. They also started pouring
gravel into the holes that covered most parts of the road. Previous
experience had taught us that gravel would just wash out in the next
big rain.After many inquiries into the matter we were told to place
rubble in to the holes and fill it up with gravel. The road crew started
to smash up the broken cement blocks found in the shower block area.
Unfortunately, they had already poured the gravel and so they had to
puzzle the rough pieces of rubble into the gravel. They tried watering
the filled holes and pounding the whole thing into the wet clay, which
worked for most of the holes, but on some of the bigger holes all the
contents were pushed to the sides by speeding cars. More people had
joined the construction crew, and many were now busy splitting bamboo
for walls and digging ditches for the plumbing pipes and the electricity
lines. Colorful cement was being poured and floated on the floor and
the kitchen was steaming with the aromas of cooking soup, baking bread
and exotic spices. The River crew had finished the trail using half
of the annoying log from the river, intensely red clay from a landslide,
pieces of scrap wood and bent re bar to hold down the small log steps.
A few steps were carved into the hill that led down to a flat area with
a huge fire pit under the protective canopy of the forest and the calming
sound of the "Idaho Falls" that fed our new pool That night we made a fire in
the theatre and since most Idahoan boys know how to play the guitar,
they played the guitar while we sang and drummed, and I even improvised
a very much-appreciated belly dance. The next two days I spent almost
entirely in the Sawmill, burning grass in the boiling heat and getting
dirt in every pore of my skin. Obscene amounts of dirty smoke uncoiled
into the pure blue of a tropical Puerto Rican sky. Piles of damp grass
smothered away under the sparse rays of sunlight that punctured the
thick blanket of smoke, while our pores choked under the ever thickening
blanket of sweat, ash and smoke. While Shawn, Matt and Rebecca whacked
the tall grass with their machetes, Tricia and I spread out and burned
a pile of grass and junk that had been torn from the cement and rolled
up like a carpet. We stoked the pile with pitchforks and slowly added
more grass to it. The middle was a ball of glowing heat, which was almost
impossible to stand next to, but had to be stoked, since it was preventing
a ball of grass inside it to be burned. Cassie had a few other piles
of burning After lunch, everyone was ushered
to the river, where Victor and John had set up a pully system to get
out our biggest adversary: "The Log". For the people who had
been working in the sawmill, on the road or in the Shower block construction,
this was the only time they could truly experience and enjoy the forest.
Wrapped in the forest's healing green, we watched Victor climb up a
thick liana vine to attach the rope to a strong tree, and started the
long process. At the count of three, fifteen people on land pulled the
rope with all their might, while the boys were in the water, pushing
the log and helping it out with some sharp, strange looking tools. The
Log must have thought it was in a weird dream, being poked from all
sides and hauled out by an incredible man force. Maybe it whispered
something inaudible to its ally the rope, because right when we thought
we were celebrating Victory the rope snapped with a loud bang that threw As the last day of work was nearing its end, everyone was back at the construction site, where the bamboo was slowly taking on the shape of a wall, to clean up the last things. The plumbing trenches were filled up with gravel and dirt, and big trash objects were being moved to a trash pile. That evening, most people chose to stay and sit on Luke's new benches by the fire, while our friend Hector played his guitar together with Shawn. I went to the highly praised bioluminescent bay, where there was no bioluminescence, and drove across the island for about four hours by mistake before returning home at 1 o'clock in the morning. The last day was a rather sleepy one, and most of the group left to San Juan, Some people stayed and hiked up the water fall with Reka, Eibes and Jody, while I stayed at the base of the river for a while before going to San Juan with Rebecca and her mother Erini to go out dancing with everybody. I already missed everyone terribly, and almost cried when I had to say goodbye to them at five o' clock in the morning. Somehow I knew that I would see them all very soon again, because these past five days had been very meaning full and different from any other group, and they had been enough to tie a strong bond of friendship between us all. by Priska Komaromi
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April 2005 by Reka Komaromi The past two weeks seem almost
like a dream of action a I am sitting in the peace and quiet of the
Las Casas afternoon reflecting upon what form, what words to choose
so that you can get a taste of the energy around me. The “ Idaho Bomb”
was a group of 25 students from Idaho State University and 5 staff members
and community volunteers. The age range was between 19 and 50 and so
was the level of skills and stamina. Since last summer all of them have
been meeting weekly to do various fundraising activities in order to
make this 10-day working vacation in Puerto Rico possible. They all
study different subjects varying from international business to art
and nursing. What they all had in common was an unparalleled enthusiasm
and excitement about finally arriving at Las Casas de la Seslva and
Puerto Rico. by Reka Komaromi Home * Blue Mahoe * Wastewater Garden * Frog Study * Green Gallery * Archive/newsletters * Donate * Contact * Links & Credits |
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