The Cabecar Indigenous who are my neighbors have a hard life.

Three indigenous, a man and two women came down today to retreve building supplies in addition to their personal supplies. Marcos tied items together so they could wear them for their 8 hour difficult hike. They will return, or other indigenous will come down, to retreve what they could not take. That big red jug filled with gasoline is heavy.

We also received a report that my 3 volunteers and the teacher arrived in the dark, their trip took them almost 12 hours. Well at least they made it with their heavy packs. They are experienced hikers but this type of hiking can only be decribed as ultra extreme. The indigenous have made this trip since birth, but they are tough, strong, extreme people capable of running to make this trip in as little as 5 hours when an emergency is pending.

Three foot bridges are now functional making this trip easier then it was. Which is not to say that this trip is easy by any means nor under the best conditions as is evident by our experienced hiking team.

Good thing I made those high energy granola bars with honey and fruit, I knew they would need fuel for their bodies to get there.

More news to come later this week,

This is commonly called an "Owl Butterfly" and it's scientific name is Caligo Memnon. It has the owl eye marking as means of protection against predators, thinking it is an owl instead of a sweet morsel butterfly......it feeds on rotting fruit and has a bluish-purple coloration on the top of its wings. Its wingspan can reach up to 150 mm. It slightly resembles the blue morpho when it is resting with wings folded....however, the blue morpho has the most amazing iridescent blue-lavender coloration imaginable when in flight...a truly spectacular sight.

Because of you, opportunities that did not exist a year ago are available to the very poor people who live in my area of rural, remote Costa Rica. Children and adults are learning English because we offer a free school to all who come. Some walk on goat trails for nearly an hour to get here. We have a volunteer American visitor teaching group classes.

My son met a man who worked for the United States government while in the airport in San Jose waiting for his flight. He promised to send my son a Rosetta Stone CD so he could learn Spanish, and he kept his promise. Because of this generous gift, a young woman is sitting at my computer right now, doing her English lessons, using the Rosetta Stone multi-language CD. Maira has never used a computer before, but she is catching on quickly.

You have made an enormous difference in the lives of so many folks. You have given them hope for a prosperous future. Your donation of items on our “Wish List” provides school supplies for the children, and so much more to families who could not otherwise afford something as simple as a pencil or crayons. We have been able to put clothes and shoes on indigenous children as they pass by our farm house.

We now have an internet connection and wifi which enables us to send the children of Esperanza and the outlying areas to 7th through 12th grade for the first time via the internet. Imagine how different their lives will now be because they can speak English, have a high school education and more if they want it. Their dreams can come true. We have already outgrown my daughter’s dining room and laundry area which is where we hold group classes. First come, first serve for the picnic table, benches and chairs, everyone else sits on the floor.

I asking my friends, strangers, everyone, to help us by donating their used computers in working order so that we can make this dream a reality and brake the cycle of poverty. Our monthly cost for the satellite internet connection is $150.00 a month, which causes me to swallow hard, but finally we have a life changing connection. When you live rural and remote, the government controlled monopoly does not serve you. This is the only possible way to send these children to school.

The government law says the children must go to school until the age of 18, but what if you don’t have a school, or transportation, and live high on a mountain? Oh well... The tourist books say education is free, well not exactly, they are nickeled and dime-ed for every piece of paper handed out, including all test papers. When you are that poor, every coin is needed for beans and rice on the table and for some there is not enough food.

Thank you, all of you, for everything you have done to change the lives of these children. You have given them hope, and provided the tools that open the doors of opportunity that break the cycle of poverty for generations to come.

We are all blessed to call you our friends.

Thank you,

Ginnee

Wish List

School supplies
Educational, CD’s, games, …
Pencils
pens
Paint
Brushes
Scissors
Pencil sharpeners
Coloring books
Spanish English dictionaries

Navy blue children’s pants
Navy blue children’s skirts
White shirts and blouses
Shoes, practical and sneakers,

Used laptop computers in working condition

Portable sewing machines, used are fine.

Sweat shirts
Ball caps

Rain gear and umbrellas

Toothpaste
Toothbrushes

Guitar
Keyboard / piano, portable electric, (really small)
Musical instruments
Drum sticks

Sunsets are amazing here in Esperanza, this is our beautiful purple and pink sky that seems to be unreal.

13 of my cows are pregnant. Our bull is the brown one. Oh Boy, this will be a good year.

Life…, going where no man has gone before, and sometimes, sometimes often, my life feels like this. Living off-grid, trying to figure out how to have electricity, a refrigerator, by pass the electric regulator of a gas oven, boost cell phone reception, relay a trans-sat dish connection further up the farm, how to do all of these things affordably and understanding them sufficiently so that you can do it yourself. You must understand how all of these factors work, or they will never stay working for you. Unless you have more money than God has dirt, you can’t afford to pay someone who knows it all, if those people even exist, a few do, most don’t, and I know even fewer.

I get a lot of my info from Dummies books, forums on line, online research, and friends in the know of a particular subject, which is a very small nitch of an already small group of friends. Let’s face it, when you can’t get online, you need a book. If you live off-grid, you may need lots of books because the fact that you are off-grid means that civilization as others know it, is not a block away. Buy the book (books), all of them, your going to need all of the help you can get. The book is a great place to start, make notes, collect internet sites you did not find on your own, and you will reference it / them, time and time again. Hopefully you will buy more than one.

Living in a foreign country and not being a native speaker makes it more difficult, you can not find a book in your language or subject matter. Buy the books, all of them on any subject you may want to know, including gourd carving and basket making and bring them with you. My gourd carving book has been sitting in the US for 6 months now, along with many other items, so many other items for so long that I can not remember what I ordered online. The gourds are growing, I may as well learn how to express my creativity and I hear that basket weaving is good for potential mental illness.

I love Amazon for it’s simplicity when ordering and I often get carried away with my need to know and have. Solving the problem of how to get these items into my country other than by human courier, has not been solved. Forget the mail, you do not have enough money for this option, and then there is the inconsistency of customs and your item getting hung up with the dreaded tax man. That all depends on the country you are in I suppose. I know my devil.

It appears that I was a child who asked “Why?”, and nothing has changed. Perhaps that is why my parents did not like me all that much, they did not know how to handle “Why?”, and I did not accept, “Because I said so”, as an answer. Of course it is not an answer, never was, never will be. I still ask “Why?”, it is only recently that I realized this, my husband pointed it out to me following a recent need to know moment. Apparently, I have more need to know than some other folks. I did not know that. The only exception here is when I am saying, “Tell someone who cares”.

Five of the horses escaped last night leaving their kids behind. At 11 we went outside to see what the noise was about only to find two restless horses complaining loudly. This morning we will round them up; by midnight, they had all broken loose. At least they were now quiet.

We do not have light pollution, so when it is not a full moon and the sky is clear, you can see a million stars. Last night was as crystal clear as it gets and the heavens were a thick blanket of stars and constellations.

Today is the start of planting time by the biodynamic calendar. It will be a busy week of planting pumpkins, basil, parsley, and many flats of other seedlings. With a many hands, the job goes quickly. This week we have been eating fresh string beans and we still have what seems like a lifetime supply of spinach in the garden. I try to hide the spinach in most everything I make, except when I am not hiding it and everyone is exposed to blatant spinach. Every time I pick up a cookbook I am searching for spinach recipes, perhaps the next great use for spinach has escaped me, not likely however. We eat by candle light, so it is hard to tell exactly what you are eating sometimes.

This weekend I made Falafel patties for the first time, they were good, far better than I expected. Creamed spinach would go nicely with this dish. We are none-vegetarians who eat a lot of vegetables, in fact, we eat more veggies than many vegetarians do. Depending on what is in season, we are often overrun with a particular crop. Because we eat fresh, not frozen or canned, a crop can be overwhelming for the cook. In just 15 minutes, I can pick enough spinach to feed 6 people a spinach entree for 2 days. The time taken to clean spinach takes far longer, sometimes it seems like hours.

Maira's thank you note to me, accompanied a fish from her pond.


Safiya is a volunteer at the farm who has applied for a doctorate program in the US. She does a bit of everything here and starting today she is teaching English in the afternoons. While developing her lesson plans, she has been working with Carolina, one of our employees. Carolina is quick to learn, has desire, and is a joy in general. Her sister Maira also works for us. Maira and I are together every morning and I take that opportunity to teach her English phrases and now cooking terms.

Last week we made two fresh orange cakes with oranges from the orchid. It was the first cake she had ever made, or seen made, and we made it by hand with no electrical appliances. They came out perfect and I gave her one to take home. We cushioned the hot pan and cake in newspaper so that it would not burn through the rice sack that she carefully carried it home in. Maira lives down my mountain, across the river and up a mountain. It takes her the better part of an hour to walk to work and she is never late.

She is a joy to have and at age 21 this is her first job. Maira has not had the opportunities presented to you and me. As with all of our local rural children, her education lasted only 6 years and by US standards it was maybe a 3rd grade education. The children are being cheated and everyone loses. We need these kids to have a prosperous, successful future, and they need the skills to make a living while protecting the rainforest. But it is even bigger than that, so much damage has been done as a result of deforestation for crops like cattle, coffee, and sugar. We need to teach the rural people, that they can make as much money or more than they were making with their deforested land, by reforesting with a variety of carbon sequestration tree crops.

Finca Quijote is a demonstration farm, we are leading by example while extending a helping hand, sharing knowledge and teaching what we know. Blessed with an education and opportunity, the best foreign aid we can give, is the gift of knowledge. We can see change coming, slowly, but it is coming. Maira, Carolina and the others in their pueblo, are listening and watching. Their brother wrote us a letter in Spanish, and then he looked up every word in English which does not translate perfectly, but it was an extraordinary effort to be understood. Once upon a time, they had prosperous lives, and then their employment opportunities went away. I know this to be true. Since then (20 years), they have been in survival mode and there are no jobs available for the rural people at this time. Only the rural people can protect the rainforest, we must show them how to make a living and educate their children at the same time.

You can help by donating educational supplies. We always need:

pencils
crayons
Spanish English dictionaries
used laptop computers in working order
portable sewing machines
sweat shirts
childrens shoes
good durable clothing such as blue jeans

We finally have an internet connection and wifi where we volunteer teach the children. Because we are off grid, and with no landline phones in the pueblo, this was a very expensive effort. Our monthly cost for a simple connection is $150.00 USD With laptop computers (easier to get into the country) we can give the kids the opportunity to go past 6th grade via the internet. Please tell everyone you know and ask them to donate their old computers so that we can teach children who have no other options. We need to teach them how to be prosperous again. Prosperous is a word they used when writing us, for them it means putting enough food on the table, shoes on their children, enough money to give their children an education and to afford a doctor when one is needed. Their concept of prosperous differs from yours.

Thank you for helping my neighbors.

Self peeling, seeded bananas grow upward rather than hanging down. The birds and animals love them. I think they are simply beautiful.

Butterflies are everywhere on the farm, you can see through the wings of this species.

Our beautiful rooster

The girls, Safia, Maira and Carolina have been busy painting the guest house and new bathrooms