back at the project- September 12, 2010

I have been meaning to start this blog for the last 3 months-- no time like now, as I have a day off (Sunday) and my house is clean and the laundry done (both of which I enjoy doing). The exterminator came the other day so I had some dead bugs to sweep up. Not a huge problem in our house- a few ants and other small bugs. We do have a bat problem though. They like to hang out in the dark in the peak of our porch (and many other porches around here). If they didn't poop up a storm while they were here I really wouldn't mind sharing my porch with them. In the past month I have cleaned up numerous piles of guano--not just at my place but at other houses, seeing as I work in Resort Management (RM). Not pleasant, but I now have a strategy-- my bat poop kit. It contains:
10 small recycled plastic shopping bags, a 2 liter bottle with water and a squirt of disinfectant cleaner in it (Fabuloso lavender, it's the best!), paper towels, a scrap piece of cardboard and a metal pancake turner (yes, for scraping up the poop). I did learn yesterday that bat poop makes great garden fertilizer-we'll see if I ever make use of that knowledge. On Tuesday we are getting a different pest control service and they have a new approach to dealing with bats and I will report back at a later time whether it worked and if I can get rid of my bat poop kit.

Yesterday was intense and hot. I spent a few hours moving furniture up to a new house (I get a crew and they do most of the work). Then I went to our nearby native village- sometimes called Pedro Santo, for the patriarch and landowner, and sometimes called Bahia Roja, not sure why, as there is nothing red around there. The picture above is some of the kids sitting on the steps of their school. This village is a group of 15-20 families and they all live in little shacks on stilts, and have no water other than a quebrada (creek), no sanitation, and no power. (Amazingly, their clothes are as clean as mine- how do they do that?) There are 35 kids of primary school age and the village made their own school of wood and thatch. The federal government provides them with a teacher.  I have been working with a non-profit called Operation Safe Drinking Water ( OSDW-check their website for details). They install water tanks and do first aid clinics in native villages throughout the Bocas del Toro archipelago. Last weekend we installed 2 rainwater catchment tanks at Pedro Santo, one for the school and one for the community.Yesterday 3 of us went back and did a 2 hour health clinic. Friend Maribel, who has been doing these clinics for several years and is from Costa Rica, so has the lingo down, and I  saw about 13 families-- about 40 people. Her husband Joe, founder of OSDW, was there, too. Besides giving health advice and some simple medications and reading glasses, we also smile a lot and tell them to drink lots of clean water. At the very end, after seeing her 4 other kids, a mother brought us her 6 year old girl, who pulled up her shirt and showed us her enormous belly- full of worms. We were out of worm medications, so will transport her to the hospital in town on Monday to get the medicine.

Well, I am about to head out and take a swim and then later we are going to our nieghbors' house for supper. Oh, before I close, I should probably tell you why I named the blog banano. It's for the gigantic banana tree in front of our house, looking toward the beach.

Before I close, I will share my latest cute pic of my dear granddaughter, Addie (Adelaide Campbell Ewald) who is almost 9 months old and full of spit and vinegar, as they used to say.