On Monday afternoon, I met with a group of community members, mostly women, who want to invite my friend Paul Chiriboga, who is an agronomist, to come do a training in the community. A couple of weeks ago they said they wanted to learn to plant vegetables. Right now they plant corn, beans, peas and a few other legumes. A few people plant potatoes, and one lady has a hot pepper plant and a granadilla (a fruit) vine. As we talked, they mentioned that because they depend on rainfall to water their fields, they were concerned about whether they would be able to plant veggies. Suddenly, it occurred to me that this was the perfect time to ask them to make a planting and harvesting calendar! We decided that it would be a good thing to share with Paul as well. I got out a poster paper and made a calendar with twelve months. We put in the planting and harvest times of a number of plants, and we used "droplets" to represent the amount of rain in each month.
In any case, I took all of their ideas down and will take the letter back to the community on Monday. Then, interested community members will sign the letter and I will make sure it gets to Paul. I made sure they knew that if Paul agrees to come, community members will need to pay for his transportation (about $2) as well as provide a place for him to sleep and food for him to eat. They were more than willing to agree to this, since they are eager to plant vegetables. In their opinion, even if they do not have enough vegetables to sell, they will save money that they regularly have to spend to buy vegetables! Please pray that Paul will be able to help this community.
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