Intense. Doing a seven-week work placement is like moving to a new place on fast-forward – you have to learn the job, the people, the politics, the town, and feel like you’ve seen the sights and accomplished something before you leave, all too soon.

Then you come back to school and sum up what you did in the most impressive, professional with world-traveling bohemian spirit way possible. Brevity and wit encouraged.

I did outreach and communications work for two alternative energy companies, which included writing press releases, being interviewed for newspaper and television stories, and organizing an international conference on community-scale sustainable biofuels with a film premiere and a weekend of workshops. I also built two websites, for Cowichan Bio-Diesel Co-op and the Collective Biofuels Conference, managed conference advertising , attendee communication, registration and oversaw the graphic design department (we had some great SWAG!)

Wha’ Happened?

I fell off the map during my internship this summer, figuratively and (almost) literally. When I headed to Vancouver Island for a seven-week placement, I planned to blog weekly (or more!) and stay in touch with people. But after being on the edge of North America with no cell phone makes it hard to keep up, and it was easier to just lose contact.

Plus it was much busier than I imagined. Running a conference you become a de facto ‘expert’ on all sorts of things – meaning taking WAGs (wild-ass guesses) at any and every answer, trying to make sure you’re not wrong…

Travel logistics gain an added dimension of awesome when you add an island to the mix – only reachable by ferries and float planes. This is considered extreme blaspheme by Vancouver Islanders – but build an effing bridge! Or at least have more than three times per day you can get to the island. I felt like we were in an episode of Lost!

Border control questions, like can I bring a minor across the border with a letter, mix with currency exchanges, press releases and public relations, spokesperson duties, and dabbling in fundraising, website design and logo creation. No matter what, working in a non-profit will never be boring, because it’s a game of musical chairs where there’s never enough people playing. So you need to be sitting in more than one chair at the same time when the music stops. Hence, my summer trip to Vancouver was more midnight website editing, and less magical frolicking. I didn’t even see a bear, or a unicorn!

In the 7 weeks I was on Vancouver Island, I did get my days of fun – making wine labels, building raised beds and planting a garden, tubing down the Cowichan river, seeing a folk festival, camping in Pachena Bay. But I also got to feel like I was living in a place – biking to work, bringing my lunch, knowing the shopkeepers. It was like a mini-placement, where somewhere in the middle I forgot the beginning and the end and just worried about whether anyone would come to our conference, like a normal employee.

Luckily, the conference, my raison d’être this summer, was a success. Sixty people attended the event from across North America – we even had an attendee from Iceland! It was a small gathering, but community-scale biofuel production is a niche market, and we had representation from all the big names of grassroots alternative fuel distribution – Lyle Estill from Piedmont Biofuels, Todd Hill from Promethean, Jason Burroughs from DieselGreen Fuels, Jennifer Radtke with Biofuel Oasis, and many more speakers from all parts of the sustainable biodiesel production chain.

Almost all our attendees use waste vegetable oil as their feedstock and are committed to strengthening their supply chains – making sure all the inputs are as sustainable as possible, and that there is resilience in sourcing and available alternatives. This crowd is definitely not in it for the money, but is committed to providing clean-burning locally produced carbon-neutral fuel to our communities.

It was great to see people I have known for years and hear how their companies have grown and changed, and their refined takes on the future of energy consumption and production in America. Because as much as we ignore it America runs on cheap fossil fuels (and Dunkin Doughnuts, according to their campaign) – but that can’t go on forever. In a world of finite resources, Peak Oil and Peak Everything are near certainties, and my generation is going to need to deal with growing competition for natural resources in an economically and environmentally damaged world, where America has lost its historic moral leadership and wealth.

A country that depends on foreign oil to grow our food and power our economy, that has no energy plan, sounds like insanity – but that country is America. I don’t see how the system we’re currently living in is desirable or sustainable, and we are going to need a lot more than recycled waste vegetable oil to deal with the challenges of the next few decades. I hope that bio-based energy will be one of the many available solutions.

Why Bio?

Biodiesel, ethanol, biomass, and biogas all have their issues – and questions of indirect land use, workers’ rights, deforestation, net life cycle emissions, global food prices and soil replenishment are all reasonable. But if we don’t make aggressive steps now to embrace every organic renewable alternative to fossil energy sources, it will be too late when the time comes. And I believe the time is coming within my lifetime, if not within the next 10 years – in terms of having the opportunity and resources to make extensive change to the global energy mix.

The beauty of biodiesel and ethanol is they can be used in the existing energy infrastructure without modification, can be produced locally and ethically, creating jobs and greening our communities.

Biodiesel has gotten a bad rap as taking food from the mouths of the starving, and many environmentalists have a knee-jerk aversion to it for this reason. I think (and this isn’t my original idea, but shared by other biodiesel advocates) that the bio-bubble burst in 2008 was a smear campaign contrived by Big Oil to destroy biodiesel. A few observations: that was the summer that gas was about $4/gallon, and food and fuel prices have a strong relationship. Isn’t it even more likely that the rising petroleum prices were the culprit? Also, most of the corn and soy grown in the US isn’t for human consumption, and the distiller’s grain left after making ethanol can still be fed to livestock.

The Frame Job

Why Big Oil couldn’t just jump on the train to sustainability town is unclear, but instead the story was that growing corn and soy to make fuel was leading to massive deforestation and starvation as food prices spiked. It’s true there’s been some horribly perverse subsidies and a lack of regulation in the biofuel industry, resulting in deforestation in the Amazon and Borneo, some commodities price fluctuations, and other unintended consequences. But America’s Farm Subsidies and other policies also negatively impact the poor and create serious environmental degradation, including a Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico the size of Texas.

I think there’s more to it – people don’t like goody two-shoes. And environmentalists get the rap of hall monitors or something. So whenever there’s an idea that’s environmentally friendly it gets held to the ultimate hypocrisy test. Like – Big Oil are all scum and we know that, so when they lie cheat and poison the oceans, that’s just Business As Usual. But if a ‘green’ initiative is started, if it’s not the most environmentally friendly mythical fairy of a technology ever, it gets trashed.

After a semester in grad school, MIIS has definitely taught me that we need to be pragmatic idealists. As long as people live on this planet we will leave our mark. Capitalism, consumerism, creation – all these things require inputs. I don’t think that the economy should grind to a halt or we should stop all resource extraction – but there’s only so much of any element or resource on this shiny blue ball, and once we use it up we’re SOL. So we should be thoughtful and careful about our resource use.

The same goes for energy. You don’t get anything for free, so any energy that isn’t directly from photosynthesis or burning calories will have some effect on the planet. It’s obvious we’re not going to do away with fossil fuels like coal oil and gas in the near future, and we need to supplement/replace them with less polluting energy sources. That’s for the health of our rivers and streams, soil, air, oceans, communities, and for our economic future.

What now?

So why poo-poo any technology that could be part of the solution, even if its first generation product has problems? I can’t think of a more polluting disgusting immoral industry than oil and the other big energy companies. And I can’t think of a single ‘clean’ technology that doesn’t have its own casualties. Solar panels and wind turbines use rare earth minerals mined in conflict countries – often creating a ‘resource curse’ for local populations, and extracted with extensive damage to local ecosystems. Hydro destroys marine life, geothermal involves digging up large tracts of soil… But we have to move towards these cleaner technologies while we have the excess human and natural capital to enact such a large change.

I worry about the future of the world, as we blithely go on consuming without any thought to the long-term repercussions of our actions. I guess since the economy hasn’t totally collapsed so far, every day we can limp along is a false positive – yes, the system can work! But like Ishmael says – we’re just falling and haven’t crashed yet. I hope that the career I’m choosing in renewable energy can provide some cushion to our fall, and that I will have the skills and knowledge to help my community when energy prices spike. China’s out there buying up global natural resources, but America fiddles as Rome burns, and I guess that these days we’re Rome.

Post-Apoca-Wha’?

Preparing for the unpredictable inevitable something that’s coming feels like the zeitgeist (at least among my overly educated, environmentally aware friends). We’re all uneasy about our futures – individually and as a global collective. My computer skills and jokes won’t feed me in the event of some sort of global meltdown, and no empire has lasted before, so why should America? Whether you call it urban homesteading, survival skills, or apocalypse-preparedness, my generation seems to be prepping to get ourselves to the bunkers. I don’t have a cache of food and weapons in a back woods cache somewhere, but I feel remiss. I should have enough food and water to survive a short emergency (like if the town I live in turns into an island for a few days because we lose highway access, or if there’s an earthquake, or if there’s a tsunami down by Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor like the one that hit Japan, or a terrorist attack, or a superflu outbreak, or zombies, or…) the whole point about unexpected things is that you don’t expect them.

So when I invest time in biofuels and other sustainable solutions, when I read about seed saving or research organic agriculture, it’s because I think I’m going to need these skills. Maintaining the system we live in takes a huge amount of wealth and energy, and without those constant inputs we will quickly crumble. Most towns only have enough food in them for 3 days. Most of Manhattan would be under water in the same amount of time if not for the sump pumps that constantly drain the island. It isn’t hard to imagine some scenarios that could shake up society pretty quick. Vermont doesn’t know when they can rebuild their highways, parts of Texas lost power for almost five weeks after Hurricane Ike. New Orleans is still a moldy shell of its former self, and Detroit doesn’t look like it’s ever turning around if Van Jones doesn’t pull a ‘Get Out of Poverty Free Card’ out of his dashing three-piece suit.

America isn’t a game of Monopoly but these days it seems like Mr. Moneybags holds all the cards, and probably has an escape plan much like Dr. Evil that involves a one-man rocket and nefarious cackling.

I do what I can (*as a broke grad student) – I bring my own coffee mug, I bike, I don’t take a plastic bag, I use biodiesel. I gave $50 to The Nature Conservancy last week on the street because I secretly know I can afford it, and they’re protecting land for our collective future. It feels so insignificant as to not even be countable, and like I’m stuck in a system that doesn’t register my actions. But if I can make alternatives more available to my community, and be educated about the way our systems work, maybe I can be more of an asset than a liability. I figure everything I eat drink and wear takes a resource away from someone or something else. But unless I want to kill myself (which I don’t), as my econ professor says ‘life displaces life’. So I try to buy organic, fair trade, local, used, and not add more to the waste stream than being an American demands.

I’m on a kick to learn more about living sustainably and off the land this year, and hopefully form networks of like-minded individuals, with good Rapture Skill Sets (for those of us who will be Left Behind in the Rapture, duh, check out the best-selling series if you’re not already deeply troubled by America’s moralizing evangelical fanatics – and the fact that they want the world to end, so that Jesus can be proven right?!).

???

I question whether I will want these thoughts floating around in the ether forever with my name connected to them, but they’re honest. I am into renewables because our system seems broken, and like the flaw is about to be exposed. We are living in a kleptocracy where the politicians and corporations run roughshod over ordinary citizens and our collective rights to clean air, water and biodiversity – never mind human rights and workers’ rights.

Whether you’re in Detroit or Darfur, an e-waste dump in South Africa or on a reservation in South Dakota, our economic and environmental wealth seems to be declining, along with our ability to take effective collective action to change the course of the world. Maybe cynicism is my generation’s illness, but it feels like the more we ‘connect’ with social media the less we get out and actually enact real change.

I was more of an optimist before, maybe I’m a realist now. The government isn’t much better than the corporations they’re supposed to protect us from (but they are still better!) – especially in America with our regulatory capture of the USDA, FDA, and the political lobbying and campaign financing available to any rich committed group of extremists. Voting once every 2 or 4 years is just about the easiest job performance review I’ve ever heard of.

As I become more disenchanted with the system, I wonder where my new perspective will lead… in some ways I identify with the Militia types who are preparing, on the other hand I think most of them are weird religious bigots who don’t believe in education or human equality (at least for minorities and gays)… or am I the xenophobe now? It scares me how much ‘ordinary’ people don’t seem worried about the possible collapse scenarios I envison for America almost constantly, while the ‘nutjobs’ are prepping to go off-grid.

I guess my final, most positive reflection, is: Let the end of 2011 be about building positive community resilience for 2012. Whether it’s getting additional supplies like food and water or learning how to forage for wild plants, we can all strengthen our communal capacity for adaptation. And by doing that we are acting as good members of our communities and preparing for an uncertain future. What do you say, anyone want to join my apoca-pod? (That’s short for Apocalypse-Pod: A network of prepared citizens ready to support each other in an emergency. Read Chris Martenson’s blog for more on the subject.)

So that’s me – half-joking, half-terrified, half-pontificating, for an audience that by this point in my post probably just includes my mother. What do you think, mom, ready to learn some carpentry skills for the land plan?

Guts and Grace Abroad!

 ”All you need is guts and grace” is a fitting quote to anyone successful I’ve met working globally across the world. In some fashion or another, from the business to the educational sector, from non-profit to simply networking after work, those who step out of their comfort zone more often than not are generously rewarded. These are the inspirational characters.  When they are met with challenge or a roadblock, they tend to live by the saying, “there’s always another way to get where you’re going.”

For many around the world, it is not easy to reach out to someone you don’t know to ask for help for a school or professional opportunity. It’s hard to take a chance and apply to the program or company you don’t know much about, or travel to a country alone you’ve never been, even if it’s in return for the opportunity of a lifetime. But if you don’t go, you won’t know, right?

I am currently in Europe for a work trip I was able to put together through some of my summer client project work. I’ve been able to travel over land for much of it and cover some good ground and cultural exchanges while at it. I’ve traveled to Barcelona, through Eastern Europe and to Budapest to give a global communications training. Heading over to London to get back to Boston and then MIIS, while visiting a cousin, we discussed his experience working in the technology sector managing large global teams from various countries in Europe and Asia. We talked about some of the challenges of conducting businesses and global communications with so many foreign cultures, diverse expectations and perspectives. He asked me a good question. Why don’t sales teams at big global companies give cultural trainings to people like me who are moved overseas to work, in order to prepare them to work with different teams and clients from different backgrounds and cultures? He thought there could be a lot he could’ve been trained on ahead of time to help him acclimate and work more efficiently upon arrival to the new placement. Well to answer his question — they do. Many organizations and companies do provide cultural training before employees get transferred overseas or get sent out to work in the field. However, more often than not, after checking in with a friend who consults in this space — employees in the corporate sector have to specifically request this type of training. It is not usually compulsory. If it is mandatory, the training is often short-lived and maybe just includes some reading, compared to the months of preparation the state department or the weeks of training the non-profit sector might provide. In this conversation, my cousin and I talked about similar issues we focus on a lot in our MPA classes in terms of organizational sustainability and considerations when facilitating and fostering participatory management and effective leadership.

I think my cousin raises a good point. How come when I went to study abroad, they gave us a pretty in depth training at Semester at Sea before we docked at every foreign port to be successful in engaging in each country? Why couldn’t the same idea in international business be used as when I studied abroad in Australia or when I served for a couple years in Latin America through WorldTeach. It is interesting how these types of multi-cultural trainings happen less in the private sector, where there could be more resources to dedicate in the first place.

I believe a person has to have guts to do this type of global work in the first place. However with help from cultural training, what makes people succeed is the grace, diplomacy and meticulous understanding we need to use when working with our colleagues around the world. Training is necessary to inform this process. The grace is what helps a professional meet colleagues in the middle, build bridges (rather than break them), and ultimately allows people (and in the case of my cousin) “close the deal” or manage people successfully at work.

One organization I’ve been working with this summer, Connect-123, a global social enterprise that encourages students around the world to go beyond the study abroad experience, promotes guts and grace through global work experience. They offer tailored intern opportunities with civil society organizations and local entrepreneurs and businesses to contribute to the local culture, economic development and social impact they’re living in. In addition to this, they offer cultural and professional training to help interns acclimate when working in the foreign country. In return, the “beyond the classroom” reward is tenfold academically and personally, while participants of this program develop professionally on a global level.

From Latin America to Eastern Europe, NESsT, another organization I’m working with this summer, works tirelessly with social enterprises and businesses to sustain for profit and marketable opportunities to re-invest in their organization and achieve their mission. While NESsT fulfills their mission to help social enterprises, they also contribute to civil society and promote positive economic and environmental impact in their work. I’ve worked with their Latin American and Eastern Europe offices for the past 9 months and gotten to know them well and the sustainable social impact they are making in emerging markets. Boasting 13 different languages on their global team,  they all took a chance in their career to help the growing sector of social enterprise. They carve sustainable solutions out of international development opportunities daily. In doing so, they provide better livelihoods to hundreds of organizations and communities in emerging markets around the world. With a little guts and grace myself, this trip throughout Europe has been solo. During this trip, I’ve gotten to work with colleagues from NESsT in Budapest hailing from Romania, who also work with Slovakia, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Hungary on global communications and management solutions online.

How are you exhibiting guts and grace in your professional and personal life? How do you see innovation playing a part in this, if at all? Do you have good stories to share about others sticking their neck out and making a difference in their own careers, educational journey or to help others?

As I write, I remember how I took a boat, train, bus and plane to get me from Spain over to Budapest and then back to London to fly home. In my own guts and grace global journey, I’ve enjoyed keeping my eyes peeled for new and gutsy confidence and innovation along the way– and looking forward to sharing more later.

For now, the door is open. Stay bold and take hold of those opportunities; they are out there. They are not waiting on you, so why wait on them?

I know these aren’t pretty pictures, but I think they’re important to share with the world.
A quick update on the bill: the bill is still in the Senate Appropriations committee, awaiting approval so it can move forward. Write to your state senators!

This is the second in a series of three blog posts about a two-week field experience I had in Baja California, Mexico this summer. 

I sometimes struggle to define the work that interests me. I know what it is, but I have to spin it differently depending on my audience:

“Conserve marine ecosystems and habitat.”

“Assist local artisanal fishermen in maintaining their livelihood.”

“Help communities secure exclusive rights to specific marine resources.”

“Find ways to incentivize fishermen to protect the coast and ocean.”

“Live in interesting coastal communities in developing countries.”

I’m learning though, that quite simply, I want to promote sustainable fishing. The phrase “sustainable fishing” involves that loaded and sometimes misused word, “sustainable”. My favorite definitions of sustainability specify the importance of a triple bottom line: people, profit and planet or a focus of the social, economic and environmental outcomes. I recently learned that the two Spanish words for sustainability—“sustentable” and “sostenible” initially had different definitions. One pointed towards the gentle use of a resource with an understanding that the resource would be used up. The other meant finding ways for people to thrive while utilizing their natural resources, but ensuring that the resource would be available for future generations. I prefer the second definition. I think our grandchildren should be able to know pristine coastal areas, healthy fish and thriving coral reefs.

Basically, my work is about finding ways to promote the social, economic and environmental well being of fishing communities.

Grupo Tortuguero has a project in Lopez Mateos that does just that. It was a treat to tag along with their team over almost two weeks to experience their work and offer some recommendations. The project, “PROMAR: Productos Marinos Sustentables SPR de RL” is a partnership between Grupo Tortuguero, the fishermen of five local fishing cooperatives and their wives. PROMAR is developing a program that promotes changes that should benefit the environment, the local economy and the community. The environment benefits because the fishermen will transfer their gear from gill nets to hook and line. This change will essentially eliminate bycatch and should increase the quality of the catch because only certain species will be targeted. The local economy profits because fishermen will immediately place their catch into coolers of ice (currently, catch sits on the boat, sometimes going bad due to the hot sun), then bring the catch to a collectively-owned air conditioned and sanitized processing center to be cleaned (currently, fish are cleaned on the beach). The sustainably caught, responsibly processed fish will be sold to gourmet seafood buyers in Cabo san Lucas via a coordinated transportation system that guarantees that the fish stays on ice the entire time. These buyers offer a much higher price that what is currently paid to fishermen for the fish caught my gill nets and cleaned on the beach. Finally, the community benefits because it involves women in the production. The fishermen’s wives are currently taking computer classes to learn basic skills on Microsoft Word and Excel. They are the managing partners of the program and also responsible for the processing of the fish. This partnership is unique and one of few in the world that so equally involves and benefits women in a traditionally male dominated sector. The distilled and lovely end goal of the PROMAR project is empowered families, protected ecosystems, conserved turtles, financial security.

PROMAR, as expected, is in the process of defining itself. I hosted a small workshop on building a successful cooperative. During the workshop, I described a cooperative organization as a living organism. Although a coop is comprised of individual members, it has its own identity and its own way of being in the world. I encouraged PROMAR’s members to consider their organization as a baby. A baby needs quality food, attention and care to grow to be a successful adult. As a child, it needs monitoring and guidance. My message to PROMAR was that as members, they are the parents of this baby. If they invest the proper time, energy and effort into organizing themselves well now, their “baby” will grow to be a very successful adult.

I am so excited to see how PROMAR grows!

When Grupo Tortuguero’s director invited me to spend a couple of weeks in their field station, he mentioned that it would be a good time to come because they would be doing turtle rodeos and I could ride along. Sure, I’m always up for an adventure and I love being on the water. I packed a few Dramamine and some extra sunscreen, unsure of what to expect. A turtle rodeo involves exactly that—rodeoing turtles. Two boats scan the water in search of sea turtles that have come to hang out on the surface. Once a turtle is spotted, the boat carefully approaches from behind while the um, turtle cowboy, prepares himself. As soon as we were close to a turtle, the “cowboy” (frequently Grupo Tortuguero’s Science and Fisheries Director, Hoyt Peckham) leaps into the water, grabs hold of the turtle’s shell and wrangles it to the boat. A few people help lift it onto the boat for measurements and assessment. The wrangling part is the most exciting, but what comes next is most important.

A small damp rag is placed over the turtle’s face to help keep it calm. Hoyt and his team measure, weigh and tag the turtle. Then they remove barnacles from the turtle’s shell that, although natural, can harm the turtle by changing its hydrodynamics and causing harm to the shell. A small sample of skin and shell is taken so that the scientists can analyze isotopes to better understand the turtle’s diet. The turtle is then gently released and continues its day unharmed. The actual “rodeoing” part is quite challenging because the turtle is strong and frequently dives under the water. For that reason, my chance to “rodeo” came during the release of a turtle. I jumped into the water so that Hoyt and his team could pass me the turtle. I held onto it for a moment, then gently released it so that it could glide under the water. Yes, it was as fun and magical as you’d imagine.

Data from the turtle rodeos are used to help us better understand the turtle’s habitat needs and informs conservation efforts. A big thank you to Grupo Tortuguero for letting me come along on the rodeo!

It stinks in the field station this morning. I stepped outside onto the street and it smells like dead fish out there too. Someone explained that the smell is from the tuna cannery down the street. Some days, too many fish are brought to the cannery than they can process. The solution: burn them down into fishmeal, which can be sold as an organic fertilizer.

A definition of bycatch: the unintentional catch of living organisms by fishing gear.

The work I do frequently includes considerations to deal with bycatch. I’ve read a lot of reports and seen numerous upsetting pictures of fish, birds and turtles entangled in nets. I brainstorm ways to assign fishing rights that encourage responsible fishing and methods to utilize fishermen as monitors of their own actions.

I care about these animals and the ecosystems they inhabit, but a caring based on something unseen is different than the care we have for something seen and experienced ourselves. No picture, video or report prepared me to experience instances of bycatch with my own eyes. My field experience in Baja California Sur was not designed to showcase instances of bycatch, however it did just that. The idea was for me learn about Grupo Tortuguero’s work in the community of Lopez Mateos (more on that later).

Sure, I already knew that:

 Worldwide, experts believe that fisheries bycatch is in the range of 27,000,000 metric tons.

24,000,0000 to 45,000,000 red snapper are caught as bycatch in Gulf of Mexico shrimp fisheries each year.

Researchers believe that between 1990 and 2008, 2.8 million sea turtles were trapped in nets as bycatch. (Six out of the seven species of sea turtles worldwide listed as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered.)

It’s a shame to smell wasted tuna from the cannery. Another bycatch experience happened a few days ago. We were out on a turtle rodeo (definitely more on that later!) when we came across a ghost net. Ghost nets are simply lost or deserted nets that continue to capture and kill marine species. Our boat was tasked with pulling the net out of the ocean. Yards and yards of abandoned net were pulled out of the water with dozens of fish in various stages of decomposition caught in it. Large tuna, barracuda and snapper were pulled out of the net and tossed overboard along with lots of small fish and crabs I could not identify. The smell of the decomposing fish made even our experienced fisherman captain ill. A net left alone in the ocean always runs the risk of becoming untied from an anchor and being lost to unnecessarily capture marine animals.

Nets don’t have to be lost to cause harm. Yesterday I went out with a couple of fishermen to bring in three nets they’d left overnight. On the way out of the harbor I inquired about the type of fish we planned to fish. Flounder, they told me. Thirty minutes into constantly pulling a net into the boat, we encountered our first flounder. Until that point, they had been yanking dead rays, juvenile tuna, crabs and other fish out of the net. Over four hours with just three huge nets, I would guess that 80% of the animals were thrown to the very well-fed group of pelicans that hung out by our boat. 80% bycatch! Other fish were kept on board for consumption by the fishermen or to sell for a price much less than they get for flounder
.

While the fishermen were approaching the end of the second net I heard one of them say, “there’s something big here… what is it?” Then I saw “it” emerge out of the water: a juvenile green turtle—deeply tangled in the deadly net. Its eyes were closed, neck limp. It had died. In the net. That they left out last night. Nothing could have prepared me for that moment. I choked back a couple of tears, closed my eyes and looked away from the turtle for a while. Then I snapped a picture because to do the work that I do, I don’t ever want to forget that moment. Later that day I recounted the story and my emotional response to Juan, one of Grupo Tortuguero’s biologists. Juan replied kindly and simply: “that’s why I do what I do.” Me too, Juan.

This community, along with thousands of others in the world depends on fishing for their livelihood. The fishermen are good people that are doing a job they’ve done for decades. It’s time to help them do it better. An 80% fish bycatch plus dead turtles for a few pounds of flounder is not acceptable. We need to help fishermen find better ways to fish. In the meantime, we can support sustainably caught fish and organizations like Grupo Tortuguero and EDF that work on small-scale fisheries. 

Throughout the summer, our Agriculture Team spent a lot of time visiting the greenhouses we built last year in Poques and Pampacorral. Our ongoing goal is to understand how our alternative curriculum manifests itself outside of the designated greenhouse workdays. It has been interesting to learn about the innovative ways the information is transferred to younger students who do not work directly with Ruben.

In Pampacorral I was fortunate enough to experience one such approach. While working with Ruben and the  6^th graders in the greenhouse, one of the teachers of a much younger group utilized the plants to teach an interactive, basic math lesson on the greenhouse whiteboard. Her approach highlighted the importance of familiarizing all the school’s students with at least the names of vegetables from a young age. Just pointing out the names of the vegetables and applying them in a lesson plan unrelated to basic cultivation and nutrition struck me as odd at first. Initially, I dismissed the lesson approach as insignificant.

In hindsight I see the genius in this approach: even a basic introduction at such a young age will make vegetable cultivation and consumption an accepted norm, something the younger students will expect to have at school in the coming years. This generation of students is growing up with a privilege that many of their parents and even the older greenhouse participants never had. I realized that the greenhouse is more than a vegetable growing structure. It is a tool to be used in innovative ways from a basic math tool to a laboratory for teaching technical growing techniques.

Basic project introduction like this lesson is the key to changing mindsets by instilling an early awareness of the importance of vegetable cultivation and consumption. It helps to speed up acceptance and buy in from a younger age than many of us had initially envisioned.  In the coming years these younger students will begin to learn the technical skills that may ultimately be utilized for community and regional expansion. Hopefully as this next generation of students grows up greenhouses will become a norm rather than an exciting and foreign concept at schools.  ~Kat

With two of the women who work in Srebrenica

This summer has been exceptional.  I have learned more than I thought possible.  I learned how to get my point across with my limited Bosnian vocabulary and how to tailor my words to fit any situation.  I went from talking about whether or not I am tired or hungry to having full-blown conversations about the simplicity and beauty of life despite cultural barriers (one of my favorites was about the proportionality of a little person).  I learned how to discuss a carpet, the wool that one uses to make such a carpet, and the draft that Bosnians deeply fear.  I learned that I must never go outside with wet hair.  I made friends.  I connected with an ex-pat community and made great friends with the women working at BOSFAM.  I traveled to Eastern Bosnia, Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Croatia, and Montenegro.  Most importantly, I learned the stories of the women who I have come to love.  I learned about their pain, their humility, and their strength.

Trying to get a picture with two of BOSFAM's most dedicated weavers

I wonder if I can fully explain how I am feeling right now.  I will not miss hand washing my clothes or the daily mental drain of understanding the language.  I will miss drinking coffee twice a day and knowing how my presence affects these women.  There is something about the Balkans that has grabbed onto me and has not let go.  In my fourth trip to this region, I am definitely not finished.  From the food to the people to the language, I have fallen in love.  The Balkans will be in my heart permanently.

"One City, One Love" in Tuzla

Who knows what the future will hold?  Thus far I continue to be surprised with the passing of each year.  Four years ago I never thought I would study abroad in Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia.  Two years ago I never thought that I would spend my summer in Pittsburgh studying Croatian.  I certainly did not foresee coming back to Bosnia this summer for this peace fellowship.  As I pack my bags, I can’t help but wonder when I will pack them again.  All I know is that I have not said goodbye to Bosnia forever.

Packing up to head home