This donkey is eating for five

You never know what might happen upon you while in San Cristobal. As was the case at our new temporary residence, the Mayan Medicine Museum, a lost donkey (seen here) was wandering the streets surrounding the museum aimlessly until someone opened the gates to the museum. The donkey happily accepted the invitation and has spent the last few days at the museum. Did I mention its pregnant? Its been gobbling up the grass like its going out of style.



So far we have spent one night at the museum with about five other volunteers. Today we had our orientation with the Natate staff and the museum staff, including the president of the Mayan Medicine Museum. Faith and I made fruit salad from fruits we bought at the local market earlier today. The market is very vibrant and colorful full of intoxicating smells and sounds. Many things we did not expect to see were being sold at the market including fruits we haven´t had since our last visit to El Salvador.


The volunteer camp we are a part of has many projects and activities planned for us. We will be broken into groups daily and given tasks. Tomorrow Faith, myself, and a young German girl named Therese will be the food preparers for the entire group of about 12. We will be waking up at 7:00 a.m. and making breakfast, snacks at 11:00, lunch at 2:00 p.m., and dinner at 5:00. The rest of our group will begin the projects that are planned. We are clearing a field with a metal frame to become a greenhouse, tending to a medicinal plant garden, and building a waterless ecologically sustainable latrine (toilet) that transforms human waste (poop) into usable compost for the plants in an adobe brick structure, the adobe bricks were made from materials on site (clay, grass, sand) from the museum grounds. All of these tasks are to teach us the importance and need for this type of understanding of how we humans need to be better connected with our environment.