El Medio Ambiente

Last Sunday we had a convivencia for work. (This is the word they use for communal living…cool right! It shows a lot about this culture that they have a specific word for this.) For convivencia, every person that works at Proyecto Generando Vida comes together and we talk about a certain topic and participate in activities. This last week, in honor of Earth Day, we talked about things that we do or don’t do to preserve the Earth and its creatures on three different levels: personally, in the project, and in the larger community. My coworkers mostly ended up talking about how terrible we are at this task. At the project we many times leave lights on after we leave a room, we often use small plastic bags to serve out frescos during events, and we waste water by watering the dirt in front of the project. I agreed that yes, the project could do a better job in some areas to preserve and protect the environment, but as we sat there in the open galerón on this hot day, using only the sun for light and the occasional breeze for air condition, I realized how much better they are than any other project I’ve seen in the United States. Maybe my coworkers do throw away leaves in the trash instead of putting them in my compost, and maybe they do leave lights on even after they’ve left rooms…but in general our project does an amazing job. 

In regard to the environment, lately we’ve been talking about how throwing trash in the garbage as opposed to on the street doesn’t actually do anything to really help the environment. It is just moving it from one place to another…and hopefully to a place where we can just forget that it exists. 

Also, I am convinced that the Recycle, Reuse, Reduce campaign could use another R. I think Repair should be added. Lately I have been trying to do this. We took our clock to be repaired instead of buying a new one, a coworker and I dyed our black pants back to a darker shade, a woman from the bank just sewed in the waist on another pair of pants so that I won’t have to keep pulling them up, and today I went to the market where they sewed my Converses so that now the bottom  doesn’t flap around anymore. 

I would just like to challenge everyone at home to do the same. 

Also, I just put some pictures up on facebook if anyone wants to look!