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It has been a while I know.

There is a host of reasons why I have not written any new updates in a longtime. I apologize.

What I have been up to.

The main thing I have been working on is a chicken project. A Salvadorian NGO came to my town last November to give a 3 week workshop on how to raise chickens. It was 3 hours a day for three weeks. I attended the whole thing; we learned about better chicken nutrition, vaccinations, and shelter. At the end of the workshop though nothing was given to the 25 participants (all women, mostly all mothers) apart from a diploma. So I started raising chickens on my own (in hopes to better understand the process and share with the community) 30 Hy-Line Browns a breed that has been bred to lay an alarming amount of eggs (1 a day for 14 months) while at somewhat contradictory to the rules of nature bred to not have any nesting instinct (which is counter productive for maxim production of eggs because chickens will sit on egg (whether or not they are there) instead of eating). I applied for a grant from an NGO in the states called Mothers to Mothers. I won the full amount of the grant, so every participant will receive the basic materials to build a chicken coop, vaccinate their chickens, and properly ailment them until they start laying eggs. However I will be using a different breed of chickens that are duel purpose (eggs and meat).

Raising chickens is a funny experience. It takes not more than 20 minutes a day to take care of them and each chicken can produce about a dollar of profit a month (not bad when the national income average is 4-5 dollars a day). My favorite part has been a fence I made. I cut down branches of a tree that is particularly nutritious for chickens and planted them a few inches apart for a coral in theory they start growing and put out new branches and leaves which can be cut and thrown into the chicken pen. Of all the branches about 50-60% have started growing.

Recently I have also started (and almost finished) a world map mural at the school. It’s a pretty typical Peace Corps project. I was inspired to do it after I had a group of teenagers over to my house to watch Saving Private Ryan and I asked them if they could find any of the countries named in the movie-they could not even find El Salvador save one kid. So now at the school is an almost complete 6ftx12ft map of the world.

I can’t stand teaching English. Something about it gets my goat. But people kept asking me for them so I started my Trojan Horse English Club. I teach 20 minutes of English then 20 minutes of whatever I feel like (health lectures, or last week I just played Beethoven’s 5th symphony for 20 minutes ( I was surprised how much they liked it)). Then 20 more minutes of English.

Sorry for my lapse I will try to keep up to date from now on. Two a month will be my goal. Hold me to it.

-Matt