Nature's Cradle in El Salvador

NATURE'S CRADLE IN EL SALVADOR

Marie and I slept soundly in the tent. We felt as safe and secure as anyone can feel sleeping in the open in El Salvador. Luis rested in his hammock a few yards from us. His machete ready at hand. Even up here in the hills of Luis' farm nestled in the coastal rain-forest above La Libertad, precaution and a sharp blade were necessary.

At 1:30 am he woke us so we could get ready for the 12 hour journey to Honduras.  Marie had been studying a sustainable farming technique particularly suited both to protecting the rain forest and organically enriching the soil to increase productivity.  Inga Tree Alley Cropping.  Marie insisted that teaching and then implementing this method would be the most effective way to assist Luis with his farm.

I met Luis two years earlier while on a surf/adventure trip, September 2014. That had been my first trip to El Salvador.  Luis was working as care taker at the house my friends and I  rented.  We were all struck by just how handy and helpful we was.

I had sprained my ankle badly in some big surf the day after we arrived; and Luis whittled me a very professional looking crutch out of some drift wood with just his machete.  Sharing rum and jokes we all became friendly with Luis, but on the third day of our trip I came to embrace Luis as friend and savior.

I woke just before first light as usual.  I could hear the roar of the surf as the huge waves effortlessly rolled the heavy stones in the shore break.  Still too dark still to see even the outline of the wave my mind imagined the size and power and my body tingled with fear and adrenaline.  I drank some tea and swallowed a bit of fruit as I stretched and waited for pre-dawn light and for another soul to stir.  Light leaped into the sky and I was able to see the fury of the ocean, and I was afraid.  But perhaps I was not afraid enough.  

My friends still slept and no other surfers were paddling out.  I saw Luis beginning to clean the garden of fallen limbs and palm fronds.  He watched me curiously as I slowly waxed my board.  I took my time, hoping that some other guys would go out....none did.  Eventually as the sun finally rose above the horizon I decided to paddle out. 

I waited on the stony shore for the sea to offer an opening into her powerful bosom.  Every ten minutes or so there would be a brief lull during which I could imagine a possibility of paddling out past the breakers.  As a lull began I launched off a large boulder, landed belly first on my board and paddled like mad.  The current swirled in eddies around the larger boulders, pulling me in no particular direction, but making forward progress extremely difficult.  Within 5 minutes I was exhausted, out of breath and nearly in muscle failure.  I still had to clear another hundred yards before the breakers would turn into to peaceful giant rollers.  The whitewater from the breakers continued to push my head under water.  I gasped for breath began to swallow water.  Now I knew I was running out of time before the really huge waves would come in.  I summoned the last bit of my strength and charged for the horizon.  I saw the finish line, that beautiful point at which the waves welcome with sweet reward in deeper blue water....peace and rest and time to find a wave to dare to ride.  I passed over one peaceful roller, then another, and another...I was there!  But No!!!

Just as I prepared to thank the ocean and breathe, I saw a giant wall of water frothing with a furious white crown that would certainly break on me.  I knew this wave was the first of the next set of giants.  I paddled straight at it, hoping to get over the top before it crashed and threw me into the stone boulders I had just paddled past  Up, and up and up as the water wall inclined closer and closer to vertical.....and then I couldn't go any further.  The wave was about to launch me and my board like a shot out of a sling, so I pushed my board aside and dove down, hoping to get under the soft belly of the beast.  And I did, it was silent and I was safe...for a moment.  Then I felt it.  Pull, pull, pull and SNAP...PING!!  The leash attaching my board to my ankle broke! My friends and the other surfers on shore watched aghast as the wave threw the board into the boulder field.  I felt the real sting of fear now.

I suppressed panic.  Treading water and catching my breath for a few seconds.  I knew I had to get to shore quickly before the southerly current swept me down shore and out of the relative safety of the cove.  For many miles south of the cove the shore line was massive cliff with no beach, not even a rocky one that a swimmer could safely land upon.  

Still no other surfers out...no other surfers would paddle out that day at K-59.  With no help on the way, I began to slowly breast stroke to shore, trying to conserve my energy and breath.  I was ok as long as I stayed out beyond the breakers, but I began to drift south too quickly.  I would have to force my way in and through the powerful break.  I readied myself for a pummeling as I stroked into the breaking wave.  The wave held me down and spun me around until I was completely out of breath.  My usual technique for surviving the crushing power of big surf without a board is to dive down and then curl into a ball and wait.  I would typically let the wave spin me and pin me until it passed overhead and then I would float to the top with no great effort.  But now, I was breathless and still spinning and the wave gave no sign of releasing its grip.  I had to swim up with what was left of my strength.  I burst into the air just as another giant slammed me down again.  With even less energy and oxygen the process was repeated.  When I broke the surface the second time I had a few seconds to scan the shore.  I was now desperate for help, but nobody was coming into the water.  I saw a few shapes of people on shore, but they were not moving toward the water.  I was alone, and now really scared.  I thought of shouting for help, but I calmed myself.  I knew that any wasted breath could be fatal.  I gasped and went down again.  I lost track of time, and I was losing my strength to swim ti the surface.  I managed to surface yet again, but I was finished.  I knew that I couldn't survive another pummeling on the bottom, and I was just about swept south of the cove.  I had one last hope.

One more giant surged toward me, but this time, instead of diving for safety, I tried to ride the beast towards shore.  It was a desperate move.  The wave flipped me over and over and I did my best to protect my neck.  I tucked tight into a ball.  I fought the forces of the wave which sought to pull my body apart.  I bounced of a soft patch between the boulders....Joy!  I surfaced and was able to stand in swift running water up to my chest.  The water sucked out and then I body surfed another wave into knee deep water.  I was completely exhausted and staggering, but I knew now that I would indeed survive.

Luis ran out into the swirling shore break and dragged me into shore.  He was the only one willing to brave the waves that day, and he hardly knew me, and he was neither a surfer nor a swimmer.  Luis is a brave, selfless man, and he was to become a great friend of mine. So when I visited the following year for another surf adventure, and he showed me his farm that had been devastated by the El Nino, I knew that I would, could and should help him and his family.

I returned to El Salvador in September 2015 to surf another break, Sunzal, still relatively close to K-59, where Luis had worked as a caretaker.  My friends and I searched for Luis at K-59, but we learned that he had been pushed out of his job when a gang took over the house we had rented the previous year.  We found him a few miles away at his shelter with his family.  I really can't call his dwelling a house or home.  I have included some pictures.  He lived in desperate poverty.  My friends and I were shocked, really having had no idea what his living situation was.  We had only ever seen him down by the house we rented the year before.  Luis greeted us warmly and offered to share the few bananas and mangoes he had just picked from the wild trees around his home.  

He explained to us that his small subsistence farm in the hills about 4 miles in from the coast had produced less than a tenth of what it should because of the El Nino drought.  I felt compelled to help. We hiked up to and all over his farm.  He was farming on some very steep terrain.  Up to 40 degrees in some spots.  To get to the very top of his farm we had to scramble up a cliff.  We were rewarded by a sea breeze and an ocean view.  I fell in love with the land and thought I knew how I would be able to help.  

His corn and beans were withered, dry and yellow in the heat.  However, the soil was rich in organic matter.  I thought I knew how I could help Luis.  A large stream ran at the very base of his steep land.  The stream flowed even now, even during the drought.  The source was a natural spring several miles further up the mountain.  My idea was to donate a large pump.  A few thousand dollars seemed so small a sacrifice for what it could do for Luis and his family.  I told him I would come down that winter to purchase and help him install the pump.  Luis was excited and very grateful.  My friends and I bought him a tool to help him with his carpentry work before we left and vowed to do more.

When I returned to New York I called my friend Marie, who is working on a Master's degree in sustainable farming at the University of Colorado.   She was very interested and agreed to help.  We were able to create an internship (that would eventually turn into a thesis), based on what we proposed to do on Luis's farm.

Nature’s Cradle Abroad (by Marie Shelli)

We landed in El Salvador ready to tackle the task at hand –installing a pump for Luis’ farm.  Little 

did we know that other adventures and discoveries lay in wait. 

After an hour’s drive we found Luis’ home, denoted by an unmarked path descending down a 

steep embankment from the road.  As we made our way down, joyful voices arose shouting “Patricio!  Patricio!” and children scampered up the path to embrace Patrick.

 

Coconuts were immediately retrieved from a tree and cut open for us to drink.  Luis showed us where we could pitch tents and as the sky darkened we sat with the family while Juana prepared beans and eggs for us over a fire in the 

kitchen.  The kitchen, an overhang outside the house, open to the pig, hens and a couple of scruffy kittens and puppies, had little ventilation for the smoke from the fire.  

As we ate their generous offering and conversed with Luis, the direction of our time here was 

swiftly altered.  While initially Luis was excited about the prospects of a pump to keep his farm in 

production during the droughts, he now told us that if once installed, it would be stolen straight away.  The history of the farmers in this region is marked by violence and corruption.  The mountainsides, once home to campesinos, were plagued by gangs who extorted farmers and threatened their safety.  The adobe homes were abandoned for safer dwellings on the roadside where police and the proximity to other families offered some security.  Now farmers like Luis can no longer reside on their farms but have to travel by bike or pony over rough mountain roads to work their farmland. In Luis’ case the journey is an hour and a half.  

Others have to travel even further. Crops are their mainstay, as any livestock kept on the land would be stolen as well. Initially it felt like our mission was over before it began. But as we explored Luis’ farm we kept in mind a method we had heard about from agriculturalists in Honduras…alley-cropping with Inga Trees. 

This system has had great success in the neighboring country, especially on hillside farms like Luis’.  If this method could be employed in El Salvador, it has the potential to relieve farmers from dependence on chemical fertilizer and herbicides, and long term it creates a drought tolerant sustainable system. Another benefit of the Inga system is the halting of deforestation.  As it stands now, farmers have to slash and burn forest in order to clear land for crop production. However this method rapidly depletes soil fertility and the land is spent only after a few years, requiring more forest to be cleared. With Inga, a nitrogen fixing tree, limited nutrients are prevented from leaching by being captured through mycorrhizae on its roots and returned to the soil when the trees are pruned and the leaf litter applied as mulch. 

VIEW 3 Minute Video to get an idea of Why and What the INGA system does:  

https://vimeo.com/101854265


This durable mulch suppresses weeds, recycles nutrients, and captures moisture in the 

soil, creating a system resilient to droughts and shifts in climate. Other benefits include preventing 

erosion and run-off on hillsides under cultivation and eliminating the need for fallows.  Once established, labor requirements are greatly reduced.   After a strenuous climb to the top of Luis’ mountain farm, made more arduous by having to hack through shoulder-high weeds, we sat in a shady spot and proposed the prospect of Inga trees to our friend. When he was open to the idea we decided we had to go see for ourselves what we had only read about.  The Inga Foundation lies on the opposite coast in La Ceiba, Honduras, where there is a demonstration farm and 200 families are using the system.  Camping in the jungle that night beneath Luis’ farm plot, we awoke at 1:30 am to descend the mountain and begin the harrowing 12 hour journey to Honduras.

(Patrick)The night air grew sticky and warmer as we descended onto the coastal road.  The cool, fresh mountain air quickly faded into memory  The only paved road in the area was narrow, winding and dangerous.  Large trucks filled with sugar cane roared through the night, shaking the plastic walls of the many shacks thrown together on the "free" land just inches off the road.  One of these shelters belonged to Luis's daughter Adele and her three children.

We waited in our rented 4x4 vehicle as Luis said good-bye to his family.  He hopped in with a small net sack of essentials and his machete.  It was a few hours north to San Salvador and then another few to the border with Honduras.  It was New Years Day morning, but still deep dark as we started driving.  Luis directed me, because there were no road signs...and (we would soon discover) no maps for love or money available in El Salvador or Honduras.

On the way to San Salvador we saw two dead bodies laying in the road.  The one that was in the middle of the road was protected only by a man waving his white t-shirt to slow down the traffic.  No police or authorities were anywhere to be seen.  Later that day we did see a soldier guarding a dead body on the main road north of the capital.  In the light we could see that this victim had been bound hand and foot, with his throat cut...apparently dumped as a warning from one gang to another.  A truck load of other soldiers raced toward the city as we drove on toward Honduras, feeling a bit unnerved and very thankful that Luis was with us...though I wished he had a rifle instead of a machete.

Now, still dark, the main roadway spilled us out in the maze of San Salvador.  Even Luis was lost.  Fortunately we were early enough that there was very little traffic.  We asked directions twice, but ended up driving into what seemed to be a flea market.  The road narrowed and narrowed until we could barely fit through the now closed vendor stalls on either side.  Garbage over flowed and choked the street--cold sweat and frustration and fear.  I felt that the street would dead end in a bonfire of street gang after party mayhem, and we would be the dessert.  Marie saw a street cutting out to the left and I took it without caring where it would take us.

Finally we pulled out onto what looked like a main road as first light crept into the sky.  We saw a motorcyclist and begged him to lead us out of the city.  Marie's Hail Mary whispering had provided us with an angel!  Out of San Salvador we had a clear and straight shot to the border.  The only worry was a high speed crash with any one of the extremely aggressive Central American drivers.

It was early morning when we finally arrived at the border crossing.  We passed through the El Salvadorian post where the agents checked our identification.  All good.  Then on to the Honduran side.  The Honduran border agent refused to let Luis pass through.  His El Salvadorian national ID had expired.  For whatever reason, within El Salvador, the national ID remains valid for three years beyond its expiration date.  This was confirmed by the El Salvadorian border agent....but it wouldn't help us get Luis into Honduras.  We begged and pleaded and prayed, but to no avail.  We gave a teary eyed Luis some money for a bus ride home, and resolved to find the INGA foundation on his behalf.

 (Marie)  Sadly, Luis was not permitted to cross the border, so we had to continue the journey on our own through treacherous mountain roads with no map (apparently none exist,) scant directions or  road signs, and corrupt police.  The three dead bodies along the road remained a sobering reminder of the  reality in which these people live.  The one in which we would now be wandering without guidance...but we had an objective and we had hope, so we decided to continue with the mission.

Thanks to Patrick’s stalwart endurance we made it to the home of the INGA Foundation, La Ceiba, Honduras just before nightfall. The next morning we met with Mike Hands, a Cambridge professor who has devoted his life to researching rainforest soils and developing the Inga system.


VIEW 3 Minute Video to get an idea of Why and What the INGA system does:  

https://vimeo.com/101854265

After long conversations and a tour of their demonstration farm in the mountains, we were excited about the hope this system could bring to farmers in El Salvador. We returned with much information, some educational materials to share and a new set of challenges. 

The main challenge lay in identifying and acquiring seed from a variety of Inga suited to the mountains of El Salvador.  And in getting others on board to try the system, which takes two years before it is fully established. This is a risk for subsistence farmers, who would naturally be hesitant to try something new when survival is at stake. Thus this will be a long-term project and one to be approached 

with care.  However opportunities unfolded before us setting into motion what we hope to accomplish.

We met an Australian couple who have started a perma-culture farm in the community.  After 

talking with them they were excited to start a demo plot of Inga alley-cropping on their land by the road where the community can see it.  Luis is willing to implement the method on his farm it after viewing an instructional DVD we brought back from Honduras.  The challenge still remained of when and where we could acquire seeds and what type of Inga variety would thrive in the El Salvador climate (a bit drier than Honduras.) 

However after referring to the tree by its English common name of Ice Cream Bean (so called for its 

sweet pulp surrounding the seeds) the Australian couple realized that they had Inga trees already 

growing on their property in a river bed. Locally it is called Pepeto, which we found out from Luis when we showed it to him.  He told us of a larger variety that they commonly use on coffee farms called Paterna, and took us trekking into the mountains to an abandoned coffee farm that used such trees. To our excitement, we found that these seeds are easily acquired in the market later in the year.  The start of an Inga project was in easy reach!  

Continuing this project will require more follow-up with collaborators as well as research and planning and we intend to return to El Salvador next year.  While this is an intervention that will take a couple of years to reap results, we also kept in mind the immediate needs of Luis in supporting his 

family.  In lieu of a pump (which he thinks can be installed in a couple of years when the  gang violence is under control) we purchased building materials for him to build a better shelter for his grandchildren on his property as well as a gas stove for

his wife who has been inhaling smoke from the wood-fire as she cooks. 

A long road lies ahead, but one which offers much hope. With droughts and unpredictable 

weather patterns becoming the norm, continued deforestation of precious rainforest, and poverty and 

hunger driving violence, this is a hope that must not be left unpursued.




(Patrick) And in truth we had a long road and a long drive ahead of us to make it back to the southern coast of El Salvador.  But the story of that adventure will have to wait for now.