We stayed in San Salvador last night and ate at Tony Roma’s. They have safe salads – bacteria free. I asked for mine to be protein enhanced with beans. I got a dinner salad with boston baked beans on top.
Stacy, a UK Masters student studying turtles, is leaving today because in her words, “Barra de Santiago is just not for me.” She a vegetarian, but a whinny one, so I don’t claim her for the tribe. Her research was to be on the nesting patterns of sea turtle nests, hoping to prove that nest are chosen repeatedly rather than at random. This is a near difficult thing to study in five weeks of research. The turtles didn’t nest at the frequency she wanted so she’s going home.
I’ve been asked three times today how long I’ll last.
Today I got a cell phone, a mic extension cord and a very used Spanish workbook from the Peace Corp office. I did a bit of testing and found a few bugs with my transferring footage to the computer. Jason and I also met with Henritta, the director of Acsion Barra de Santiago. I learned a lot about the community today. We when to the internet libre café and tried to get online for an hour, but without success. So I was left to problem solve the issue myself, without google. Around 8pm I got the whole mess working and captured 4 seconds of footage of a statue of Alfred Romeo. Not bad for a days work.
Let me attempt to summarize what I learned today. Men dig up sea turtle eggs and sell them to resorts for tourist to eat. They are required to donate 12 eggs per nest of roughly 80 eggs to the hatchery if one exists in their area. Barra de Santiago has a hatchery, but only one faithful worker who is in ill health.
There are three “town counsels” in the Barra. None of them work together. One of the three is officially elected but only meets once every two years for the election. The Mayor has funds to disperse for municipal projects, but needs to be approached and has total control of the money.
Current projects are a sports program with kids to get them involved in group activities and hopefully with the turtle efforts as well.
I’m tired. I’ll try to wrap my head around the situation again tomorrow.
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