Dominican re:nourish mission 2011 - Day 3

Today started out with a trip to San Pedro to get supplies for our various projects and a quick visit to Jumbo (think DR Walmart) to pre-order the 800 hot dog buns in preparation for this year's BBQ extravaganza. Last year we cooked 400 hotdogs for children at batey Don Juan, this year we are going to try to feed everyone at batey Vasca where we are doing the community garden.

The owner of the nursery where we ordered the trees yesterday was showing Peter & Terry how to peel the fruit. Of course they expected a juicy, sweet fruit inside however realized once they had peeled it that it needs to be boiled for some time until it is ready to eat. Jordan and Peter went with the delivery guy and some locals help deliver a couple of bon pan (good bread) trees to batey vasca. Apparently bon pan produces enough fruit to feed a family of four every day. We were also told that it is a good substitute for Viagra.

We ended up planting all of the 60 fruit trees we had ordered yesterday at the Don Juan community center so we ordered an additional 30 trees today including mandarin, avocado, mango and apparently some very special orange trees that have oranges that are very juicy and easy to peel and as luck may have it only available from this particular nursery…

Today we also ordered the posts for the fencing at batey Vasca, including 5 large and 40 of the living posts to be delivered tomorrow and installed Sunday. We also pre-ordered 800 hot dog buns in preparation for this year's BBQ extravaganza. Last year we cooked 400 hotdogs for all the children at batey Don Juan, this year we are going to feed everyone at batey Vasca where we are doing the community garden.

Also in preparation for the BBQ we rounded up the drum BBQs we used last year. Unfortunately time and weather had taken its toll on the drums which made the BBQs unusable. We were going to take the two BBQs into town this afternoon to try and find a welder that might be able to repair them for us fortunately Alex, one of the workers helping us who lives in a nearby batey said the he could take the BBQs and repair them both for us and would have them ready by tomorrow afternoon.

Tomorrow will be a big day. The David & Paulo will be finishing the slaughter slab at the orphanage, the rest of us will be shoveling and leveling the soil for the area outside the long term volunteer house as well as one of the children’s houses. We will also be laying the sod for these houses tomorrow. Luckily each year the quality and shape of the sod is improving, here is Jesse showing one of this year's prized pieces:

Lastly, I am aware of the problems with the audio on the videos, I appologise. Unfortunately between the audio pick up and the wind it is difficult to get clear audio.

Here is David's update on the slaughter slab:

Here is Paulo's update on the tree planting at the Don Juan community outreach center: