Visiting an environmental school to learn about reforestation

Today was the day we really got to work. After a lovely breakfast we traveled to an environmental school, the name of which I'm going to have to look up. 

There it is.


And there it is again. 

The school is in two sites, and we spent quite a bit of our day in their multi-use structure. It's an open-air shelter, though it's more than a shelter really. It's clearly the center of the school, where we had some team building activities, a presentation about the school's mission, and at the end of the day, students taught us how to dance. More on that later.

Study in 1968, the school is for 18 to 27-year-olds, and students in the program live there for 3 years, if they're in the full program. They then maybe hired by the government, the forestry department to help with reforestation in the Dominican Republic. Sadly, Haiti, the DR's neighboring country, is quickly on the road to deforesting the landscape.

The school is taking in Haitian students, in an effort to help build that country's capacity for reforestation.

The school has greenhouses, where they grow seedlings for a number of types of trees, including Cyprus. They're also working on composting, recycling, in a number of other environmentally focused projects.

We broke up into three separate groups once it  was time to work. One group helped paint murals on the schools outer walls. Another group worked with the seedlings, pulling thousands of weeds from the cartridges that contain the ceilings. Our group built benches and cleared a space for a new fire pit. 




I was tasked with hauling sand from the river in a wheelbarrow through not exactly finished trails. One quick stop with the wheelbarrow after hitting a root or a rock or something otherwise impassable, and a wheelbarrow handle to the ribs later, we were finished.


After an absolutely wonderful meal prepared by the school's cooks, we jumped on the bus and headed to and idyllic waterfall. The staircase down was nearly vertical, but we were rewarded with amazing beauty.


So, this was an absolutely jam-packed day. Much more on this later. Right now, I've got a pack and we're going to get on the bus and head to our next work site.

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