**PURAVIDAonline**

Workshops have now taken off with the local kids, working both in the little village of Agua Fria and at the farm itself with the kids from the immediate surrounding area. We have been working with creative games and drama exercises to work on self confidence, body awareness and the idea of creating a story. The group of older children have now fully embraced the idea of theatre, which was initially strange to them, and are creating their own stories that within themselves deal with a lot of social issues such as alcholism, infidelity and the arrival of the gringo’s in the village. We hope to develop the workshops into a participative theatre that involves the whole community.

During the last few weeks we have been concentrating on our water systems. The permaculture gardens where we grow vegetables and herbs are located on top of the hill and watering is currently a heavy job involving carrying buckets of water up the hill. By installing a RAM pump we hope to be able to provide a proper watering system for the gardens that will allow us to extend them further.

We have also started to look at ideas for Rocket stoves, energy efficent clay stoves used in many rural parts of the world to great sucess. The Rocket stoves would also have chimney pipes which would avoid the great amount of smoke the women are currently inhaling while cooking. We have been sourcing some clay on the land to use for a trial experiment. If this works sucessfully we will build Rocket stoves for all the families on the land which will also give them an opportunity to learn how to make them.

published by elinzinha