Fish!

Hi everyone,

As most of you who are reading this already know, I live in the jungle in Panama with an indigenous community called the Embera. We have been trying to implement new ideas and projects to try and improve the quality of life and business in the village along with furthering education opportunities among the youth.

Our current project(among others) that we're focusing on is the construction of a fish tank to grow Tilapia. The main source of income among the people is through tourism, and part of the package is us feeding the guest fresh fried Tilapia and Patacones. This is where the tank comes in. We get up to 140 tourist a day during the high season which is a lot of people to feed. There are not enough adults living in the village to both fish for the food we give tourist as well as keep food in their own homes for their families. In turn we often buy the Tilapia from the fishermen on the lake, causing profits to decrease since the money is taken out of the tourism payment.

After a training course where a guest PCV came to teach the community how to build and maintain a fish tank, myself along with the rest of the village came together to implement what we see as a very beneficial project. After digging the 3 tanks to appropriately breed, grow and maintain mature Tilapia, we assessed that the project could be drastically improved if we were to add a few advancements. This includes a pump that requires no motor or gas to pump water from the river to the flow into the tanks, extra tubing to attach to the pump along with a few "llaves" to open and close the water spouts connecting the 3 tanks.

We´re in the process of covering the cost and installing all of the advancements, and I'll update everyone with a post once this is complete and we have little fishies growing.

Thanks everyone for reading!

The group almost done digging!

The chief pick axing away. The back of his shirt says "life is not a spectator sport." awesome.

Installing a drainage tube.