In which my drawings are useful

Alright everyone, this right here is one of the best parts of my job.  I mentioned a few posts ago that the Echo folks had me illustrating a seed-saving tutorial.  I used big markers on heavy canvas, to create sort of a flip chart which can survive being rolled up and taken to villages.  Not that these are particularly amazing illustrations or anything, but it's a true pleasure to work on a project that will directly be useful, and possibly helpful.  Here it is in action last week at a seed swap meeting in a Palong village.  This tribe is seriously displaced, having left their homeland in China and then needing to flee Burma and now trying to find a place to be in Thailand.  It's a longer story than that involving land rights and citizenship issues, and far more convoluted, and I don't know most of it so I won't try to tell it. 

Of course, the Palong women who are listening to this presentation probably already know more about saving seeds than I ever will.

I realized long ago that I'm not cut out to be an actual agricultural development worker, or an environmental educator, or an ecologist who has the knowledge and equipment to save the world and everything in it...even though that's where my interests and passions lie.  However, I can draw, and therefore can offer that skill to the people doing the groundwork.