Tink Tink Tink Ceremony

 January 15, 2026

We got to bed early last night (except for a few late night stargazers), so morning was easy. We all went to the garden and were there just after 8am. Some of us got organized on the roof project and others followed Joelma to the riverfront to claim two more damaged canoes that will be incorporated into the garden. Even though we had just gotten started, we broke from our tasks to go to the Tink Tink Tink at 9 to observe the opening ceremony for the new space. 

We were nervous about the unfinished doorframes of the storage areas, but our hosts hung some brightly colored curtains to hide the flaws of the work still in progress. They set up some of the toys and books in the new play space and invited local children between ages 0 and 7 to join in a morning introduction to the space. The kids all got gift bags with mystery presents in them and they were all eager to frolic and play in the new toy area. But first, community leaders and the nurse talked about their excitement over their expanded health facility and introduced us as some of their helpers in making it come to fruition. We all joined in a prayer for the future of the space, the community, the children, and their parents. We were asked to speak so Jesse told them what an honor it has been for us to participate in this project and we wished them good health, happiness, and joy as they use it. 

The plan going forward is for this area to be a bit of a babysitting place when parents are seeking healthcare, but they also have an ongoing contest about who comes and gets checkups regularly (monthly?). Since the DIRTies' first visit here, improving public health offerings has been a top priority for Tonico and the community. The changes that were funded by the government last summer have made a huge difference and our work this week has helped them make even more progress. It is fascinating to have seen a big open space that was underutilized a week ago turn into an important community resource. We are proud to have been a part of it. 

The Tink Tink Tink took on a series of sessions today to introduce the new children’s space to the families and their children. So we were all in the garden and/or chicken coop trying to push the projects there as far as they could go. On the coop, we ran into materials problems, as we ran out of the special roofing nails that we need to complete that job. We hate to consider it, but it might be the case that there were, in fact, the appropriate number of roofing nails, but we struggled so much in hammering them in that we wasted some. We guess this is an understandable result with a group of novice workers, but we would have loved to preserve and conserve the available materials instead of leaving some of them unusable. Oh well. A boat came today that brought more nails. In the meantime, we noticed that the small brick wall surrounding the coop had suffered some damage, so we employed our tink-tinking skills on that area and filled the broken places along the foundation of the coop. We were very proud to have some elementary skills that helped us not only fill our time but also helped us meet a need for the community. 

In the garden, we kept clearing the edges of the main garden area, using machetes and mini-scythes to clear vines and brush all along the fenceline. There was a small internal fence that had collapsed, so we revived it. As for the perimeter fence, it was highly impacted by a lot of invasive growth. Emphasis on “was.” Our strong group, with particular heroics by Guido, just tore into that underbrush and got back to the original footprint of the garden. All along the edge, vines and broken limbs were hanging out over the garden so we endeavored to remove those as well. At one point, Guido, Brendan, and Sofia were working on a particularly stubborn limb wrapped in brush and vines. Practically out of nowhere came Casey, who effected about a 32” vertical leap that allowed him to get a hold of that limb so that he could twist it out of there like it was nothing. It was awesome. And no one had a camera in hand because no one saw it coming. We will all just have to hold this superhuman act in our memories, as it is not documented in any other way. But it was memorable to be sure and whoever saw it will certainly store it for quite a while. 

We created burn piles for all of the brush we were cutting away, which seems very non-Californian but we are not in California anyway, are we? We aren’t sure when the piles will be burned but we hope not to be around for it because we don’t want to add any extra heat to our current environment. In fact, we went away from the worksite and after lunch, almost everyone made a beeline to the river, including some of the local boys who are our friends. We stayed for quite a long time, as the day was a bit cloudy (not entirely) and therefore cooler than the temperatures that we normally face. Our afternoon snack was fresh pineapple and watermelon, which we supplemented with peanut butter and Ritz crackers. 

We could see the boat coming when we were enjoying our snack, so we knew that it was time to mobilize again.