This morning JP picked me up in the boat and took me to back to Zaguto to check out the vibe and have some yarns. He was only 20 minutes late and I had to scramble to get ready. Upon arrival I was given the grand tour of the village by one of the senior ladies and an ever-multiplying group of local kids.
Like Kia, Zaguto is a wide village, spread along the coast in a ribbon of leaf houses built on stilts above the sea. On the whole, the outlook for Zaguto looks rather more positive than for that of Kia. They have a communal area for meetings, a fairly cooperative system of leadership and the Chief and the village “cheer lady” seem to be strongly opposed to logging and so are pursuing tourism as a more sustainable alternative. They seem to have the capability to do so too, as several of the ladies work at a nearby surf camp over summer when surf seasons cranks up, so there is a general knowledge within the community of how to organise a tourism operation. That they are reasonably well organised gives me hope that they may actually be able to stave-off logging here and spend some of their money on things like toilets rather than SolBrew.
And that is about where I come in. My mission here (which has become my primary work objective for the moment) is to help them to use their limited resources to do something that will make an enduring difference in their lives. Given their aspiration to attract tourists (and to generally improve their lot) they are pretty keen to use me to help improve their waste management and sanitation situations, as was to be my focus in Kia. With this in mind, it has been settled that I am to come back at the end of the week to talk through a few ideas, for a “story” and a “sing-sing”. 
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