elizabethabbott.ca

Some interests of mine.
I welcome suggestions about other sites.

I recently visited sugarcane plantations in Sertazinho, Brazil, home of the Green Cane Project. The organic plantations are marvels of efficiency, sustainability and bio-diversity and use sophisticated mechanical harvesters; the conventional plantations continue to use machete—yielding cane cutters.

Operator shows me how to work his 32-function sugarcane harvester.

Brazilian cane cutters at work in conventional sugarcane field.

Here I am, wearing a borrowed macintosh over my winter jacket, rubber boots and a headscarf, at the beginning of a day's volunteer work in a dog shelter in Nis, Serbia. I hauled trays of donated bread, fed the resident cats, comforted a dying senior dog and watered and fed scores of dogs. I was bitten twice, on the back of my legs. The
young woman who runs the shelter does this seven days a week; her determination and love for her hapless charges are boundless.

A puppy gazes at the donated bread heaped inside the shelter's delapidated building. Outside, the dogs wait
for us to serve it along with a stewy brew of cooked, donated food and kibble.