Water in Dominica

One of the things that I have realized I feel very connected and attracted to during my journey is water. I have enjoyed swimming in every country and drinking the water (except Guatemala) and have felt a beautiful affinity.

Dominica has some wonderous and amazing fresh water areas due to it’s extremely mountainous terrain.

This is a waterfall that very few people knew about. It took an hour and a half steep down hill trecking and 2 hours uphill trecking from where I worked on the garden. I visited it several times during my stay and felt loved and cleansed. I also felt the effect of such climing on my legs.

This is a water fall that had no apparent tract to it but I had a private guide. The pool at the bottom made a precious swimming hole.

These hot pools were in the same area, led by my volunteer guide who loved taking the pictures. He was a handy person to have around!! 

Dominica was a rugged and wild land with pure water sources that called to my wild side. I do hope to make it back there, but I will need to find a way to do it that is consistent with my respect for mother earth and minimizing my impact.

I have been blessed with this journey and am ready to step into a new one with the added experience and knowing of the earth and a deepening of my relationship with her.

I will send a summary blog at the end of September. Until then I am traveling the US trying to find the most wild places possible. I have stripped down my belongings to one box and am ridding myself of anything that stands between me and a pure connection with the earth. This is the next step of my journey. May you have a joyous journey of your own that brings peace and happiness to share with all those around you.

Gardening in the Caribbean

After having spent 4 weeks in the tortured land of Guatemala, Dominica was a welcome change. Dominica is a small island between Antigua and Martinique in the East Caribbean Sea. It is a third world under it’s own governance. The government has hopes of converting all growing practices to being organic with in the next ten years. 

This small island has been the subject of many of battle between the French and English. Plantations of cotton, coconut, and bananas were started on the island during the European rule. As a result much of the population are descendants of the slaves that were brought over to work the land.

The Europeans seemed to have given up hope of the land being profitable due to extreme weather hazards and a very steep and volcanically active terrain.

This was the view from my tent where I gardened. The land was very steep, windy, rainy and wild. The climate was warm and the flora beautiful.  My calves grew in size and strenght every day I worked on the garden due climbing the elevation changes in the garden plot.

I stayed with a woman named Judy who is from England. Her son and a friend from Scotland live on the land with her. They are working to build a earth bag home for Judy.

The idea of an Earth Bag home is that it is resistant to extreme climate occurrences such as hurricanes and tornadoes. It is also supposed to be able to handle earthquakes. Judy hopes to be prepared to deal with whatever challenges come her way.

Gardening in the tropics gave me the chance to rethink what I believed myself to know about gardening. Seed life, soil conditions, planting seasons, crop rotation, and permaculture all take on a different flavor in the tropics. I am grateful for the opportunity to know the challenges and the potential beauty of living with tropical land and hope to give it a try some day.

Sacred moments in Guatemala

One day I saw this man in his uniform. I have grown rather fond of the Scouts in the US as I see them as an attempt to help children reconnect with the forest and the earth in a loving, care taking way. I was excited to see that scouts existed in Guatemala and made a connection with him through our mutual love for nature.

We chated and set up a 5 hour day to share techniques. In the picture above we are practicing making rope out of yucca.

Here the scouts are learning to make friction fire using a dow drill.

We also tied knots together and we shared our committment to being part of the ecology of the earth.

During our time together, the leader suprised me with an induction ceremony. He asked me if I was willing to commit to service to others and care of the earth and to always be ready “Siempre Listos”. To these things I vow. I am now a member of the world organization of Scouts. What an exciting honor. I was truely moved.

Another amazing a special experience was working with the children at the Maya Specialist school. At this school the children learn Katchikel as well as Spanish and English. They learn how to use the Maya chart in order to make sums, subrtractions, divisions and multiplications. Children in the first grade had the ability to mark four digit numbers with a basic understanding of the meaning of such a number.

These children were taught using all the modalities of auditory, visual and sensory stimulation. They did not just talk about concepts, they participated in making them happen.

We participated in the web of life together and also harvest some of our own food. I knew that these children had a different understanding of their connection to the earth when one of the kids asked me if it hurt the plant when I harvested a sunflower head. I was honest and shared that I did not know but that it is possible that it does. As such we talked about the importance of our intention when we work with the  earth and harvest our food.

I had one of the greatest pleasures of my life when I planted trees with this group. Frist we planted six trees in the school yard. We talked about how much the trees would enjoy the children’s laughter and how much the children would enjoy the tree’s shade. 

Then I went with this school of children to plant pine trees on some land that had previously been planted with corn. Each time that the children and I planted a tree together, we would thank it for all the health and vitality it would bring to the ecology. We thanked it on behalf of the squirels, the birds, the soil and humans. We gave it our best wishes for a long and prosperous life.

I imagine that planting trees with children from a land that is currently struggling to maintain rainforest is one of the best opportunities a person can have. I am so grateful for this experience!! I don’t know if it balances out my jet fuel debt sort of speak, but I hope it makes a differnce for these children, their future ecology, their future choices, and those of their childen. Truely what seems to be needed to improve the earth’s well-being and that of all her residence is: a hightened awareness, a shift in counsciousness, and a change of heart. These children have a great chance of all those things happening for them.

Fun in Guatemala

As often as possible, I escaped from the daunting task of dealing with the level of pollution in Guatemala.

On one occasion, I took a group of 8 girls through the woods in the hills above the town to explore.

They showed me which mushrooms in the woods were edible.

We found some caves that people had escavated in order to use the pumice sand in construction. The layer of ash and volcanic stone of the region makes for rich soil and varied resources for creating natural shelters.

I made a trip to the town of Antigua with another volunteer. We did not plan the color theme or our clothing, it certainly worked out thematically.

The town is artsy with a colonial feel and tourist friendly.

While I was in Comalapa there was a week long celebration for the saint of the town. This was an opportunity to have cultural dances

These are men dressed up with ugly masks. I was not able to get the local Guatemalans next to me to explain the significance of this other than silliness and fun.

This boy is demonstrating a dance from the Maya culture in the traditional dress of the men before the civil war started.

 

There was also the types of US fair attractions including a lot of junk food and amusement rides. A ride on a Guatemalan Farris Wheel is definitely a risky adventure.

The other volunteers at the project were also from the states. They found their own ways of trying to keep themselves anesthetized from the daily assault of the environment. My favorite was the singing.

Cat has a beautiful voice and can play a lot of fun tunes. She has a great laugh and an uplifting spirit.

Patrick and I worked together a lot of the time in going to the schools. He was a great person to support me in playing with the kids.

Ben was a great accompaniment for our music nights.

I had been warned many times that women should not travel alone. This was my escort on a couple of wooded outings. Though he appears quite drunk here, we was a sober friend who was able to discuss topics close to my heart.

Tela de la Vida

Joanna Macy (good name) writes about deep ecology and ecopsychology. I read her book “Council of All Beings”. After being in Guatemala for a couple of days, I felt moved to use an adaptation of the exercises in her book to interact with children in surrounding schools to highten awareness of their relationship and role in the natural world.

I called the dynamic-interactive workshop “Tela de la Vida” The workshop took about an hour and was applicable for people of all ages.

The idea of the workshop is to help children have a felt knowing of what it means to be a part of the ecology of the earth. Each person in the workshop chose an element of nature to represent and to speak from the perspective of that element of nature.

For example, I might be an earth worm. I would hold a sign that said “Earth Worm”. I would take an end of a ball of yarn and speak for the earth worm perspective. I would say “I am an earthworm. I live under the soil. I create tunnels and help digest micro nutirents so that the palnt roots can access them. When chemical fertilizers are applied to the soil, I die. The plants and soil are hurt by my death.”

The children were asked to take ten minutes to think about their creature and to imagine what it would be like to be that creature. What would they  need to survive? What would help them? What would hurt them?

After the child had time to think about this, an adult coach would support them in exploring their role.

One by one, each child would talk about their natural element. I would hand them an end of the ball of yarn and thank them for the vital role they play in keeping the earth in balance. As the yarn was passed from person to person standing in a circle, a web would be formed.

Once the web was formed, I had other adults play the role of a disrupting factor to the delicate balance of the web. I had an adult come in and unconsciously throw garbage around. Then we all talked about who would be effected by this uncounsious human action. One by one, if the element the child represented was effected, the child would let go of their peice of yarn and sit down. As we traced the full effect of harmful actions, every child would feel the impact of sitting down and the distruction of the web.

Throughout the workshop, we talked about the role of humans in nature as being the caregiver, garudian and custodian. At the end of the workshop we identified four things the children could do to help the web of life be stable.

These girls are doing their part by looking for any garbage that may have blown into the woods to be put in it’s proper place. 

Before I left Guatemala, I had the opportunity to train a young man named Cesar on how to conduct the workshop. Together, we made any adaptations that might make the workshop more culturally appropriate. Cesar is committed to ecology and to being a leader in helping Guatemala regain a more healthy relationship with the Earth. He was delighted to carry on with the workshop.

The Challenges of Guatemala

To sum up my experience in Guatemala, I have to say, it was a challenge.

The country is mountainous with multiple water sources and a pleasing climate. The people feel full of beautiful shades of depth, and flavors of character. During my time there I had the pleasure of working with children from the community and surrounding area of San Juan Comalapa.

Guatemala has some very powerful forces that have impacted her land and people. There was an internal attack on the native Maya people by the colonial oppressors of Spain from 1960-1996. The Mayan were strong and determined and escaped to the mountainous terrain to survive.

Though the official attack and explicit policies of subjugating and murduring native people was stopped by a “Peace Treaty” in 1996, the oppression of the Mayan people continues.

Related to this oppression is the toxic effect of the Western culture on the native people of Guatemala. The air, water, and soil of her land are all at toxic levels as a result of the infiltration of the “white world”.

There is no emmission control for vehicles in Guatemala. Since the natives have been subjected to the “progress” of the “western civilization” bussess, delivery vehicles and cars frequent the highways leaving clouds of CO2 in their wake. Additionally, every sun rise and sun set the air is filled with the wood smoke of thousands of fires to heat, cooks, and reheat tortillas and beans. Each night I went to bed with a soar throat. Fortunately, I could heal during the night but would have to go through the same process each morning.

Less than 50 years ago, the native people would trade all of their food goods at market wrapped in plantain (our a related type) of leaf. Now the markets are flooded with plastic bags. Because the product is not of the culture, there is a lack of awareness of it’s toxic effects. Water ways are litterally choaked with pastic bags from corn chips, grocery bags and soda bottles.

Chemical companies such as Mansanto and DuPont are active in Guatemala. They sell fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides to the farmers. I found chemicals being used and sold that have been banned by the US due to their known leathal effects.

Guatemalan farmers, desperate to make a living from the land, apply these chemicals to their corn and other crops to force increased production. Again, due to the mismatch of the clutures, the farmers are not aware of the damage making this choice has on their family and land. As a result the land and her food are quite toxic.

The soil has been over worked, stripped of natural micro nutirents and vital microbial life forms and erroded. Food quality is quite poor.

In addition, when the rainy season comes and there is a daily downpoor, these chemicals are washed from the soil into the water. Many people drink straight for the various water sources, not having the option of purchasing bottled water. The bottled water, much like that in the US has been treated with other chemicals and stripped of it’s inherent vitality.

I feel profoundly saddened by the conditions of the land and people of Guatemala. I cry for the water, the soil, the air. Though such an attmosphere is not at all condusive to holisitc health, I was fortunate to find joy and beauty in such a harsh environment by working with the children.

 The history and current condition of many central and south american countries are very simular to that of Guatemala. Do me a favor and when you send out blessings, please include, “Bless all of the Americas”. While you are at it, how about “Bless us all, every one.”