It was a moment of fulfillment for us at Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge (SFEL). The head of the Konso Woreda Education Bureau, Mr. Geyeto Gedeno, stood in front of those gathered, his fumbling speech soon beginning to gather momentum:

We now want to see this program expanded to all the schools in Konso, making us an example to the whole society and the rest of Ethiopia! Permaculture shows us how to achieve food security and environmental preservation, how to improve our nutrition and benefit our ecology, all through direct community action!” We all clapped and cheered heartily.

Gathered around the training room were teachers, parents and children from the three schools where the Permaculture in Konso Schools Project (PKSP), pilot project, had been underway since May 2009, when it began with training of teachers at SFEL, in a PDC that was part funded by a former volunteer (and a good friend of ours, Sarah Davis from Austin Texas) and part funded by Save the Children Finland (STCF).

Tichafa Makovere, our lead trainer, who had lead the pilot project, now stood before that selection of people from around Konso, and repeated The Parable of the Sparrows, his own analogy for inspiring community empowerment and breaking the mentality of aid-dependence, which has become so deeply ingrained in southern Ethiopia that it seems as much of an obstacle to the development of food sovereignty as climate change or population growth.

God feeds the birds of the air! But he does not let them sit in their nests while he comes and puts food in their mouths. Unless they fly out of their nests to scratch the ground in search of their food, they will go hungry.

The analogy sums up Tichafa’s approach to the development of food security in Africa. As opposed to the (mostly) well-intentioned, but counter-productive, habit of most westerners, individuals and organisations alike, of splashing around hand-outs to “the poor starving Ethiopians”. Tichafa, a Zimbabwean of the Shona ethnic group, knows better about what will benefit Africans in the long-run.

Empowering communities is about getting them to provide for their own needs, not just giving them whatever they ask you for so they become dependent on you.

It was when he had visited his first Konso school, in early 2009, with an Italian NGO Director, that he had first confronted the Konso community with The Parable of the Sparrows. The school principal had been complaining to the Italian that he had not delivered them the furniture that he had been promising (not delivering on promises was a habit of this particular Italian), but Tichafa stepped in to his rescue:

Don’t embarrass me! I am an African like you. We are not beggars! Look at all these Eucalyptus trees you have here, they are destroying your soils. You should cut these down and sell them, then use the money to buy your own furniture. And plant better trees at the same time!

At this the Italian pricked up his ears.

Oh, I need Eucalyptus for beelding my new conference hall!

Such is the mentality of self reliance that SFEL’s Permaculture instills. While many NGOs are throwing around thousands and even millions of dollars into white-elephant projects (such as superfluous conference halls), there are often far simpler solutions to the chronic needs of communities on the ground that they could solve by themselves, if they were able to make more effective use of the resources. This is the key aim of the Permaculture in Konso Schools Project (PKSP) the pilot phase of which culminated with Mr Geyeto Gedeno’s speech last Saturday.

The format of the PKSP is similar to that of the ReSCOPE and SCOPE programs, which Tichafa lead in a number of countries around southern Africa over the past 15 years with great success; two key teachers from a school are given the full 72-hour Permaculture Design Certificate course, during which they produce designs for “retro-fitting” their school grounds. The follow-up then brings in the kids and parents, to implement those designs (with input from Tichafa, where necessary) on the ground. The whole community gets involved – hauling in manure from their animals, mucking in together and singing in great spirits as they do – intensive gardens, tree nurseries, soil and water harvesting infrastructure are all laid out on the ground and channels are dug to run rain-water from roofs into keyholes where banana suckers soon explode into lush thickets. Moringa, papaya and mango (the first 70 seedlings provided by SFEL) will soon close a canopy over the flourishing vegetable beds in the intensive gardens. Permaculture is included on the school curriculum, with resource materials designed for the purpose, so kids gain theoretical insight as well as being involved practically. Within a year the school can supplement its children’s diet with fresh fruit and greens and gain income from sales of vegetables and tree seedlings to the community. The skills are also taken home by the kids, so penetrate into the community for the long-run. The bare school yard soon becomes a lush and fascinating jungle for the exploration of the young mind, and these people are taking control of their own destiny, no longer sitting by the roadside waiting for UN grain convoys to roll in with hybrid wheat over-produced on the other side of the planet – the solution lies right here, in their own back yard!

A program of monitoring and evaluation continues over the following 24 months, with exchange visits between the schools, bi-annual refresher courses for the teachers at SFEL, visits to our own model farm to promote new ideas and improve motivation. The culmination of phase 1 (the pilot) was the competition between the schools which came in February 2010 with SFEL’s most recent international PDC, the participants of which were asked to judge between the schools for the best implementation, as part of their own PDC training.

The PDC had a multinational complexion with American Peace Corps sending two Ethiopian-American officers, an Ethiopian estate owner from Norway, two freelance American volunteers, a Swedish SFEL volunteer for five months, an Italian couple, a British volunteer on a mission to develop a windmill for SFEL, a Welsh lady working the Karrayou Tribe from the rift valley in East Shoa, and a veterinary surgeon – a Karrayou also working with the Welsh tribe. Criteria for the participants appraisal of the schools, included:

• The presence of the design map on the wall
• The presence of a tree nursery
• Effective intercropping of species to reduce disease and promote companion relationships
• Evidence of innovation in water harvesting
• Evidence of eating the vegetables produced in the gardens
• Evidence of gaining an income for the school from sales of produce

Overall it was decided that Sawgume (the same school where Tichafa had first embarrassed the teachers with the parable of the sparrows a year ago) deserved to win the competition, but all three schools were given prizes as an encouragement. The prizes were donated by local businessmen, such Mr Samuel, the owner of Bela Abyssinia Tours, a customer of SFEL, who agreed to contribute 3000 Birr for exercise-books, pens, watering cans, spades and hoes, which were awarded to the teachers and most industrious parents and kids of the three schools.

And the PKSP pilot phase has been proclaimed a resounding success! The Konso Education Bureau are keen to see its expansion to all the schools in Kosno. STC Finland have agreed to include two more schools in their program in 2010, however we at SFEL are keen to go beyond that. If more NGOs, GOs or individuals will involve themselves, by adopting or sponsoring schools in various ways, we can keep Permaculture actively growing in Ethiopia in the coming years. We are ready to work with you.

You can also support our activities by joining our next international PDC in at SFEL in Konso: Permaculture for the Rural African Environment – Oriented towards food security development for rural communities lead by Tichafa Makovere Shumba, at Strawberry Fields Eco-Lodge: April 05 – 18, 2010.

For more information please contact info (at) permalodge.org also visit our website www.permalodge.org and see more photos of project work here.

Permaculture education should be in every school, everywhere. If it was, I believe most of the world’s problems could be solved within a decade.

Recently, The Panya Permaculture Project here in Thailand collaborated with Pun-Pun (an organic farm, seed-saving operation, and sustainable living and learning centre) to launch The Living Seeds Festival; an annual festival to celebrate biodiversity, sustainable living and community in northern Thailand.

The Festival included local organic food, organic seed exchange, massage and natural healing, and demonstrations such as natural building, earthen ovens, organic gardening techniques, appropriate technology and more…. The main aim of the Festival was to raise awareness on our present food crisis. The loss of food varieties (both in the markets and our diets), damage to land and soil (caused by conventional farming techniques), and the fragility of food security were just some of the many issues presented.

Being very close to Pun-Pun (as neighbours and friends) Panya’s role was very supportive. We covered the shaded grounds within Chiang Mai University in bamboo sculptures. These included ‘tensegrity structures’ (a mesmeric combination of tension and integrity, which creates a self-standing, three-dimensional, and often times awesome geometric structure; Google it for some fascinating imagery), giant tripods, woven orbs and nests.

The land was a wonderment of shapes and figures, and the bamboo awarded the area a gorgeous sense of nature; in its complexity as well as its simplicity.

We decided on bamboo for several reasons: there is a bamboo grove between Pun-Pun and Panya; the harvesting of bamboo is relatively quick and the plant regenerates rapidly; bamboo is durable and flexible; bamboo is extremely cooperative; and a relatively new member to Panya – Will Eastlake- has extensive experience with bamboo installations and constructions from various festival projects in Australia.

The Festival was a hit. Throughout the afternoon, people and more people wandered amongst the myriad booths, from seed saving to making adobe bricks. Seeing so many interested in food security and personal independence was truly inspirational. The proverbial ball has definitely begun to roll in Thailand.

And, I expect next year’s Living Seeds Festival to be an even bigger success.

For those who can make it, we are also having a two week natural building workshop, starting January 6, 2010.

We’re pleased to announce that we’re partnering with the makers of the video above, WeForest, to help establish self-replicating permaculture reforestation demonstration sites in accordance with our Permaculture Master Plan, in several worldwide locations – starting in Zambia in the first instance. Our Geoff Lawton has just agreed to be on their advisory board, and we’ll be working to supply guidance, knowhow and staff to pioneer these projects.

This is just one example of the many encouraging collaborative results we get as people boil current events down to their only logical conclusion – discovering we need to quit battling nature and get busy harnessing biological synergies to repair the earth and rebuild sustainable community interactions.

Recently we had a whirlwind tour of Atacama in the north of Chile, the driest place on earth. This was a learning experience rather than teaching – in this hostile and vulnerable landscape that has been occupied for thousands of years we find strategies for building resilience.

In November 2009 we were invited by Daniela Martinez and Claudio Pereira of the new organisation Permaculture in the Desert to run a weekend Introduction to Permaculture workshop. At first we were a little apprehensive about our ability to provide useful ideas and strategies to desert people, but we took this as an opportunity to learn as much as we could about desert ecosystems and the people that live there. At first a seemingly hostile landscape has revealed its beautiful and friendly face to us. This is an inspirational place. We are just as unconvinced as the locals that this dry salty place can be greened. But there are remarkable signs here of resilience. And while many of them remain completely dependent and vulnerable the desert people of Chile have much to teach the rest of us about living lightly.

Atacama is apparently one of the driest places on earth, and according to NASA may have been dry for some 40 million years. In some places the desert is sterile, and comparable to the moon in terms of life. NASA has taken soil samples south of Antofogasta that contained no life. Despite these adversities parts of the Atacama have been occupied by humans for thousands of years.

Antofogasta by the Sea

We arrived by plane to Antofogasta – hot, windy and dry – and quickly caught a bus to Calama. The dry barren landscape all around was perplexing, a vulnerable industrial city on the edge of the sea. This mining centre, founded on extraction has been here for two hundred years or so, fueling an industry. The extraction has moved from guano to potassium nitrate to copper and the provision of services to the mining industry. We shouldn’t beat around the bush; this home to some 300,000 people is a completely unsustainable city inherently vulnerable to change.

The road to Calama is busy 24 hours with trucks of sulphuric acid and consumer products moving back and forth, and busses full of workers. A train rumbles past every few hours loaded with some metal or nitrate. Some 50% of the Copper from Chile leaves these shores for yours from Antofogasta. I am reminded about the lorax, just before the last tree had been cut. This is an industrial landscape, connected intimately to millions of households all over the planet. Someone is getting rich, but the fragile desert environment and thousands of people are being exploited and poisoned. Atacama brings home to roost the reality of a globally connected extraction culture at climax.

Calama the Town in the Middle of Water

We arrive in Calama late in the afternoon, from the bus we see a patch of green in the distance against a backdrop of red and brown desert as the sun sets. We stayed at 2400 metres above sea level for a night, in Calama, meaning "town in the middle of the water". The river Loa, Chile’s longest, flows from the slopes of the volcano San Pedro, runs through the city, then curves north through the desert. Once upon a time this place would have been an abundant watering hole in the middle of dryness. In Google Earth you can see some revealing images of the landscape and the river system that tell us a lot about the patterns of this landscape. Calama with a population of 143,000 is certainly one of the driest cities in the world with average annual precipitation of just 5mm.

Lolo, a student who traveled 1500 kms from the desert to El Manzano once a month for 8 months to attend our design course in 2008, gave us a bed for the night. We were entertained by Felipe and Carolina, talking late into the night, they share stories of life here and their families, tell us about the mining town up on the hill that has been closed because people were being poisoned by arsenic. The air water and soil in this city is contaminated by it. We are later told by a mining executive that this was not the case, the city was moved because the mining operation has grown so much that the town had to go. Who to believe? We ask the locals many questions, gathering as much information as we can about climate and water, soils and wind, cultivation and communities. We are given conflicting stories; "rain… never", "once a year in January.. the main street gets flooded and full of mud", "it hasn’t rained for a long time", "it rains every year in january, a lot of rain", "its just a few spits of rain". We are not sure who to believe. 

We rise early in the morning, and resisting the temptation to stay, feed the dog and pack Lolo´s little red truck. We stock up in the mega mall with water and fruit and head out through the desert for San Pedro de Atacama. 

San Pedro de Atacama

As we drive a plume of dust rises high into the air in the distance, some kind of mining industry in the middle of nowhere. It seems every part of this place has been scraped and dug. There are signs of water everywhere, but none to be seen; rivers and bridges, erosion and dry cracked clay flats… and dust devils appearing on the side of the road, vanishing just as quickly. I am expecting San Pedro to be an uncomfortable dry and dusty place. As we drop over a ridge and down into the valley a broad landscape emerges in front of our eyes, Los Andes fading into the distance in the south. There are big volcanoes in the distance, one of which is Licancabur we later learn, over 5000 metres above sea level. There are big brooding clouds high in the mountains in Argentina, but the entire mountain range is snowless. The valley looks dry from this distance, no life to be seen. I have NASA’s data in my mind as I survey the surrounding desert – no life detected… not even a drop. The geology is exposed, a patchwork of colour, layers upon layers, stratas of rock, crumbled and folded, twisted and worn, layers of lava, and pyroclastic flows.    

San Pedro is a small community, an oasis, with a population of about 4000. The climate is obviously very dry, and with an altitude of some 2400 metres, daytime temperatures are mild year round with 25-30 degrees celcius in summer and 18-25 in winter. At home in New Zealand in spring at this altitude we find a lot of snow, perhaps some lichen… but here we can find lemons. We are closer to the equinox, above the tropic of capricorn, in what, with a little water, might be more sub-tropical. The nights are cold and temperature drops quickly, routinely below zero and as low as minus 10 in winter. They say this place receives almost no rainfall, and the locals tell us that rainfall is reducing, but that it does rain normally in January, sporadically, a mosaic pattern.

The water has a naturally high level of arsenic, much higher than the recommended levels safe for human consumption. We are retold a story by a local woman that the irrigation water arrives from the mountain in two streams. High in the catchment the water is sweet and life giving, but it curves around a large salt deposit and accumulates a higher concentration of salts. There has been talk for many years about diverting the river around the hill to reduce the salt problem, a big engineering solution.The reality is that the locals have been irrigating with salty water for thousands of years. With a rising population, pressure on irrigation water has risen, and today locals have 1.5 hours of irrigation by channel every fifteen or twenty days. They inundate small paddocks of alfalfa to feed their crops.

Desert Food Forest

There are three or more hardy desert legume trees that are growing everywhere; Prosopis tamarugo / Tamarugo, Prosopis chilensis /Algarrobo, and Geoffroea decorticans /
Chañar which all produce sweet edible seeds. These trees provide the main canopy species in the oases and are used for construction fuel and fodder. We are told that the best way to make them germinate is to feed them to pigs, and to take their excrement and bury it in a hole to wait for moisture. We find many fruiting species underneath this canopy in places. There are three or four species of adapted pear species which produce small sweet pears. Quince and Pomegranate are everywhere, peaches and grapes, some citrus, no avocado or olive to be seen. We meet Macarena who takes us on a tour, first to her site where she plans to build a house, and then to a friend on the edge of the city.

Here we encounter what appears to be a 200 year old food forest, with seven layers of food producing species from the canopy of legumes to a rich dense groundcover in the shade and root crops. There are many of the elements of a permaculture system here, but in need of some rearrangement and reconnection for functional diversity. In the valley of Jerez we find an amazing oasis in a canyon with a fast flowing stream, full of life and green. The emergent tree here is poplar, spaced widely, with big old fig trees and legumes making up the main canopy. The valley is divided into small parcels, under lock and key, where people from the village co-manage to produce their own fruit. This place is inspirational. If complex polycultural systems are possible here in such an extreme environment, then we can do it almost anywhere. For more information watch the Permaculture Research Institute’s Greening the Desert, where they had it easy compared to Atacama.

Corporacion Gen

After a few days in San Pedro we return to the coast and deliver a public presentation "Hope & Despair" in the university. We hope that we inspired a few more people to participate in the permaculture network. The next day we traveled back out into the desert to the site of Corporación GEN to start an Introduction to Permaculture Course. Corporación GEN started in the 80’s with a group interested in environmental sustainability and social networking. One of the remaining associates gave us a brief history of the organisation and its efforts to create an education centre just out of Antofogasta.

The site is around 30 hectares – a speck of green in a shimmering desert. They rely on a water supply from a pipe that brings fresh water from Bolivia. A recent leak in the pipe that flowed for a few weeks carved a one metre deep river channel that now divides the site in two. With a monthly consumption of 300 cubic metres they pay a hefty price for this lifeline. The team has established a small area of legume and Shinus molle to create a shaded and sheltered garden with various small homes, animal systems and gardens. As they all begin to age and get tired they are looking for a succession plan, to engage more young people in the project to continue the process. This place is an example of what is possible with limited resources in an extreme environment. They have applied basic strategies that are really common sense. Once again we find that with a little redesign, new elements, and the integration of existing elements like animals and compost/mulch systems productivity could be increased and maintenance decreased. 

In the shade and shelter we join with new friends committed to a simple way of living. We share food and join in important conversation about the future of our communities and strategies for building resilience back into our communities. Together we explore the reality of the current global crises as a crises of culture, one that we choose everyday. We overview the design science of permaculture as a tool we can apply now of we choose. We learn the basic principles of permaculture, and the process of design. With a new understanding of desert systems we explore various dry land characteristics and strategies. Together we discuss the realities of an extraction culture in a vulnerable desert landscape. We realise that it is not so much the ecology that is our challenge, for it is possible to live here. We already know how to design, build and live in resilient communities and need only look back a few hundred years to draw lessons from a vibrant desert people. Sure they didn’t have a perfect life, probably a hard existence, but they certainly knew that over consumption and contamination of water would wreck havoc on their future. 

Thank you Atacama! We look forward to seeing you all again in April 2010 for a Dryland Permaculture Design Course in San Pedro de Atacama. We hope that this event is a catalyst for integration and the beginnings of a transition initiative in the north. See you soon.

For more information about the design course in April please contact Grifen Hope; contacto (at) ecoescuela.cl or visit the website www.ecoescuela.cl.
The Permaculture Design Certificate course is a prerequisite to participate in the Applied Permaculture Design Diploma and in action learning degrees with Gaia University.

St. Croix, a 6 x 20 mile island in the Caribbean, is exploding with positive action. Led by the Virgin Island Sustainable Farm Institute, locally grown food and ecological agriculture are seeding in with island people and travelers across the island. Now, in collaboration with AppleSeed Permaculture and Gaia University, the US Virgin Islands are being innoculated with the empowering principles and processes of permaculture design.

The Virgin Island Sustainable Farm Institute (VISFI) is a 7-year old working farm and educational center designed with permaculture principles. The founder and executive director Ben Jones of VISFI reports, “The seed of inspiration for VISFI was born from the permaculture movement – and 7 years into the development of our farm institute, we are nurturing our first regional permaculture students. We are happy to come full circle with the vision of sustainable design, using scholarships to bring in the local community to learn with North American participants in a lush tropical farm paradise.”

Chicken tractor in tropical vegetable & forest garden

“This course marks an awakening of the permaculture movement into the Virgin Islands, and we’re really happy to be working with neighbours, former students, musicians, activist, farmers, and hope they leave our living campus full of new ideas to spread the fine ideals of permaculture around the world.” The course also includes a true diversity of participants: from a St. Croix conscious-reggae artist to a Certified Public Accountant from Pennsylvania, from a new Gaia University associate to a northeastern United States market gardener, and from an international agricultural development consultant to a Puerto-rican indigenous Jibara woman.

Participants from St. Croix, Puerto Rico, and mainland United States

Collaboration

The lead teachers of this first-ever Virgin Islands permaculture design course are Ethan Roland of AppleSeed Permaculture and Dyami Nason-Regan of Starberry Farms. They connected with Ben Jones through the transformative action-learning degree pathways of Gaia University, and share his vision of global abundance through their permaculture design and teaching work. After training with Geoff Lawton of the Permaculture Research Institute in 2005, Ethan started AppleSeed Permaculture to spread permaculture through professional consulting and teaching work throughout northeastern North America and around the world – Ethan has since taught permaculture in Menominee, Thailand, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and beyond.

Participants preparing for an 18-day hot compost

Working with the VISFI staff and the deep permaculture design process developed by Dave Jacke, the teaching team delivers the standard 72-hour permaculture design course as a complete immersion in permaculture design and action. Participants are mentored through a full 2-week permaculture design process, including standard hands-on activities (compost-making, food forestry, gardening, natural building) and learning in a diversity of living classrooms.

Permaculture pattern understanding: Edge class in the tidal pools

The mission of the Virgin Islands Sustainable Farm Institute is to provide a working educational farm enterprise that integrates sustainability in education, environment, and community through quality instruction in Agroecology and related fields.

VISFI

…combines experiential learning, outdoor lecture, field laboratories, personal and group research projects, leadership development, and local environmental awareness into a comprehensive educational experience.

Participants present design site analysis drawings in the field

…encourages personal growth, self-awareness, and community development in each student relationship with agriculture and the environment. We promote healthy agriculture through intelligent, sustainable farm design coupled with environmentally conscious practices and principles.

…seeks to forge an economically productive link between the organic revolution and modern agriculture systems. It is our aspiration that family and community based agricultural enterprises will prove sustainable for generations to come.

Harvest from the VISFI Farm – sugar apples, papaya, passionfruit, limes…

…staff, through years of academic study and disciplined agricultural experience, have developed a progressive curriculum that encompasses Sustainable Agribusiness, Tropical Organic Farming, Tropical Agroforestry, Permaculture Design, Cultural Mentoring, and Agritourism. A synergistic approach to agricultural learning will produce students with the skills and knowledge to survive in a modern world as small and medium-sized farm entrepreneurs.

Project teams returning from an afternoon of design work

In collaboration with Gaia University, VISFI is working to create a global network of small farm and educational farm campuses to facilitate the sharing of information, ideas, and sustainable agriculture and resource management technologies. Gaia University will host its first orientation in Integrative Eco-Social Design at VISFI in December 2009, kicking off programs for its accredited Bachelors, Masters and post-Graduate degrees.

Even though we’re only a week into the course, it’s clear that the teachings of permaculture are spreading on the island. Local participants have brought their friends and family to visit the VISFI, taking home seeds and cuttings from the vast array of fruits, nuts, and perennial vegetables on the farm. They carry with them the priniciples and ideas of permaculture, to plant and nurture in their own communities.

The long-term effects of Permaculture Design Courses are always difficult to predict. But here on St. Croix, an island with a painful history of slavery and devastating agriculture, the practices of permaculture are already beginning to heal the ecological and social landscape.

Permaculture: meeting human needs and increasing ecosystem health

We are having a Permablitz this weekend here on the Gold Coast, below are the details.

Event: Permablitz Gold Coast
Date: Saturday 21st November
Time: 9am onwards
Venue: Ingleside State School, 893 Tallebudgera Creek Road, Tallebudgera Valley QLD (15 minutes drive from Burleigh Heads Beach).

Details: Come along for a morning of gardening. We will be revamping the school’s existing garden beds and replanting. The school is super keen to get their veggie garden going! If you have any manure, compost, tools, and a plate of food to share… bring them along! There will be morning tea provided!

If you need more details, please contact me on leg30 (at) hotmail.com

Further Reading:

• Permablitz Hysteria – Bring it on!
• The Gold Coast’s First Permablitz

For now, here’s a teeny glimpse at the latest:

Geoff, Nadia and I are currently stationed a stone’s throw from the Dead Sea in the Jordan Valley. At 400 metres below sea level, this is the lowest place on earth. Geoff and Nadia are teaching a Permaculture Design Certificate course (PDC) to 35 students from many different countries. With this course, and other previous Permaculture Research Institute efforts in the region, we have a really good wedge of influence in what is effectively the hub of the middle east – the very open-bordered country of Jordan. Although we have a few ‘westerners’ here, the bulk of the students are from either Jordan or surrounding nations – like Palestine, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Qatar, Afghanistan, Turkey and even a couple of slightly further afield train passengers from Bulgaria. Other students come from Australia, Italy, UK, USA, Singapore and China. It’s been great getting to know them. A story could be told about many of these people alone. (Aah, so many blog post ideas, so little time….)

My mind starts to imagine all the possibilities for their futures…. Some are particularly lucid and eager to get started in their own countries. Several have their own land – potential future demonstration sites – and others are working with or running NGOs in their home countries, which of course gives a lot of networking/uptake potential.

Students socialise after a long day’s learning

Click for larger view

Besides being the bottom of the world, this is also one of the driest and hottest places on the planet – with around 120mm of rainfall per year, and temperatures that can exceed 50°C. Even now, heading into the Jordanian ‘winter’ in mid-October, temperatures are regularly going over 40°C.

This place is also full of the harsh realities of life. Jordan is one of the most globalised countries in the middle east and is seeing similar results to all the other ‘developing’ nations that have followed the typical World Trade Organisation economic recipe of ‘free market liberalisation’. The little village of Al Jawfa where we’re based is a case in point. From being here just a short time the significance of Geoff’s previous work in the valley really begins to sink in. Surviving in a land of rocks and sand is not easy. If these people can but see the potential in harmonising their activities with the landscape, and thus let nature do what it does best – heal itself – they can begin to regain food and water security and buffer themselves against what will otherwise inevitably become an increasingly ugly resource-constrained situation.

PRI is developing a new site – this is one year after initial planting

As per our Permaculture Master Plan, the few western students we have here are effectively subsidising the training of needy local people. The construction you can see going up on the site above is a toilet and shower block, which will be part of the infrastructure that will service the needs of a site administrator, teacher and project manager – along with the many students that will be taught on the finished site. This is the Jordan Valley Permaculture Project – what I like to call ‘Greening the Desert, the Sequel’. Unlike in the movies, however, we anticipate this project to surpass the original. I’ll give you more details via the video I’m working on. Stay tuned.

If you would like to help speed up the development of the Jordan Valley Permaculture Project, please donate (be sure to specify the project’s name so we know what it’s intended for).

I should mention that because of limited time I’m concentrating on video to the neglect of still photography. As such, I’m missing so many photo opportunities it hurts! But, I’ll share the results of the video work with you in due course. I’m a video newbie, but hopefully it’ll work out okay…. If I had more time/funding I’d cover the area better, with video, photos and more candid articles. It does pain me to see such scenes as these and not be able to cover them in depth.

Anyway, I’ll get this online (getting access to the internet has been difficult) and leave you with a few photos from the flight in.

Centre pivot irrigation in northern Saudi Arabia

Arterial systems in Jordan are mere placemarkers, awaiting the few
downpours that arrive between November and April

Working on contour (foreground) to stop erosion and make the most of
every drop of precious water is becoming a positive craze in Jordan