EcoExplorers Madagascar 2010 from Shannon Kohlitz on Vimeo.

Here we are past July’s time for fleece, hat and socks, wouldn’t you believe! Manintsy – cold (25/16 °C day/night or less) was the semiarid southwest Madagascar in winter; winter in the dry southwest where ‘it never rains’. Well, never say ‘never’ and/or be prepared for rain in the no rain season and for beautiful double rainbows arching gently over the glowing morning skies….

Since our last update in February, ho avy has been on a ‘high season rainbow ride’ – exciting in a way, admittedly speedy and bumpy some of the time – more like a downhill slalom race against time, where falling over exposed tree roots is unavoidable. Retrospectively, it’s been a valuable growing time: our trees are growing and we are growing with them.

We especially enjoyed the rainbow of colors left behind the pens, pencils and brushes of Eco-Explorers – talented undergraduate students of the University of Michigan’s School of Art and Design. These young students overflowing with creativity came to Madagascar expecting no rain. Although they got some, they seemed to greatly enjoy this mad ride, and so did we on ho avy & Madagascar Eco-Explorers’ tour and project service work in Ranobe.

A double rainbow morning

Some truly beautiful pieces of art were born on this three week long trip from mid May to June, exploring Madagascar and spending five days doing projects with ho avy in Ranobe. The students painted two interpretation panels: one for the native tree nursery and another one for the reforestation research center. Several oxen carts (and finally also oxen horns) were colorfully painted. Without doubt, the favorite motif is Star Wars. With pride this cart has been riding to the next village and the city of Toliara! Bar relief sculpturing on adobe walls on the reforestation center has adaptively used the wet walls leaving our planned spiny forest mural for another occasion in the future. A treadle pump for easier and playful water access has been built during the days of the group visit and another one completed in even shorter time by one volunteering student staying beyond the expedition.

Bar relief

Deep impressions have anchored in minds and hearts of these young people exploring Madagascar on their first step out of their secure homelands into the unknown. Madagascar is quite an experience.

Wildlife theme on centre

The 19-person art student group was the largest we’ve hosted in Ranobe since last December, adding significantly to the 4 Czech, 2 American, 1 French, 4 Israeli, and 2 Spanish visitors already spending several weeks with us – sharing their skills and expertise to advance various aspects of our program, from forest habitat description, GIS to business development. They have been a refreshing change for ho avy as well as our hosting community.

The most recent partner of ho avy was a team of four engineering masters students from the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan (www.hazomanga.org), who came to Madagascar with the group of the art students. The engineers give sustainable energy assessments and make conservation management recommendations. They collected solar data, built housing for ho avy’s solar system, designed and built a solar dryer, water filter and evaluated the feasibility of biofuels. The students interviewed the Ranobe community on wood, charcoal and water use issues. Mapping of land use, deforestation and forest recovery, set a good ground for a long-term monitoring research. Being a well organized, dynamic and enthusiastic team with women in majority, they creatively filled their free time with experimental baking in our solar box oven. Banana bread, chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin cookies, among others, turned out being delicious field yummies. Nicely done!

Clair, Brennen and Olivia taking solar data

Patty and Brennen constructing solar dryer

Ho avy’s daily interactions with the villagers since October 2009, with international visitors and cultural and language exchange, have been raising environmental awareness and building capacity. Needless to say, information starvation and curiosity is apparent among villages of all age groups. Ho avy has been collaborating with the GTZ and Sokapila organizations on implementing the Kit Mad’ere, a tool introducing environmental education to schools and community. A workshop was held in early April for teachers from the schools in Ranobe and Ambolimalailaka. In March, ho avy organized a workshop to improve farming methods: introducing the system of rice intensification (SRI). The workshop has been well attended and the method is now practiced on several FIMPAHARA fields.

Olivia with Tsiforse and Malai mapping deforestation

Improved and alternative technologies brought by ho avy seem to get adopted: the fuel efficient stove was in full operation, the biogas digester has been producing methane for the ladies to cook with for several months now. The output of the biogas digester is an excellent fertilizer and FIMPAHARA used it for their crop fields. Ho avy’s well, installed in December last year got a manual pump and has been in non-stop use by the villagers. Results of interviews show, the pump is greatly appreciated for easing everyday chores. The solar box oven has not had a break and delicious variations of bread, cakes, muffins, or roasted peanuts for snacks indicate a growing appreciation of solar energy as a passive cooking option.

Housing for solar panels designed by the MSc students

Speaking of solar – ho avy’s solar system is now located on the second floor of ho avy’s research center. Ho avy spiny forest research center will generate knowledge about how to conserve biodiversity through research, sustainable development and forest restoration. The center has been under construction over the last months – largely natural building, designed by Anthony, who has worked closely on it with the FIMPAHARA men. The building progress has been exciting, considering the tool limitations, e.g. a non-functional drill, so much of the building was done creatively – by hand and off the grid, with local wood, rock, roofing material, bamboo and adobe mix. The building is not far from being completed; we plan for an inauguration by the end of this year. The center’s surroundings are developing into a demonstration site of integrated sustainability, home gardening, multi-crop plots, agroforestry and more.

Agroforestry has been our focus activity since March. We raised fruit trees along with native trees in three tree nurseries on an area of 184 m2. Nearly 10 000 native trees and 5500 fruit and multi-purpose trees have been nurtured. FIMPAHARA collected 75 species of native and 5 non-native species for medicines, non-invasive fast wood propagation and oil-rich seeds. Up to June 2010 over 800 native and 750 fruit trees have been planted on 1.35 ha of FIMAHARA land: on edges of forest, in agroforestry polyculture plots and in live fences/hedges. Jointly with FIMPAHARA, we planted diverse fruit trees on ca 3 ha of crop fields. These efforts, i.e. planting indigenous and fruit species on disturbed forest edges and reforesting in belts, aim to assist ecological forest recovery. We want to create ‘ecotones’ (transitional habitats) favoring wildlife colonization and assisting seed dispersal. Planted trees have been monitored for survival and growth.

Just hanging out in the village

The local community has been enthusiastic to participate and support these agroforestry trials. The planted species included native fruit trees ofen harvested from the forest, locally planted bananas, papaya, mango, guava, lemons and tamarinds and tested varieties of species that are on the market, but not grown in Ranobe, such as litchi, clementine and orange, cashew, annona, passion fruit, pomegranate, avocado, loquat, date and coconut palms.

The community helps build the reforestation center

Ho avy’s involvement on site for the last quarters of a year has been an invaluable experience which allowed observing and figuring seasonality in terms of food growing. One has to skin-experience it, especially when coming from completely different climate. By living through the ‘cold’ parts of the year – we got it right now with April/May potato planting time. Besides potatoes, 1 ha of garden has onion and garlic, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, red beets and radishes, carrot and parsley, basil, lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, a variety of beans, peanuts, sesame, flex, several kinds of squash and melons. A few sunflowers have made our gardening efforts more cheerful. Malagasy people like rice, but they also like flowers and so do we. This is indeed a very exciting step forward to community-scale gardening, greater diversity of food production and important dietary supplements, that have been largely lacking.

Watering the nursery

For filling these gaps, we need to continue our mission; we let the exciting energy of the upcoming spring enter: rising temperatures, new beautiful flowers and fresh leaves or magnificent courtships of birds, bring inspiration to the next phase of ho avy’s efforts in Ranobe. We have a few exciting goals and future prospects and will mobilize our efforts to reach them before this year’s end, moving step by step towards a sustainable future. Stay tuned if you’d like to hear more in few months….

Photo galleries:

• Forest, wildlife and research
• Eco-Explorer’s art student trip
• MSc. students
• Ho avy and community interactions
• Technical alternatives
• Center construction
• Nursery, agroecology, agroforesty & gardening

During my two week immersion into permaculture design, Bill Mollison was asked by a student, "How do we go about teaching permaculture to our children?” to which Bill replied something along the lines of, “I don’t believe we should be teaching Permaculture to children. They already have enough on their plates in terms of responsibilities and such, so we shouldn’t overburden them with yet another subject.”

True enough, if you take permaculture as the full 72-hour course that we adults tend towards. But I approach the idea that teaching children permaculture is vitally important to the sustainability of life itself and needs to be taught to youths so that by the time they are adults, permaculture is no longer a subject, but a way of life that is as natural as breathing.

But how would we go about uploading The Permaculture Designers Manual into the minds of our youths without overburdening their grey matter? Exactly the same way that farmers (1) are learning Permaculture – a bit at a time, with small bite sized chunks of drip fed information, with an emphasis on tacit learning. My son’s school has done their part in this by going for the low hanging fruit, the easy beginners’ steps of sustainability;

• Rainwater tanks all over the place, so many of them I lost count and the larger ones are connected to the subsurface irrigation system on the sports field. No swales though…
• Vegetable gardens for the children to learn about where food actually comes from and how to grow it. Other schools have taken this step even further with a Kitchen Garden Program
• Teaching about biodiversity; what it means, why it’s important, and how can we go about achieving it in our area? The NSW Government has provided fantastic teaching resources for this subject. They are covering subjects such as; the web of life, habitats and homes, ecosystems, vertebrates, invertebrates, food chains and webs and vertical layers of habitats.

Now these simple elements are not Permaculture as such, but they are a fantastic place to start and they will sow the seed within their generation for them to make the necessary changes for a sustainable planet.

I should probably point out that that my son is not at high school. He is only 7 and has already begun walking the path to sustainability. If he and his class mates can do it, then there is hope for us all.

Notes:

1. You would simply be amazed how well farmers are warming to elements of Permaculture. More on that next time.

Further Reading/Watching:

• Solving All the Problems of the World – in a Garden
• Scary school nightmares and de-schooling society

Resources:

• Eat Your Garden – Organic Gardening for Home and Schools
• Seed to Seed – Food Gardens in Schools

is a unique 127 acre botanical garden and historical site jointly operated by the Los Angeles Arboretum Foundation and the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation and located in the city of Arcadia [just outside of Los Angeles]. Home to plant collections from all over the world, including many rare and endangered species… (from the LA Arboretum website)

This respected Los Angeles institution has now broken new ground by being home to a Permaculture “first,” as detailed in the article that follows…

Fun-tastic Permasphere, L.A. Arboretum

by Erin Marteal

The planting methods in the Permaculture Sphere follow two basic Permaculture principles: 1. Make use of the resources you have, and 2. Mimic nature. When you eat a tomato, simply smoodge the seeds out on the ground and let nature take it from there. Look to the fruits of the market to provide your seeds rather than those little expensive packets. The squirrels might make off with some, but they’re bound to leave a few behind to take root in your garden.

Visiting the Permasphere, L.A. Arboretum‘s Permaculture garden was a highlight of the 2010 AHS Children & Youth Garden Symposium in Pasadena. The excursion day offered three options; a public garden tour, a school garden tour and an environmental education tour. The public garden tour included a visit to the Permasphere, which for me was a launch of sorts for my Permaculture travel-research. With so few public gardens in the world that actively engage in Permaculture, and the L.A. Arboretum the only U.S. example I have identified that actively practices Permaculture and calls it that, I was eager to see it for myself. However I managed to get on the wrong bus and about ten blocks after we’d pulled out of the Westin, our tour guide introduced herself and announced the itinerary, which was not the itinerary I had signed up for. I grabbed my bag and asked the bus driver to kindly let me out, then jogged 10 blocks until I found an open business: Bally Total Fitness from whom I borrowed a phone book. About twenty minutes of phone time and two cab companies later, a yellow taxi pulled up and I was off to my true destination: The Los Angeles Arboretum. My cabbie, a lovely Armenian man who spoke of his neurosurgeon nephew and his teenage daughter who excelled in math and science chuckled as I told my wrong bus story, and appreciating my plight, delivered me to the arboretum in what must have been record time. I thanked him and approached the desk positioned out front of the main entrance, which was staffed by what appeared to be day-camp greeters. None of them knew about the Permaculture garden, and directed me to the front desk. I hurried in.

The food forest with banana, figs, and other fruit trees

The woman at the front desk graciously allowed me to the front of the line when she saw the sweat on my brow, conference badge around my neck, and twinge of panic in my eye. A lost duckling, her expression read. She kindly invited me to the front of the line and pulled out a garden map. “Yes, let’s see, I hope we can find it here. Oh, yes, here it is,” she said, as she pointed to the perennial garden. Eager to lose no more time than necessary, I said, “I’m looking for the Permaculture garden.” “Hmmmmm….” she said. “Best to check with Mark – mustache, hat, guy who knows pretty much everything, and you can find him in the gift shop.”

Caitlin explains the art of planting – sprinkle seeds and let nature decide when and where they come up

Moments later Mark was lamenting there was no staff to lead the way; it was nearly impossible to find on my own, he said. He paused, reconsidered, then thoughtfully explained how to find it; “follow this path straight ahead until you get to the circle plantings; bear left then right and go through the gate into the back alley, parking area, and you will see it on the right.” I started on my way and soon realized there were multiple paths spurring off in different directions and with no signage or clear landmarks I abandoned my map and asked a visitor (or maybe it was a camp counselor?) who, fortunately, knew just where it was. I arrived at the Permasphere in time to catch the last half of Caitlin’s tour.

If you’ve ever attended a conference that includes excursions, you know what it is to be whisked along on a time-table that belongs to someone else. Large group field trips rarely allow time to soak in a place or experience. The goal is to introduce a place or project, a whetting of the whistle perhaps, not in-depth exploration. I was fortunate that the group had been split into two and I tacked on to the next group for a repeat of the 15 minute tour of the garden. Caitlin explained the state of the site when it came under her purview not even one year ago. Old furniture and trash filled the site. In addition, thousands of gallons of rain water were swept across the adjacent asphalt, down the drains, and out to the ocean during rain events.

Cob oven heats up to 450 degrees F in 20 minutes,
can get up to 800 degrees F

After ridding the site of the debris, a team of volunteers cut the curb and dug swales to invite rain water in to the garden. From there, the site design emerged. The garden has only been ‘finished’ (in as much as a Permaculture garden is ever ‘finished’) in the last few months and now features a hand-crafted cob oven and welcoming keyhole cob shaded seating area. The food forest includes bananas, figs, rosemary, poppies, tomatoes, chard, among many other species of edible and medicinal plants. The space, though only recently planted, is already becoming lush and inviting. And it all exists on a very modest and replicable scale: about 20′ x 40′ (74 square meters).

Caitlin explains the construction of the cob seating area,
a mix of clay, sand and straw

Caitlin was originally hired as a nursery horticulturist and with the support of the arboretum’s CEO, Richard Schulhof, moved into her current role as Permaculture Curator. By all appearances, it seems the Permasphere and the Permaculture principles demonstrated and taught there have been very well received by the public.

A place for butterflies to land when damp

However, Caitlin is moving to San Francisco in just less than a month, and her replacement has not yet been identified. What will become of the Permasphere in her absence? Technically, the garden is not open to the public, and visitors clearly miss it if not on a specific mission to get there. Will another Permaculture curator be hired to continue the work Caitlin started, or will it fall back into the background that it has recently grown forth from?

Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Course

The Los Angeles Arboretum & Botanic Garden

Building on the great success and enthusiastic response from teaching a Rain and Grey Water Harvesting workshop at the LA Arboretum last Spring, Caitlin Bergman (SayPermaculture.com) and Owen Hablutzel (PRI USA) are organizing (with Kirstie Stramler [Permaculture.tv]) a full 72 hour curriculum PDC, also to be taught at the LA Arboretum this Fall.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn Permaculture in this unique, historic venue from a wide-diversity of the top teachers and Permaculture organizations in the US! Register today!

Oct. 2 – Nov. 21, 2010 (8 Saturdays and 1 Sunday), 8am – 6pm

For registration info, visit:

www.SayPermaculture.com

www.Arboretum.org

Permaculture is sustainable land use design based on ecologically sound principles. Its aim is harmonizing habitats and inhabitants, creating richly productive food systems. Permaculture is an eye-opening set of principles and concepts that make a tremendous impact on communities. This experiential course is a practical, project-oriented, support training. It moves beyond theory to hands-on applications. Participants will become certified permaculture designers upon successful completion.

Much more than a gardening program, this lively course covers:

• Habitat restoration
• Rapid soil rebuilding
• Thriving food production
• Rain and grey water use
• Community integration
• Earthworks
• Sustainability
• Urban food forestry
• Recognizing landscape patterns

Course Dates: 8 Saturdays and 1 Sunday, 8am-6pm:

8 Saturdays (Oct. 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, Nov. 6, 13, 20)

1 Sunday (Nov. 21)

Venue: The Los Angeles Arboretum & Botanic Garden

Why: This course is fun and applicable to real world experience, and includes an emphasis on practical hands-on learning, giving participants a solid foundation in Permaculture design. Our work changes lives as it changes the Earth.

An environment of support and unity between classmates is fostered, which will enable collaboration in design projects and a strong network of fellow designers. The subjects to be covered have the potential to generate green jobs and abundance of all kinds.

Course Fee: $200 non-refundable holds deposit due by September 13th deducted from $1200 tuition. Be sure to sign up early as course is limited to 30 registrants.

Instructors: Warren Brush, Howard Yana-Shapiro, Ph.d, Owen Hablutzel, Kirstie Stramler, Caitlin Bergman, Gavin Raiders, Wes Roe, Lindsay Dailey, Lois Arkin, and other special guests…

For registration info, visit:

www.SayPermaculture.com

www.Arboretum.org

You could spend $50,000 and the rest of your life visiting all these amazing people and seeing their projects, or a hundred dollars now to meet them all in the one place at the same time. – Sarah-Jane, Star APC10 Volunteer, talking with Cairns locals at the Sustainable Living Expo last weekend.

Only One Month to go! We are not booked out. But you must register now!

This is our last APC10 Update before the event, which we have come to realise is likely to be the most important gathering of permaculture minds. The key themes in this convergence will be transition initiatives, engagement with the mainstream and renewing our networks and movement’s structure. In our extensive correspondence with permi people world-wide, there is a call for permaculture to move away from the margin to become an effective and credible voice in the future of Australia’s planning and preparations for the changes that will come as a result of climate change, peak oil, economic pertubations, migration shifts, etc.

We have summarised our plenary presenters below but we have an impressive line-up of speakers from around the world – in all about 50 people. Our programme is a conventional conference style programme, but interaction, discussion, round tables and time-out to network are vital to the convergence’s success. We will be testing our capacity to skype in speakers from around Australia and the globe – doing so on a shoe-string budget with volunteers. The complete and final programme is on the website: www.apc10.org

This is not a big-league corporate event with money to burn, yet it has attracted the attention of some of the world’s most influential environmental philanthropists including our own Dick Smith and Sir Richard Branson who, though unable to attend, is very interested in the potential of permaculture. A couple of the Branson’s family members are coming to do the PDC and attending APC10. This is a statement about the credibility and reputability of permaculture and its transformational potential. This comes from the decades of very hard work put in by permaculture educators, business developers, community organisers who have been determined to make the principles and concepts of permacultue work in practice. We pay tribute to Bill and David, and the generations of people they trained, and feel honoured to be able to carry the mantle onwards.

APC10 would really not be possible if it wasn’t for our sponsors. We have built genuine personal relationships with each, and we thank them for their involvement in helping APC10 – bringing speakers from overseas, supporting registrations from developing countries, providing IT services, catering and staging, advertising and promotions, and of course, the venue itself. And also our volunteers and members of Permaculture Cairns who have never doubted what our small group can achieve and have thrown their all into making this a world-class, memorable, celebratory and professional event. We love each and every one of them.

So if you have not yet registered please do so without delay. Your attendance, at APC10, is vital.

Plenary Guest Speakers:

Major General Michael Jeffery, CEO, Outcomes Australia. One of the challenges Australia faces in the 21st century is that of making the transformation from old technologies used in our current, predominantly industrial, farming systems to the new reality that we need to be more ‘in tune’ with nature. In so doing, we need to recognise the new realities of climate change, such as more erratic rainfall, desertification of the landscape, degradation of our soils, the impact of a burgeoning population, the shrinking of the farm sector and the explosion in costs of petroleum based inputs on sustainable food production.

The philosophy of Permaculture advocates the need to work with nature rather than against it, and this goal complements of Outcomes Australia. Both recognise that water should be seen as our primary national strategic asset and managed accordingly and that restoration of the health of our soils is fundamental to the sustained productivity of our agricultural landscape.

Sonya Wallace and Janet Millington, Transition Towns. As part of Australia’s first Transition Initiative, Sonya and Janet delivered Australia’s very first Energy Descent Action Plan. Since then they’ve been working on a peak oil and climate change policy group for their local government authority, and have presented at national government conferences on Transition Towns, Energy Descent Action Planning and how permaculture can be successfully applied to communities and regions.

Gunter Pauli, ZERI – Skype from Belgium. Gunter Pauli is a passionate proponent of green development and a clean economy. In 1994, Mr. Pauli founded the Zero Emissions Research & Initiatives ZERI a network of 100 Universities around the world, developing pilot innovations that could change prevailing economical business models. A worldwide network of business systems and communities could create a hundred million jobs, establish social funds and guide economies and societies toward sustainable zero waste production.

Gunter Pauli’s Blue Economy promotes a business model that speaks to permaculture principles. In nature the output from every natural process provides an input for another. There is no waste. A business model that supports less waste and emissions should be established as a global standard. Solutions to problems that are elegant in their simplicity and striking in their effectiveness, demonstrate that a new economic model is feasible and permits innovation and creativity to identify possible paths towards a better future.

Bill Mollison, Co-founder of Permaculture & Geoff Lawton. Inspiring, authoritive, thoughtful and often ‘off the cuff’, Bill, Geoff and their families are visiting APC for 2 days of our 4 day convergence and will provide the Saturday evening keynote presentations.

Russ Grayson, Permaculture V3.0. Russ kicks off the Official Convergence on Sunday 26th encouraging the movement to self-reflect. He will ask us to consider some key questions about the effectiveness of permaculture as advocates for change and asks how does permaculture need to change to more fully engage in public and enlarge its influence? How dow we go about creating a new Permaculture 3.0?

Daryl Hannah, Environmental Campaigner, actor and permaculturalist, Gala Dinner Keynote Speaker. Daryl will come to APC fresh from gaining her design certificate with Darren J.Doherty, but she is not a permaculture novice. Attracted to simple living, sustainable housing design and wholistic management principles in agriculture, Daryl is one of the most down-to-earth celebrities on the planet. For her environmental activism in North America, she’s rated amongst the top three most influential American actors alongside George Clooney, Leonardo di Caprio and Brad Pitt. Daryl believes in using media focus on promoting ethical and progressive causes and has used her fame to draw attention to renewable energy, indigenous people’s rights, and food security issues. She’s humble and honoured to take a place within the permaculture movement and wants to understand how she can help promote, educate and progress its goals.

Mark O’Connor, Can Permaculture survive Population Growth? Australia is set for a population of 140 million by 2100. High density cities, where most Australians live, will leave little space for gardens and making permaculture a pipe-dream for many. Mark, co-author of Overloading Australia, shows how this push works, and how we can beat it.

David Holmgren, Final Keynote Speaker, Permaculture for the future; understanding the lineage and preparing for surprise (via Skype). In the final plenary of APC10 David Holmgren co-originator of the permaculture concept, draws on lessons from over three decades of permaculture thinking and activism to distill pointers for using ethics and design principles to surf the energy descent future (without being dumped by king waves). This will be an upbeat presentation that encapsulates how the next generation of permaculture activists can confidently and creatively face the cascading crises that are unfolding all around the world. In keeping with the theme of creatively adapting to the energy descent future, David will be giving his presentation via Skype from his home, Melliodora in central Victoria.

We’ll see YOU in September!

Warm Tropical Permi Blessings
The APC10 Organising team and volunteers

Preamble: Described as ‘the champagne of tea’, Sri Lankan tea is consumed the world over. Second only to Kenya in exports, Sri Lanka’s tea industry accounts for a full 15% of the nation’s GDP, generating about $700 million per year. Yet very little of this money is seen by the people actually producing it…. Tea plantation workers are trapped in low paid manual labour positions and live in miserable housing conditions, while people around the globe slurp on the fruit of their misery. Sarvodaya has its work cut out to try to assist, but they’re giving it a good try.

Sri Lankan tea plantation worker
All photographs © copyright Craig Mackintosh

Winding up into the south-central highlands of Sri Lanka was refreshing – taking us from temperatures pushing 40′C to a pleasant 24-ish. In contrast to the more arid south and north of the country, this hilly terrain, which hosts dozens of Sri Lanka’s world famous tea plantations, attracts significantly more precipitation and cooler temperatures.

Tea has been grown in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon, as named by the British colonialists) for more than 130 years. In the 1860s, after a rust fungus decimated the coffee plantations that previously majored there, tea quickly took over as the crop of choice. Although produced in several lowland regions in the south of the country as well, it’s the leaves from the tea estates of these higher altitudes that are particularly sought after for their exceptional quality in taste and colour.

Tea plantations in the central highlands of Sri Lanka

While the scenery was exceptional and the climate pleasant, anyone with half a heart who might head off the beaten tourist path in this district would find much injustice to dampen the mood….

We pass through a small town as we climb up into the mountains

A village rests on a hill above a giant waterfall
in the high watershed of Sri Lanka’s central highlands

Life sucks for the average tea plantation worker

Unlike other Sarvodaya endeavours – where entire villages reassess what’s really important in life and then work together to implement positive change on land under their control – Sarvodaya faces a much greater challenge here, with the people they’re trying to assist being low paid peasant tenants on state owned, industry controlled estates.

Across Sri Lanka women are often discriminated against, but on the tea plantations this tendency is even more pronounced. Tea plucking is assigned to women and girls, only, with the girls starting as young as twelve years old. They, along with their males, are accommodated in barracks of one or two room ‘line houses’ (which I was not allowed to view or photograph) with extremely basic amenities – normally without running water, electricity, sanitation facilities and often even without windows. Six to eleven family members may live together in a single room. Privacy and sexual harassment is thus also a significant problem, resulting in a higher than normal suicide rates amongst the women.

Pluckers are paid by the quantity they harvest, earning about 200 rupees per day (US$1.75) from working 7:30am to 5-5:30pm. In the peak season they will work these hours seven days per week for up to three months, slowing to 3-4 days per week in the off-season. In the dim light or darkness before and after work the women must also cater to the needs of their families – looking for firewood with which to cook their meals, etc. This burden is offset a little by having even younger girls attend to domestic duties during the daylight hours.

Men fare slightly better – they’ll earn about the same amount for working less hours, weeding, logging and planting from 7:30am to 1:30pm, and can earn a little more again from other tasks after that. Men are responsible for collecting not only their own wage, but also that of their wives and daughters….

At the end of their working life workers are paid a small, lump sum pension payment – after which they’re at the mercy of their extended family.

Article continues after photos.

Women queuing at 5pm to register their day’s work at the estate office…

…both young…

…and old…

…before being trucked to a different part of the estate
– to work a little more before the day closes.

Mostly illiterate and unskilled, workers have little hope of escaping to a more equitable or meaningful life. All the estates pay the same rate, so trying to transfer to one of the other (roughly 500) plantations in the country is pointless. The industry retains its labour force, not through incentives or reward, but by paying them so inadequately that they just cannot leave.

As most have little to no land or time available to cultivate much in the way of their own food, they’re fully dependent on this wholly unjust money system.

‘Fair Trade’

The particular estate I visited had the apparent dual advantage of being ‘fair trade’ in addition to Sarvodaya’s involvement. When questioning the women on the benefits brought by the estate’s fair trade status, however, my disgust with many fair trade claims was further cemented. After much contemplation, the women said the fair trade organisation had provided school bags for their children, and a couple of very small buildings for religious services. Wahoo! Convinced they must have done more, I pressed different individuals during the course of my visit, asking in different ways in the hope of prying more information out. I signally failed to discover anything more that ‘fair trade’ had done to improve their lot. The one thing they did confirm was that they were not paid more than workers on other estates.

That should give you that nice warm, fuzzy feeling the next time you pay a premium to pick up fair trade Sri Lankan tea at your local market, hey?

When escorted into the estate’s leaf processing factory I was told I must put my camera away. When querying the reason, I was informed that the last person to take pictures there, a year prior I believe, returned to her homeland, Germany, and the pictures went into a German newspaper report that didn’t make the ‘fair trade’ organisation happy at all…. The result of the article was not an improvement of worker conditions, but a ban on further photographs in the building.

Sarvodaya, the people’s movement, more effective

When asked about Sarvodaya’s involvement, however, they were far more enthusiastic. One middle aged and heavily calloused women clearly stated "Sarvodaya has much more value to us than fair trade".

One of the first tangible benefits Sarvodaya has brought was to provide (with international donors financing it and the estate workers and Sarvodaya volunteers providing the labour), clean drinking water – through a gravity fed system that filters the water and pipes it directly to tanks on top of the line houses. As you might imagine, carrying water great distances in your ‘free’ time, when working such long shifts, would be a major chore. This single low-tech design implementation is, on its own, of immense value to the tenant families.

In addition Sarvodaya has, just like in other Sarvodaya villages, encouraged and helped the women to form committees to address specific needs, and has encouraged the estate managers to open estate management up to input from the same. Of the estates Sarvodaya are involved in, up to fifty percent of the labourers are now members of committees which directly influence estate management. Wage increases don’t enter into the discussion at this point, but other aspects that directly effect their quality of life do – including developing greater respect for women by all.

Sarvodaya is working to improve the estates’ health situations – currently farm accidents and other medical issues can be traumatic and deadly due to delays and lack of medical support and resources – and is also providing micro financing for some to begin small cottage industries. On this particular estate, some of the families that had lived there for generations had tiny portions of garden space, which Sarvodaya was assisting them with to develop a little food security as well.

It seems clear that a grass roots, participatory democracy people’s movement will always be more effective than top down, industry- and self-interest controlled, consumer-pandering financial mechanisms. The self-interest foundation of capitalism ensures funds trickle, or flood, to the people with power, not the people who need it or have earned it.

A peaceful revolution?

When I first arrived at the estate I was welcomed like a king. Warm smiles and enthusiastic hand shaking ensued before I was prominently seated in a small room with more than 15 other women and just a few men – one a rather apprehensive looking fair trade representative. A wooden bowl was produced, a finger dipped into it, and a Tilaka painted onto my forehead. Then a floral necklace, reminiscent of the Hawaiian Lei, but made of plastic, was placed over my head and around my neck. To complete the welcome they all sang a song in unison. I worked hard to project appreciation and not reveal my inner embarrassment for such a show of attention.

Talking with them all, I felt so out of touch with the realities of their life, and yet as a westerner accustomed to some degree of (at least perceived) independence, I felt a deep frustration for the way these people are forced to live. Short of suicide, they truly have little chance to escape their onerous existence.

After speaking a while and hearing their situation and their views, with my frustration deepening, I couldn’t help but broach the topic of ’systemic management change’ and/or land redistribution. Could they envision a more equitable profit-share scenario, where workers co-owned the estate and benefitted from its development?

"No, we can’t see our instigating a revolution", one said, as they all broke into a smile.

"What then, do you see for the future?"

"We put our hopes in our children" another shared, with others nodding in agreement.

They told me that Sarvodaya is helping support the education of their children, giving hope that these will go on to achieve more, become politically and legally active, and potentially overturn the system they were born into. Sarvodaya’s leadership training has seen not a few underprivileged young people go on to become teachers, lawyers and even judges. This, combined with the Sarvodaya philosophy of ‘progress/welfare for all’, has the potential, they believe, to stimulate positive pressure on their situation.

In Part II of this series I shared the meaning of the words ‘Sarvodaya Shramadana’, the name of the people’s movement I’ve been documenting. It is, essentially, "the awakening and uplift/progress/welfare of all". In the context of the modern day feudalism and effective slavery occurring at these tea estates, the words might well also be transliterated into, simply, ‘a peaceful revolution’?

Stay tuned for Part X….

But, not stopping on the negative, Rhamis goes on to show some of the exciting movements within Detroit that these circumstances are giving life to. Out of necessity, people are working to increase their resiliency and quality of life – turning the problem of Detroit into a solution. Rhamis joins the dots between our socio-economic problems and the environmental catastrophes taking place, and begins to look through the lens of permaculture to see how we can turn things around by imitating natural systems to create low- to no-impact societies that don’t operate on the boom-and-bust model that present day Detroit is arguably the most striking example of.

Duration: 82 minutes

Part way through the talk Rhamis presents the following Urban Roots film trailer. I’ll put it below for convenience. To jump back to where the trailer below (higher quality) ends in the video above, click on 31:40 on progress bar above.

There are two very unique and exciting opportunities to learn Permaculture Design and obtain your certification in Kenya this coming December of 2010 or in March of 2011. Students from around the world are invited to join local Kenyan students and International permaculture teacher and designer, Warren Brush, of Quail Springs Learning Oasis and Permaculture Farm and other teachers from the local culture for this learning journey of a lifetime.

Nyumbani Village

In December of 2010, we will be convening the first course at a village outside of Nairobi called Nyumbani Village. This village stands on one thousand acres of land donated by the Kitui District County Council. The site is within the poorest division in the Kitui District and has a high incidence of HIV and a high number of HIV orphans. When complete, the Village will accommodate approximately 1000 orphans and 100 grandparents living in 100 dwelling units each with a grandparent and 8 – 10 children.

The Village provides a family-like setting for orphaned children under the stewardship of elderly adults and seeks to ensure that the children receive love, sustenance, health-care, holistic education and culture transfer, aiming for their physical, psychosocial and spiritual development, and, at the same time, providing holistic care and support for the grandparents in their later years. Through group homes and community services, the Village seeks to harness the energy of youth and the maturity of elders to create new blended families that foster healing, hope and opportunity. The village also seeks to ensure that the residents in the surrounding communities reach a certain level of self-reliance through the Village sustainability program.

They are ripe and ready for permaculture education to take root in their development process. Local teacher, Joseph Ntunyoi, from the Maasai tribe, will be assisting Warren Brush in the teaching of this course along with an up and coming teacher Ayouba Kamara from Liberia as well as with other special guests.

Badilisha Village

The second course is in March of 2011 at a village development called Badilisha Ecovillage on Rusinga Island on Lake Victoria. Badilisha has been organized by local people to make valuable lasting contributions to the social, economic, emotional, mental, spiritual and physical health of the people and ecology of Rusinga Island in Kenya

The good people at Badilisha Ecovillage are well on their way in establishing a community from which Earth Care and environmental conservation is supported by conscious design and application. They are growing food using permaculture principles, they are working to establish a resource centre for local residents to learn about sustainability through various projects and programs and they are working to improve the economies of the island by developing ecotourism. Their work spans working with school programs, teaching and practicing non-violent communication, assisting people with HIV, and they run a family sponsorship program for the extremely disadvantaged people of their region. This course will be taught by Warren Brush and assisted by local teacher Evans Owuor Odula and international teachers Elin Lindhagen and Loren Luyendyk.

At each of these visionary sites, we will be offering an affordable full two-week permaculture design certification course that will blend both local students with international students in a unique cross-cultural learning environment. These courses will incorporate myriad hands-on learning opportunities with practical permaculture theory and storytelling that is delivered uniquely by Warren Brush and the local teachers.

To keep within our ethics, we are asking that the students who cross the oceans to get to this course also commit to offsetting their carbon emissions for their travel to get to Kenya through designing and applying what they learn in the course. For the local students, we are asking them to commit to taking what they learn in these courses to their communities through applied projects that better the lives and ecologies of their home regions.

May our work in Permaculture around the globe continue to bring healing to place and people as it provides abundance, resilience and stability to our strained world!

Take a PDC in Kenya (PDF) or donate, either way will help to underwrite the course expenses so that local Kenyans can participate without cost….

~~~~

Warren Brush is a certified Permaculture designer and teacher as well as a mentor and storyteller. He has worked for over 20 years in inspiring people of all ages to discover, nurture and express their inherent gifts while living in a sustainable manner. He is co-founder of Quail Springs Learning Oasis & Permaculture Farm, Wilderness Youth Project, Mentoring for Peace, and Trees for Children. He works extensively in Permaculture education and sustainable systems design in North America and in Africa through his design firm, True Nature Design. He can be reached through email at w (at) quailsprings.org or by calling his office at 805-886-7239.

Tongue-in-cheek instructional video

Note: This is an update on PRI’s position and direction, and an opportunity for you to get paid to help!

The short version: We’re now paying you to write for us! Click here to get started.

The background/long version follows:

Over the last two years since I took over the running of this site, I’ve been pleased to see significant growth in traffic. I’m not so narrow-minded as to believe this is just due to my efforts or Geoff and Nadia Lawton’s or the rest of the PRI team, however. Aside from the tremendous support and input from the wider permaculture community, I also note that current events and the spread of information through the internet is threatening to actually wake the world up – and this ‘awakening’ is seeing an unprecedented growth in interest in sustainability, transition and the creation of resilient people systems. This interest certainly isn’t coming too soon, but better late than never.

For whatever reasons, though, this site is today regularly recognised as one of the, or even the, leading permaculture website worldwide. This has come about with a lot of help from readers like yourself, and permaculture project leaders and workers worldwide. This growth is helping increase permaculture exposure, and is helping our aim to drive permaculture into mainstream consciousness. (Examples: CNN, SBS, ABC, etc..)

But, whenever a site or entity grows, there are always questions about its purpose. I want to share the Permaculture Research Institute’s intentions as succinctly as possible here, and also solicit your support to help us in our goals – goals I believe many of you subscribe to. And no, I’m not asking for donations! (Although these are always appreciated!)

The Permaculture Research Institute (PRI) is an independently audited (annually) non-profit entity. But, it’s a non-profit with a difference. While a large part of our focus is on project aid work, where we seek to implement permaculture solutions in some of the most challenging places in the world, we don’t subscribe to the traditional strategies that NGOs often ‘utilise’. It was my personal prediction that many NGOs will, as our energy and economic woes intensify, lose their funding as charitably-minded people and businesses lose their liquidity and reprioritise expenditure. From some of the NGOs I’ve worked with and spoken to over the last couple of years, these predictions seem to be coming to pass. More and more people and businesses are finding they just don’t have excess funds to pass on to ‘feel good’ causes. In a peak oil world, this can translate to huge humanitarian disasters as dependent populations find supports removed.

In other words, if we only ran on donations, we’d be as finite an endeavour as industrial civilisation.

The PRI, instead, wants to see permaculture education and uptake spread – despite a failing/flailing economy. We thus seek to be as resilient financially as our on-the-ground systems are biologically. As such, our methods differ not only in the solutions proposed (we prefer to teach a man to fish, and how to manage fish stocks sustainably, rather than just dump piles of them at his feet) but also in the financial model that keeps our permaculture evangelism growing and working while we’re still, reluctantly, in the ‘money economy’ era of the society we find ourselves in and are trying to transition ourselves out of.

Another point of difference, while I’m discussing this, is that we regard the suburbs of Los Angeles or Brisbane just as ‘challenging’ as rural Ethiopia or Vietnam – in that people in ‘first world’ countries are acutely vulnerable in so many ways (economy, energy, centralised food systems, etc.), but just don’t see it, nor where they’re headed – and thus don’t see the desperate need to transition to a life based on real-time sunlight. In contrast, ‘two thirds’ world people are generally struggling on a day to day basis, so can be highly appreciative of tools that make their lives more productive, resilient and efficient – and they are often barely only a generation or so removed from a sustainable, low-impact lifestyle, so their skill-set is usually far more practical. As such permaculture ‘aid work’ is just as essential in London and Melbourne as it is in Lesotho and Mombai. Given what’s looming on the horizon, some might say even more so….

The Permaculture Master Plan

Anyway, the PRI seeks to develop and support the growth of successful, mutually beneficial, interdependent relationships (both between individuals and communities, and between these and the land at their feet), with these successful interdependencies occurring by largely self-reliant individuals cooperating with each other to meet human needs in holistically sound ways. The emphasis here is that we seek to build relationships that are mutually supportive/symbiotic, and not competitive. Just as in the plants and organisms around us and at our feet, we believe the success of the permaculture movement as a whole is entirely dependent on our leaving behind the selfish ambition that most of us in the west have been programmed with through our education, media and through our participation in the contemporary, competitive economic model almost universally applied today – and instead to find ways to interact harmoniously to support each other.

Furthermore, we seek for our projects to transition to localised resilience in food and other base human requirements (housing, clothing, etc.), but also to become financially self-sufficient. As we do not believe in contributing to globalisation, but, rather, to help transition away from it, we do not encourage projects to be self sufficient through sales of produce or goods, or at least not to make this their primary endeavour, but, rather, to sell knowledge, so the people around them can begin to grow and produce their own goods. The idea, expressed by our Permaculture Master Plan, is to educate the world in permaculture design principles and application – making each project site both an impressive demonstration site of what is possible and achievable by and for local people in their respective regions, as well as a professional education site sharing the ‘how’ of it. Following this demonstrate-and-educate recipe enables project leaders and their teams to concentrate on transitioning/building the community around them while course and consultation fees finance this evangelisation.

We don’t see any losers in this scenario. The ideal and ultimate goal is that these projects will self-replicate to the point where they will saturate the global landscape with mutually interdependent and resilient communities of knowledgeable permaculture practitioners – setting the stage for a softer landing on the peak-oil downslide. Although the income from course fees would gradually diminish over time, as more and more demonstration/education sites multiply – this income would become increasingly redundant/unnecessary as the growth of resilient permaculture sites and communities fills the void created by a crashing money economy.

Time is of the Essence

If you’re following the logic so far, you will recognise that time is of the essence. To have paying students finance the ballooning of permaculture demonstration/education sites worldwide, we need to get a large portion of this ‘evangelisation’ work done before the economic mayhem born of peak oil and climate change begins to hit us even harder than it already has. At the moment, increasingly, people are seeing the need to get permaculture-educated while they still have the finances to do so. Many can still afford to take flights to learn at locations where their hardish western currency can not only train themselves in modern permaculture design systems whilst gaining valuable indigenous knowledge but also subsidise the training of poverty-stricken locals. This will not always be the case. We’re working in a window of opportunity that will close in the ensuing years.

Making the Most of the Time Window We Have

As such, we feel that leveraging the impact of this website (www.permaculture.org.au) is paramount. I note many permaculture individuals endeavouring to develop their own readership in fragmented efforts that, often with the best of intentions, fail to achieve much. The reason they fail to achieve much is that it takes a lot of time and dedication to grow a website, and that growth is largely dependent on a consistent stream of quality content that keeps people returning to, and linking to, your site. People are too busy on the ground to maintain such sites, or dedicate staff to the task. A million small websites sharing intermittent posts is not nearly as efficient as a few larger sites with far higher traffic counts sharing regular engaging content. I like to think of the networking and leveraging of grass-roots permaculture labour and resources – to build mainstream momentum in all things permaculture – as represented by that largest of all biological organisms: mycelium. While various plants and rocks and microorganisms appear independent of each other, there is a common link – in soil biology – that connects them all. In like manner, the internet, perhaps one of the few real gifts the industrial revolution has given us, is enabling us to connect and share our energies in symbiotic and synergistic ways for the benefit of all. For us to reach mainstream consciousness, funneling our experiences and knowledge through reliable website ‘portals’ is, I can say categorically, far more efficient than expecting readers to browse a thousand sites to get the information they need.

How to Leverage Our Collective Energies to Spread Permaculture Fast

The lifeblood of my work, that of trying to drive permaculture thinking into mainstream consciousness, is found in sharing quality reports from around the world. My logic goes like this: when people in mainstream consumer society confront permaculture, if they believe it’s only practiced by a few sandal-wearing souls living on the fringes of society, they’ll conclude "nice idea, but it’s too little, too late", and they’ll write the concept off as being idealistic dreaming. But if, instead, they realise the reality – that this is a movement of many tens of thousands of people working, right now, in almost every country on every continent of this jewel of an earth we call home – then they’ll instead think to themselves – "hell, change is afoot, and I’m getting left behind – I want to get involved, and now!"

The work is happening, and it’s building momentum. But while the word ‘Permaculture’ is now finally in the Oxford English dictionary, it needs to be on the lips and in the hands of everyone if humanity-saving goodness is to reach that tipping point where it’ll take off and meet the enormous challenges we face today.

Those tens of thousands of people are working hard, accomplishing great things, but they’re often too busy to look up and around to view where they fit in the big picture – the big mycelium fungal net, as it were. I would like to say to those people that by writing articles and sharing your work, frustrations, challenges, successes, observations and inspiration, your effort to report, as an ‘element’ in your system, does in itself serve several ‘functions’.

1. You inspire others to imitate/emulate your example.
2. You educate people in the ‘how’ of it.
3. You make your work known. People can’t help and support you if they don’t know you or your work exists. Such assistance can come by way of encouragement, gifting practical knowledge/information that is relevant to you, and actual physical involvement and financial support.
4. You enable us (PRI) to better understand your situation, and tailor support to assist, assuming you are seeking such assistance.

As many of you will know, I regularly undertake to do such reports myself, and have done so in places as far afield as Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Chile, Jordan, the West Bank, Slovakia (and), Australia, (and, and, etc.). But, while I will continue to seek to profile successful examples of permaculture around the world, we want to hear your views, your experiences, your challenges, your successes and gain knowledge and inspiration from your particular observations. You don’t have to understand the science of web promotion – that’s my job. You don’t have to understand how to deal with websites, image optimisation and editing – that’s also my job. I get tired of hearing my own voice, as I’m sure do our readers. We want to hear yours! I want to see the permaculturists out there, from novice to guru expert (we don’t believe in gurus – but rather, real people doing real doable things), sharing their knowledge for the benefit of all.

Get paid to spread knowledge and inspiration

And guess what – we’ll even pay you to do it! Recognising people are very busy, and that in today’s world time is food, we will pay to hear your stories on a per-post basis. Click here to learn more.

We of course still welcome volunteer posts. Again, we’re a non-profit, so the more money we save the more we can inject into starting and assisting projects worldwide. In the last year, for example, we have donated approximately $100,000 to projects worldwide, either by way of direct donations or through teaching or consultation time. Over the next year we anticipate this figure will increase again. And we’ve assisted further through my time – utilising this high-traffic website to bring course adverts for diverse locations worldwide to the attention of our readers. We’ve seen sites where they were struggling to find students, but after an advert here the courses filled up. This is what it’s all about! This is funneling information and resources to spread permaculture as fast as we can!

This website and our forums (which we’ve recently upgraded by the way) have been a gift from PRI to the permaculture community. We’re very glad to see them getting utilised. I still see many people, however, not quite understanding our ’services’. Many almost appear to think we’re some kind of independently wealthy (or even publicly funded?) entity with a duty to spread research knowledge and long term analysis of various aspects of permaculture systems, and share it freely, not understanding that within our current capitalist framework such important but time-consuming work is impossible to do, simply because it’s price prohibitive. We remain financially independent, yes, but only due to the hard work of people within the team – and that work is based on classroom and field education. We’d love to initiate research-and-document projects, and create unending ‘how-to’ videos and articles, but doing so takes time and money. As such, we encourage all permaculturists to undertake these tasks as they are able, and to share them to the largest audience possible. We’ll help subsidise this work, by paying per-post as an encouragement/incentive to take the time out to do so.

So, in the busyness of life, I hope you will see that, as I’ve often said to PDC students, reporting on your work and observations is just as important as the physical design work itself. Make your voice heard. Share your knowledge and we’ll ensure it gets maximum exposure.

I look forward to receiving and sharing your articles!

P.S. Until today we’ve had excellent results from our arrangement with people interested to advertise their courses on our site. In exchange for a separate non-promotional article (i.e. something inspirational or educational or both), we’ve put their course adverts up at no charge. This arrangement will continue.

Journey to Igourdane: Large communal extended family home.
Only the part on the far right is now inhabited.

The days on the course were spent going through the theory and wandering about on the farm trying to apply it to surrounding landscape. Every now and then we might be given some mint tea, batboot and olive oil.

Pattern in design session

Spicer officanalis and Lucerne

David and Alex

Berber garden: olives, almonds, pomegranates, lucerne, broad beans,
fenced by dead hedge and native cardoon.

Irrigation at Ourthane, the course farm

Lunch was eaten at the spring, usually a tagine or couscous and salad eaten with bread. The day of the souk we had an outstanding dish of sardine meatballs in a very tasty stock.

We were so lucky to get such a rich and diverse bunch of students. The knowledge and experience they contributed to the course was truly invaluable. I don’t think Dave would argue that we learned something new every day through our exchange through the students.

The sessions were structured along the sections of Bill’s A Designers’ Manual although there was a certain freedom to discuss and reinforce the material we were going through. Many thanks go out to the multilingual students who helped us clarify the material at each stage to make sure everyone understood it before we moved on.

And so the days passed: learning, food, discussion, practical sessions, mint tea and sunshine. Donkeys brayed, turkeys gobbled and cocks crowed.

Break time. Atay (mint tea), hobbs (bread), and zitoune (olive) oil

On the Sunday in the middle of the course some of us chose to visit the Cascades du Ouzoude, a system of waterfalls a few windy mountain kilometres away.

The visit to the falls provided us with a good break from the course. The first week of a PDC is always going to be intense with so much to take on board and comprehend. We spent the day taking full advantage of the relaxed pace. Rainbows, thundering water and Barbary apes all blessed our visit.

Cascades du Ouzoude: Barbary Macaque and young

Cascades du Ouzoude

The Cacades du Ouzoude is part of a larger watershed fed by highland areas such as Igourdane. The falls are a natural wonder and are truly something to behold and yet they represent so much more. Tourism has blossomed around the falls with restaurants, tea shops, craft and antiques shops studding the terraces and paths around the water. On the day we visited the vast majority of tourists were Moroccan with a few visitors from elsewhere.

This highlights how interconnected places like Ouzoude and Igourdane are when considering permaculture design over larger areas, ecologically and economically. These centres of human activity are interdependent and it is our job as permaculture designers to cultivate the awareness of such relationships and their relevance to the designs we are engaged with.

Cascades du Ouzoude

Cascades du Ouzoude: Waterfall powered flour mill

A real highlight of the course came at the beginning of the second week. The journey to Igourdane was a transformative and emotional experience, a real turning point. The students got to tread in the footsteps of the villagers by taking the route they take to fetch water down the mountain and back albeit in reverse.

The Journey to Igourdane

We held a morning session and after another lip-smacking lunch, this time under venerable shade of the carob elders, we set off on foot, on mules and donkeys for the road into the mountains.

The journey to Igourdane. The journey begins.

Marwane had engaged the services of a water diviner with a track record of locating water for agribusinesses. He was to locate the place we could drill to find potable water. He was an elderly yet ageless, spritely man full of laughter. He always had a smile lurking behind every other expression and a roguish twinkle in his eyes. He took off ahead on a donkey before we set off, we wouldn’t see him again till we reached Igourdane some hours later, where he greeted us with the villagers as if he were the tortoise and we were the hares.

The journey to Igourdane: dried up river bed and ruined Ksar

The way to Igourdane from the farm led through sparsely planted olive groves, a seasonal water course and a dried up river bed, before we reached the road itself – a rough limestone track that would allow two pannier laden donkeys to pass each other comfortably. The track climbed gently higher before turning in the twisting hairpin bends of a mountain path.

The journey to Igourdane: Traditional buildings

I rode a mule up the mountain having only ridden camels before. I actually did very well all things considered. Advice on how to ride comfortably from the others was just as well as my mule refused to let the pace be set by the other animals and took me off a fair way ahead of the rest of our train. I assumed he wanted to be rid of such a heavy burden as quickly as possible.

As the path lifted us steeply out of the foothills, allowing us a wider view of mountains, the stone track was patterned by water and covered with small stones and scree. I fell in such a rhythm with the mule that using the movement of my body I was willing each step he took to be sure and firm, as every now and then he would slip on pebbles and the polished rock before correcting himself without breaking the rhythm of his doleful stride.

It was an incredibly hot and arduous journey for those of us uninitiated with travelling through mountains (not including Dave of course). However it was the ideal way to impress upon the students and me, as to what life was really like for the people of Igourdane, to tread in their footsteps even just a little, to put ourselves in their position, to try and understand.

As the path levelled out, dwellings, carob and olive trees came into view. Sadly the first house we passed belonged to a family who had had to leave the area, mainly due to a lack of potable water.

The journey to Igourdane: Immature carob pods

It was not long before children appeared from here and there, hollering news of our arrival through cupped hands and thus, thanks to the Berber telegraph Igourdane knew our exact whereabouts and estimated time of arrival. Faces familiar and new greeted us and our caravan and led us to the shade of ancient carob trees that had been planted long ago in the shape of a horseshoe – the roots of which had been mounded up with rocks to form a shady and cool corral for stock. The welcoming party consisted of the local men, farmers, boys and elders. We exchanged warm greetings before resting and taking stock of the place we had all been thinking of for so long; in my case for well over a year.

Igourdane dam. Heavier than usual seasonal rains have given a
false impression here. This was taken in May. By August this will be dry.
As will the surrounding land. Just look at that unused catchment above….

The village consists of homesteads and house clusters dotted about terraces and plateaus amidst dry-stoned walled fields of barley, wheat, lentils, olives and carobs. The buildings are constructed out of stone and pisé with traditional roofs made of long poles laid over modular square rooms and piled with earth and sods with grass growing above.

Cross breed calf

Stay tuned for Part IV….

In partnership with Sust`aina ble Molokai and the Ho`ala Hou Program, the Permaculture Research Institute USA is proud to announce an upcoming series of key Permaculture courses on the Island of Molokai, Hawaii.

We are offering the following four foundational courses between October and December this year:

• Permaculture Design Certificate Course with Andrew Jones and Shenaqua Sookhoo-Jones, Oct 10-22
• Practicum: Incorporating Traditional Hawaiian Plants, Foods and Fuels into a Permaculture Design with Andrew Jones and Hunter Heaivilin, Oct 25-29
• PDC Teacher Training Course with Andrew Jones and Shenaqua Sookhoo-Jones, Nov 1-6
• Earthworks with Geoff and Nadia Lawton, Dec 6-10

These courses will be held in conjunction with the Ho`ala Hou Program, a substance abuse and prevention program that works with youth and families to set up up community garden plots. Courses will take place on Ho`ala Hou’s 20-acre site.

This series is also part of an island-wide initiative with local nonprofit Sust`aina ble Molokai to work toward the goals of the Molokai Sustainability Plan, a plan created by the people of Molokai that honors Hawaiian traditional and cultural pathways alongside modern strategies for a sustainable future.

For more information and to register for these courses, please visit the Permaculture Research USA website at www.permacultureusa.org.

Aloha and A hui hou!