Join world class permaculture instructors Brad Lancaster, David Spicer, and Murad Alkufash for the first Permaculture Design Certification course to be held in the West Bank, Palestine.

In addition to this being a groundbreaking drylands PDC course, it is a once in a lifetime immersion opportunity into the rich culture and heritage of the people of the rural West Bank, who have cared for and farmed the land of this region for over one thousand years.

Course participants will be part of the world-changing movement to “green the deserts” of the Middle East through the design principles of permaculture — learning skills such as rainwater harvesting, food forest production, homescale gardening to maximize production on small acreages, and more. Participants will also have the unique opportunity to participate in a 3-day Arabic immersion course, traditional Palestinian culinary workshops, and a historic tour of this ancient city from the pre-Crusades era. Special highlights of the week will include Skype sessions with permaculturists Geoff Lawton, Julie Firth, and Starhawk.

The PDC will run from the 6-17th of June, 2010, with an optional 3 day Arabic-language course starting the 3rd of June, 2010.

This course is supported by the Firedoll Foundation, the Council for Australian Arab Relations and the Permaculture Research Institute.

Please go to the bookings page for further information, booking options, and contact details.

Editor’s Note: This is part two of a series. Read Part I here.

Yoga on the deck which will become our temporary bedroom

We’ve been here a month now, and I’m actually writing from a hammock with my laptop powered by the sun, underneath a pair of orange trees. This is our new “living room” in this experiment in outdoor living, outfitted with a log bench, a couple of rocking chairs woven with cord in the local style, outdoor kitchen and shower and a repurposed buoy that serves as a swing. A few steps away are kitchen and shower, cross a little bridge to the bathtub/dipping pool, and another few meters is our newly finished wooden platform where soon we’ll be sleeping. For now it makes a great yoga deck and has a sweet view across the Machuca River valley to a steep hillside dotted with grazing white cows.

A lot of folks have called us “brave” to move out here with our two little daughters, Serenne (5 months) and Lîla (3 years). From my perspective, parenting here allows me to do basically the same things I’ve been doing at home in Berkeley, but with more of a sense of purpose and alignment with my values. Whereas in the U.S. I find myself feeling like a somewhat unwilling, slightly apologetic housewife, driving my little ones around, grocery shopping and turning up the heat to stay warm, here I can take care of my family’s needs with a much smaller ecological footprint. That is, minus the impact of the plane flight here, which is considerable — a subject I’d like to return to in a future post.

Being in the jungle with a pre-crawling baby is easier than it will be when she’s on the move, as I spend much of my time with her in a carrier. My approach to parenting is strongly inspired by Jean Liedloff’s book The Continuum Concept, which is linked to “attachment parenting” and the resurgence of baby wearing in the U.S. Liedloff based her book on experiences living with indigenous people in the Amazon and observing their relationships with their babies and children. She believes that allowing babies to spend the majority of their first year worn close to mama’s body and snuggled close to her at night helps develop an essential sense of security and trust that stays with the child into adulthood. This concept of “kangaroo care,” and the idea of skin to skin contact as important, especially for newborns, has started to gain credence even in U.S. hospitals.

While the indigenous families observed often saw mama carrying her baby, she would usually have him or her in a sling or wrap so that hands could be free for work, even while nursing. Yet when mama tired of carrying baby, the extended family and community were often available and interested in spending time with the little one. This way of raising children feels right and sensible to me, in contrast to the way I feel when I’m home alone with my baby all day, isolated and trying to stay sane, and driving my toddler to and from preschool.

So far, even though the number of us living at Tacotal is small, my reality has been much closer to that of the indigenous mama, and I love that. There are lots of hands to hold baby and tell stories or show plants and animals to Lîla. The one major issue is that little Serenne’s thermostat is set to North America, so she has been really hot since being here. In the heat of the day when it seems too hot to wear her, I put her in her play gym in the kitchen and give her lots of little baths. She is just as cheerful as she’s always been most of the time, and I’ve been giving her little tastes of our bananas (we’ve harvested a big bunch from one of our trees since arriving) in anticipation of starting her on solid foods in a few weeks. She doesn’t seem to know what to do with the banana yet but is very interested in the new taste. I’m anticipating that when she starts crawling in a few months, it will be trickier as there are currently no baby-friendly floors here. An upcoming project will likely be to finish the kitchen floor, which is now dirt, and make a polished earthen/adobe floor. This will also cut down the frequency of laundry that’s needed and hopefully reduce the layer of red dust that big sister Lîla usually wears around.

I wrote earlier that we’re able to meet our needs with a smaller ecological footprint, and want to discuss a few of the systems that make that true. One major difference from life at home is being off the power grid and away from municipal garbage and sewage lines . I can honestly say I enjoy my daily visit to our composting toilet here, which is up on a breezy hillside and built of bamboo, wood, and recycled materials. It has a small area in front for pee that separates it from the poop, which allows the “humanure” to dry out and prevents bad odor. Instead of flushing, we put a few cups of sawdust in to complete our mission and close the loop (food to poop back to soil where we grow more food).

With no garbage pickup here, we are very aware of the waste we create, and in fact I’m looking right now at the border of our “living room,” marked with green glass wine bottles. Since we don’t have a fridge, we buy more dry bulk items with less packaging. We separate out organic waste for the worm compost, leftovers that feed the chickens, and citrus for the regular compost. Packaging is separated into plastic, glass and metals which can be recycled and paper and cardboard is used for kindling in the wood stove. Another ingenious little system which was put into place since we last visited involves creating building material — mass that can be built into an earthen wall — by stuffing small plastic and cellophane bags that can’t be reused into empty plastic bottles.

Stephen demonstrates how to ‘flush’ the composting toilet

Of course, a major difference from home and one of my favorite parts of being here is the lack of driving. I especially dislike trying to get two kids in and out of their carseats several times a day and fighting the traffic in the Bay Area. The road in here is so rough that you need a good reason to drive out — riding a horse or walking is actually more comfortable. With the number of folks living here, we each only need to leave every few weeks for groceries, though most of us probably venture out once or twice a week to get supplies, go to a restaurant, or visit the beach (about 30 minutes from the end of our bumpy road to the first Pacific beach at Tarcoles. Since I want Lîla to be able to learn more Spanish and have a chance to interact with more kids (there is presently just one other kid here, her good friend Jazz), we’ll be driving a bit more often when the two of them start school next month. Unless we find a school accessible by horse!

The family in front of our jungle kitchen

Up until now, we’ve collected stories from around the world on this Culture of Permaculture blog – reports back from inspiring sites that we feel are in some way demonstrating solutions to the serious social and environmental crises our generation faces.  The posts have included profiles of places that my family and like-minded collaborators have visited and conversations we’ve had on topics such as community, ecological design, and living in balance with natural systems. 

Our goal is to publish a tabletop-style book (read more about the Sustainable   [R]evolution book project here) that showcases these design solutions in practice around the world, from urban community gardens to indigenous villages to permaculture centers.  As an anthropologist, I’ve been writing and editing the manuscript from an ethnographic perspective, looking at these places as evidence of an emerging, international culture of sustainable living. 

This entry marks the beginning of a new era of this research.  Instead of simply visiting these sites, we have the incredible opportunity to create one.   About two years ago, my family decided to join a group of people who formed a collective to buy 55 acres of land in Costa Rica.  Many of the members of the group knew each other from an annual Burning Man camp they were part of; some, like us, were connected through Stephen Brooks.  Stephen is the ever-optimistic and energetic creative force behind Punta Mona, a permaculture center on the Carribean side of Costa Rica, and Kopali Organics, a natural and fair trade food company.  His unmatched networking abilities and experience living and working in Costa Rica made it possible for 33 people – American, Costa Rican and Mexican – to come together and ante up to be part of the community we named Tacotal. 

Most contributed money ($12,500 per ¼ “pod”, with 8 pods total); a few contributed sweat equity with jobs ranging from accounting to construction and engineering.  We use the pod system to organize ourselves and make decisions, and together the 8 pods form a legal corporation which officially owns the land.  Since it has not been subdivided as of now, none of us actually own our individual home sites.  We’re all in this together, for better or worse.  This is part of what allowed the price tag to be so low – many of the costs associated with buying land here come from the expenses of subdividing.  It creates a different sort of community too, one based much more on trust and long-term involvement, as selling shares is somewhat complicated in this setup.

The first banana harvest since our arrival

Tacotal is the local name for the incredibly resilient, fast-growing vegetation that comes up after land has been cleared.  As one of our community members pointed out yesterday at a meeting, Tacotal is the start of the forest that perpetually regenerates: pure potential.

It feels like this year, we’re starting to gain some momentum and make bigger strides toward the realization of that potential.  When the opportunity to purchase the land came up two years back, we needed to move quickly.  At that time, the majority of the community members were not ready to make the move to the land permanently.   So Tacotal has faced the complexity of being a largely virtual community, except the month or so around our annual meeting, which has drawn about half to three-quarters of the members to the land.  Much of what has been built and planted was done by a handful of members who could devote more time and energy.  This includes several Ticos (Costa Ricans) who live in the capital, San Jose, and came on weekends, sometimes organizing permaculture workshops or other courses that brought helping hands to the land.

That brings me to our location—we’re on the Rio Machuca (one of the best features of the land is it allows us to go for a swim in various pools and little waterfalls) about an hour from San Jose and 30 minutes to the Central Pacific Coast and the Jaco area.  It feels tropical and jungle-forested but drier than a rainforest.  The town of Atenas isn’t far, and its climate has been called the best in the world by NASA and National Geographic.  The nearest town to us is San Mateo de Orotina, only a couple of miles away, but as of now our road is in a state that requires at least 15 minutes to navigate those few bumpy miles.

Arriving at San Jose airport – it’s hard to travel light with two kids!

Because of this, ironically, our first step in establishing our eco-life here was buying an SUV!  This was hard to bring ourselves to do as people who have rallied against the awful American propensity for huge gas guzzlers that are only used to drive on nice smooth roads.  Anyway you can’t access our land here without a serious 4 x 4.  At least we got a diesel and have plans to convert it to veggie oil….  after much research we ended up going for a Nissan Terrano, bought through a website called crautos.com and with the help of our Tico friends.  It’s been handling the road really well so far.

 A crazy synchronicity with the Nissan – not sure what this is evidence of besides globalization and some kind of law of attraction.  The car appears to have been made for sale in Japan – it has Japanese writing on it in several places.  In 1998, I lived in Japan in a small city called Asahikawa, in the northernmost island of Hokkaido, working as an English teacher.  When I looked carefully at the writing on the car, I saw the kanji for Asahikawa – I think it came from a dealer there, of all places!

So our first week here was tied up with finding and buying the car, and trying to figure out the intricacies of getting cell phone/internet service – this has been complex and is still pending.   We also managed to set up a mailbox, get mattresses, and learn a little bit about the layout of San Jose.  It’s a major challenge getting around there as there are no real addresses – no house/building numbers and just a handful of named or numbered streets (and you’re super lucky if they are marked even if they do have a name!)  Directions are something like this:  “Go past the church, make a left, you’ll see a panaderia on the right, go 200 meters past that to the sleeping dog and make a U turn – don’t go the wrong way down the unmarked one way street…”.

Lila juicing oranges

We finally made it to the farm about 10 days ago and this is the first time I’ve had a minute at an Internet café to post.  Tacotal is dripping with oranges at the moment and we’re making a ton of juice and have made a few attempts at marmalade.  There are also a ton of bananas in four different varieties and lots and lots of limes – I made a tasty banana ceviche last week which we learned about at a San Jose restaurant. They call it Guinean Ceviche.

 Since we were here last the place has obtained a dog and we hear there have been no snake sightings in a while which makes us all breathe a sigh of relief.  We’ve been staying in one of the star plate domes which went up since we last visited, and working on building the cabin that we will stay in for these months while we are building our “real” house.  Our daughter Lîla, who will be three in a couple of days, is having a great time taking care of the chickens, looking for lizards and butterflies, and swinging on the rope swing.…

I will sign off for now and next time write more about the permaculture systems at Tacotal and the challenges of parenting in the jungle.

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.

Information is the critical potential resource. It becomes a resource only when obtained and acted upon. - Bill Mollison

There is a moment, according at least to Geoff Lawton, when a permaculture student becomes ‘terminal’; forever destined, perhaps, to spout interesting (to some, anyway) facts/theories about ducks and lofty (but totally do-able) plans for future garden designs and/or the ‘edible meadow’, all the while flicking off light-switches everywhere and drying seaweed on the clothesline in between those telltale permaculture dreams….

Well, I can’t say for sure at this stage that we have any new terminals among the 18 students who just completed the first ever Permaculture course in Samoa, (and I dare say the Samoan incarnation of a permaculture addict might differ on specifics) but I definitely saw familiar sparks in a few eyes over the last 2 weeks, which means at least – they are infected!

From the 25th of January to the 12th of February, these 18 brave pioneers (who are also already certified Life Skills coaches) lodged with us in humble but comfortable headquarters in Fagalii, to test out for the first time METI’s Permaculture Demonstration and Training Centre. Personally, I was thoroughly impressed with the participants and their willingness to learn, interact with and use the information made available.

The course was not a certified PDC, but covered all basic design principles and concepts. More culturally specific than the universal PDC, the course focused more on theory than technique because most of the participants have extensive practical knowledge already. (We have found under the cobwebs of western misinformation that the skill and feeling for living naturally/ethically/harmoniously is still very well intact in Samoa.)

All participants received a fully-translated copy of a 50-page booklet which was written over the last 12 months specifically for the islands of Samoa. (Contact me at tamlyn.dae (at) gmail.com for a copy of this document in English or Samoan.)

So, what was learnt? What did the people actually get from this pilot course? Well, first of all, since Permaculture is a totally new term for almost all Samoans, I believe this course was effective in casting the first rays of light and understanding on so important a concept for the islands. I also believe that the information given was almost entirely received with appreciation and affirmation.

Aloema Fretton told me that when her husband, Alesana, who also successfully completed the course, gets back from NZ, they are going to get started on designing their dream permaculture home:

It is a huge relief for us to hear that we don’t have to use chemicals. Before we could only use land for a few years, but now we understand that we can actually increase the fertility of our land over time. It is cheaper and better for us. But I can see that permaculture is not just about us right now, but it is about doing the right thing for the future of our country and the world. My children will benefit from us using permaculture because the land will be fertile; instead of us making money now but destroying the soil and leaving nothing for the next generation.

And here are some photos to really drive the point home (and as evidence that YES, this really happened!):

The beautiful and theatrical ladies perform a highly educational role-play – a very
effective way of communicating information (and bringing some serious hilarity
into the classroom)

A few keen participants listen to a talk by local beekeeper extraordinaire,
Lester Dean, on small-scale beekeeping as a livelihoods project in Samoa
(and learn that keeping bees = double or triple mango and avocado yields!)

‘Designing in harmony with Natural Patterns’ day was a fun one. One student found
this leaf which in its natural context contained at least 4 of the generic pattern
models on the whiteboard.

Seed-saving, an all important aspect of any sustainable growing system.
Here are eggplant, green bean, mung bean and chilli seeds from
our very own demonstration garden

Three cheers for the first batch of compost tea in Samoa! The makeshift
brewer (with this cheap electromagnetic pump) functioned flawlessly.

Getting practical – Uunu returns an unwelcome esi (papaya) tree to the
hungry banana circle.

Leativa and I check out the compost in a practical lesson

Participants set loose in the veggie garden

Information is the critical potential resource. For me, 12 months of work were easily paid off in the split second of seeing those ’sparks’ in response to information given – and I believe that the necessary action will follow. I would like to extend a huge THANK YOU to METI and all people involved in this event, and offer my most sincere blessings for the future of this project, and the work of all those dedicated to creating harmony.

In a world where less than 1% of the planet’s fresh water is available for human consumption, it is curious to notice how people in overdeveloped countries choose to utilize precious water resources.

I often wonder what our grandchildren’s children will think of industrialized cultures; it is hope that inspires me to imagine them laughing. “Can you believe it?” they’ll say, holding their bellies and bursting with amusement at the ridiculousness of their elders. “They used our precious fresh water to flush their SHIT away!”

Over 884 million people globally lack access to safe water supplies – that is approximately one in eight people living on the planet whose water has been contaminated, generally by human excrement. In fact, over 5,000 people die worldwide everyday from drinking or bathing in water containing contaminants. [1] And we in the U.S. use over 5 million gallons daily just flushing away our waste.

From a health and a resource perspective, it’s hard to imagine a more inefficient system than a water flushing toilet. It contaminates water, and wastes our “waste.”

Anyhow, I digress. This blog posting was inspired by the chore of the day at the Permaculture Research Institute.

It was time to empty the composting toilet system, and I eagerly participated, curious to see how human “waste” could be utilized as a resource – quite a feat for our fecophobic world.

Here’s a quick rundown on how the composting toilet works.

The composting toilet system at the farm is simple; a normal looking bathroom, with two normal looking toilets. Just like any toilet, you pull your pants down, and empty your delivery into the hole that is attached to a chamber below.

(In industrialized cultures, that’s where your relationship with your poo ends – instead of taking responsibility for your shit, you simply flip a button and send it downstream, confident that someone else will take care of it, somewhere…).

Once the delivery is executed (whether yellow or brown), you add a scoop or two of sawdust, a carbon-based material that aids the decomposition process and helps balance out the nitrogen so that (smelly) ammonia isn’t released.

And people keep pooing away in to the chamber below, until it’s full. Then it sits for a few weeks, and meanwhile you switch to using the other toilet. If used properly with the right amount of carbon added, it won’t smell and won’t attract flies.

Simple as that.

When we went in yesterday to empty the chamber, my curiosity had mingled with a bit of dread. But I was determined; I had my gloves on and my nose plugged, prepared to feel the morning’s oatmeal churn…

Alas! I was shocked (dare I say thrilled?) to see that in less than four weeks, the excrement of forty people into a chamber had turned into a rich, humus-looking, stinkless mass – unidentifiable as human waste.

Fellow toilet compost removal technician, Dave, agrees

Granted, it had not yet heated up to the process of destroying all of the potentially dangerous pathogens found in human excrement. That requires a heat of 50-55 degrees Celsius for several hours, easy to accomplish in any hot compost pile. Once the humanure has been decontaminated through a composting process, it is essentially a carbon sponge that can act as a substrate to grow beneficial microorganisms for the soil – a valuable resource for any backyard garden.

Though I am generally in favor of decentralized systems, where we can personally observe how our actions impact our local environment, I’m not necessarily saying that everyone must process their own waste on a household scale.

In fact, there are plenty of examples of sane ways to process effluent on a local scale, such as the Ecological Wastewater Treatment Plant in Arcata, California. The facility utilizes the microorganisms on a plant’s roots to break down pollutants in the water.

Or the Living Machine concept developed by John Todd which also filters sewage solids out of water using plants and their associated bacteria.

Marin County (home sweet home!) is even in the process of piloting a very progressive compost toilet program.

These are all potential models for a semi-centralized, but ecologically sound, waste processing system.

Nonetheless, it’s pretty empowering to know that we can safely and effectively process our own waste, conserve our water for more precious uses, and convert “waste” from a problem to a solution.

And to pick up from my last posting… I feel one step closer to my steak dinner now that I know my poo fertilized the soil that grew the grass that Red ate!

Team Humanure: Mission Accomplished!

For more titillating reading on the topic, you can download (for free!) the entire PDF of the Humanure Handbook. A good book to have on hand in the bathroom.

References:

1. http://www.water.org

Related Reading:

• Phosphorus Matters

It is so important in these times to work in collaboration and inspire each other. I have been so blessed to work with many of you through the Permaculture, Bioneers and Slow Food networks.

Over the last few years I have been able to dive deeply into the relationship connection from the field to table and table to field by participating in some amazing gatherings and courses. Terra Madre in 2006 and 2008, presenting at conferences and institutes, travelling to Africa for the International Permaculture Convergence and teaching design courses and workshops in Permaculture and healthy food systems.

In 2009 as Farm Supervisor at The Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, I was able to teach and farm in a way that was incredibly fun, demanding and rewarding. Throughout the year I took up a camera and tried to capture some of the magic. The result is this three part film that I recently uploaded to YouTube. If you get some moments and let it download in HD, it is fun to see what you have helped me accomplish, I really could not do all this without the invaluable support of my family, cohorts and friends like you. I truly am grateful and honoured to be supported and connected with so many revolutionaries.

Feel free to forward this film on to any you might think would enjoy.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Thanks to Lindsay Dailey for the submission!

This is Red:

9:30pm

This is Red:

6:00pm

This is Red:

3:00pm

This is Red’s papa, Billy:

And this is Red, a one year old bull, on the afternoon of his transformation – from living, breathing being to food on our plate:

He spent his last day with the goats in the home pasture, while the rest of the herd was sent out to pasture so they would not be traumatized by witnessing his death.

Red was slaughtered in the loving hands of his caretaker and master; it was not very dramatic. He was roped in the pasture, and after a quick prayer quickly sliced through the adam’s apple, and held down by three (strong) men while his muscles spasmed. He bled to death. It was quick and painless, and Red was surrounded by people who knew him in life and honored the passing of his spirit.

We spent several hours cutting up the carcass into separate cuts of meat. It was amazing to see a T-bone, top side, and flank steak miraculously peel away from the carcass under the hands of an experienced butcher. Everything was cut up, labeled, and packaged to freeze, from the liver to the tongue to the legs – if not for human consumption, then for the dogs (they eat well around here).

When we finished, all that was left were the entrails, which were wheelbarrowed over to the chicken tractor. Three days later, Red’s guts are now full of flies and maggots which the chickens are quickly consuming. While the stench of rotting guts is unbearable (if you happen to walk past that section of the farm), it is comforting to know that every last inch of Red is being put to use, or recycled back in to the system. Not a cell of his body is “waste.”

Witnessing little Red’s slaughter and butchering was powerful, especially after having taken care of him for a few days, since my farm duties include taking the cows out to pasture each day.

But the moment when I suddenly felt overcome with emotion occurred around midnight after the slaughter was cleaned up, and our bellies were full of the most delicious steak I have ever had.

Geoff and I took Bluey (the cattle dog) out to the field, and we brought back the herd of nine cows, one less than usual. I was nervous that they would smell the death on us, but they were responsive and docile, peacefully walking back to the paddock where they are kept at night. They passed the site of the slaughter, and kept plodding on.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

The herd had almost reached the shoot to the home paddock, and then as if on cue, all nine of them pivoted simultaneously, and slowly turned around to stare at the site of the slaughter a few hundred meters away. Billy the bull, patriarch, and Red’s papa, began to wail.

And then I witnessed a site I never imagined – a herd of cows mourning. They lined up single file and walked to the site of the slaughter, circled around, and moaned and brayed.

Never have I felt more connected to, and thankful for, the food that I eat. As I stood there in the darkness, quiet and in awe at the herd’s expression of loss, I was overcome with gratitude for the cow that filled my belly, the grass that fed the cow, the soil that fed the grass, the microbes that fed the soil….

Days have been blown away like autumn leaves, it feels, by strong winds that have been finally bringing some mild cyclonic weather and needed moisture in this high summer time in SW Madagascar. It’s mid February: hot times – times of growth; growing native trees from the spiny forest; growing subsistence crops.

And how refreshing has it been when the temperature dropped a full 10 degrees (from 40 to 30ºC) and even to a record low of 27 ºC at night, the lowest record in the last couple months, which is truly a pleasant feeling. We’ve had 50mm of rain during the second rain storm since Christmas, enough to plant rice, yet not enough to plant corn, manioc, beans, squash, melons or native trees to our reforestation sites. We are holding off for now and hoping this will happen with the next substantial rain storm so as to assure seedling survival.

The great challenge has been keeping healthy in the hot weather and unsanitary rural conditions. Overheating, water contamination and swarms of flies are more of a daily problem for the villagers and us than ever before. Outbreaks of sickness have been proliferating and spreading with an average of every 3 out of 5 children sick in each family with sick bellies, respiratory and sinus infections. A couple of weeks ago an 8 year old boy lost his life after 4 days of being sick, complaining of stomach pain. Life has been hard, yet the villagers keep their spirits up and keep up with dedicated work….

The lack of rain during the ‘official’ rainy season has been a continuous struggle for the villagers. The farmers’ survival adaptation seem to be the extensive channeling of the only source of water for their rice fields – the Ranobe Lake to a large area of new fields created on the lake edges. FIMPAHARA has been splitting their time between work in their rice fields and work in tree nurseries and ho avy activities.

At the end of January we have completed a training seminar for 20 adult FIMPAHARA members and 20 youth members ranging from age 4 to 16 years with practical sessions held in our extensive nurseries filled up with over 4,000 new pots, planted with nearly 65 species of both native and cultivated tree species, fruit and medicinal trees. Till now we have planted over 10,000 pots with almost 100 different species, 80% of which are native trees raised from seeds, sustainably collected in the Ranobe forest. We are very pleased by this account and also have initiated the first trials to grow the native species from cuttings for fast vegetative propagation.

The growth in our nurseries has accelerated with the recent rain – all nurseries and the forest sanctuary look lush and green and beautiful and so does the forest. We have made our nursery into an interpretation botanical garden, labeling the planted trees and seedlings and regularly monitoring their growth. Abundant wildlife has been emerging after the rain, especially reptiles. Collaborating researchers working currently on forest biodiversity surveys found our sanctuary to be by far the most diverse from all of their survey plots around the Ranobe forest and lake – Recording 12 species of reptiles along with 22 frequently recorded birds species during our morning counts, and these are not yet the final counts.

Fresh growth in the nursery after the rain and subsequent hot days seems to make a paradise for a lot of insects and we have noticed vast amounts of caterpillars chewing on sprouting field weeds and slowly crawling into our nurseries. One needs to put up with few caterpillars if we want to see the butterflies, right? (And we’ve been seeing some spectacular ones). Yet we are searching and testing for all possible sensitive and herbivore control using extracts from locally grown insect repelling plant species, such as neem and katrafay. Nursery maintenance is an on-going job in responsibility and FIMPAHARA are taking a great lead here.

Besides intensive nursery work we have been concentrating our energy on building our reforestation station, a center for reforestation education and practice. Our two biogas digesters have been producing gas and garden beds and fences are now set up which has been a big theme to go forward with so we can plant food when the rain comes. For the next months we will launch into environmental education and forest regeneration surveys.…

Please view our field progress in pictures here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/martina.petru/Favorities_midFeb#

Part I

Hello everyone. This is my first blog from Uganda. I’m here to set up a community sustainability project in the north of Uganda near the Sudan border. It’s a hot spot sometimes with cows, guns and dust. These people have been aid dependent for 40 years.

Getting to Uganda from Australia was a mission. It took me 40 hours of travel. I arrived at Kampala airport late at night and finally got to a hotel looking like a zombie. The next day I met my boss and went over my mission. I have been given a heap of lattitude to make this work.

Day two I’m taken to downtown Kampala to the roof top of a tall building for a meeting with some UN dudes. I can see these huge birds, some kind of crane, gliding all over the city like they own it. Kampala looks like a nice city from up there but I can see slums poking out of the cracks.

The Ugandan people are friendly and polite with me and each other. I’m given a vehicle and a driver to get to Karamoja, 8 hours drive north. Bags in the vehicle, wave goodbye to the police guards at the gate and off we go. Once we leave the city the driver puts his foot down. I check my seatbelt. We are speeding along potholed tarmac through villages at 130 kph, just missing people, cows, chickens and parked vehicles. The drivers accent is so strong I think he is speaking in another language. He puts a cd of local music making the drive seem like a weird movie. This country feels familiar even though Ive never been to Africa.

The further out we get the more lush the land looks. I see lots of small scale farming. Casava, banana, beans, goats, pigs… pretty basic subsistence farming. People are all well dressed. Women are loaded with baskets and jerry cans on their heads. We speed on. The country gets drier. The towns are filthy with rubbish, dust and vehicle exaust. Everybody’s still smiling. We stop at dark and I crash in a hotel for tourists. The phone rings at midnight. The reception guy asks me something and I can’t understand his accent. Finally I realize he is asking if I need a wake up call. GRRRR! I just get back to sleep when there’s a knock on the door. I open the door to a tall Man with a big smile, “water suh?” He’s holding up a water bottle. I thank him and close the door, unplug the phone and bury my head in a pillow. It’s 1 am.

Next day we’re speeding again through the scrubby bush. The land is drying out and the road is turning into a 4×4 adventure. Along the sides of the road in the middle of nowhere are women and men in their sunday best, or so it seems. Colourfully dressed carrying all kinds of stuff on their heads. They wave and give us big happy smiles. It dawns on me that I really like these people. The kids are lots of fun and they run along the side of the vehicle yelling “mazoonga!” which means white man in a non racist way.

Finally I take over driving as the driver is nodding off. Tricky driving as the holes in the track are hungry and threaten to swallow the ute. Finally we get to Hq at Abim. I meet the staff and unload my gear at the “hotel” which is a room that comes with 2 jerry cans of water per day. It’s hot here at Abim but I’ve had worse. Small scrubby mountains crowd around the edges of this frontier town. I check out the town’s wells and their hand pumps. There are women lined up at each one. They tell me the water is good and it hasn’t yet dried up in 15 years. These women are paid to get water for the NGOs and buisnesses and carry the jerry cans on their heads. They must have tough necks!

I’m here now in the safe zone. I’m planning my first demo garden which I’ll start on today. Ive got tools seeds and sacks. I’ll pay the local kids to bring in sacks of animal manure. I’m showing the local people, by paying the children, that manure is valuable. I don’t pay too much or the adults will want to do it. That may cause them to lose face if they are seen collecting shit! Kids don’t care and they may be the only breadwinners in the family. They are funny dudes. They sneak up beside me and in a quiet voice say “how are you?” When I answer they giggle and just stand there looking at me with their wide smiles. I’m gonna have some fun with these guys!

Well thats it for now. I gotta get digging,
Cheers, Steve

Part II

Hello again from Northern Uganda. A lot has happened since my last blog and it’s hard to believe its been just over a week.

I’m driving the ute at speed through the bush. There are four of us in the cab. It’s getting dark and we’re late. We should have been in camp hours ago. We were delayed by a series of comical events but now it’s not so funny. The guys with me start telling local horror stories. “If the warriors catch you, you will surely perish” one guy says. The other guy adds "This is the area they operate." I press harder on the accelerator! We make it home without incident.

It’s easy to get complacent about security because the people seem so friendly and always give me a wave. The Karamojong have a fearsome reputation. They are cattle people. They love cattle because it is a symbol of wealth, prestige and they can’t get a wife unless they have at least 200 head. A “Kjong” as they’re nicknamed can give a description of a particular cow to another Kjong who can walk 100 kilometers and pick that exact cow out of a herd of a few thousand. They live and breath cattle. Each Kjong male has a cow whacking stick and a small wooden seat which he carries everywhere. The guys and the girls have the same haircut and both wear a kind of striped robe. The women wear a neck full of colored beads and the guys wear a colorful top hat and earrings, sometimes with colored feathers.

The youth are bored. They stand for hours watching their cattle, or somebody else’s cattle. Their life is worth nothing until they have cattle. Where do you get cattle from if you want a wife? You get an AK47 and go on an organized raid and steal them from “the enemy”. There’s nothing to lose except a dull life. They even take on the army, a thousand young warriors itching to get free cattle.

One of my roles here is to come up with a solution to the “warriors”. I go to a Manyatta, a stick fort surrounding a few huts. This is were the women live permanently while the warriors roam the land looking for fodder and water with their prize cattle. They’ve built the manyattas for defense high on the slope of the valley but away from water. The land is drying up from over grazing, charcoal making, fence building and drying winds. The soil is starting to blow away. The women have to carry water a kilometer from the hand pump in the valley. I crawl through the entrance on my hands and knees. No fat people allowed! They wouldn’t fit.

There’s a narrow hallway of sticks and another crawl hole. Very clever for defence. Any intruder would be very vulnerable to attack. I make it through the maze to the cooking hut. I swallow hard. These people are starving. This place reeks of extreme poverty. There’s no maize in the granary. The kids are slow and have distended bellies (worms).

An old woman is sitting on a dirty cow hide. I shake her rough hand. Her skin is dusty and looks like leather. I smell rotting flesh. On a stick rack next to me are two giant bush rats, each the size of a corgi. They have been gutted and are covered in blue-assed flies. They have been dead a while. My translator Catherine wrinkles her nose and I point to the carcasses. “You hungry?” I ask. She moves away rapidly. We get the hell out of there and make our way to the vehicle down in the valley. How can I help these people. Their village is too far from water. They want to grow food but they can barely carry the water they need for survival.

The bore pump in the valley has a strong hand pump sticking out of a cement circle. The girls place the gerry can under the spout and jump up and down holding the handle. A group of thirsty cows jostle each other to get at the flow. One cows tounge snakes out and slurps at the water going into the gerry. Slap! A girl whacks the cow on the face. It doesn’t care. There’s a puddle below the cement ring with cow shit, flies and mud all squashed up into a foul soup. I see a design in my head. Animal trough at the outflow. Steel pickets with barbed wire surrounding a community vegetable garden with a lockable steel gate. I see the outflow from the trough running into the garden and fruit trees with heavy duty guards planted around the garden. OK, I’ll try that. Saves the women from carrying more water.

I’m in Moroto. It has paved roads! Uganda’s third highest mountain looms over the dusty town. I see a prison. My driver says there is a farm in there. “Can we go in?” I ask. I’m thinking of a story I read about Idi Amin’s prison system where inmates were given sledgehammers to execute each other. The driver nods and we turn in. A guard is sitting under a tree. Lazily he puts the barrel of his rifle in the dirt and pushes himself to his feet. He calls over a tall guy who takes us on a tour. The prisoners are dressed in yellow shorts and tee shirts. They look like a soccer team. Their gardens are pathetic. Only four varieties of hybrids. the same story everywhere. No diversity. I see these squalid huts and feel sorry for the prisoners. “that’s where the wardens live” says my guide. Oh dear! I meet the head warden. I tell him what I want. I want to improve their gardens in exchange for them becoming a seed bank. He agrees. Most of the 90 prisoners are Kjong warriors caught in the field. I want to work with them so I can understand their culture. I can’t find them in the bush and it’s too dangerous to look. Here they are a captive audience. I can train them and expand the non-hybrid open polinated seeds I am collecting. The prisoners can make a business of it. The warden is overjoyed. He takes me to meet the governor who gives me the thumbs up. I’ve always wanted to make a permaculture prison and now it’s in my lap. The inmates smile and laugh when my translator “Ram” (short for Ramadan) tells them what the Mazoonga will do.

I’m driving all over Karamoja looking for strategies that are working so I can put them in the manual I’m writing. Sometimes I have a military escort which is a ute with 4 armed soldiers hanging off the back. I’m slowly coming up with a plan. These cattle are killing this place. I hear of a farm where ex-warriors are growing casava and loving it. I’m headed there next week. My garden at the compound is growing. An 11 year old boy “Achilla” who I call Atilla waters it for me. He’s going to be a doctor when he grows up. This place is growing on me.

Part III

It’s my third week in Uganda’s Karamoja province. It feels like I’ve been here for years. We load the pick-up truck with tools. There’s a village 5 km north of town. The name of the village is too hard to pronounce for a Mazungu like me so I call it “the 5 kilometer village”. We load steel shovels, hoe rakes, steel digging bars, large sacks for hauling dry manure, and the African hoes. The women’s group at this village have promised to build a fence for their vege garden. I don’t expect much because I know they don’t have any tools. If they make an effort I’m going to help them. We arrive and they are waiting under a shady tree beside the road. It’s hot and a fierce wind blinds us with dust as we get out of the ute. The mountain behind is on fire. The wind is fanning the flames to amazing heights. The fire eats the vegetation off the mountain like a hungry monster.

The women clap and cheer when I shake hands with the chief. He’s the only man in the group of 30. He has a list of everybody’s name. He’s done this before. The charities have trained him well. I tell him I don’t want names, just a garden. He smiles and translates this to the group. I drop the tailgate and pass the tools to Santos and my trainees. The women go nuts. They whoop and make a lee lee lee lee noise between their teeth. The enthusiasm is genuine. I’m a bit embarrassed. They take me over to where they have cleared an area for the fence. The shrubs have been chopped down and piled up at one end. We mark out an area for the first garden with a shady tree at one end. I visualize the tree as the meeting point for the garden crew. Lots of kids sneak up all around. Some are brave and touch the blonde hair on my arm and run away. I spin around and growl as they shriek and evaporate. Everybody laughs when they realize I’m not going to eat the children.

This is one of my pilot projects to test my designs for the manual. The women ask about seed. There are 40 kg of non hybrid seed at HQ. You get the seed when the garden is dug, I tell them. They begin to sing this time. I wonder why after 40 years of aid somebody hasn’t taken the time to cover the basics – water and food. Grow your own is better than American GM flour off the back of a truck! I tell the women no more cheering until the garden is dug and the fences are up.

We head to the prison in Moroto with the first sample of seeds. This time we get invited in to the inner prison. The guard closes the heavy doors as we enter and I feel a little apprehensive. Inside the prisoners are playing volleyball. Whew! The governor ushers us in to his office. We make a deal. The garden project will grow all the new crops, and some for seed. Our crew will consist of several Karamajong rival tribes all mixed up. Traditional enemies will be working together. The Guv, as I call him, shows us around. He takes us to a patch of open ground where he wants the project to start. The soil is heavy dark clay. It needs a fence. The water pump is nearby. Yep it’ll work. The Guv’s happy and the head warden looks on with a big grin. We have to go. Lots to do.

We visit a farm run by ex-warriors. It’s way out in the middle of the bush. The leader speaks english. He sees the permaculture Designers’ Manual in the back of the landcruiser. I show him the mandala design. He gets excited. We need training, not handouts he says. A deal is made. We’ll train his mob if he trains warriors in the future. He offers us land for a field school. I tell him we’ll be back in 10 days with tools. He’ll have the leaders ready for a training session. I give him some seeds. Very happy guy.

On the return trip I decide to take the dangerous short cut. The security dudes warn us against it. My gut says go. We go. We drive like rally drivers. Nice road most of the way. The four of us are tense. No warriors. We make it no worries. Next day we find out warriors ambushed the safe road where we were supposed to go. One motorcyclist killed, a truck shot up and occupants kidnapped. My guys say lucky we listened to our gut! The gut is smarter than the security guys.

My garden is taking shape back at HQ. Many villagers watch its progress through the bamboo fence. Every demonstration is a teacher. The kids watering the garden each day are proud now the seeds have sprouted. They talk to the other kids through the fence as they water. They are junior trainers whether they know it or not. Everything is growing…. Thank God!

Watch this site for updates….