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Published: February 23rd 2010
The day I waited...
because the volunteer went to the wrong town to pick me up...what to do but take pictures? :)Hi all!
Well I´m hear in rural Michoacán...off the main road and hitchhiking into town (with friends) just like I´d said I wouldn´t do. Just goes to show that you can never really make promises. Anyways, I got here okay from Morelia (which is actually not that far away) and everyone here is nice and friendly - I´m living in the forest WWOOFing at this place called The Bosque, visit http://www.bosquevillage.com for more details. While I´ve been here for the last 2 weeks there have been 8-12 other volunteers from Germany, Canada, Montana, Colorado, France, Holland, Sweden, and England along with the owner Brian (originally from Washington state) and his partner Marie. This place isn´t really a farm, but an eco-village and we work everyday to build houses out of cob (earth materials, clay, sawdust, etc.), working with wood building shelves and chainsawing planks, and making masks and painting. It´s amazing that they´ve only been taking volunteers for the last year and a half and already so much has been built!
Permaculture is the dominant paradigm (working with nature to get desired living results) as well as the trial-and-error type of projects. Really, it´s worth coming here to learn
skills that you would normally pay a lot to learn in the states, and if you stay here longer than the required 2 weeks you´re welcome to lead your own projects, for instance a solar dehydrater, a house, or musical instruments. There´s lots of room to play (83 acres) and everyone is pretty eager to help out, including the 8 dogs that keep you entertained while working (the only thing the 2 cats want to do is sleep!). We´re off the grid here and do rain-catchment and have composting toilets which is the best part (why would you want to shit in your drinking water?). It´s interesting to talk to Brian about his ideas for this place and his vision for the eco-development of a real long-term community integrated with the surrounding villages (not just a transient volunteer community). Brian´s also got over 3,000 books to browse on lots of subjects, I could stay here just to read for awhile - he said he always learned better and faster out of a book than by going to school.
I could go on and on about this place. I mean, it´s not perfect (what is?), but the good thing about
Waiting, just like me...
or maybe he's just enjoying the day traveling is being able to visit different communities and take in what you like or what you would do differently, at least this is what I´m doing for when I someday have a place of my own. The work schedule suits me - I wake up at 7:30am and make myself breakfast (usually fresh-squeezed juice and oatmeal) and then we all meet at 8:30am, divide into projects for the day and work until La Comida (lunch) at 2pm with a break for 20 minutes at 11:00am. The after lunch we´re free to do whatever, either walk into town, or host workshops for each other (I did a hula hooping one). We have to be back by dinner at 7:30pm (all the food is delicious!) because that´s when it gets dark and you have to hike 2km in. I must say that while I´ve been here in Mexico I´ve been between 4,000 - 8,000 feet in altitude and it´s cold (but there´s a great view of the lake)! At least at night it is, and during the day it´s usually pleasant and around 70 F. There is also a wood-fired sauna here made out of cob-wood with a living roof on
My cabin
Someday I hope to be able to build something like this... top for insulation which is pretty cool.
I´ve been enjoying the work here (would like to come back in the future) and making friends with people around the world. Judith, a friend from Germany is also into circus arts like me and brought lots of toys to play with like her trapeze! We´ve had some fun on that and exchanged juggling lessons for hooping lessons. It´s also been really cool and empowering to meet a lot of other women traveling solo: one woman sold everything she owned except for 2 boxes of books and is just traveling now writing an english-learning program. Lots of others are just traveling with no real timeframe or end-date. Jacky´s wise words: "I´m not on vacation, I´m living. I don´t need to go back" haha yup, well it´s definitely a way of living, community hopping in different countries. There is another WWOOF farm actually right down the road which I visited to see what it was like: more of a farm with a limit for volunteer space, and they require volunteers to stay for at least a month. Again, good just to visit and see other communities.
Oh! And Brian´s been working with
The table, and hangout
with the studio in the background members of the community to host workshops like knife-making, basket-weaving, etc. so it helps out the local economy and 2 friends and I went to a bread-making workshop on one of our days off! I mean, I know how to make bread but wanted to check out the Mexican way of doing it and how they make really neat designs - check out the pictures! We worked all morning kneading dough while the wood-fired oven heated up, then ate lunch put the bread in the oven and stuff our faces with it all afternoon...yum! I also did a basket-making class, making baskets out of the pine needles in the forest - way cool, and i could probably apply the same technique for other materials as well. The classes cost some money but it feels good to support the local community - Michoacán is the state that
still receives the most remesas (money from out of the country). The 2 local men that work on the farm actually spend half the year working on vineyards in Sonoma - small world! But it´s really hard on the familes, especially the kids to lose their dads for 6 months a year, even though
the dads make 10 times as much money in CA....
Anyways, I´m heading back to Morelia tomorrow to hang out for a few days before heading south! I´ll be working on another farm for 2 weeks right north of Oaxaca city. It´s an educational farm where a lot of kids come through to learn about farm animals and growing veggies...so I´m looking forward working with some animals. Yeehaww I might even be camping out on the site if there´s not enough cabin space, which means I didn´t bring my sleeping bag for nothing! Alrighty, hasta la próxima vez!
Moni
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