In this sweet little beach town of Mazunte, I was staying at a family run posada called the Gota de Vida. Mazunte is named after a beautiful blue, red and white crab that is now endangered due to over fishing. The posada is off the main road tucked away under the palms, the owners have a passion for gardening so it is a lush paradise. The posada has 4 or 5 cabanas always occupied by people from all over the world. The family who owns the posada are among the few who have been in Mazunte since it became a town some 40 years ago. We spent a lot of time talking about about plants and the changes that the town has seen due to tourism. I feel like one of the family, so if you are ever in this part of the world, go to Gota De Vida, a peaceful, clean and cheap place to stay.
A couple of weeks into my stay here i found El Neem, a yoga school perched on a hill over the ocean. It is called El Neem beacuse there are Neem trees all over the place. According to Don Pedro, the owner of the posada, 20 years ago a man from Africa brought the seeds planted them on the hill side and ever since they have been self seeding all over the place. Neem has many medicinal and cosmetic qualities with which i have been experimenting.
I have had a relaxed yoga practice for a few years now and wanted to expand and heal. I found so much more at this school. El Neem teaches Agama yoga, which is a type of tantric yoga.
(dont be scared i am not spending my time having crazy tantric orgies). We practice yoga 2 hours in the morning, 2 hours as the sun is setting and have a 1-2 hour lecture every night. I am not only learning how to hold poses for amazing amounts of time, I am also learning so much about the yogi way of being, culture, India, chakras and much more. I had no idea that yoga is a whole philsophical way of being in this world, one which i admire and understand. I am loving this place fully! However i will be leaving on Sunday, I am pretty bummbed beacuse i would like to finish the 24 day yoga course, which will end with 5 days of silence, can you imagine, 5 days of not talking... wow! I am bumbed about leaving however i am moving on to a beautiful place as well, Cusco Peru! Yes a change of pace. I will be spending a few weeks with a friend in Peru.
Lastly I would like to share with you just one example of the beauty of manifestation, prayer, power of the mind what ever you want to call it. Before i left the states i sat and meditated on what my intentions were here in Mexico, i knew that working in the mountains would be very important but something kept pulling on me about healing my spirit and taming my monkey mind. I asked to find a yoga school where i could practice yoga on the beach. A beach which met the mountains. And not only practice yoga but do it cheaply in a work trade situation. And 2 months later I am living that prayer!
Ask! do not be deceived by the notion of scarcity. Ask! With faith and love we live in a world of abundance. Even in this time of economic crisis, and paniced hubbub, ask with an open heart and have faith you will be cared for by the divine.
Love to all
Friday, February 27, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
My last days in San Miguel
Wow, It has been awhile since i have written, sorry to leave you hangin but life just has a way of taking you!
I have left San Miguel and the beautiful Sierra Madre mountain range about a week and a half ago. My job was complete and it was time to go. Leaving was bitter sweet I felt heavy with sadness for leaving the people i connected with. My specific job was done but there is so much to do, I felt i hardly skimmed the surface. I feel a strong connection to the people and land i pray that I get the opportunity to work with them again. Though the work is so hard, the living conditions minimal i find such satisfaction in this work. I love the challenge and the exchange of knowledge and experiences. My last day i made the rounds to say good bye to all of the people i met and worked with. I had been feeling frustrated and down trodden with my work, it wasn´t until that last day that i realized the impact I had on the people i met. It is a very satisfying feeling however at times it is a bit much for me to bare. The generosity that the people i met exhibited puts us fearful Americans to shame. They shared everything they had and opened their homes and hearts to me a stranger. We can learn a lot from this practice.
The projects that we were working on shifted and continually changed, after spending days working with coffee farmers to put up and use the solar dryers they proved unsatisfactory and were a big disappointment. We salvaged them by moving them to another home and setting them up at plant nurseries. Only time will tell if they will function as anticipated. The failure of the solar dryers was a bit disheartening for the coffee farmers and devalued our reputation. It is SO important to have the resources and knowledge to make each project work, if not the farmers will turn their back to anything you propose.
I spent many days up in the mountains at the "Finca". It is there that i learned about the process of coffee production. Interestingly enough i wrote my thesis in college on Mexican coffee cooperatives and Fair Trade. I never anticipated meeting the people i was researching and living the reality of which i was trying to portray through my thesis. Which by the way didn´t even begin to get into the juice of coffee production in Mexico. I will write more about the life of the coffee farmers later.
While up at the Finca we put in place a beautiful garden/ plant nursery. The goal is to make the Finca a demo site for people to come and learn techniques to enhance coffee and plant production.
I have many experiences with in me to share, however I get caught up in the movement of life and forget to write about them.
However below are a few of the things i learned:
I have left San Miguel and the beautiful Sierra Madre mountain range about a week and a half ago. My job was complete and it was time to go. Leaving was bitter sweet I felt heavy with sadness for leaving the people i connected with. My specific job was done but there is so much to do, I felt i hardly skimmed the surface. I feel a strong connection to the people and land i pray that I get the opportunity to work with them again. Though the work is so hard, the living conditions minimal i find such satisfaction in this work. I love the challenge and the exchange of knowledge and experiences. My last day i made the rounds to say good bye to all of the people i met and worked with. I had been feeling frustrated and down trodden with my work, it wasn´t until that last day that i realized the impact I had on the people i met. It is a very satisfying feeling however at times it is a bit much for me to bare. The generosity that the people i met exhibited puts us fearful Americans to shame. They shared everything they had and opened their homes and hearts to me a stranger. We can learn a lot from this practice.
The projects that we were working on shifted and continually changed, after spending days working with coffee farmers to put up and use the solar dryers they proved unsatisfactory and were a big disappointment. We salvaged them by moving them to another home and setting them up at plant nurseries. Only time will tell if they will function as anticipated. The failure of the solar dryers was a bit disheartening for the coffee farmers and devalued our reputation. It is SO important to have the resources and knowledge to make each project work, if not the farmers will turn their back to anything you propose.
I spent many days up in the mountains at the "Finca". It is there that i learned about the process of coffee production. Interestingly enough i wrote my thesis in college on Mexican coffee cooperatives and Fair Trade. I never anticipated meeting the people i was researching and living the reality of which i was trying to portray through my thesis. Which by the way didn´t even begin to get into the juice of coffee production in Mexico. I will write more about the life of the coffee farmers later.
While up at the Finca we put in place a beautiful garden/ plant nursery. The goal is to make the Finca a demo site for people to come and learn techniques to enhance coffee and plant production.
I have many experiences with in me to share, however I get caught up in the movement of life and forget to write about them.
However below are a few of the things i learned:
- Cultural differences can be breached with patience and perseverance.
- The Mayan population needs to accept the past injustices and take responsibility for their future.
- The government needs to provide more then money, it also needs to provide education.With out both educational and monetary support the indigenous population is doomed to remain dependent on governmental aid.
- I love the tropics and want to learn more about tropical agriculture.
- Rain boots are ESSENTIAL for working in the mountains. Provide protection not only from the slippery mud and rain but also from the snakes.
- You can survive with out a mirror.
- The body can go for days on nothing if it has to.
- The Fair trade system like the organic certification is an idealistic notion that has been polluted by corporate actions.
- Rats will eat anything.. including refrigerators and bee pollen!
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
The practice of present moment travel
It is so important to break free from the comfort of our day to day lifes. The lifes that move like clock work; sleep, eat, work. Overtime we accumulate bad habits, such as isolation, overeating/drinking /shopping, harshly judging ourselves and others, building walls and feeding fears. On this trip I have realized the importance that travel has for my quality of life. It is a challagning yet healing effect for me, in many ways wiping the slate clean, clearing space for better habits and complete presence to fill.
Everything is new. Colors are brighter, I am forced to let go of the illusion of control. I have no idea how i will get from one place to another, or what that place will have instore for me. When forced into uncomfortable situations, I am forced to break out of my mind, out of my isolation and into the world fully present. I have to re-learn evertime i travel how to let go and just go with it. When i do let that everything i need is handed to me and i find myself and everything else beautful and fluid.
It is important for us to force ourselves into uncomfortable situations so that we can expand our understanding of the world and ourselves in it. I hope to strenthen this practice of letting go and being present and bring it home to my day to day life.
Everything is new. Colors are brighter, I am forced to let go of the illusion of control. I have no idea how i will get from one place to another, or what that place will have instore for me. When forced into uncomfortable situations, I am forced to break out of my mind, out of my isolation and into the world fully present. I have to re-learn evertime i travel how to let go and just go with it. When i do let that everything i need is handed to me and i find myself and everything else beautful and fluid.
It is important for us to force ourselves into uncomfortable situations so that we can expand our understanding of the world and ourselves in it. I hope to strenthen this practice of letting go and being present and bring it home to my day to day life.
The Finca
The past cold rainy week has faded away as i have fed my body and spirit here at this amazing little beach town of Mixunte.
Everyone in the household made the treck up to the Finca. It took in total 3 hours of up hill terrain, half of which was walking through the once was jungle. It is now all second growth, coffee farm or pasture. The coffee farm is not what I excpected it, and most, are coffee trees under a canopy of larger trees, it is essentially a forest.
The Finca itself is a tiny old cement building with a leaky rook and an out door cooking eating area. I was grateful we brought a tent! If we had not it would have been 10 of us sleeping on the dirt floor in the tiny house!
We got one productive day we cleared an area for the nursery and started a little kitchen garden. We picked coffee seed and hand husked them all preparing them for planting. It had been wet for days but the rain came in quick and heavy and stayed with us for over two days. We were stuck up on the mountain with nothing to do and nowhere to go.
Food was running scarce, beans, tortillas and coffee. Yes one can live off of these three things only and do physical work as well.
A couple of guys went out hunting and came back with an endangered animal, the ant eater. It was beautiful and lying dead before me. I was disgusted and intrigued at the same time. I watched as the kids play with the body and the dogs fight over it. I could not eat it, though everyone else said the meat was great... of course it was they had not eaten anything substantial for days.
It is important in this kind of work to stick out the hard times with the people who live there and have no choice. My instinct that first rainy day was to flee and fast. But i could not and many great experiences came out of our time together in such lousy conditions. It demonstrates conradmanship, dedication and fosters a deeper understanding for the hardships that they endure. It builds trust which is a key componant of organizing a group of people and advancing as a community.
The treck off of the mountain was to say the least insane, The mud was overwhelming, the trail we came in on was now a stream. We were a sight as we climbed up and onto the street, head to toe mud and wet.
Needless to say the next day i was out of there, I had to take a break from the constant struggle, i had to eat and revamp before we start the next phase of the project.
Everyone in the household made the treck up to the Finca. It took in total 3 hours of up hill terrain, half of which was walking through the once was jungle. It is now all second growth, coffee farm or pasture. The coffee farm is not what I excpected it, and most, are coffee trees under a canopy of larger trees, it is essentially a forest.
The Finca itself is a tiny old cement building with a leaky rook and an out door cooking eating area. I was grateful we brought a tent! If we had not it would have been 10 of us sleeping on the dirt floor in the tiny house!
We got one productive day we cleared an area for the nursery and started a little kitchen garden. We picked coffee seed and hand husked them all preparing them for planting. It had been wet for days but the rain came in quick and heavy and stayed with us for over two days. We were stuck up on the mountain with nothing to do and nowhere to go.
Food was running scarce, beans, tortillas and coffee. Yes one can live off of these three things only and do physical work as well.
A couple of guys went out hunting and came back with an endangered animal, the ant eater. It was beautiful and lying dead before me. I was disgusted and intrigued at the same time. I watched as the kids play with the body and the dogs fight over it. I could not eat it, though everyone else said the meat was great... of course it was they had not eaten anything substantial for days.
It is important in this kind of work to stick out the hard times with the people who live there and have no choice. My instinct that first rainy day was to flee and fast. But i could not and many great experiences came out of our time together in such lousy conditions. It demonstrates conradmanship, dedication and fosters a deeper understanding for the hardships that they endure. It builds trust which is a key componant of organizing a group of people and advancing as a community.
The treck off of the mountain was to say the least insane, The mud was overwhelming, the trail we came in on was now a stream. We were a sight as we climbed up and onto the street, head to toe mud and wet.
Needless to say the next day i was out of there, I had to take a break from the constant struggle, i had to eat and revamp before we start the next phase of the project.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
The Community Development Project
The meeting for the coffee growers was announced over the loud speaker that blares thorugh out the small town. 13 people came up to see what the leader, who had just come down from the mountains had to say. Almost half of the participatants were women. The coffee cooperative was disband do to corruption and now is trying to reorganize. I was introduced as the agronomist for the coffee solar dryer project and the plant nursery. Agronomist? Yikes... Everyone had a lot of questions for me and were very receptive to my ideas. Many decisions were made and off each went back to their own coffee crops.
For the months of December - February almost everyone is leaves town to treck deeper into the mountains to harvest their coffee.
We have bought and essembled two coffee dryers which will improve the quality an quanity of coffee that they are able to sell.
Tomorrow i go up to the coffee farm to start the plant nursery project with the folks up there.
We are starting new coffee plants, ceder and fruit trees, along with cover crops.
It is two hours from this very rural town. The conditions are minimal to say the least. I will be up there with 10 others who are harvesting coffee.
For the months of December - February almost everyone is leaves town to treck deeper into the mountains to harvest their coffee.
We have bought and essembled two coffee dryers which will improve the quality an quanity of coffee that they are able to sell.
Tomorrow i go up to the coffee farm to start the plant nursery project with the folks up there.
We are starting new coffee plants, ceder and fruit trees, along with cover crops.
It is two hours from this very rural town. The conditions are minimal to say the least. I will be up there with 10 others who are harvesting coffee.
Monday, January 12, 2009
San Miguels Jewel
Before i go on to talk about the project, i must share with you the jewel of the little town of San Miguel.
A Beautiful fresh water spring that comes out of a large cave.
It comes out of rock onto rock and is marked by the two amazing Cider trees that grow above it!
We went exploring in the underground cave. It is enormous the water is the most pure water i have ever experienced.
The women go there to detox, the spread the mud full of minerals over their bodies and even eat it to purify their bodies of illness an impurities.
The outside spring/cave has become my daily haven.
It has powerful healing energy, and though it has yet to be confirmed i am sure it is this water source that brought people to settle there.
A Beautiful fresh water spring that comes out of a large cave.
It comes out of rock onto rock and is marked by the two amazing Cider trees that grow above it!
We went exploring in the underground cave. It is enormous the water is the most pure water i have ever experienced.
The women go there to detox, the spread the mud full of minerals over their bodies and even eat it to purify their bodies of illness an impurities.
The outside spring/cave has become my daily haven.
It has powerful healing energy, and though it has yet to be confirmed i am sure it is this water source that brought people to settle there.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
San Miguel
The day i arrived to this beautiful mountain town i got sick i have been sick ever since. It almost feels as if the mountains are cleansing me of my idustrialized impurities. Testing me, deciding if i am worthy of being here. Jason my American compadre says he has felt the same energy and as hard as he has worked still nothing of grandur has come of it. Perhaps they are keeping us out. These mountains are powerful and abundant with food, shelter, medicine and water.
Questions i have been asking:
If so abundant then why then do the people still suffer?Are they suffering or is it the outside western eye that percieves this way of life as poverty and suffering?
The mentality of the opressed around the world is similar. They are resentful and expect money from the goevernment or those who have abused and took advantage of them.Accepting the realities of the situation I see the solution to be that the dominant entity gives the opressed communities a certain pre determined amount of money with the tools to succeed, i.e. education. And then leaves it to the communtiy to grow and determine its future.However in the case of Mexico the government is willing to give money but no education. Leaving the mayan people wanting more.It is the responsibiltiy of the people to accept what is and accept responsibilty of their actions and push through with solidarity and hard work.It is similar to breaking the cycle of abuse in a family. Those who break it live hard and self disciplined lifes so those after them are able to live more freely.
Questions i have been asking:
If so abundant then why then do the people still suffer?Are they suffering or is it the outside western eye that percieves this way of life as poverty and suffering?
The mentality of the opressed around the world is similar. They are resentful and expect money from the goevernment or those who have abused and took advantage of them.Accepting the realities of the situation I see the solution to be that the dominant entity gives the opressed communities a certain pre determined amount of money with the tools to succeed, i.e. education. And then leaves it to the communtiy to grow and determine its future.However in the case of Mexico the government is willing to give money but no education. Leaving the mayan people wanting more.It is the responsibiltiy of the people to accept what is and accept responsibilty of their actions and push through with solidarity and hard work.It is similar to breaking the cycle of abuse in a family. Those who break it live hard and self disciplined lifes so those after them are able to live more freely.
Monday, January 5, 2009
They say that the road to Hana on Maui is the curviest road in the world. I could have died a happy girl believing this. I have experienced massive car sickness many times taking the road to Hana. However the road from Oaxaca City to the coastal beach town of Puerto Escondido is much more windy, steep, long and terrifying.
Tomorrow i leave the beautiful city of Oaxaca to Xcpatec a small village in the mountains.
Wish me luck
Tomorrow i leave the beautiful city of Oaxaca to Xcpatec a small village in the mountains.
Wish me luck
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