Living-Change 2016 in a Nice Narrative Nutshell
Portland State University (PSU) students have returned for our second year of the Living-Change program. With some reshuffling of our curriculum we added an extra day, allowing for a 16 day course, to breeze by in laughter and good fun. This extra 24 hours allowed for some much needed down time mixed in with the full Permaculture Design Certification (PDC), a student lead project with the primary school in the nearby village of Llupa, and the series of social technology classes that this program provides.
Our resolution was to include more social aspects of permaculture and we couldn’t have asked for a better group for this addition. Upon meeting these 9 students in Lima, we could already clearly see a remarkable level of group cohesion forming early on. In the student testimonies at the end of the course many reflected on how surprised they were to feel such closeness and comradery among newly met friends within two or three days of meeting.
The first week consisted of course material and activities introducing permaculture as a design tool for any project to come. Julia, our lead in teaching the PDC concepts, spent this past year visiting a variety of farms and ecovillages throughout the Americas, so her wealth of already robust information on the subject was freshly expanded. Most notably, this spring she spent six weeks in Cuba looking at the extensive sustainable systems in practice on this isolated island nation.
We started with the more theoretical concepts such as ethics, principles, identifying zones, and a study of soils, for a more relaxed first few days to give everyone time to adjust to our 3,750 meter elevation. By day 3, students started getting their hands dirty with composting classes, a tour of our neighbor’s farm, and putting into operation our Community Wheel to hand out chores for the duration of the course. Part of the experience at The Hof is living in community together, so every student helps out between classes with chores like watering the gardens, changing the humanure buckets, and keeping the solar panels clean.
By the end of the first week, our little group was swarmed by the 25 children of the Llupa primary school when we visited the school to meet everyone, and to talk with the teachers about an idea that they had come up with for a way that our students and their students could collaborate together on a project. The idea was to help them prepare and plant a small garden in the back of the school to grow nutritious food to feed the children. Our students organized themselves into 3 groups of three so as to better get to know the children and teacher they’d be working with on Project Day. We were quite blessed to have the help of the wonderful and talented Julieta; a social clown persona introduced by our good friend Talia. Her clowning around was the grease in the wheels for the overall coordination of the three groups. 150 minutes after arriving, we had collectively made a hand print mural over the garden space and some wonderful connections to work with each other after the weekend.
Among some planning time for our return to Llupa, we spent Saturday engrossed in a few natural building projects. The first of which was how to make a fine natural plaster out of clay, sand, and cow manure. With some music blasting the rest of the morning, we applied the mix to our adobe shed we affectionately call The Light House. To add a little sparkle to the process, a sun and moon mosaic design was added, making use of our old broken crockery that we’ve been saving for just such an occasion. The sun now rises on the east and the moon sets in the west side of the hut.
That same afternoon, we switched gears and invited our friend, Tomas, from Llupa to teach us how to build walls using a dry stone masonry technique; traditional to Andean Quechua architecture, along with adobe construction. The class built a low wall which we used immediately in the following class to teach how a raised bed is put together for gardening.
The next day, we invited another friend of ours, Alli from Scotland, to come teach a class on water use and swale building with A-frames. Water is one of the limited resources in our area, so we dug some
swales to help harvest more of the rainfall to store in our hills.
In the afternoon, we piled all of our materials for the garden project in Llupa into a collective and rode down to our homestay in the village for an early morning start. The homestay was in the homes of two families where we would spend the night and have our meals. Our group was split into two, and our evening was spent talking with our hosts, Emilio or Hilario, and finalizing last minute preparations. Many of our students told us later on that this experience was the highlight of the course for them. Both Emilio and Hilario had many stories about their days as guides in the mountains to share. This, along with the novelty of falling asleep to the sound of guinea pigs (cuy), chirping quietly in the house courtyards, and just the general nature of their gracious hospitality, impressed everyone.
On Monday, we loaded up the wheelbarrows and walked through the tiny village center to the school. Once again, we were welcomed warmly by both teachers and children. Under the preparations made by our students over the weekend the day could not have gone any smoother. Within another two and a half hours all of us had come together to till the earth and complete the planting of a full vegetable garden for the children. We even dug out an impromptu irrigation system much to the delight of the children who carved canal after canal as if building sand castles. Much of the take away impression for our PSU students was a striking imprint of exactly how strong and capable those little kids between 6-14 actually are. One student recalled being impressed that, though she struggled to count to 20 in Spanish, the Quechua children could count to 20 in Spanish, English, and Quechua.
Our second week held more of a focus on the social technology side of things where Dror, our expert on the topic, taught techniques like Dragon Dreaming and World Café for project development. The students completed their design projects for PDC certification, many of which emphasized more the use of social spaces rather than just dwelling on the agricultural aspects of design. And, of course, we took a break in the middle of the week for a day hike up to Laguna Churup.
All in all it was a wonderful group, and an inspiring experience once again to see it all come together so gracefully. We wrapped up the last day with a celebratory Pachamanca feast put together by our staff Norma and Herminia along with the PDC presentations and our traditional course closing ceremony of an appreciation fire followed by walking the labyrinth under the light of the moon just before departure.
Thank you to Dror Noi, Julia Bowerman, and Dave Hall for making this year possible again.
