May your Winter Solstice be filled with quiet joy and wonder, and may 2012 bring us all closer to the awakening we long for and need so much.

In praise of co-housing

I am very fortunate to have an old friend who has been living in Westwood Co-housing for several years, who just happened to have a room available in her home this November.  I never thought I would live in a co-housing community because I knew I would not have the funds to own a unit, but being a renter here is wonderful! There are 39 adults and 11 children who live here, and everyone I’ve met has been friendly and welcoming.

Westwood is an ecologically built community, with solar hot water which

shared common house

also provides radiant floor heating. I have never experienced a more comfortable heating system. No noisy furnace or space heater, no blasts of hot air or cold floors, just even comfort and warmth underfoot. The buildings are well insulated and share some walls, like row-houses. There is a “common house” in which there are a couple of washers and dryers that everyone uses, a large dining hall and well-equipped kitchen where group meals are held at least 2 nights a week, a play room for kids, a room with comfy couches for meetings and TV or DVD watching, an office, and two guest rooms upstairs where residents can house their relatives or friends comfortably. There is a large garden with a plastic greenhouse producing greens through the winter, and a toolshed. It’s an easy walk to downtown West Asheville, with a library, grocery stores, bakery, coffee shops, and more.

Last Saturday morning was a community work day; everyone is required to put in at least four hours a month of work on shared areas.  I was invited to participate in raking leaves and putting down wood chips on the path that runs through a small wooded area along a creek behind the homes. My friend Tara’s 13-year-old daughter Mira was working alongside me, and we took a break to play with one of the cats, a beautiful part-Siamese. Afterwards, about twenty of us shared a vegetarian lunch.

Giraffe at Westwood (NVC symbol)

I was pleased to learn that a series of classes in Non-Violent Communication were being offered here, and was able to attend the last two–taught by an old friend of mine who lives part time at Earthaven. Like any community, this one has its challenging issues. It is so important to be able to communicate our needs in non-threatening ways so that no-one gets alienated.

Our little household is a mini-community of two older women, a teenage girl, and a 30-something young man. So far, we are getting along harmoniously and enjoying each other’s company.

Brian, me, Tara, Mira

Peace is possible!

Back home in Asheville! Culture shock? Yes, after spending an hour wandering in fascinated attraction/revulsion through an Ingles supermarket I emerged dazed and shaking a little.

Keystone XL Pipeline
After an indulgent Thanksgiving week with my dear old Dad and his wife Joan, it was my good fortune that Bill McKibben came to UNCA to speak and to celebrate the (interim) victory over the tar sands pipeline. A couple of speakers preceded him; one was from Asheville Students for a Healthy Environment (ASHE), a student delegate to climate talks; another was Kendall Hale, a friend and fellow activist who had gone to the recent  Tar Sands Pipeline demonstration in which the organizers’ dream of encircling the White House was met fivefold! And four days later, Obama announced that the pipeline would be delayed and reviewed.

The power of one degree
McKibben gave a few cogent facts on climate change. “A one degree rise in temperature of the earth doesn’t sound like much. Yet 2010 was the warmest year on record.” Seawater has become 30% more acid in our lifetimes, and there is 40& less Arctic ice. He explained how warm air causes an increase in the water vapor held in the air, hence we have an atmosphere which is 4% moister than before. The result is that some areas experience drought while others get floods. The drought in the Horn of Africa caused grain prices to go up due to failed harvests; 200 million more people were starving than two years ago. In Queensland, Australia, Pakistan, and Vermont we have seen record floods. Syracuse, N.Y. broke its previous flood record by 60%. Bangkok had its worst monsoon in history.

And yet, unless we lower our CO2 emissions now, we can expect to see a 4-6 degree temperature increase by the end of this century. What will happen to our grain harvests then? A single degree of temperature increase decreases yield by 10%.

What we must do
1. Install renewable energy technology wherever possible. The easiest is solar hot water. Half of the world’s installed renewables are in the form of solar hot water in China; yet less than 1% of Americans have it. The payback is prompt.
2. Put a price on carbon to reflect the damage it does.
3. Break the power of corporate politics; OCCUPY!
4. Amend the Constitution. No more corporate personhood, no more corporate purchase of elections!

The power of the fossil fuel industry to prevent change is huge because they make more money than any other industry, and they spend it to buy political power. Of course they’re rich—imagine a restaurant whose waste got dumped in the street, with no responsibility required. This is what the fossil fuel industry does, dumping not only carbon and methane into the atmosphere scot-free, but also thousands of other compounds and chemicals that are toxic to life on earth. You cannot outspend them. A political system based on corporate spending is not responsive to people’s needs. Corporations are not people and should not be political actors. $400 billion of government money goes in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, which needs no incentives to continue what they are doing. This money must be invested in renewable energy instead!

350.org
A couple of years ago McKibben, author of  The End of Nature and many other books, birthed 350.org. This campaign aims to raise public awareness that a sustainable level of CO2 in the atmosphere is around 350 parts per million, whereas we are currently at 393 ppm and rising. 5100 demonstrations were held all over the world, with the majority of participants worldwide being poor, brown, black, and young. These are, after all, the majority of people on the planet. Photographs of people from the air spelling out a giant “350” in city after city, town or village gave an unmistakable message to the world. This global outpouring of grassroots support for carbon reductions can be seen on www.350.org’s website.

“The true radicals,” said McKibben, “are those who are willing to experiment with fundamentally changing the composition of our atmosphere. Who are the true conservatives? Well, those of us who would like to pass along an Earth that looks something like it did when we were born.”

Tar sands oil
For extraction of Canadian tar sands oil, already more earth has been moved than for the Great Wall of China and the ten biggest dams in the world, combined. In the wake of this rape of the land, polluted water and torn earth are left. Tar sands oil produces three times the greenhouse gas emissions of conventionally produced oil because of the energy required to extract and process tar sands oil. Extracting the heavy crude from the sand, clay and bitumen means burning natural gas to melt the oil out of the sand. As many as five barrels of water are needed to produce a single barrel of oil. The indigenous people of this region in Alberta have been displaced and are outraged. The amount of CO2 estimated to be generated by Canadian tar-sands oil would bring us up to 540 parts per million. Says climatologist Jim Hanson, “This would mean game over for the climate.” Europe has so far kept tar sands oil out. And now, Trans-Canada’s pipes are quietly rusting in midwestern fields! But of course, every victory is temporary while we do not hold political power.

Move Your Money!
The very next day there was a rally in Pritchard Park calling for clean energy. We then marched with posters and mini-windmills and spirited chants to the Royal Bank of Canada, which has invested $17 billion in tar sands oil; it is the largest investor in the Alberta tar sands.  From there we proceeded to the Bank of America, which invested $3.9 billion in the coal industry last year alone. This means mountain-top removal coal mining. NC presently obtains 61% of its electricity from coal-fired power plants, spending $2.36 billion per year to purchase the coal. Tying in with the Occupy Wall Street / Occupy Asheville movement, we called on people to “Move your money” away from these banks. A plywood “windmill” which had served as a stage prop the previous night was planted by two demonstrators on Bank of America’s lawn.

If all the money RBC and BofA invested in fossil fuels in the last four years were instead invested in offshore wind farms off NC’s coast, we could generate 7,800 MW of wind capacity—enough to power 6 million homes. NC has 4.3 million homes. This means we could sell power to nearby states. The investment in wind power would keep this $2.35 billion in the state, while eliminating the many toxic emissions of coal-fired plants.

A letter to this effect was read aloud, with the “human microphone” echoing each phrase, outside the two banks, and a skit was acted out with Santa Claus telling a “Monopoly game” banker that he really needed to invest in wind and solar energy, or he would get only a lump of coal in his stocking this Christmas.

A few people were arrested, and police with cameras snapped many photos of the demonstrators.

Dia de los vivos, dia de los muertos

Rather than just one Day of the Dead, Peruvians have a day for the living (los vivos) on Nov. 1, followed by a day for the dead. I was wondering if I would see the sugar skulls so prevalent in Mexican tradition, but did not.  Instead, a special sweet bread was for sale in all the shops and on the streets. The women were kept busy fanning away the myriads of bees that swarmed around the large, sculpted challah-like breads with small ceramic heads like dolls, and some that were shaped like horses with horse heads. I learned that these breads are gifted to the children in the family. Also I heard that on the day for the living, a lot of pork is consumed.

Urubamba Day

honoring "choclo" (white corn)

Big celebrations on Nov. 8 and 9 for Urubamba’s founding day: parades, dances, lots of food and chicha sold on the streets.

Benito’s neighbors

Benito measures the toilet pit

Benito, who works at Samana Wasi, and I went to meet some of the campesinos who live nearby and lack toilets, four homes close together which also lack electricity. At the first, a toothless older man showed us the pit he and his son have been digging, which was only about a meter deep so far. We emphasized that it needed to be two meters deep, and took measurements so we can get the poles and wood for making the platform.  At a second home, there seemed to be no ideal location since the land was very sloped except for right next to the asequia (channel for irrigation water). However, since the asequia was cement-lined, we approved that area for digging the pit. A third house already had a primitive pit toilet, a precarious scramble up the hill. It was not very deep, with just a couple of poles and boards over it as a platform to stand on and nothing more. The family plans to dig another pit a few feet away for the new toilet. The fourth family were not home. The cost for the platform materials for each of these toilets Benito estimates at about 40 soles (less than $15). Since the Municipality is not forthcoming for these yet and is focusing on the community of Pichingota for toilets right now, I agreed to pay for the materials for all four.

On the way back down to Samana Wasi, we came to a recently cleared site which Benito proudly announced was the location for the new home he hopes to build. He has begun moving the large boulders off to one side, and has already made a small stash of adobe bricks. By working two jobs, he is saving the money he will need, around 5,000 soles.

The play’s the thing!

"plants" in their costumes

Finally the teachers’ strike ended and we had another rehearsal of our skit about “The Life of the Soil.”  The night before, I was feeling morose about the foot-dragging on the part of some students. Did they really want to do this play or were they being coerced? Caitlyn, the young volunteer who has been sharing my apartment and assisting with the classes, helped me see that the kids needed more of a context. So, after seducing them a little with props borrowed from my theater friend Nino such as a shiny blue fabric “river” and some foam-rubber “fish,” I asked them: “Why would this crazy gringa want to spend time

"insect" faces painted

making smelly fertilizers and compost piles?”  I answered my rhetorical question by telling them about how the U.S. is a producer and promoter of chemical fertilizers and pesticides which kill the soil and its organisms as well as polluting the rivers, and exports these worldwide, replacing the tried and true organic methods practiced by their grandparents, while making tons of money; I felt responsible and wanted to counteract this in some small way.  Then I said that they all had the opportunity to be actors and to teach the younger students through theater, which is much less boring than someone lecturing. No one would be forced to be in the play and I asked them to raise their hands if they preferred not to participate; no-one opted out.

When performance day arrived, I brought in facepaints and one student, who had a lot of talent, painted most of the girls´faces.  The “insects” wore pipe-cleaner antennas, the “plants” were decked out with green posterboard leaves.  But we did not have time for a run through, and the students had not had enough practice to have much confidence;  some suffered from stagefright. The CD player only worked intermittently.  So, the performance was quite raggedy. I hope the idea that soil contains living creatures that are killed by chemical fertilizers and pesticides got across.

Afterwards, Caitlyn and I served oatmeal squares and brownies we´d baked the previous day, along with chicha morada (purple corn drink) which unfortunately arrived rather late. The director, Jesus Ludena, presented me with a certificate for 4 months of service teaching organic agriculture. The teachers turned in the evaluation forms filled out by the students, results of which I´ll publish later.

11/11/11

The night of the play, Nov. 10, there was a full moon and we celebrated by attending a party in Ollantaytambo with a little ceremony by a shaman calling in the energies of the moon and of 11/11.  He made a despacho and we all contributed our prayers and coca leaves, then it was burned in a bonfire. Caitlyn and I got to know a local man, Putucu, who invited us for a walk up the back side of the ruins to the Templo de la Luna, and we scrambled up the rocky slope sometimes on all fours, to the breathtaking view at the top: seemingly endless stairs descending to the tiny, lit-up pueblo below. Truly, the Inca were master stoneworkers. Putucu believes that they used mental powers to move and sculpt stones, and I would not doubt it. There is no good explanation for their amazing skills. In the Templo de la Luna, he pointed out one huge stone (the mouth) which appeared to have two lips, and another equal sized stone with two eyes, but it was not positioned above the mouth. Perhaps the temple was never finished. There were also large flat slabs we could lie on for “moon-bathing” and a few steps away, a “throne” from which the Inca leader could survey the entire pueblo. The mountain facing us, the majestic Pinculluna, seemed to have a halo of clouds in the moonlight. We got back to our hostel around 2am.

On the following day, my friends Paloma and Nicolas had people over to

Nicolas with scale model of 3D chakana

their teepee for a meditation, circle dances and chants, and a healing ceremony in which we formed concentric circles with a hand on the shoulder of the person in front of us.  Nicolas had dug an amazing three-dimensional chakana in the yard, at least 2 meters deep. At the bottom was a sacred fire of palo santo, and there were ledges on which one could sit. One of these ledges was considered a portal and each was invited to sit there in turn while holding a large vessel of water in outstretched hands, and to say: “Yo soy el espiritu de la Pachamama!” (I am the spirit of the Mother Earth.) At the same time, all

chakana in the earth

standing in the circle above us extended their hands to send energy, and after the declaration we all shouted “Hayayay!” as an affirmation. Afterwards, we shared food and conversation.

Overhead, the cherry-headed parrots fly in large flocks, with a loud chorus of calls. They are here to feast on the capuli, a small purple fruit that tastes like a cross between a grape and a cherry. Most mornings are sunny but the clouds roll in each afternoon, and we are starting to get some rain. With just a couple of weeks left of my time in Peru, everything is starting to feel more chaotic than usual.

Greening the Crops
At the high school, most of the barrels and buckets full of liquid fertilizers–fermenting garlic, cow manure, human urine, and so on–have now been strained, diluted, and either sprayed on leaves or sprinkled onto the soil. It was messy and smelly at times, and the girls were often holding up their sweaters or scarves to their noses and making faces, but we got through it. Although most of the corn on the farm has been fertilized with chemicals, they had run short, so some of the organic liquid fertilizers went to the corn that was a shade yellower than the rest because it lacked nitrogen.

spraying liquid abono on peach trees

It was very satisfying when we could finally pronounce two of the compost piles ready. Prof. Melchor decided the finished compost should go to enrich the soil under the peach trees, so the students dug shallow circular trenches at the drip line and filled them in with the compost, which is looking black and rich with several earthworms.

Drama
The classes have been very pragmatic and hands-on, but I was bothered by the lack of didactics and wondered whether the students really understand the difference between living soil, full of micro- and macro-organisms that break down waste and feed the plants, and chemicalized, dead soil. The idea came to me to have one of the classes put on a little dramatic presentation for the whole school, acting out the parts of the living creatures. The director and the two teachers were favorable to the idea, so I wrote up a one-page skit with two narrators and parts for insects, earthworms, bacteria, and plants. I was really hoping to bring my talented friend Nino in to help; he works with children and adolescents teaching drama classes and the results are wonderful. But he was not available during the hours needed.

However, the students do have an art and drama session weekly, so I connected with the drama teacher and we had our first rehearsal. The kids were predictably shy and inhibited, but some movement games helped them warm up. I was looking forward to our next rehearsal, and a session with a microscope to take a look at the actual soil—when along came a teachers’ strike: Huelga! Now, everything has been put on hold. With just over 2 weeks until my plane leaves, I’m hoping for a speedy resolution!

Water organizing: one drop at a time
Meanwhile, my friend Luciana (the key organizer behind the Anay Pachamama festival this past August, and my chief ally in the water work) abruptly announced that she was taking off for Buenos Aires, Argentina, until February. I managed a brief meeting with Mary Cueva, manager of the Hotel Villa Urubamba, who had promised to introduce a proposal to the Chamber of Commerce calling on hotel and restaurant managers to finance a river cleanup. In between answering at least a dozen calls on three phones, she said to me, “The trouble is that after the cleanup, the next day there will just be more plastic trash in the river.” It is true. So we then talked about the need for trash cans in the areas where the most trash seems to gather, with the Municipality taking charge of emptying the cans. Better yet, a recycling program.

Manolo Chavez, head of the Chamber, had agreed to put Mary on the agenda for the Chamber’s next meeting, but he has postponed that meeting twice; it is set for November 11 now, because the Mayor of Urubamba could not attend the previously agreed date. Mary and I met him for a hot chocolate yesterday and we kicked ideas around. We all agreed that a massive public education campaign would need to accompany the new trash cans so that they would be used. Manolo told us how “Plan Vilcanota” had $7 million in 2003 for river cleanup, but that most of the money had been stolen due to corruption. “The Mayor has the power,” Manolo said, “but he isn’t really interested in the environment.” He suggested that the regional government has funds and we should approach them. He’ll also invite the director of Guamanpoma, the German NGO that has been financing the wastewater treatment project in Pumahuanca. Manolo mused that there is a big need for more jobs in Urubamba, and that a recycling program would certainly create employment. Mary agreed to create a powerpoint presentation about the plastic trash if I would take the photos.

The other slowly moving project is to set up an internet forum on best practices for management of drinking water and wastewater, to inform the “Plan Maestro.” The meeting set for last week, with Juan Velasco of Economic Development, Raul of the Water Department, and Eiger Sanchez of the Environmental division, got canceled. It is now rescheduled for Nov. 3, when Robert Grimaldo (a dentist from Cusco who is a friend of Luciana’s and dedicated to clean water) will also join us. I met with Robert this week and we agreed on an agenda for that meeting including the creation of a webpage, deciding who will be in charge, statement of goals, strategic alliances, and invitations to experts to participate.

Melodrama
The women’s group was set to meet today, but there was an unexpected twist. The Brazilian woman at whose home the group is held was completely freaked out because workers who were repairing her roof yesterday did not get the job completed, and then it rained. She actually had a breakdown and we spent most of the group time trying to soothe her with singing and bodywork, but she still broke into angry screams in Portuguese and other strange behavior. Meanwhile, a crew of workers were busy on the roof with metal and straw, getting the job done at last.

Hurray for webcasting! I got to watch some of my beloved Bioneers meetings from California live, right here in Peru, thanks to the wonders of webcasting.

Paul Stamets, Report from the Underground: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World.
Stamets, the world-renowned mycologist and fun guy, was back spreading the good news about fungi. In farming, fungi can remediate chemical farmlands for the transition to organic. They can provide nontoxic insect control and ecosystem restoration. An old-growth forest, besides providing the best known storage of above-ground carbon, is a wonderland of fungi. Habitats and humans may share immune systems; mycelia connect the two. Most plants have some association with fungi for mutual benefit. The mycelial network consists of fine fibrils, netted, which hold soil, absorb water, digest nutrients, and communicate with the ecosystem, providing a neurological network. “Web-based life forms adapt quickly,” said Stamets.

Mushrooms break down hydrocarbons and contaminants. They can even work in salt water; Stamets devised floating mushroom booms to help detoxify the Gulf. In Fukushima, the “Nuclear Forest Recovery Zone” utilizes a species of mushroom which hyper-accumulates radioactive cesium, removing it from the soil.

For diseases, there are remarkable curative mushrooms. Fomitopsis officianalis, which grows only in old-growth forests, and is the longest-lived mushroom in the world, works against tuberculosis. Agarikon, a very rare species, has potent antiviral and antimicrobial power, for use against pox and bird flu. Shiitake, wellknown for their immune system enhancement, contain 267,000 units of vitamin D per 100 grams. Turkeytail mushrooms enhance natural killer cell activity (key to immune function), and Stamets reports that they cured his mother of breast cancer! So many potent arguments for saving old-growth forests.

Cordyceps, which inhibits immune function, is invaluable for organ transplant patients. It is also used to deter insects such as termites and carpenter ants, and even disease-bearing mosquitoes. Bees are unhurt by it. Such species could make pesticides obsolete, control disease vectors, and steer some insects away from people and plants.

Lynne Twist and Natalia Greene, Rights of Nature
Lynne Twist of the Pachamama Alliance told how Correa, president of Ecuador, brought the rights of indigenous people into the constitution in 2008 and was the first to give legal rights to nature; Bolivia was the second. Natalia Greene, the president of CEDENMA (an organization of all environmental groups in Ecuador), spoke of extraction economies in Latin America such as oil and mining in bio-diverse areas like the rainforest. The indigenous movement is strong in Ecuador, especially since the Chevron/Texaco oil spill disaster. “There can be no just society while women, animals and nature are viewed as inferiors,” she stated. “We must decolonize our minds.” Yes, even property rights can be limited when they harm nature. How can we protect ourselves if nature has no rights? We must not only value ecosystem services, but also realize that we do not understand nature and it is far more than a commodity. There is now a global alliance for the Rights of Nature; see www.therightsofnature.org.

Amory Lovins: Reinventing Fire
Lovins has been a clarion voice for the “soft energy path” of energy efficiency and renewables ever since the 1970s. Worldwide, he says, we use 4 cubic miles of fossil fuel each year, but the costs outweigh the benefits—not only in causing climate change disasters, but also in pollution of air and water. 95% of coal goes to making electricity; 75% of oil goes to transportation. We need to find a new source of “fire.” Lovins believes that no new technology is needed to save $5 trillion while growing the economy, using efficient autos, buildings, and factories.

Already in Germany, a 230 miles-per-gallon carbon fiber plug-in hybrid car is being released, which saves 4/5 of the capital needed for auto manufacture. With car- and ride-sharing, we could have up to 80% less driving. Electric automobiles, smart buildings, smart grids, wind and solar power, a three to four-fold increase in energy efficiency in buildings and a two-fold increase in industry’s efficiency would save $1.4 trillion. That is four times more savings than the cost of installation.

For example: the retrofit of the Empire State Building cut energy use by 2/5, with a payback in just 3 years. In buildings and industry, 60% of all electricity is used for running motors, of which 30% is just for running pumps and fans. Many pipes can be enlarged, with less angles, to make pumping far more efficient.

As wind and photovoltaic prices drop, they become more accessible. Putting PV on your roof, you become a virtual power company. Renewables will add half of all new generating capacity in the next 3 years, Lovins claims.  We can already displace 2/5 of coal using natural gas and wind power. Some say that wind and solar energy are too intermittent, but the reality is that coal and nuclear power plants break down regularly, and the power grids must always provide backup. Peak demand can be met with occasional use of biogas. “Smart grids” using distributed renewables are already in use in Denmark and Cuba. The costs are the same as business as usual, while being climate neutral. We can be free of oil and coal by 2050, Lovins believes.

“But not all the fossils are in the fuel,” he added, getting a laugh from the audience as he referred to the resistance to change.

****

Just one more month in Peru, then it’s back to Asheville, NC!

Luciana (right), her partner Alfredo, & a young friend

Agua es vida
Luciana Sanz of Cusco, the chief organizer of Anay Pachamama/Gracias Pachamama in August (a 2-week festival honoring the earth), has been moving ahead on organizing a clean water campaign for 2012. “Agua es vida” is the name chosen for a group of organizations committed to the environment and water resources in Cusco and the Sacred Valley: the Earth Charter, the Fund for Attaining the Milennium Goals (United Nations), and the Cusco Regional Government.

The goals are:

1) An educational forum will be held in August 2012 with leaders in treatment of residential water, wastewater, and conscious water use. The government will present their “Plan Maestro” for treatment of drinking water and of wastewater, and for the cleanup of the Watanay and Vilcanota Rivers. Local and regional government members, congress members, directors of NGOs, educators, and environmental youth groups will all be invited to participate.

2) A campaign to clean up the Vilcanota River, involving hotels, restaurants, and other private enterprises, will be led by Villa Urubamba. A presentation will be made to the Chamber of Commerce to get commitments from these businesses, for funding and for workers to do the trash pickup.

3) A pre-launch project via the internet will include a web page with experts invited to give their suggestions regarding best technologies for this region for water purification and sewage treatment; proposed for March 2012.

Anay Pachamama 2012 will have water as its primary theme, with the awareness that water resources are critical for this region. As in 2011, offerings and ceremonies will be held for the earth and for the rivers.

Sanitation for Peru

Palomar
Meanwhile, my friend Sofia Cortes from Colombia and Australia, has friends

visiting from Australia. Adrian is a public health consultant who specializes in dry toilets, wastewater management, and clean drinking water. In between visiting Machu Picchu and other sites, Adrian and his wife Ronna (with Sofia as translator) have been helping local rural families who lack toilet facilities to install a very simple type of dry toilet. It is not a composting toilet, because he believes that those require more education and maintenance to work properly. Instead, it is a pit toilet that is deep enough so that it might take a couple of years to fill up, with just some ash sprinkled at intervals to keep down odors. When filled, the pit is topped with soil, and a fruit tree is planted there to take advantage of the nutrients. The structure of the toilet, usually adobe bricks, a tin roof and a simple wooden platform with a hole, are then moved to a new location.

Adrian & Ronna of Australia

I was delighted to introduce Adrian to my friend in the office of Economic Development, Juan Velasco. I was even more delighted when Juan said that part of his job was improving sanitation in rural homes, and that the municipality would provide funding for the materials needed to build the pit toilets! The very next day, we went to visit Palomar, a community near Ollantaytambo that Juan said was having sanitation problems. As it turned out, they already had septic tanks and the problem was that the wooden beams holding the covers were rotting and the covers had collapsed on a few of them. Adrian counseled the people on keeping the wooden beams up off the ground by adding a layer of stones on which to rest them, to prevent rot; also he suggested rubbing in used motor oil to help preserve the wood.  Juan gave away some doors to help with construction. We were then treated to a feast prepared by the community: roasted cuy (guinea pig) for those who ate meat, and tender new potatoes with a delicious spicy peanut sauce for me, plus some generous slices of avocado.

Pichingota gets dry toilets

A few days later, Juan brought us to a tiny and poor community called

Pichingota, house under rock overhang

Pichingota. Just 80 families live there, on the other side of the Vilcanota River. First we went to see an ancient home, still inhabited, built directly under a dramatic rock overhang. In the cliff we could see vestiges of pre-Inca buildings, and we learned that an ancient people known as the “Gentiles” lived there. One of our hosts showed us a skull, curiously elongated by means of head-wrapping the infants.

The pit had already been dug, about 4 feet deep and 9×9

Adrian & Ronna survey the pit

feet square. Next the family helped us saw three eucalyptus logs and five planks to make a platform, with stones holding up the logs. A plastic bucket was secured and the bottom sawed out. When all was nailed together, the only things missing were a structure to sit on and the walls, roof and door. These would be made from adobe and thatch, with a curtain for a door. The underside of the platform would be painted with used motor oil as a preservative.

grandma's broken chair might work!

For a structure to sit on, the grand-mother’s old broken chair with a hole in the seat seemed like a possible choice!

Vignettes from the high school

We were invited to expand our classes to all three of the level-5 students.

spraying broccoli with dilute urine

The simplest fertilizer to make is fermented urine. (Actually, you don’t evenhave to ferment it, but do be sure to dilute it, at least 5:1 water to urine; some say 15:1 is better.) The students brought in their plastic bottles filled, and dumped them into a bucket. Some of the bottles were from Inca Kola, the neon-yellow soft drink that tastes like bubble gum, so I like to call urine “the real Inka Cola.” A week later, we mixed some with water and put around 10 liters into a backpack-style sprayer which a valiant boy strapped onto his back, and then headed out to spray the young broccoli. But unfortunately for him, and to the great amusement of the other students, the sprayer sprung a huge leak—spraying him forcefully in the butt with the smelly stuff! He was able to stop the leak and finish the job, and I believe the students all have their school uniforms as well as their fieldwork clothes.

compost making

When it was time to build a compost pile with our second class, some of the students really brought paper—their old school notebooks! They had a merry time tearing out the pages and dumping them into the pile. My least favorite part of

the finished pile!

compost-making is having to separate out all the plastic that inevitably gets tossed in with the rotting fruit and vegetable scraps in the market barrels. The juice ladies always throw in cans from evaporated milk, plastic straws, and the occasional disposable diaper along with the orange peels, papaya seeds, pineapple skins and tops. Putting up signs asking people to put in only organic waste did no good at all, alas. This is understandable, since people know that all the garbage usually goes to the landfill without any separation of recyclables.

With compost, the fun part is measuring the temperature and seeing the students’ faces as they place their hands close to the steaming mass that ensues after a week’s time. Then, they shovel and fork and rake it into a new pile, and wet it again.
We also experimented with making an area of sheet mulch. It is so much less work, turning the pile. What we lacked was the kind of fluffy straw we can find so easily in the U.S. We began with a thin layer of manure directly on the ground, then cardboard–unfortunately not all of which

cardboard for sheet mulch

was free, plus a layer of paper. I brought my teabag-wrappers and various other paper from home, as well as a bit of my own compost pile to throw into the mixture. Some students brought sawdust, and we had the market’s kitchen scraps. Then we piled on as much of the thin straw as we could, but it won’t be like in “Gaia’s Garden.” Still, I hope to have the students plant into it.

For many of the liquid fertilizers, an ingredient is cow manure. On our way to the school, Isabelle (a volunteer from Denmark) and I spotted some fresh cowpies, and couldn’t resist. Fortunately I had two plastic bags with me and used one as a “glove” to scoop up the fresh dung.

One day Celestino invited me to observe as class members made their traditional compost, using a deep trench in the ground which they filled with layers of dried grass and guinea pig manure (mixed with their bedding of chopped corn stalks). These materials are watered well and then moistened every few days, but never turned over. Earthworms come up and do their job.

On the 18th, the students held an Exposicion for their parents and the community in general, as part of the school’s anniversary celebration. It was rewarding to see them displaying their liquid organic fertilizers, along with charts and diagrams explaining the process, and to hear them taking the microphone to describe the uses of the “abonos naturales.” The community turned out to eat trout, guinea

Isabelle talking with the students

pig, choclo (white corn), potatoes, and other traditional foods, as well as to hear the student presentations.

Documentary, “Waste Land”
My neighbor Victoria invited me to see a documentary she knew I would love, from Brazil. It is the moving story of a wellknown Brazilian artist, Vik Muniz, who had an idea for transforming the lives of workers in Rio de Janeiro’s waste dump, the largest in the world. These people were known as “trash pickers,” and they are the poor; some call them “waste people.”  Some of the people

Vik Muniz on location

he chose to photograph had worked there since they were children. One can imagine the stench as people climb over mountains of garbage, culling out the recyclable items. There is no recycling program in Rio de Janeiro, but this group of workers go through 200 tons a day (the garbage of 400,000 people) and harvest significant quantities of PET plastic, metals, cardboard, paper, and more. They are then able to sell the recyclables and make a living. One woman specializes in cooking the useable foods salvaged, so that nobody who works there goes hungry. They have an association which looks after the workers’ interests.

Vik had grown up poor and could identify with many of the workers’ stories. As he interviewed each worker, many spoke of their pride in their work, protecting the environment. Several women said that even though at the end of the day their clothes were filthy, it gave them much greater dignity than the alternatives available to them: “It’s better than turning tricks in Copacabana.”

Vik’s idea was to photograph several of the workers, then blow up the photos to

a huge size and use recyclables to recreate the images of the workers. In one such portrait, the outlines of the woman’s face were made from bottle caps, and the large vessel on her head was filled in with brightly colored plastic bottles and toys. He then photographed the giant images and reduced the size.
The proceeds from the sales of these art works (up to $50,000 each) were donated to the workers’ association, which was able then to invest in big improvements in working conditions. Some of the women left the garbage work and got better jobs as a result, too.

A must-see! Still, it left me thinking: wouldn’t it be so much better if we could just separate out the recyclables and spare the people from this filthy and dangerous work?

San Pedro cactus

San Pedro is a cactus that proliferates in Peru, and like its shape, it has a yang energy. Having taken it three times before, and always experiencing a rather mild effect, I was not prepared for the power this plant would exert on me this time. People say that the cactus has different effects based on the moon, the shaman who harvests and cooks it, and one’s own psychological/physical/emotional states. The plant contains mescaline, which is a potent hallucinogen, but some shamans cook most of this substance out. This time, I experienced strong visions even with eyes open.

Freddy, a shaman from Yanawara, drove us up to a massive rock where he, my friend Ineke, and I drank the foul-tasting yellow-green brew, after invoking the Apus (spirits) of the mountains and smudging with palo santo smoke for protection. Freddy put on his shamanic chullu with the bright pink and yellow yarn tassels. Then we hiked uphill to “El Paraiso,” a little oasis of streams and rocks, with cows grazing nearby. The full visionary effects took hold, and I saw the mountains and rocks breathing and pulsating; the clouds in the sky looked like dragons or perhaps dinosaurs, rapidly shifting and changing. With eyes closed I could see serpents of many red and orange colors, with intricate scales of geometric design, undulating. Everything around me was alive, moving with energy, and especially the mountains themselves. “It’s all waves, and we try to put it in boxes,” I said aloud. Brilliant flashes of light and rainbows suffused the atmosphere. Freddy played a haunting melody on his wooden flute.

He made a smoky fire to keep away the biting insects, which bit anyway, and suddenly dark clouds rolled in. A strong wind turned everything cold, even with the fire. Rain began to fall in big drops. How weak and frail these human bodies are, I mused, and how puny our attempts to care for them against the force of the elements. All of my senses were so heightened, I could barely stand the sight of plastic trash or cow manure, or the smell and sootiness of smoke. I wept for the devastation we humans have wrought against nature. Freddy fanned my body with a cluster of condor feathers to chase off any bad energies and comforted me with hugs, saying that we humans do not love ourselves enough. I thought of the cosmic joke, that we take ourselves so seriously while we are truly so tiny and insignificant.

Freddy showed me how certain trees have bark with wrinkles, like our own skin, at the junctures of limbs: the skin of the tree-people. The limbs of this tree are so like our own limbs, and the skin of the water has its own complex of wrinkles and folds, ever moving and flowing. Arms outstretched, he reminded me that we can soar.

We began walking down to a lower area with lush, beautiful mosses and water flowing down among the rocks, and the sun came out again. My happiness returned. Freddy described how the water becomes a raging torrent in this place during the rainy season, flailing his arms and shaking his head wildly with his huge grin. Lying on our backs in a small grassy spot, I again experienced kaleidoscopic images.

Again and again I said, “Tu medicina es f-f-fuerte, Freddy!” (Your medicine is s-s-strong, Freddy!) At times I felt almost unable to walk. “It’s too much for me.”  First the body is too cold, then it’s too warm, or it gets wet in the rain. We are forever making puny attempts to look after them. I heard myself complaining, like an old woman: “El cuerpo es tan faible, asi es, asi es, ayayay.” (The body is so weak, that’s how it is, that’s how it is…).  I grieved over how hard it is for me to flow like the water, how much I resist. Later I began to see my pattern: When I feel stressed, I try to resist rather than flow, I complain, and of course my energy diminishes.

When we reached the car and started driving down the mountain to Freddy’s home, the rapidity of the descent was agonizing for my heightened sensitivity. It had never occurred to me before that such a thing could be stressful. It was as though I was learning all the things that subtly stress me in everyday life, all the ways in which I lose energy. I was seeing myself as I might become a few years hence, as my unconscious destructive patterns create aging in my body and mind.

At Freddy’s home, we watched a flock of fluffy baby ducks follow their mother around his little pond, and when the sun set we got comfortable with a fire of eucalyptus branches and plenty of hot coca tea. Finally I felt steady enough to catch a cab home, although the powerful medicine did not allow sleep until nearly 5 am.

The next day I did nothing but nurture myself, with frequent rests and little naps, warm soups, some journaling, and lying on the soft clover-covered earth of the little orchard nearby.

The first sewage treatment plant in the Sacred Valley!
My friend Celestino Bustamante, a leader of the Pumahuanca community, informed me with a big grin that a brand new sewage treatment plant is being built! He introduced me to Richard Ojeda Pro, the engineer in charge of designing a plant for Pumahuanca’s sewage. The funds for this project, around $1,300,000, are coming from the Cusco regional government. Three small treatment plants will be placed in three nearby locations. Richard estimated that as much as 70% of the cost would be the laying down of the sewage pipes alone, since Pumahuanca currently lacks such a system. Two other communities currently without sewage systems, Chicon and Yanawara, are also slated to receive funding for similar systems.

At first, Richard told me, they considered open ponds, but they decided that those took too much area and the nearby population might not like the odors. So, they decided upon a more compact design involving separation of solids, which will be routed to a sort of biodigester that will result in a usable compost. The first step will be the removal of large inorganics (plastics) and then the wastewater flows into a chamber where greases are captured. From there, the wastes go into a biodigestor, where anaerobic microorganisms kill any pathogens. The final treatment is a “drying bed,” to remove some of the moisture. What about the methane gas that the biodigesters will produce? So far, there are no plans for capturing it, but the potential does exist.

All three plants will be near the river, of course. Richard assured me that only one of them would be endangered by flooding of the river, as it is just one meter above the river level. The others are higher up.

Although I asked, I was unable to quite understand what happens to the wastewater that is separated out, but Richard said it would be “pretreated” before release to the river. He said that only during major storm events, there may be untreated wastewater reaching the river. Thinking that Effective Microorganisms might be able to help with the wastewater, I later sent him some information on how useful these have been for the cleanup of Lake Titicaca.

Next river cleanup plans
Thanks to my hostel owner friend Isabel Alfaro, the Chamber of Commerce’s next meeting will have a proposal to hotel owners and managers to participate in a cleanup of the river. Each will be asked to provide two workers for 4 hours, or 40 soles to hire 2 workers in their name. Luciana Sanz, organizer of the very successful Anay Pachamama festival, has a small group of people from Cusco who would also like to be involved. Perhaps the Cusco focus will be on cleanup of Cusco’s own sewage, which flows untreated into the Huatanay River and thence to the Vilcanota.

Brewing up fertilizers

boiled ashes and soap for frost hardiness

In the Agropecuario High School’s farm shed, there are now quite a few buckets and barrels of liquid concoctions prepared by the students: various combinations of manure and alfalfa and other plants; mashed garlic and water; fermenting urine; ashes boiled with soap; and a blend of hot peppers, onion, garlic, and dish soap. Each of these has a use as a foliar spray or addition to the soil, either as a natural fertilizer, stimulating plant growth, deterring insects, or strengthening plants facing a cold snap. Often we have the students bring in some of the needed materials.

hot peppers repel bugs

Many plastic bottles filled with their own urine were contributed, amidst jokes about Inca Kola (the bright yellow, bubblegum flavored soft drink found all over Peru). All the “recipes” came from a booklet published by Chakana Peru. We also have a pile of month-old compost, which has been reaching target temperatures, and tomorrow we build our first sheet mulch! The students will showcase their products at an exposition on September 18, open to the public.

Next week we will begin teaching essentially the same 4-week program to the other two sections of level 5 students, at the teachers’ and principal’s request. I am particularly pleased that one of the classes is taught by none other than Celestino Bustamante, who turns out to be a teacher as well as the president of the Pumahuanca community.

hauling waste from the market

Making good use of garbage! Our organic agriculture classes at the AgroPecuario High School have been very practical. My goal is to convince the students that there are alternatives to chemical fertilizers for growing food—alternatives that cost little or nothing and don’t involve too much extra work. The school has a farm conveniently across the street. The school’s principal, Jesus Ludena, is very supportive, saying that organic agriculture is “the wave of the future,” although the majority of crops are still grown with chemical fertilizers. There is a small area that is already all-organic.

The teaching team
Beltran, age 25, has been involved in growing vegetables on his family’s

Beltran directs the work

organic farm for several years, and he agreed to help teach. Ineke is a young Dutch woman working part time with Living Heart Peru; her father has an organic farm in Holland. The students are aged 16-17, so there is plenty of horseplay and giggling, but they also work quite hard outdoors.

Feeding Pachamama
At the first class, I asked them, “How do we pay the Pachamama? What does Mother Earth like to eat?” The month of August is the time when many people make an offering or “payment” to Mother Earth (Pachamama). These offerings can include candy and Coca-Cola, but I wanted the students to think about what the Earth’s preferred “foods” might be. Delicious manure soups! We talked about how healthy soil is necessary for healthy plants, and how good soil is made in a forest with layers of fallen leaves and branches, animal droppings, with the help of earthworms, insects, etc.

making a compost pile

We described the elements of a compost pile and how to build it, then assigned students to bring in at least one component. Some brought manure from their family’s guinea pigs; a few brought cow manure. There were lots of kitchen scraps and peelings, some weeds, and some sawdust. With a bicycle-powered cart, Beltran brought a couple of barrels of market scraps including lots of fruit peels from the market’s juice bar, flower stems, squished tomatoes, some old newspapers and cardboard. The farm supplied us with corn stalks, straw, and more manure. We separated the “greens” from the “browns” and then proceeded to build our pile, while students hauled buckets of water from the asequia to douse each dry layer. Some stony soil was sifted through a coarse screen and added. Finally, we had a compost pile a meter square, which had cost us nothing!

After five days, the students turned and re-watered the pile. Two days later we stuck a thermometer deep into the center and measured 52 degrees Centigrade, just about the target range. Micro-organisms at work!

Using an illustrated booklet from Chakana Peru, we followed some recipes for foliar sprays and biol, mostly involving manure, alfalfa, ruda, and a few other ingredients. We also made a natural pesticide, which called for an anaerobic digester. This we made from a plastic barrel with a screw-on lid, into which we drilled a hole and inserted a tube that routed the gases into a bottle of water. Silicone completed the seal in the lid. We will also be making an insect-repellent with hot peppers, garlic and onion, and a

chopping alfalfa for fertilizer

fertilizer out of garlic.

What’s next?
But there is more to organic agriculture than just substituting compost and natural liquid fertilizers for chemicals. The soil has obviously been damaged from so many years of agriculture and chemical application, not to mention the practice of burning crop stubble to kill weed seeds. We hope to at least talk about cover cropping and companion planting, and about flowers that attract beneficial insects.

The principal is eager for us to start teaching the other two sections of level 5 students. The teacher of one of these turns out to be none other than Celestino Bustamante, whom I first met months ago at a meeting of regantes (irrigators). I had not known he was also a teacher at the high school. Last week he informed me of some wonderful news: his community, Pumahuanca, is building the first ever sewage treatment plant, using filtration and micro-organisms! The project is funded by a Spanish NGO. More about that in the next post.