Hands on LivingLand

Strange and mysterious realms – São Paulo, January 2013

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Ryan

Rising and falling, rising and falling, rising and falling… so is the Universe, and our lives we are taught in such streams as Vipassana, and within this scheme the conscious mind is peacefully observing. Equanimity, they teach us, is the ultimate goal, neither desirous, nor perturbed… accepting of the patterned laws of the World and ever aware, watching, always at peace.

But oh how my own little human feelings shift from one day to the next, and oh how one day the sea roars with her fury, only to fall sublime and mirror-calm in the next. Oh how rains beat down on the lone observer, only to clear and reveal tomorrow’s sunniest warmth. When we are wise, arise, we watch and are not awed by sentiments… when we are wise, yes… but I am not always wise… who is?

And what a tumultuous last two months that have passed! perhaps the most challenging of my life. In 2012 I’d cultivated many novelties, among them a vibrant organic farm operation, incredible personal developments, and thriving interpersonal relationships with family, friends, and clientele. Things had seemed to be more and more under the control of my conscious designs, and it seemed that Universe was with me, catalyzing my many dreams, creating molecules of elements, production of visions. I’d seemed to be progressing on life-long goals: to create a livelihood spanning conscientious agriculture projects in both Canada and South America… Guyana was supposed to be about that, I’d thought: a productive international experience, the ideal mixture of travel with service and green, always green. I was sure I was on track, but alas…!

Then came that ruinous attack, that violent collision, that falling to victim of cruelty, ignorance, racism, hatred, and abuse. I am left here struggling to comprehend, to accept, to move beyond, and to put into words the force of that beating and subsequent escape, infection, and cessation of work in Guyana. The blows were deep and the losses more than of blood alone. Violent trauma, then but a foreign concept, became integral and held me in its nefarious clutches. And though I instantly received vast new information: new data, a cellular understanding of vile tendencies still at large today in our human world, I also lost much, suffered great losses, and suffer. Cast to the sea of martyrdom, I lost some of the blind trust (or was it social naivety?) that had let me live this adventuresome last decade… my faith was pulverized and nearly drowned.

So what of equanimity?

Neither can I just let it be, but I try to launch myself to ever-greater elation, elevation, try to extrude great leaps of learning and personal perceptual evolution from it all; to not just accept the perpetrators of this heinous act, but to embrace and Love them even! Bah, bullshit, baloney!! In the bottom of my heart I am sickened by the filth of it all: the nameless, faceless aggressors; the lawlessness of that forsaken country and all other oppressed peoples and states; the thousands of years of brutal slavery, torture, and oppression; the fierce ignorance and apathy that allows these patterns to persist into our times!

I lay fallow to slow physical healing, to failure, and fear, and the drudgery of necessarily lethargic weeks, and to bouts of severe depression even, and questions without answers. ‘Why did this happen?’ I screamed asking to myself over and over, trying in futility to generate some meaning, but none came. I can’t see why any of it has happened! Sense is non-sense. Was it all a sign that I had in fact been ‘off track’ the whole time… my whole life even?!

In a recent personal development course on integrity we’d talked lots about the power of story. Story is the ongoing dialogue we hear nearly all the time in our minds, whether we’re listening acutely or not. If you listen right now you can hear it… perhaps it’s analyzing what I’ve just written, what you’ve just read… ‘Is it true, or not true?’ do you agree and comply? Or perhaps it’s more interested in getting thinner, or making love, or resolving some broken relationship, building a better car or business. Really, it goes on and on and on, creating patchwork meanings from the fragments of things we’ve collected, things we’ve heard others say, things we’ve read, things we’ve been taught or learned from our experiences. To our culture, legends served to guide us, to give direction when we needed it… but inside ourselves, in our own inner personal worlds, stories can lead us way astray. Reality is far more, and far less, than we can begin to perceive objectively through the thick lens of our experience and reflections… the refractions to colours and textures are our own meddling with what happens out there… and we are not at the centre of the Universe, but mere fragments, parts of a super-massive whole, grand beyond comprehension, so why try?!

Then I was back in Canada, beaten up, deeply wounded, failed professionally, and flirting with a confusing serpentine depression. All of a suddend I was without work to do, without a service or practice, without optimal health, and without valid meaning in my life. So I made a decision and acted swiftly on it: Go back to Brazil. I’d use some of the money I’d received from catching up on three years of income tax and I’d zip on down to Brazil to ‘get back on track’. When I’d left Brazil a year and a half ago I’d thought I’d return soon, but I didn’t. I love her, feel some strange attraction to her, as if… but then the stories resume… and all the fantasies and visions I carry, all the experiences I’ve had, all the things I’ve told people I’d do here start whirling around: expectations kill the moment and slaughter the magic! But anyways, what was it that I had envisioned was going to happen?

In my internal story I’d simply return and pick up where I’d left off last time I was here: so healthy and at peace. I’d re-live and add to the multitudes of amazing experiences I’d had, the seeming miracles I’d witnessed and partaken in. I’d stay with old friends and pick up with them where we’d left off too… and things would be exactly the same as they were or better – the mind’s grasp on time and the changes that happen therein is exceedingly weak. In my story I’d be a beloved hero: I’d return to Rapha’s land and cultivate there, partake in making great things happen there and thrive; I’d go to Julia and express my full love for her and she’d reciprocate; I’d arrived to the university and be heralded with trumpets and bells…

But instead I arrived to Sao Paulo, pop. 22 000 000 to no sizzling fanfare, just a grey expanse of buildings, upon buildings, upon buildings upon… an Atlantic Rainforest-turned urban jungle, a garden of Eden-turned Babylonian prison of concrete and steel and eye-stinging smog… and my little wounded heart, my shipwrecked body, the vessel of my spirit and vision cast forth seeking a resurgence of strength, love, manifest beauty, and green…

Yet even courting a grin – for the arrival is always so pleasant to the I – I stumbled out into the grey light, into the haze, spoke some words in the singing foreign tongue, and launched into the travel, pinkling on my new companion, my dear sweet Uke. I played a merry mystery song, hopped a bus and as soon as I’d arrived, was zoom-zoom leaving that nebulous grey whole. Oh how the city pulls the rural light into its center, it’s devouring core, oh how once within, all memory of space and time and freedom and the unbridled expression of sweet Ecos is erased. Reality becomes an urban drama, an endless cycling of to-the-top seekers clawing either for survival or more luxurious ends. But to the top of what pile?

So before the invisible giant, before the nefarious gravitational force could grab me, before it could lure me, persuade me with its illegitimate promises of glory, of women, of fame, of culture, of risings, risings, risings, and the inevitable crash, yes before all of that, I was away!!! To the forest, to the farm, to the family, gente fina!

-Interlude- you’ve already read the story of Rapha (see last blog post): of the strangeness of a paradise going wrong, falling off. Of ideals and talk, of reality and lethargy. Perhaps that’s the general tale of Earth? With all the potential to act kindly and lovingly, to be still and graceful, to live in abundance… we choose grief! Oh grief leave my heart! and leave the heart of my True love, Gaia! Let us live in peace and sweetness, in plenitude and generosity, in creation, and yes, in Love.

Then back, a floating back, a struggle against my will, a backtracking, a longing search for connection. It’s that which I seek, no escape, no holiday. It’s connection I crave, buried somewhere, hidden, out of reach. It’s hiding there, behind the veil, behind the sheen, a joking, taunting, choking, belittling flame. And it warms my curiousity only then to burn me and be snuffed out, disempowering me with its smug illusion… and I know my enemy – instinctual desires – and yet I flirt with her bitter poisons, so sweet, sometimes…

And there is she: promisor of Truth, beacon of uplift and belong, of acceptance and creation, of ancient intuitive magics, of wisdom, flower lust, and holistic repose… and my Love, I would hold you forever if you’d let me near, for your word is real, I feel it all around me, recognize in your eyes the sweet fertility where calmness resides, and I would too… let me oh chance and design, let me to reside near my sweet one again.

Hers are the hands of grace, sweet petals, soft and merry strokes. If idle, I would wade to immerse my spirit in the flowing stream, watch one by one as her pastel colours unite and fade into the crystal unity, whispering invisible love stories to the banks and mosses and ferns. Hers are the eyes of forest and musk, of familiar mysteries shown only temporarily and rare to mine, the celestial seekers; to the growing-weary eyes of age and a seemingly endless search for the simple luxury of Love, of simple recognitions that all is truly good, all is full, all is fair and calmness the Law. Sweet lady I knew you once in a lucid dream, only arrival and remain.

Grace, you are the primordial awakening, the first taste of fruit, the dawning of unity after great millennial divides, and symphonies after silence. You are the dew upon leaves under warm moonlight breezes, the promise of warmth after cool rains, the simplicity of the zigzag flight patterns of bees, and ripe pollen, at once complex and utterly pure. Yes here I freeze and bloom in your gaze, am so deeply warmed, and if not for convention and good education I could occupy my paternal force and draw you towards my center. If Spring were willing, I could express what must be reflected: Truth; that this is a bond made in time, for time, and our time… coming or not… is shared. The road is long, Sweetness, and I sometimes can’t see and end I would prefer, and loose the light of hope even as your earth eyes close to sleep and dream yet again with the Divine.

Be you real or mere fantasy, I hope and pray for you Arrival…

Eden-turned-Babylon, welcome to São Paulo.

May our escape to dreams carry us to profound consolation…

This city’s graffiti is for me, its most redeeming feature… lively human imagination rises beyond the grey tedium of our unconscious mis-creations.

Anonymity reigns supreme here.

And even in the midst of the locura, here the sweetest Love is created. Olga and José, certainly two of the sweetest things I found in the city. I love you both sooo much!

Contrasting creations.

Metrô.

Me and my sweet lil Ukelele create humble light and love in these strange and mysterious realms…

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January 3, 2013. Return to Brazil.

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Ryan

5:45am, Sitio UOAEI, Barrio Justinada, Sao Miguel Arcanjo

Where fields replace forest, roosters begin a daily cockling… and where forest still remains, the silenced chirps and twitters of so many unseen creatures begin their daily reverence. This is the Serra do Paranapiacaba, a misty and cool region rising high above and beyond the lowland coastal plains of southeastern Brazil, between the cities of Sao Paulo and Curitiba. Even at around 700 meters above sea level, I am surprised to arrive to cool damp conditions here, after all, I straddle the Tropic of Capricorn, and summer solstice passed less than two weeks ago.

Yet these same humid airs gently mist and nuzzle myriad network of plants that form a dense and exuberant floral community in support of countless animals. Although nothing like the temperate forests of British Columbia, I feel slightly at home here where there’s a potent ecological magic at work. Walking through the forests, the cool airs, thickly accumulated leaf litter, rich topsoil, abundant mosses and ferns, and arrays of fruiting mushrooms give rise to a familiar sensation: this forest too participates as curator of ancient wisdom and millennial evolution. I am awed and blessed to wander and kneel before her mysterious force and bounty!

…

Last time I visited my friend Raphael Arcanjo Balboni he and his family had just purchased this property. I couldn’t believe it then, and I am still blown away. How one comes by a property like this falls nothing short of a miracle. It holds around 25 acres of gloriously mixed and rolling topography, including Atlantic rainforest, open cultivable areas, a plantation of eucalyptus, two gurgling aquifers that stream into a large swimmable reservoir, and an immaculate dwelling, made with attention to fine Italian detailing representative of the previous owner’s skills and style. This place was turnkey, made all the more potentiated for it’s location near Sao Miguel Arcanjo, a peaceful and quaint agricultural town just three hours to the southwest of the largest urban area in South America, Sao Paulo, with its ominous human population of twenty-two million, last count. But there’s more to this story…

The Balboni family is unique and fiery. In the 70’s a while a dictatorship held control of the Brazilian government, among many outspoken opponents to tyranny was ‘Zizo’ Balboni, Raphael’s uncle. Passionate, creative, outspoken, and tireless, Zizo was eventually persecuted, imprisoned, and executed. When the dictatorship eventually collapsed, the Balboni family sought and received financial retribution for losses, and with the funds purchased over 400 hectares of magnificent virgin Atlantic Rainforest, contiguous with the largest remaining tract in the country.

Today ‘Parque do Zizo’ receives but a trickle of visitors, from here and abroad. Although park facilities are rustic, the offerings of the park’s energetic flora and fauna are deeply impressive. Two days ago a group of us spent the day hiking through the dense dripping and fragrant forest. We bathed under a powerful Cascade, let the cool potent forces of this place run to and through us. Upon return, more than one admitted experiencing a mystical trance-like upwelling of energy and reverence… yes, this place holds a potent and mysterious vibe, and tens of thousands of species of living beings. The genetic bank here could aid in the restoration of a surrounding countryside biome that has been 95% erased of its former magical legacy.

On the dirt road between Sao Miguel Arcanjo and Parque do Zizo you find Rapha’s site. The potentials are here for great things, and I’m glad to know and be a part of whatever history comes to pass here.

…

I met Raphael about 5 years ago under rich circumstances: a course taught by Brazil’s foremost leader in restorative agroforestry systems, Ernst Gotsch. From the moment I saw this overall-clad figure arrive I knew we’d connect and be friends. During the course, while the rest slept, Rapha and I talked late into nights, often breaching the dawn with profound inquiries of reality, spiritualism, creativity, and whatever myriad genius arrived to our collaborative minds. The course was fantastic, and so was our budding brotherhood, so I accepted his then-offer and travelled with him to Sitio Demetria in Botucatu, the largest biodynamic farm, Steiner-inspired Anthroposophy school, and Waldorf in South America. I stayed with him there for over a month, learning some of the ins and outs of biodynamic agriculture… but that’s another story.

Today Sitio UOAEI is a child of Rapha’s numerous visions. When I visited him here last the family had just purchased the property and Rapha was getting his feet wet. Even then the project promised profound mystical experiences, and I remember one night very clearly. As Rapha and I sat with the dusk a stray rooster began to make a boisterous scene in a nearby fruit tree. ‘That rooster is ‘savage’ and won’t live in the pen with the others,’ he commented. So I suggested we catch it, take it’s Life, and eat it, which we did. Sneaking up on him was easy enough, catching him not a problem. We’d already sharpened the machete, and though the cock complained with low rumbling caws, we prayed and sang for him, and made the sacrifice in one swift chop. Then Rapha and I stood standing there for moments, I with the dripping body, he with the head, and we felt the transformation of life occur in and all around us.

We plucked and cleaned that magnificent sinewy bird and stewed the meat in a pressure cooker. Just previously to Brazil I’d been working with a community agroforestry project, and living under rather dire conditions in Honduras. In the impoverished community I was serving I’d had to accept eating whatever arrived on my plate, sometimes even industrial wieners – which were a luxury for those people – and many times I’d felt somewhat martyred by my beliefs and services. So when we sat down to eat this meal of fine wild rooster meat, when the first drops of stew touched our lips, a most powerful sensation overcame me and I spoke: ‘Cara, é forte… muito forte.’ And Rapha agreed. This was some strong stuff… very.

In fact the meat I ate that night at Sitio UOAEI catalyzed a recalibrating inner transformation in me. The moment my body came into contact with the flesh and blood of an animal sacrificed with dignity and reverence, raised on freedom and of its own means, thanked properly with prayer and song, and eaten between friends, well… in that moment I understood at a cellular level the True meaning of ‘meat’… and for the next 6 months didn’t eat another gram of industrial meat and became vegetarian… which led to many marvelous circumstances.

…

So on December 29, 2012 I hopped aboard a plane bound South. Following the horrifying events of Guyana, and a challenging but very healing return to Canada and recovery – time amongst trusted family and friends and forest and farm – here I was again. After about 30 hours of hopscotching across two hemispheres and continents I arrived to Rapha’s. Jittery and brimming with excited anticipation for what I’d find – after all it’d been nearly two years since the last sojourn – I was quite shocked to arrive face-to-face with an intense and very unsettling energy. Something was going on there… or in Rapha, or in the family, or in the country, or in the world… though I didn’t and don’t know what. Rapha is distant and very vague, uncommunicative, impatient, pent-up, way over-reactive, highly agitated… there is an undercurrent of severe anger in him that is as palpable as a bitter potent coffee, cold. Of the people near him, he speaks harshly and with aggression. It’s pretty lame actually. He is barking away his friends and family and lovers and people that would help him here. He lost it on me at least three times too! The word ‘crazy’ comes to mind. I wonder what’s going on in his being, and where the vibrant seer and singing minstrel went away to?

In snippets he speaks of the so many things that have happened here he doesn’t even know where to begin. I won’t push, but I’d like for him to trust me enough to recount them. What I do know is that the place isn’t thriving right now at all. People speak of many deaths… many animals that died here… including at four months, the child he’d created with a lovely young woman here. He speaks of the rural community around here that has been less than welcoming of his extremely alternative visions and crew, of his apparently rebellious nudist, biodynamic, weed puffing convictions and sharply critical tongue; pistol-toting neighbors and supposed friends have robbed him; drunken binges have brought mild havoc here from time to time.

The first night was tense. There was a volunteer with fear and anger in his eyes (I found out later why!). But the Brazil I’ve come to Love arrived to kick up the New Year. About 15 lovely people came to UOAEI to pass the Ano Novo with us, and oh what a time! All of a sudden we had delicious traditional foods prepared by in the outdoor kitchen, enjoyed around a cheery table. We had the music of Samba and Reggae and Folk and Jam. We had the newborn child of Rapha’s incredibly lovely cousin, a woman who exudes such love and warm radiance that her energy could turn even the greyest day to blue-sky golden. Permaculturists, poets, expecting couples, a young boy, lovers, seekers, Cynthia, my heart: oh what a way to begin 2013… with a tummy full of rootsy foods and a heartful of Brazilian tribe. How I love this people…

And now what? Ha. A pretty little rooster has just hopped up on the chair here next to me. ‘Hello guy,’ I say to him, and he looks at me with his silly little eye, winks, then hops away.

The day has broken fully open now and the cockling of distant roosters gets augmented by other birds singing in the grey overcast day. Wrapped in a light blanket in this outdoor kitchen only yesterday filled with so many happy hippies, I sip steaming yerba maté and calmly ponder the life before and all around me… I will create an ecological garden for Rapha here today…

Oh I ride with the wings of the giant silver eagle!

Strangeness prevails.

São Paulo, pop 22,000,000!

The Tíete River starts in this urban mess and flows out near Buenos Aires. Even this was once a lush rainforest…

Oh gente linda, gente boa, gente fina! At Rapha´s house.

Enter the green kingdom womb of Mother Earth.

Parque do Zizo: very potent energy.

Here in the subtropical Atlantic Rainforest, fungus is common, reminiscent of coastal BC… lush.

Our friend Rapha… may his tears of sorrow one day flow like this river and wash away all anguish.

Orchids and epiphytes abound in this misty mysterious world.

Such lovely people! How fortunate I was to pass into the new year with them all!!!

Such colourful lovers!

For real, this crazy huge beetle even plucked the strings a few times!!

As soon as we had one cloudless night out there, it turned Night of the Insects.

: A final offering for Rapha´s site… I catalyzed a little production, created and planted a zinging garden!

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Solstice 2012

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Ryan

Apocalyptic…? Nah, December 21, 2012 was a perfect day. We enjoyed bouts of crawling around on hands and knees enraptured by the intense beauty and intricacy of green mossy spikes, grey crusty lichens, white wisps of fungal filaments, and slimy orange basidiomycetes. We enjoyed the varied textures of smoothly sensual arbutus, and spikey silver conifers. We shlucked and slocked our laughing stepwise way over spongy forest terrain, rolling with mossy mounds, and granite outcrops. We reveled in bright sunny hilltops, with views to sky horizons and blueness far above, interspersed with misty clouds and rays of pale yellow sunshine, cool airs, and deep belonging. We found moments of giddy childlike play, jumping, dancing, and singing, and sat with profound inner spiritual revelations via contemplative meditations with stretch. We whispered pacts of brotherhood and man love with some of the most sacred promises a soul can make with another… to bury the others body whence he may fall, under a sacred fruit tree…

Yah, 2012 carried a lot of hype: plans change, perceptions change, paradigms change… and hoorah! But would we see the beginning of a new era of consciousness or an apocalyptic end of the world… or nothing dramatic at all, just another year, another day, another breath…?

Though I had’t been overly invested in all the hype, it had become embedded deep enough in my psyche that its effects were influencing my thoughts and actions. The ideas of large and sweeping changes that were beyond my control to do anything about scared me more than they inspired me.

So it wasn’t for nothing that I’d planned on being in South America working with Cuso during the solstice and New Years of 2012. Inside, I was pleased about it, felt somehow safer because at least if the lights and electric heating did go out forever I’d be in the topics, warm. I’d felt sad to leave my friends and family behind in Canada, but they just didn’t get it after all, and so I’d surrendered my perceived duty to save them, though I felt a bit of failure, like I was abandoning them, or something, a bad son, bad brother, and bad friend.

Then things changed, as they do. While down there I got all fucked up by those thugs, was nearly killed, and finally chose to return to the northern lands for some BC healing and family love. But in my mind I felt like that decision was a gamble, I figured if the big things happened on the 21^st I would probably die up there in frigid and unprepared Canada: the grip that believe and perception have on a human mind is so powerful!

But, 21/12/12 was among the finest days of the year, and I couldn’t have planned it better! I awoke in the warm home of my dear friend and brother Farmer Nate and his new loving family; woke to Kristine and sweet baby Rosie, to fresh coastal air, and the potential of a great outdoor adventure in the forest with a man I deeply trust and love.

The sun shone through parted clouds, and though frigid the air was clear, crisp, and calming. We arrived to the trailhead and opened the jar of magic. This Vitamin P (Vitamin Psilocybin) was pure local organic: the mushrooms had come from the organic farm of a good friend. We pulled out four stringy dried shrooms each and ate them under rays of dappled sunlight, then we headed out into the forest.

On the side of 2012 being a dawning of new era of consciousness, I sure got my value. At the height of the trip while I was peaking, fluid waves of wisdom and energy upwelling from inside, and smiling so deeply so contentedly I looked over at Nate. He was clearly in a similar state, moved beyond words at the vibrant sensations and pulsing inspirations. I was sitting beside him in a meditative pose and beholding the distance of space and the vastness of views to Finlayson Arm. Spreading out in front of my eyes were layers of green forests with mists and snow clinging to the upper elevations and the churning of the tidal currents below. An bald eagle soared on invisible air currents, and the low-burning white light of the winter solstice sun refracted and highlighted everything around us.

On impulse I muttered the words that best fit the feeling: ‘Everyone’s having their own unique experience…’ but even as the words were passing my lips I knew all attempt at connecting with Nate through words, or to even try to explain the incredible cellular wisdom I was achieving would be inadequate.

Psilocybin can smear the sense that human word association attempts at making meaning out of the meaningless, for what is the universe without human words and labels, rationale and logic to order it all? The answer is: One. Before we separated things into pieces and parts, before we defined this entity as separate from that one, things were all connected integrally. And that’s what I was seeing: a oneness in the world around me that my lifelong attempts to understand with words and concepts had, and always will, fall way short of.

Surrounded by a spectacular vista in the shimmering pulsing light of this revelation I made some deep nearly inexplicable new understandings and associations. I became hyper-aware of my own perspective there, the perfection of the natural scenery all around me, and the thoughts I was feeling flowing through me like a wandering river course. I realized that if I was experiencing something wonderful, Nate must be too, and I didn’t have to ask him about it, or explain my experience and perspective to him, because I immediately realized that both our perspectives were unique and perfect. Then I saw the yellowed heads of grasses, dried by the autumn heat and blowing in the frigid winter wind and the liberty to experience independently was extended to them too; they are organisms having an experience. Cooing to myself and chuckling with intense satisfaction, I let my focus flow outward to encompass the whole scene beyond: the flittering winter birds, shrubs, trees, forests beyond, and most challenging of all, the humans I knew existed in homes and boats and far off vehicles I could hear on the distant highway. If I was having an experience and enjoying it immensely, then they likely were too: we’re all just fine!

Earth.

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December 4, 2012 – Cortes Island

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Ryan

Well… that was a life experience indeed… way unexpected and scary, yet fertile for inner growth. I’ve been repatriated to Canada now, so I’m ‘home’. A week ago I was alone, limping around and pretty jittery in Guyana. Today I am on Cortes Island, hiking through lush temperate rainforest trails with my lovely sister and friends…!

After the incident I’d been a week in the flat in Georgetown, not leaving, limping around, spooked out, and hoping I was getting better when one night I lost sleep for pain in the sliced up foot. The next day I realized it was totally infected! so I asked Cuso to please get me to a hospital where I received yet another analysis… this time the doctor was very surprised, for three reasons: 1. I had been sewed up ‘dirty’, so a bunch of street filth got trapped in there and festered. 2. I hadn’t been prescribed any antibiotics which had exacerbated the situation. 3. I was still in Guyana! The Embassy hadn’t demanded my repatriation with Canada following the aggravated assault and attempted murder!

His authentic surprise was the last straw for me… I thought: get me outta here! I was seriously infected, and I didn’t feel like I could trust anyone there anymore. So I catalyzed a near-immediate medical evacuation, and soon was back in BC, recovering.

It’s amazing. Cutting edge research is showing more and more than to heal a disease one must look at the environment within which the disease in question is occurring. For people, that environment usually begins with ourselves – our minds, bodies, and spirits – then moves outwardly to our surroundings and society. In Guyana I was trying to heal, but I have to admit, I was ‘jumpy’, nervous that I wasn’t safe there at all, and alone. Just days after having arrived back to Canada, in the loving hands and homes of family and friends, I was recovering fast.. or maybe it was just the antibiotics…

All good.

Here’s a poem I’ve written as I consider what’s next? :

New forest gardens – by Ryan May

There’s no escaping now

I’ve seen the Jungle, been touched by her green fire

and fury, soft to water flowing over ancient stones

where the twisting coils of enraptured climbers

lay confused masses over how best to reach heaven through the treetops

There’s no escaping now

I’ve spoken the words of Care, felt the promises sink in deep, so deep, to root

and cozy I’ll be safe, only knowing I was moved far enough away to return

for the planting of once-forests-again with hands made for climbing

and cradling soft creek-side cheeks once more reflected in trees and monkeys and bees

oh Forest, you are full with our true inner selves: silly, shining, and divine

There’s only to travel now, to arrive:

we’ve imagined the scene, awoken to the vibrant bubbling visions, lucid colours

to the resplendent ever-reaching green shoots quivering under wavering endless blue skies

and a chocolate yellow sun who blows warm kisses over newborn praying children

where wanderers, you and I among them, stroll naked through the New Gardens

suckling sweet sticky fruits while we repopulate the land.

November 29, 2012

…

So Guyana, Cuso, and maybe murderous thugs are fully behind me now and I’ve written a decent report aimed at bringing institutional growth out of the affair. I’m all healing up and am soooo happy to be alive!

Although I so wanted to serve, I had to accept repatriation to Canada… I am not much use to any movement if I’m dead or terrified. Also, my mother and sisters wouldn’t have been able to sleep until I did return and heal up. It’s all good… my next actions for consciousness and socio-environmental advance will be designed with more dignity, calmness, love… and wisdom… than ever before.

This guy’s long toes allow him to walk on thin leaves.

Unloading 5 and 10 ton cargo trucks from a ferry in Bartica, over planks! This one was a very near miss with invoked a flurry of incomprehensible blasphemies from the driver…

: Who is united?

Every town has dozens of these shops… GOLD is the blood of Guyana now… figuratively and literally.

Prosperity.

This is the leader of the blind bad guys, er, president of Guyana. His government has been in power for over 20 consecutive years. As far as I can see he doesn’t care even a gram about the well-being of his country people. Shame on you!

A Guyanese citizen. No wonder violent crimes are so prevalent… what have we got to loose?!

Needless to say, the lock on my hotel room door in Bartica didn’t give me a sense of much security.

: All good. Thanks for the time and lessons Guyana! Onwards!

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Mob robbed and nearly murdered!

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Ryan

The following is a report and analysis I’ve written to detail some terrible recent incidents here. Perhaps more so, it’s helped me to organize my thoughts, feelings, and reflections, and to regroup and consider what next. Please feel free to contact me by email if you wish to comment. ryan(at)livingland.org

Names of all people involved have been modified.

November 15, 2012

Placement and Incident Report & Reflections

Prepared by Ryan May – Cuso International Volunteer

Vocational Training Advisor – Horticulture

I feel it prudent at this time to open up the lines for some communication.

1. The placement

As you may be aware, the complications of this placement have thwarted every attempt I’ve made at progress here. I have a decent record of communications and written reports from over the last month, which should depict any details that Cuso might like to review. On Monday we held a (final?) meeting with the partner organization that clearly demonstrated their current state. They hadn’t even read and reviewed, let alone discussed, the constructive report we’d prepared, nor the well-thought-out proposal for immediate next steps. A follow up to this is that they are going to step back for three months and reconsider their initiatives while structuring their group: it looks like the placement has been officially aborted.

As if my bewilderment with the disorganization of this whole placement, and my deep internal questioning as to why I find myself here in Guyana at all weren´t enough, to make matters even more perplexing, two evenings ago I was mob-robbed and brutally beaten! In all honesty, I am lucky to be alive to write this.

2. The mob robbing and murder attempt

On Monday, November 12, in the evening following another disheartening meeting with the partner organization and Cuso, another VSO volunteer and I were attending the annual ‘Diwali’ festival of lights parade along the seawall. It’s an Indo-Guyanese tradition and was totally uplifting to see. We were impressed and inspired and thinking ‘Way to go Guyana!’

Just about ready to head home, we suddenly saw the most bizarre scene. On the road below the seawall a van had suddenly appeared and parked across a lane, as if stalled there. We noticed some minor commotion, and it looked like one guy was being surrounded by a group of people, so we asked another bystander what was going on. ‘Dem muggers is here,’ he said. We were confused, but from our vantage point far away, didn’t feel in danger or unsafe. We watched the scene for about a minute, with no sense of threat until all of a sudden we were hurtled off the sea wall. As this point I lost Sam because he landed on the well-lit street side of the wall, and I in the dark, dank, slippery ocean side.

I was confused and thought we’d merely lost our balance somehow and fallen, until I felt myself being mauled by a crowd of hands and apparently mugged. I yelled ‘Hold on, wait, what are you guys doing?!’ and then I felt the first of several blows. They beat me repeatedly on the head with bottles that smashed on impact, and hit me furiously with fists. I quickly realized that they could be set to murder me, so I exerted a herculean effort, threw them off, grabbed a leg I saw on the seawall, and dragged myself up onto it, even as the men grappled at my legs trying to pull me back down into the mire. I rose, jumped off the wall, and fled into the streets, barefoot and bleeding badly through totally shredded clothes. During the escape I ran over patches of broken glass and my feet got severely slashed up, but aware my life was on the line and under the effects of pounding adrenaline, I maintained an incredible velocity. It must’ve looked crazy, because there was general panic in the streets by now. Covered in blood and pooling from head and feet, I must’ve looked terrible and scary beyond belief.

When I was several hundred meters up the street, with people all around and panicking, a little boy on a bike who’d been riding beside me called, ‘You friend calling on you mista’.’ I stopped and saw Sam running toward me, then behind him the van full of assailants. They were coming for me! I hesitated, weighing my options: during the in-country orientation and training we’d been told that ‘if you call for help, people won’t generally help you for fear of getting injured themselves.’ From the seawall experience, I believed it, so between running up the well lit and peopled street, or veering off into the darkness of another to hide, I chose the latter.

Stumbling along, I glanced backwards to see the thugs pursuing me in their van still. On instinct and immediacy, I pleaded with a security guard to let me into his property, but he wouldn’t. So I hid beside and then under a parked van, while the security guard motioned for me to stay down. It saved my life. I am sure they wanted to kill a white man, as that´s what I heard them muttering both during the beating and as they searched me out. My heart pounded as I could see them getting closer and closer searching, and then just one car away, before I was discovered, they retreated…

In a very bad way I sought help from any bystanders. Eventually someone called a taxi, and I was delivered to a local public hospital. At that time Sam had alerted the VSO help line, and he and others arrived to transfer me to a private hospital with immediate and better service. I received dozens of stitches to my head and feet, was administered medications and other treatments, and now after two nights in the hospital I have been discharged.

3. Recovery, thoughts, and reflections

I am back in residence now, in the rented Georgetown VSO house that seems to have become my home. I’d been here for two weeks waiting patiently on circular placement development, and now will be here for another ten days as I recover my ability to walk. Everyone in the office has been informed and are making sure I am OK. I asked that they let me inform my family and emergency contacts first, so as to not terrify them all with a third-party report of assault and hospitalization.

I am OK and grateful to be alive! I have yet to make any formal decisions on next steps, and first just want to let my wounds heal up so I can at least walk. Although I have certainly considered immediate repatriation to Canada, for a variety of reasons, I am not convinced that is the best thing for me. I had arranged my entire life around this placement so I have very little to return to at present in Canada. This placement was to be a progression of my career in international development work. I let everyone in my sphere of influence know what I was up to, including, family, friends, colleagues, contacts, and community. To return home now after a nearly complete project fiasco/failure, and badly beaten to boot, will not lend itself well to future developments. Really, I can’t see myself better off lying on a couch at my mother’s house or a friend’s. I can’t see much inspiration in then looking for a job, as my farming and work operations were properly packed up for the season, and I hadn’t planned on being there until Spring 2013.

I felt it prudent to keep the Cuso office in Canada in the loop. Also, although I now have a much better working and personal relationship with the office here in Guyana, you are my fellow Canadians, and it was with you all that I began this whole thing.

I am certainly confused by it all: things have gone from messy, to totally messed up. First, the very problematic and chaotic placement, honestly one of the worst and/or most oddly challenging professional experiences I’ve ever had, and then a mugging, beating, and near murder! But although one might feel victimized, I do not. I assume responsibility for the fact that I chose to come here.

All parties involved with the messy placement have admitted their faults and apologized to me. Both lacked due diligence. The coordinator of the partner organization knew months ago that this probably wouldn’t work; that they were not even near a state ready to receive an international volunteer to teach. Yet he didn’t say anything and was too ashamed to admit his fuck up, wanting to look good and be the nice guy. My placement manager at the VSO Guyana end admits she was just way too busy with other very pressing work to properly investigate the placement partner. In fact she hadn’t been able to travel to the site to verify that it was as she’d been told, and she accepted as truth what the (very very persistent) partner representative said and didn’t investigate and verify the said structure of the partner organization. A preliminary investigation would have exposed the reality: that absolutely no physical or organizational structures were in place to handle the scope of project they were proposing.

So I have received and accepted apologies from both of them, and worked with each to ensure they learn and grow from this, it mustn’t happen ever again! In terms of the PEP group, certainly in part because of my efforts, frankness, constructive suggestions, and coordination of several meetings, they too have decided to take several steps back in order to regroup and redesign their initiative(s)

Today I sit here in Georgetown, stitched up and bandaged, reviewing these events and letting them sink in and teach me. When I close my eyes I can see the shadowy images of men clubbing me with smashing bottles and screaming ‘white guy, white guy, white guy…’. From this, I can say that at the cellular level I now understand racial discrimination and violence based on skin colour and reaction to overt oppression. How many innocent people of contrasting ethnicity, gender, age, stature, sexuality, religion, or some other feature have received similar treatment at the hands of so many ‘white guys’ or other people of power, force, coercion, fear, greed, and ignorance? While we lay claim to the title of greatness as human beings, we clearly have a very long way to go: perhaps we’re still human becomings. I stand for what’s best in people, and believe we’re on an inevitable path to a full expression of these values.

But back to the current issues, the history of Guyana is one that’s been (and still is) mired in the blood of ethnic and religious tensions and just because I am Canadian or someone who stands for the best in people, doesn’t mean I am immune to crossfire. In fact I imagine that although not initially singled out and targeted in the mobbing and assault, I was subsequently targeted and made to suffer partly as vague consequence of the appalling and abusive treatment of Guyana and her people at the merciless hands and dealings of some very questionable Canadian (and other international) mining and resource extraction firms here. Ample evidence of deplorable abuses prevail nearly daily in the media here… just Google or Youtube: Guyana gold mining, and you’ll find plenty of sick and disturbing.

Politics are also a key issue, or the near complete lack of them. The country is has been oppressed, beaten, and gagged: hammered down to a mostly dumbed down, muted, and disempowered state. Peaceful protestors get shot at and killed by underpaid police mercenaries (an incident of this occurred here the day before I arrived here at a village called Agricola near Georgetown), with no investigations or charges following. Public discussions of blatant political corruption are hushed or averted completely because nobody wants to be singled out. In the paper last week were reports of dramatic ‘overpayments’ to the tune of tens of millions of US dollars: international contractors are receiving obscene payouts to upgrade the airport or build luxury hotels, even when the country’s most basic public service sectors remain critically underfunded or even totally unfunded. International resource extraction firms are granted appalling land and resource concessions and a near free-reign over worker and environmental policies, which are in turn critically unacceptable and un-policed. All this while an untouchable political elite that’s been in power for the past 20 consecutive years hides out behind mansion walls, drives around in luxury vehicles, sends their children to excellent international schools, and signs backroom deals that serve little more than selfish and unethical agendas.

The disarray is apparent at all levels. The capital city here, once heralded as ‘The Garden City of the Caribbean’ has fallen now to a disgusting litter-strewn open septic field slumland, where the stench of aseptic sewer and burning garbage can literally singe the nostrils, and crippled beggars often line the traffic-clogged streets. The university campus condition is tending towards totally derelict, and informal interviews revealed to me that most staff members have left to pursue more secure and lucrative overseas positions. Of the university alumni, a staggering 89% leave the country. In short, nearly anyone who could possibly advance the prevailing situation leaves. I tend to be outright surprised when I meet a middle class professional person who has repatriated to Guyana, and I immediately acknowledge them with authentic respect, congratulations, and support.

I’m back at ‘home’ now healing up and lying fairly low. The mugging, beating, and near murder will change me forever like nothing else could. While many of my friends, family, and colleagues advise me to return to Canada at once, this event spurns me even further than ever to serve for the things I stand for: care of earth and care of people; for peace, dignity, honesty, creativity, kindness, compassion, and love; for hard and focused work, with results. I am not angry with the perpetrators of this act, and rather, I feel for them: I understand. These guys, and the millions like them on Earth today, have absolutely nothing to loose, and no help from anyone. They are pressed to the edge of the social precipice without a drop of aid, therapy, rehabilitation, or training possibility. Even if they wanted to change, what would they do, where would they go, and who could they turn to? There are few people to help them get out of the downward spiral, no loving and kind parents or family to turn to, and centuries of oppression and slavery is their history, their truth. They were desperate enough to mob-rob a crowd of happy revelers, and angry enough to kill a man for the colour of his skin… the white of which means not ‘peace’ to them, but ‘oppression’. I understand.

Today I sit in Guyana nearly totally un-effective in my professional aims, and physically beaten up. When I arrived a month ago I’d seen not so many overwhelming problems to run from, but so many empowering solutions to run towards, positive expressions of humanity waiting to be discovered, developed, and implemented. I saw, and still do see, tremendous opportunities for the structuring of a country populated with such a lovely people and vast and incredible natural wonders. Guyana is above all deeply friendly, caring, and beautiful, yet left in the current corrupt, unsafe, and disempowering reality, it’s sinking fast: She’s a burning ship without able captain or crew, with cargo of riches in innocent people and the invaluable seeds for a reforesting of the world with plants and creatures, a biological refuge of immeasurable value and worth. With a critical mass of gardeners to tend to them, the seeds of progressive change would so readily thrive in the soils here…

VSO-Cuso is one group that sends such gardeners down and must continue to do so. The country office is doing a tremendous job given its context, and in my dealings with both staff and volunteers I’ve been continuously uplifted and inspired at the fine efforts made by incredible character, motivation, and skill. Even in the light of my particular and peculiar situation, I see both seeds of hope and hands willing to sow them.

As for me now, I just have to chill out for a bit, and let this all sink in as I heal. Before I can move forward and consider next steps, I’ll have to let my feet heal so I can actually walk. Although I’ve been told it’s not possible, I remain somewhat concerned about the possibility of blood contamination from the violent events I’ve just endured. As soon as possible, I must test for the possibility of diseases transmitted by body fluids.

In a surprising and profound way I feel more personal empowerment through all of this than destruction. I see more clearly now that we simply cannot embark on agricultural or ecological work without giving serious energy to the social sphere as well. I knew this before, but now I know it. Ecological restoration cannot occur in isolation from social restoration; they’re vitally linked. Earth stewardship must be partnered with social stewardship until our ethic becomes: care of people, care of planet. And I am committed to this.

I had hoped this placement would be a firm step in the direction of increased effectiveness in achieving my ethical and career goals. From Canada I saw it as an opportunity to get back into the international scene and work at the grassroots level to inspire and propel positive developments. But I neglected the fact that I had no idea of who or what I would be dealing with here, and that three months in a totally new context might not be a realistic scenario within which to succeed to my level of ability and expectation, especially when we’d received indication that things were not ready, albeit just four days before my departure.

More than ever I am seeing that it is our responsibility to work where and with whom we can achieve the greatest effectiveness towards our unique individual or organizational goals, and that nobody else really knows or can choose this for us. It’s for each of us to forward with advances that we find within our desire, influence, and ability to reach.

Within the context of the single human life I have, I’m starting to really scrutinize the maps of contemporary socio-environmental challenges and opportunities. I am clarifying where my own unique capacities and tactics may achieve maximum results, and to plan accordingly. This exercise demands lucidity, honesty, focus, care, intelligence, and commitment; the expression of this aim will require incredible cooperation and support. I cannot really waste time, and neither can humanity: our survival is at stake.

While working within the conditions we find ourselves in we also create our own reality, so how all this will play out I can’t yet know for certain. It’s an ongoing and dynamic process. But sitting here all beaten up is ample evidence that something is slightly amiss. That was way too close for comfort, a near miss indeed! Among other things, I take it as a signal that I must play way better than that: to be smarter, more focused, more strategic, and more effective. I have a lot to offer, I dream big, and I believe we can make it.

It’s been said that ‘to know and not do is worse than to not know at all.’ We’ve all seen way too much now, and we know what to do. May we collectively create the ways forward to express what is truly best in each of us!

For care of people, care of planet,

Ryan

ryan(at)livingland.org

4. Incident Photos

The following photos were taken with Sam’s Blackberry so please excuse the low quality of the images. My camera, newly purchased to document this placement, was stolen during the mugging and murder attempt.

It all began with the Diwali Festival of Light, when a friend and I were out in the crowded streets celebrating with everyone. Amidst vehicles festooned in lights, glitter, costumed deities, fire crackers, and families, we thought: ‘Way to go Guyana!’ We felt in no danger until it was right on top of us.

At about 1am I was admitted into Woodland’s Hospital, mugged, badly beaten, and having narrowly escaped a racial execution.

This snoring ER Doctor was awoken, and five minutes later was stitching me up. Though I was fairly worried he might not, he did a remarkable job.

When I close my eyes I can still see the shadowy image of a group of men clubbing me with bottles and fists. As I received blow after blow I told myself, ‘Don’t you black out Ryan.’ I managed to avert blows to the side of the head or face. It was a combination of luck and fitness.

After escaping the attack I fled but having lost my sandals ran over several patches of broken glass. My feet were sliced up something nasty, and bled pools as I awaited stitching.

ER work all done. Alive. Shaken. OK.

Happy, safe, and productive with Jose and the agroforestry folks from Cooperafloresta in Barra do Turvo Brasil, SP, Brazil, in 2009. From this near murderous event, it’s clear that if we have the choice one must go to and work with the people and places where greatest effectiveness can be achieved. I’m clicking my (healing) heels.

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November 5, 2012

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Ryan

Up at cool daybreak to chirping tropical birds and mild urban calamity. Cowboy coffee and words from the two great books I am reading now: How to Change the World – social entrepreneurism and the power of new ideas, by David Bornstein and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – powerful lessons in personal change, by Steohen R. Covey. (Both excellent reads!)

Eventually my two roomies are up and at em. I wander down the boulevard (divided by a stinking gooey black-water creek), pass a limping beggar, nearly get hit a couple times by honking passing mini-busses, and veer off when I find the coco-man. 140$G (70 cents) and I’m sipping fresh coconut water and slurping down the sweet tender meat. To Dolly the fruit lady for my daily ration of sundripping vitamins in the form of sweet fig banana, pawpaw, pine, and golden apple. Back to the pad for another day…

My body is still in Georgetown but my mind is starting to wander southwards, to more productive ideas. Not too much to report with respect to the Cuso-PEP project here… oh wait a minute, what project was that?! Even after sharing the report I wrote and asking for input and dialogue, I’ve heard nothing back from the Board of the PEP group. The only guy who’s gotten in touch with me at all is the casual volunteer coordinator there, the same fellow that waited until just 4 days before I was to leave before letting me know there was nothing on the ground here.

All good. I’ll work with him as best I can, supporting his work in whatever ways I am able. We’re all learning together.

As I chat with some other folks working here, I learn that project disarray and (dis)organizational chaos is nearly a norm in this group. I am certainly not the only one who’s come down here, only to find that the partner group is totally unprepared, or are sometimes not even aware they are coming at all! I’ve heard of several people who’ve just said #$%* it and walked away. That’s not where I am yet, but it’s interesting to hear about it. It seems that in today’s rapidly changing world, running an organization based on volunteers (who come and go in the span of 6 months or a year (or in my case just 3 months!!!)) is not an efficient way to solve big problems at all. Imagine the interruption of flow and lack of continuity that ensues when someone leaves, carrying with them all their learning, contacts, etc, and thus creating gaping holes and too many start-stops to be at all effective.

All good. For me, it’s another lesson learned. For a long while now I’ve been thinking my future in the NGO/non-profit sector may be limited; that I yearn for for something new. I feel called to create businesses that reflect my deepest values and principles: Care of the earth and care of people via positivism, creativity, honesty, hard work, respect, cooperation, authenticity, integrity, shared values, love. Enterprises that are self-sufficient and generate revenue… with which to reinvest, for growth and continued benefits. Well-paid staff with buy-in, meaning, and longevity supporting the evolution of clean people-planet enterprises. A new model for the restorative economy that must surely be coming in the light of the current planetary plight. I’ve got several ideas germinating in the fertile soils of my mind.

From the small enterprise I ran successfully at Livingland Farm this year, I have learned that it’s possible to earn ‘clean money’. As I produced and sold local organic produce I realized one day, ‘Man, this wad of bills I’ve received for sales is totally clean! I don’t know where it’s come from, but it’s now been filtered through a ‘money laundering’ service: from sunlight, water, earth, air, my sweat and devotion, and the potentials contained in a seed, to a customer’s tummy, for a customer’s health.’ I liked it so much I am even now scheming for more and greater… Brazil?

A sun-drenched tropical vitamin dose.

Like so many others, this parrot squawks and tweets each morning from his urban cage. He remembers the wilds of forest and freedom. Are humans that different?

Typical view from house to house here in Georgetown. This used to be known as “The garden city of the Caribbean’. Nature sure wants it, but what will it take to get people onboard too?

Working from home. Whilst slurping Jackfruit, I study market chain developments, as two fans keep it real.

Office party in celebration of the changeover from VSO to Cuso International.

Sporting the Cuso colours and style.

Happy birthday Cuso Guyana!

Garden City of the Caribbean. I love it here and feel incredible potential for amazingness. It will take vision, passion, and everyone’s handstolivinglands.

Found this lil guy in my apartment last night. Sooo cute!

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October 31, 2012 – to the Pomeroon and back to Georgetown

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Ryan

After a week of amazing in-country orientation and training, I headed out to start my remote placement in the Pomeroon Region. BUT, here I am again, fast-returned from the tangled jungle and back in Georgetown! As some will recall, just 4 days before I was to leave Vancouver, I received a letter from the partner project coordinator saying that things were at a ‘total standstill’. We were all alarmed but decided to go ahead with the mission. In these types of projects one expects a certain discrepancy between what’s on paper and what’s on the ground… this however proved to be more challenging than expected because the project is perhaps a year or two away from being ready for what I was called in to do.

Here’s some of a report I wrote. In no way an accusatory criticism I offer it as a professional analysis of the main work we’ll have to do in order to get this project (and/or others like it) heading in the right direction. As we aim to solve big people-planet problems, we’re bound to walk a challenging road. The good thing is that we are here and committed to learning, (hopefully laughing), and making progress. :)

October 30, 2012

Interim Report and Recommendations for Cuso Placement:

Vocational Training Advisor – Horticulture

Prepared by Ryan May, Cuso International Volunteer

Summary

The Pomeroon Education Project has had 10 years of experience in successfully raising funds to hire a boat to carry Amerindian students from their various communities to secondary school in Charity. Their current aim is to design, construct, and manage what is proposed to be a 6-month intensive residential vocational institute on a site at their family owned and operated resort and farm. The Akawini Vocational Institute would provide local Amerindian youth from several communities with training in order to develop livelihood opportunities other than those currently available in their communities.

Following interviews and a weeklong site and community analysis, I’ve found that the PEP and AVI may not currently be quite ready to receive the full effect of the particular skills I applied for under Vocational Training Advisor – Horticulture and that moving forwards before preliminary work is done may be detrimental to overall success. As an international NGO, the PP requires significant internal structural development; the AVI is stalled in its conceptual phase.

Both PEP and AVI have organizational work to do including:

development of the structural design, establishment, and maintenance of a multi-stakeholder international NGO
design and implementation of the staffing, programing, and infrastructural needs of the proposed vocational school for Amerindian youth
long-term project viability assessment and stakeholder analyses

Based on the findings, and with the long-term sustainability of the PEP/AVI in mind, it may not be advisable to rush into a teaching arrangement with the program beneficiaries yet. Several key areas have been identified that the PEP/AVI may wish to address and strengthen if the current project aims are to succeed and be sustained into the long-term. Observations of some of these issues and some suggestions on possible courses of action/development of structure are presented below.

I trust and believe in the hopes and motivations of everyone involved with the PEP/AVI and I commend all efforts to date. I genuinely hope that the project(s) succeed, and that these observations, conversations, and comments are helpful to all involved.

Observations

Omitted.

Suggestions

Complete a detailed needs & wants evaluation within the Amerindian community(s), learn from the best-practices of other similar projects
Create governance and funding structures that will ensure long-term viability and the continued effectiveness of the project(s)
Decide upon and define what the new AVI/PEP objectives are so we can always know where we’re heading
Create a diversified steering committee, and/or management team that includes local (Amerindian, residents of Region 1 or 2, in-country Guyanese) members who are integrally committed to Amerindian education and development in the Pomeroon and other Amerindian communities
Find at least one local, qualified, and devoted staff member (co-Coordinator) and contract him or her with good pay and benefits for a fixed term of at least one or two years
Rather than build an expensive (to build and to maintain) institute on Adel’s Resort and Farmlands, consider a model of ‘network training’ with similar objectives that spans the target Amerindian communities. This may be easier to maintain and fund. Thus Akawini Vocational Institute could become Akawini Vocational Network. The growth potential and scope of such a network could be very impressive, locally, regionally and nation-wide.
Once the actual educational desires of the Amerindian communities are understood, find and hire various qualified instructors (contractual basis could work), and send them to live within the communities for fixed short-term instructing assignments. This will lead to less time for the students to be away from work and other opportunities, and increase general effectiveness within the communities. Delivered thus, the Akawini Vocational Network could perhaps address and counter-effect the trends for outmigration of young people and men (up to 80% of men are currently working in the mines and other such off-village employment!). Operational costs will be significantly lower and programs will address site-specific agricultural (and other) needs within each unique community.

My friends and colleagues, our aims are genuine and pure, the needs and benefits significant and worthwhile. Working together we will create wonderful results by slowing down, asking many questions, being honest, gathering a body of knowledge and support, and of course, staying focused, committed, and positive.

Please feel free and encouraged to communicate openly with me, and all others involved with this initiative.

For the care of the earth and her people,

Ryan

VSO group is welcomed by the village captain, or ‘Tushao’, and given an excellent introduction on the challenges and accomplishments of the Wakapao Community.

The Tushao’s mother in-law describes her cassava cottage industry.

The one-room schoolhouse in Wakapao Community.

If you can decipher what’s scrawled on this weathered chalkboard, it’s a lesson on renewable resources! These teachers are amazing.

The community’s mapping project.

Duch and Jordan show me the old nursery at Adel’s Farm.

One word may say it all: Passion. (Ok, two then: Passion fruit.

…

So I am back in Georgetown working out a ‘what now?’. I’ve had meetings with many of the people involved and will wait for a bit to see what materializes. I feel I’ve done a good job with the situation I came into, and have made a solid contribution to all the folks involved. It was challenging!! We’ll see if I wind up going back or not…

We’re all learning from this, and working on figuring out what we may wind up doing while I’m here… I’m certain we’ll find something(s)… there’s a lot of great work to do!!

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October 22, 2012

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Ryan

October 22, 2012

Fffwaaap, and it leaps through the air, lands on the ground, and starts scurrying towards me, huge and green. I guess people sleep at night so they can’t see these creepy crawlies, all come out to nibble bits of fallen skin, or hair, or whatever. It’s a tropical cockroach, a big one and he’ll miss me. He’s been busy in here every night, eating… and can you blame him? But far from harmful, he’s been an efficient recycler…

So long Georgetown! At 6am tomorrow, I’ll be rolling outta here, headed northwest to a tiny town called Charity, gateway to the Pomeroon where I’ll be based for the next months. But first, a final recollection for the city:

…

Saturday, October 20

Brandon and I are to go on a shopping tour with another VSO volunteer to get oriented and buy anything we need, but after a night out with a couple American tourists exploring the nightclubs to see just where all the gold money goes, I’m awoken at 8am by Zena Bone and her family to go for breakfast. Since Zena is the owner-operator of Adel’s Resort where I’ll be based, and the force behind the Pomeroon Education Project, well, I figure it’ll be prudent to go. It’s also an honour. Apparently in Guyana business happens over casual lunch or drinks, so hoping to get the who’s-who here, I’m showered and in her car in 5.

She’s down from Maryland to make sure the project gets back on track, and to take care of the VSO contingent that will be traveling out there on Tuesday for a forum. Things haven’t been all smooth with the education project and Auntie Zena, at 78 more spunky than many women 30 years younger, is gonna figure out why. Very very little’s been done, and it’s been a year or so since the project’s conception. The coordinator has been there 7 month, and there are apparently a couple new volunteers that recently arrived, and suspicions floating about why things are so delayed. I am glad to get her perspectives, and will try not to let them colour my own too much.

After a long and passionate extended discussion, we get into the place (or no place!) of foreigners in any kind of development projects here in Guyana. After, I catch up with Jean-Claude and Brandon for a burger. They’ve done their shopping tour, so I take to the streets myself, as usual.

I head to the famous Stabroek Market, a sprawling affair down near the port. It makes the Haney Farmers’ Market or anything I’ve seen in Canada look like an English tea party. All colour and variety of fruit, veg, towels, shoes, cloth, appliance, this, that, people, dogs, horns, heat, heat, heat. I’m walking the beat, chatting with folk from Indo pepper vendors to fry Rasta mamas, from teenage foreign currency flippers to sweaty mid-age beer chuffers. It’s INTENSE. I am on the streets, doing market research, if you will, for how can I serve the people if I haven’t asked them what they want, what they need… what their dreams are?

Talking to Jonathan, a mid-aged Indo-Guyanese guy with a wonky 1x1m table offering a few handfuls of peanuts, a couple bags of peppers, some tiny bananas, and wilting bokchoi. His clothes are beyond a little scrubby, his face more advanced than scruffed.

R: Good day sir.

J: Good day.

R: How are you?

J: Very well thanks? And you?

R: I am amazing, I am alive and loving life.

J: Oh, very good, me too, dat is de most important!

R: So can I ask you Jonathan, what do you want? What is your dream?

J: To be happy, man.

R: How’s that?

J: Peace of mind, man. One comfortable little house, little security, ya know wha’I mean?

R: And how might you get that? (I expect to hear he needs a better job, more money, etc…)

J: Well I can tell you. Dey gotta pay the mans in control of dis country enough money, then things’d be better. Dey not be needing robbin us folks blind…

I’m blown away. These people fucking get it. Time and again I am totally surprised by the depth of social understanding here. This guy would rather the government get honest and pay it’s workers here, police, enforcers, hospital, city workers, etc… then they wouldn’t have to do shady business, and things would get better.

After a long and lovely convo, I move along, chatting here and there with people whom you’d think poor, though they often reinforce my discovery of a sharp and clear intelligence and wise attitude and composure.

I stumble into a bazaar. At the front door something compels me to greet a black man with a large Rasta toque, under which must hide a labyrinth of greasy dreads. Before I know it, the most remarkable situation unfolds before my eyes.

We talk about positivity, about life, about chitchat for a bit. He’s a musician, he says and pops in a defunct CD into the neighbor’s player, no sound. Tells me to check he out on YouTube (just found him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHfZTdcfWEU). So. While I am chatting with him, I notice a tiny digital scale on the counter and ask slyly, ‘Man, whatcha weighin?’ His answer is simply ‘Gold.’

Guyana is in a nightmarish gold rush that nothing resembles sinewy Klondike miners swishing frozen Yukon river water in pans. It’s massive-scale socio-ecological disaster (quick youtube search reveals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfowIMg2JI4&feature=related but just keep poking around, you’ll be SHOCKED, and Canada is a BIG, UGLY PLAYER).

As I chat with Ozana, a kid comes running in clutching a chain. All of a sudden I’m getting a very practical lesson. Ozana brings out a plastic bottle of acid, squirts some on the chain and it starts bubbling away. ‘Dis not gold, dis fake!’ he explains. ‘Take it‘way,’ and his ‘flat footer’ (street searcher) disappears. I’m hooked and get my new teacher going. After five minutes of lessons, a young woman appears with two friends. She carefully unwraps a wad of paper, and voi-la, I am exposed to pure, 24-karat gold, a half-penny weight, for which Ozana pays her 6500$GUY (about 32$CAD) on the spot. Her father has sent it from the mines (certainly sneaked out/stolen by the caring man), and she now has some cash. For relative terms, a university-trained engineer can hope to make 60000$GUY a month here.

Ozana takes me, and my pounding heart into the back of the bazaar, this is fucking unbelievably stimulating, and I am getting a first-hand account of the reality here. We find a group of much tougher-looking dudes gathered round a fatter guy. Ozana drops his score on another scale, and trades it for 7000$GUY. He’s just made an easy 500, not bad for 2 minutes work.

We go back. I inquire about the logistics of this thing. The hierarchy, why sell to this guy and not direct, etc. He explains that this way every man on the chain makes his cut. I ask about export out of the country… legal vs illegal. He says that there are pros and cons. You smuggle out, you save time, maybe make a little more. But, you go through the Gold Board, it takes time for paperwork, but they cut you a major kick back on duties for importing equipment like trucks and machinery into Guyana. Driving around here you see TONS of massive ex-military Bedford 4×4 trucks, all headed to the hinterland for either tropical hardwood timber or gold. Guyana is wholesaleing their Eden to China, Canada, and others. Concessions are granted for a meager 6% of the cut.

Since I haven’t been yet I don’t know what’s going on in the interior, but I am seeing how everyone here is in on it. So good luck protecting the plants, animals, and indigenous people from this shit! And I’ll do my best.

It’s also really hard because how can you expect or even feel right about telling people to stop? While the folks from ultra-wealthy nations flaunt iThis’s and iThat’s, fly all around the world for vacations, drive massive new cars, enjoy social programs like libraries, hospitals, schools, policemen that follow the rule of law… ?! What can you tell these people, that they should go hug trees? No… I’m going to have to do waaay better than that!

October 21, 2012

Happy birthday to me! 33 today.

I awake after a deep, restful sleep. My mind is on overdrive here, so stimulated and aware. I love it, and I need to rest. Last night we’d gone out for some dinner and I was treated to a couple glasses…

I eat a lovely breakfast at Rima’s made by her amazingly charming staff. I am gonna miss these gals, they are such lovely people.

Pretty chill day, after that. On Sunday the city shuts down, which is nice. I get to talk to Mom and receive some nice birthday wishes. I chat with my friend Rafa in Brasil… he’s gonna be a papa! I Meet up with an awesome new friend from here named Rene Edwards, who’s just launched a sweet project with Conservation International in the Rupununi (http://rupununi.org/Home_Page.php). He comes and picks me up and we go with his family to the park. His kids immediately refer to me as Uncle Ryan, as is the custom.

We get back and a few of us from VSO-Cuso head down to the seawall to people watch and drink a few beers. I meet a couple of really cute local girls, and enjoy the cooling Atlantic breeze.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Another NUTS day. Too tired now for details… so here’s the Coles’s notes:

-first experience with the clogged Guyanese banking system and how to navigate by taking advantage of certain inequities. Got some money from the office so I can be ready to go into the bush tomorrow. Victory.

-went to a dentist to get my teeth cleaned and had a very very unique experience. Intense then Smooth.

-learned how to do business with a printing house here and got some very very discounted and rush-order business cards. Tricky and quite thrilling… you had to see this place.

-As always much more.

On a final note. I am becoming quite interested in something called Social Entrepreneurism, whereby one helps folks to help themselves and a cause, in my case environmental protection. I haven’t had much interest in the money game so far in life, mostly because I haven’t seen a way to make ‘clean money’. But two things have recently changed. 1. At Livingland Farm in Pitt Meadows I actually generated revenues from sunlight, air, water, soil, the potential stored in a seed, my devotion, sweat, and Love. It felt amazing to bring that to the marketplace and offer a truly clean product to people, in exchange for dollars that then became, cleansed, it felt like. 2. I’ve been doing a lot of powerful personal development work with Landmark Education that has shed new light on a plethora of under-explored areas. One of which was the nature of the breakdown-breakthrough dynamic, whereby one can actually learn to turn problems into solutions, and the other an in-depth examination of my principles and values. With the latter, as it turns out, two of my highest principles and values are: Care of People and Care of Planet. So… if I can figure out ways to generate revenues, who knows, perhaps a lot of revenues in accordance with my principles and values… well that seems like a fun thing to do, doesn’t it? Then I could re-invest and make more and more effective changes on the planet, ie, Socio-environmental Entrepreneurism.

Exciting.

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October 19, 2012

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Ryan

Guyana is a country after my own heart, and I fall in love with her more by the day. Such contrasts, such high stakes, such beauty and hope amid the chaos and uncertainty… indeed, where many would see intense misery and despair, I see incredible possibility and opportunity.

I’ve been meeting such incredible people here: the entire staff of the CUSO field office, passionate and skilled people, committed to serving for the good of All, and united in the belief that we can find way to solve the impending problems here, to the deeply calm and positive cab drivers just looking for a way to survive and stay happy amid the tough times.

Preparing to head into the deep bush up the Pomeroon River, where my contacts with information technology will be limited, I’ve been reading waaaaay late into the nights, studying such things as the social entrepreneurism, the formation of market cooperatives, and the rich background information of Guyana and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

Good books here are rare and cost-unavailable to the general public and student community (I spent 100USD today for a few paperback books in the only bookstore in town, texts and such for my coming work with the Pomeroon Education Project).

I had the incredible good fortune to find a copy of a remarkable book and borrow it from the CUSO office: Rupununi – Rediscovering a Lost World by Watkins, Oxford, & Bish (Buy it!). I was up until after 3am last night devouring it’s luscious images and opulent texts, weeping often as a nearly forgotten tropical biologist in me began to re-emerge, motherly words like ‘Wait my darlings, I am coming for you!!’ floating from my head to my heart.

Guyana may well turn out to be a place I have scoured the world to find: a living land of vibrant creatures, lush ecosystems, and incomprehensible values left to live for, sacrifice for, and to grow with and serve. As I adventure through the myriad social and biological trails that lead deeper and deeper into this place and people, my spirit tingles with the intuitive sensitivity that I have arrived here to help show that many things far beyond our present understanding are indeed possible.

…

I’m lying in front of a noisy bedroom fan here at Rima Guesthouse near the downtown. It’s 930pm, and Guyana is still nice and warm. They say that the temperature is cooler here, moderated by Georgetown’s proximity to the Atlantic Coast and prevailing northeast trade winds… proximity indeed!

Nearly the entire coastline of Guyana is a low-lying coastal plain, now broadly cultivated in sugar cane and rice. When the Dutch established this city in 1781 they applied what they knew of city planning. In Georgetown today, their remarkably puny-seeming retaining wall of about a meter high and wide separates street from sea! As I strolled this seawall last night and straddled it for a photo, I had to rub my eyes… was I seeing this for real? and yes! The entire city is in fact below sea level!! An intricate system of canals and kokers was built to drain excess water from drowning the entire place. Now however, they are all plugged up with silt, sludge, and trash. Holding my nose and going in for a closer look, I even discovered a unique species of tiny fish that seems to thrive in the dank, murky, grey-water of these city-wide open cesspools.

We’ll have to fix this, for sure. What was one heralded in the Caribbean as ‘The City of Gardens’ must be restored! There is huge potential here for some lovely work indeed.

I can’t help but wonder why the settlers didn’t just locate their new city up and inland a few kilometers, saving all the hassle and ensuring longer-term viability. As I flew over Texas on the way here and saw hundreds of chemical and gas plants plopped right down on the shores of the Caribbean, as I think of Fukushima, and as I envision the future of rising seas, I wonder who of us will be able to see beyond what we currently know and accept as ‘the way’ to discover truly novel solutions, to create ‘new ways’?

The tendency for humanity to operate under the incredibly limiting veils of what we currently perceive as the truth, and to operate under the status quo pales in comparison to the fabulous new realms of imagination, creativity, and innovation that we have access to as well. Friends, this latter is our uniquely human gift, so let’s go ahead and open it.

…

I abandoned a first international development placement in the Galapagos 10 years ago mostly because as a recently-graduated, 23 year-old Canadian, I just didn’t feel right about the nature of my situation there. Who was I to arrive down there to tell folks in their own country, different than mine, of a different culture, and of a different language even, what to do and how to it?! Who was I to assume that Canada (a ‘developed‘ nation) had hit any closer to the mark and was an example for another (developing) country to follow?! Honestly, I had felt ashamed then to be in Ecuador in that context, in a position of undeserved imperial power, without the experience, wisdom, or real stakes in the outcomes.

It’s in this light that the little wisdom I have gleaned may help me now: ask lots of questions and listen to what people want. Fairly new for me, it’s called authentic communication, and in it we listen more than we speak. CUSO’s new modus operandi is ‘participatory development’, by which working with is the way. Now we may effectively catalyze solutions that are closer to what the folks who live here really desire, and will also include the myriad inputs they will surely have. We’ll hit closer to the mark, combining what we’ve learned to do (and not do) with innovative local knowledge. It can be challenging because maybe we want to show we know everything and look good; maybe we want to self-express ourselves and dominate, ‘be the boss’… maybe a lot of things, but certainly such old models of communication, conduct, and colonization via imposed techniques and mandated protocols are shit. We’ll need to do far better in the future if we are to restore a planet Earth that works for all.

…

I send you the warmest vibes from these southern climes. My mind spins day and night in visions of the fish, frogs, lizards, birds, mammals and plants that are sure to accompany me on my journey, and of the many smiling faces and warm hands that will greet and work with me in their myriad ways to move forward, together, toward the brightest of all possible futures that our planetary family deserves.

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October 17, 2012

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Ryan

Just a very couple of quick words. Guyana is incredible. I’m not sure if I can impress upon you all how odd, refreshing, hopeful, and inspiring it is to be in a country that looks and feels like sooo many of the Latin American countries I’ve been to (hot, tropical, dirty, disorderly, impoverished, colourful, heartful, lush, insect song, abused, deserving, diverse, full of potential, forgotten, found) BUT… they speak English here. This opens up a whole new suite of opportunities for me. It’s hilarious, and easier, despite the major challenges.

Work to do, there is ‘a plenty. In Canada it’s always a little hard for me to see what to do… like… how can you really make life better there?… because it’s already pretty damn good!!! Here, the simplest contributions would go a loooooong way, and the biodiversity and social stakes are sky high.

I am here in Georgetown for a week of in-country orientations at the CUSO Guyana head office. Learning a ton.

Some preliminary tidbits that stand out:

-Guyana has just ~750000 people… twice that many live outside the country

-89% of grads from the local universities leave Guyana and emigrate to other countries (Canada, USA, Europe, anywhere)

-according to a (crabby) cabby, police may stop you for doing anything slightly wrong, and the accepted custom is to pay the ‘kick back’ (bribe) to get out of it; hence, police are not generally respected by the public

-from what I’ve seen, the folks are either of Indian (from India), Black, or Muslim descent. I’ve seen very very few Europeans or Hispanics

-the leading party, the PPP (People’s Progressive Party), has been in power for 20 consecutive years. It wins over and over because it’s the ‘Indian Party’ and there are more of that ethnic group here than any other (~43%), even though the majority of ppl don’t seem to believe they are doing a good job at all!

-the accent is truly Hindi meets Jamaica… it’s lovely

-Guyana hosts one of the world’s largest remaining tracts of virgin tropical forests… around 80% of the country is still covered (I have yet to see any of it and am so excited!!!), ultra-diverse, remote, and gorgeous by the photos I’ve seen. There are almost no roads that go to ‘the hinterland’ so it’s been relatively unexploited

-Guyana can produce food… great food… and a lot of it. Most of it is ‘organic’ only because agrochemicals have not been readily available here. The Ministry of Agriculture recently put a new program in action called ‘Grow More’, the idea to ‘modernize the agriculture sector’ with nasty agrochemicals to increase growth rate and production. What I am seeing are huge opportunities for co-operatives and niche organic markets.

-The cuisine is Caribbean meats Indian… = spicy and yum… and damn, these people can fry a piece of chicken like nobody’s business

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Strange and mysterious realms – São Paulo, January 2013

January 3, 2013. Return to Brazil.

Solstice 2012

December 4, 2012 – Cortes Island

Mob robbed and nearly murdered!

November 5, 2012

October 31, 2012 – to the Pomeroon and back to Georgetown

October 22, 2012

October 19, 2012

October 17, 2012

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