|
Several
years ago a message came to me in meditation.
The message was,
“Build
a house of many stories on the shore of the Ocean of Universal
Love. Make it so
strong that no storm can knock it down and open its doors to
everyone.”
I
didn’t know what this message meant but I kept it in my heart,
and many times since then it has come back to me.
I have come to believe the house of many stories referred
to in my meditation is both within and without.
For all of us there are infinite levels of understanding
and spiritual growth and I know that I’ve only begun to climb
the spiral staircase that leads to the top story wherein we will
abide in our home with the Heavenly Father.
But
while I am struggling to make it past the bottom steps of His
house God has gifted me, through the Shanti Yoga School of Life
and Global Coalition for Peace, with the privilege of being a
means of offering tools of self-reliance to impoverished women
in El Remate, Guatemala. The
program in Guatemala is entering its fourth year now and it has
been blessed. The
women’s gardens are thriving and even the children are
learning the joy of growing their own food.
 
SATTWIC
PEACE GARDENS IN EL REMATE
The
women have an orchard and a meeting place of their own.
We’ve been able to start the peer lending program with
four women presently developing their own small enterprises and
others waiting to be the next micro-loan recipients.
The women’s lives have changed: their diets have
improved, their self-esteem is growing by leaps and bounds and,
through their hard work and perseverance they are improving the
quality of life for themselves and their children.
NICOLASA
AND SAIRA AFTER RECEIVING THEIR MICRO-LOANS
El
Remate is a small village of approximately 250 families.
Before Guatemala’s thirty-five year civil war, it was a
mere dot on the map of the northern Peten region of the country.
But during that war that devastated whole villages and
pitted neighbor against neighbor, El Remate was one of the
places where people running from the violence and terror
migrated to. They
found refuge there, but such an assault on the human spirit as
that war waged is not easily forgotten.
When we first arrived in El Remate and the women’s
group was in the infant stage of development, it was obvious
that distrust and jealousy were some of the overriding
characteristics of the relationship between these genuinely
good-hearted and hard-working people.
We had to count every seed and make sure that the
distribution between the women was perfectly even.
We were closely watched to insure that we did not grant
even the smallest favor to one that was not given to all.
Now we can leave the left over seeds or chicken wire,
which we use to protect the gardens, with one of the women and
ask her to be in charge of distributing them, without concern.
When we used to arrive in the village the first few days
activity would always include a litany of complaints from the
women about each other. During
our latest visit I realized after a couple of days that
something was missing – it was the complaint sessions.
While they still have grievances (as does any group) they
are learning to be open and honest and take them to each other.
They have worked hard at becoming a community.
MEETING
AND WORKING TOGETHER AS A COMMUNITY
In
this time of food crisis, word of the gardens in El Remate has
spread to neighboring villages.
On the last morning of our recent trip we visited the
village of Ix-Lu where we had heard there was a desire to learn
about the gardens. We
met with two representatives of a group of women in Ix-Lu who
make flour and a coffee substitute from the nut of the ramon
tree. When we told
them that we had come to talk to them about the gardens big
smiles broke out on their faces.
They related that they had just been saying to each other
that if they were going to be able to continue to feed
themselves and their families they were going to have to learn
to grow their own food. They told us that they do not have much
land to work with and that seeds are very hard to come by.
In our experience of scanning the local markets to see
what seeds are available we were able to find only two kinds of
seeds, pepper and cilantro (understandable since there is not
much profit in selling seeds.). These
seeds were not organic and appeared to be dyed – perhaps to
make them more easily identifiable.
So the square foot gardening method along with the
biodynamic seeds we provide is a double blessing.
And we learned that women from three villages are
involved in the processing of the ramon nut, so when we return
to the Peten in September, that is IF we return, we will have
the opportunity to bring the gardens to three more villages and implement
the principle of the ripple effect that we have established
with EL Grupo. That is, they must teach and prepare other
women for free and help them to develop their gardens,
those in turn have to do the same so that this healthy food,
hunger alleviation program propagates in the village and beyond.
ABUNDANCE
FROM THIS
TO
THIS
IN
JUST A FEW MONTHS
But
since GCFP cannot go on providing seeds forever, one of our
main goals for future visits will be to teach the women to save
their own seeds and encourage them to develop a seed exchange
system. A ray of
light during the recent visit to El Remate was to see the
spirit of giving back on the part of the women becoming
effective.
With President Juana Melendez leading the way, twenty new
gardens were installed, mostly for residents who are not members
of the women’s group. A
seed-saving and exchange system, along with the practice of
composting, will produce a fully self-sustaining gardening
program for the village of El Remate.
NEW
GARDENS FOR THE FAMILIES OF EL REMATE
While
in El Remate we received an e-mail from Lyna Hart in the
Manitoba province of Canada.
Through the efforts of Paul Fauteux, a School of Life
student who works for the Canadian government, Lyna had heard
about the Women’s Self-Reliance Program and is interested in
bringing it to the First Nations Women of Manitoba.
There are ten First Nation locations in Manitoba, six of
which are only accessible by small plane.
Since returning home we have learned through telephone
conversations with Lyna about the huge food security challenges
facing these First Nation peoples.
Considering the time of year and the short growing season
in Manitoba direct action will have to wait until next spring.
In the meantime, we will be studying the specific dietary
needs of the people and how the gardens can best accommodate
those needs.
On
another front, we have just initiated a cooperative action with
an urban gardening project in the Garfield section of
Pittsburgh. Garfield
is one of Pittsburgh’s most depressed areas.
Maria Graziani has been working for years to develop a
group of abandoned lots into an urban farm and has done some
tremendous work with the help of young volunteers from
Pittsburgh’s colleges and university.
But attempts to engage the people of Garfield have not
been very successful. The
Healcrest Farm is up on a hill above the residences.
We will be putting our gardens on a piece of the property
that borders the road and are hoping that the achievability of
the square foot gardens will attract them to the project and we
will be able to start a Women’s Self-Reliance Program in this
area where it is sorely needed.
We’re
also getting more invitations to teach the gardening to
children. This
spring we were able to put three gardens in at the Waldorf
School in Washington, DC. We
taught a children’s gardening class in El Remate. To illustrate the
spirit of cooperation, each of the children was given one type
of seed to grow in a paper cup. When their seeds sprout
and are ready to plant in the ground, they will come together to
form one complete garden. Cooperation and
sharing, unity with all of life, and working for the good
of the community were the concepts emphasized in the program.; and we will be presenting
the program to all age levels at the summer school of the
Islamic Center in Pittsburgh.
Plans are underway to develop a permanent children’s
gardening program that we can offer in a variety of settings and
locations.
THE
CHILDREN GATHER TO LEARN ABOUT THE MIRACLE OF GARDENING (LEFT)
TANYA (9-YEARS OLD) WITH A GARDEN OF HER OWN (RIGHT)
I
recently received this quote in an e-mail from my friend, Walter
Reece in Monterey, California:
Internal
peace is an essential first step to achieving peace in the
world. How do you cultivate it? It's very simple. In the first
place by realizing clearly that all mankind is one, that human
beings in every country are members of one and the same family.
-His Holiness the Dalai Lama
It
seems clear that we are being given many opportunities to share
our resources with other members of this vast family of
humanity. The
free flow of knowledge and compassion keeps moving forward
through non-profit organizations like the two that we've worked
closely with in El Remate - Trees for Life, who provided the
means for the women's orchard and Propeten, modeled after Heifer
International, through which the women have received goats and
chickens. But this
is not just an organizational movement; it has taken root
(grassroots) in the lives of the women of El Remate.
As prescribed by the Heifer model, as the goats and
chickens reproduce the women are passing these gifts on to other
residents in the village. They
have also visited two indigenous villages in Peten to teach them
about the gardens and are ready to be the primary teachers for
the other villages in the area who desperately need this
information .
Through
our collaboration with Trees for Life, Propeten and Project Ix-canaan,
the Guatemalan association that invited us to El Remate, the
Women's Self-Reliance Program has been able to make the initial
steps towards applying Aparigraha, the economic paradigm based
on abundance, cooperation and right motivation that has been
developed by GCFP's director Vyasa, and his economic advisory
team..
But
WSRP is running out of funds.
There is not enough money in the account to even make the
next trip to Guatemala scheduled for September, much less to
start implementing a program in Manitoba.
We need your help! We
are asking for a pledge of $10 a month to our Family and Friends
program. This
donation can be made with check or credit card, monthly,
quarterly or in one lump sum for the year.
There
is a storm brewing throughout the world, a food crisis of
monumental proportions, one that is touching every nation and
community. Some of
us have the resources to see us through, but so many of our
brothers and sisters and children do not.
Will you stand with us on the shore of the Ocean of
Universal Love and help us to build the house of many stories?
Together we can make that house so strong that no storm
can ever knock it down, and make it open to everyone.
THE
CHILDREN MAKE A GARDEN FOR THEIR FUTURE
Om
Shanti,
Thank
you and God bless you.
Rose
“Mirabai” Lord
|
