Steve Cran

American Veterans Go Green Warrior by Steve Cran

Posted by permaculturetv at 5:40 am cooperation, culture, democracy, design, ecology, education, food No Responses » Tagged with: , , , , ,
Sep 022012

American Veterans go Green Warrior

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The United States economy is still struggling and “jobs” are hard to find for the average person. Returning soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan discover they are competing for any meager employment opportunities with a growing legion of unemployed Americans . They are mostly offered jobs that are menial or low paying, the same types of jobs ex-convicts are offered when they leave jail. Thanks for putting your life on the line…now you can be a janitor!

If they have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and most of them have it in one form or other, they are given a variety of mind-altering drugs to numb their misery. One vet compared his bag of prescription pills to a bag of candies. Many vets attempt to get assistance from the myriad of Vet-help organizations only to find they are passed from program to program with no employment options. Most of these programs seem to be designed to keep the organization afloat, and don’t actually help the veterans into a real job. None of their military specialist skills are recognized outside the military and they find they are at the bottom of the skills heap … Slowly the vets lose hope and fall into a pit of despair .

One third of suicide attempts in the Oregon are a veteran . 18 veterans a day in the USA kill themselves…the numbers on veterans living on the streets, ending up in prison, addicted to drugs, in mental institutions and generally running off the rails is absolutely staggering not to mention the ripple effect to their families and communities. It seems more military veterans are killed by their own hand than the actual enemy in war. This tragedy is further compounded by the negative image promoted by the mainstream media…

A small group of dedicated people began looking for answers.

Some months ago I was asked if I could help coach a bunch of American veterans into using permaculture practices to create sustainable livelihoods for themselves in their country. Could veterans heal themselves while healing the planet? Could veterans make a sustainable living growing food and planting food forests? Can former warriors become Green Warriors? Sure… why not?

Having trained ex-combatants, ex-child-soldiers and victims of war as well as having being a soldier myself I accepted the challenge and headed to Portland, Oregon from Hong Kong to facilitate an experiment. Permaculture can solve most of the problems of the world if applied in the right way. Hence the first “Boots to Roots” Permaculture Aid Field Craft Course began in August 2012

The Vashon Island ferry drops its ramp and 30 odd cars rumble out of the ship and we pedestrians are waved on by a guy in a clown suit, oops, I mean a high visibility safety suit. I see some definite hippy types heading to the popular island famous for its organic farms, alternative culture and interesting people. I’m looking forward to meeting the veterans, and spending 3 days on a retreat with them as a prelude to our permaculture experiment.

The vets pick me up in a small blue Hyundai. They’re not the manic, Rambo, thousand yard stare types I almost expected but well-mannered excited young people on a mission. Penny Dex, a former army pharmacy specialist, fills me in on what’s going to happen over the next few days as we pass through farms and villages on the way to the retreat . The first night at the retreat we have a guest speaker, Kia, from the largest organic farm on the island. They intensively farm 7 acres and supply several farmers markets on the island and in Seattle. She gives the vets an overview of the realities of organic market gardening. Behind the success of this farm is an innovative 72-year-old farmer-elder who calls the shots. He couldn’t make it to our retreat . He’s recovering from injuries after falling off his skateboard. (Wow!) That’s what elders are for, mentoring.

Over the 3 days we visit a few farms and markets and see permaculture in action . The days are sunny and warm. Our veterans get more enthusiastic about farming and the upcoming course. At night I hear the war stories as well as the stories of their post military treatment by the various support services. Why does their government continue to fund these services when they clearly do very little good for returned soldiers? Why are their many specialist skills unrecognized by the government? If this is the method one would use to create dissent and radicals among the hundred of thousands combat veterans. It seems to be working .

I’m in the car again heading to Portland, Oregon on a wide freeway. People appear to be driving huge vehicles with massive engines just to carry one person. A huge red pick-up truck a mile long cruises past with a small man driving … No wonder America needs so much fuel. Wray, my 26-year-old co-passenger, relates how he had PTSD on return from Iraq and the V.A gave him a mess of drugs that really screwed up his reality. Once he gave them up he was able to make up his mind that any healing he needed wasn’t going to come from the government that caused the problems in the first place. All our vets on the training have had similar experiences and are now open for something completely different.

Portland is a very funky city with many organic markets, organic supermarkets, organic coffee shops and restaurants. Permaculture has crept in between the cracks here and there is a strong green vibe to the city. It also has the most strip joints per capita I’m told. In the distance I can see snow capped mountains making a nice backdrop as we enter the city. Our first stop is “Hop-Inn”; one of the many microbreweries Portland is famous for. I’m threatened with death unless I consume many beers…I comply. Several types of beer appear in front of me. They love brewing with hops for sure and each beer was so bitter I could swear it was some form of malaria medicine. Yeeach! I eventually settle for a cherry cider.

That afternoon we make it to our project site and meet Colonel Cool, actually his name in Doug Kuhl, and he’s cool.

Doug operates a crisis line for vets in trouble and according to Doug, there in no end of trouble a disgruntled vet can get into. On the veteran’s suicide hotline, Doug has heard it all… I wonder if there is a hotline Doug calls when he’s had enough. Doug has volunteered his land for our permaculture veteran rehab experiment. We immediately begin building a field school camp.

Thankfully I have the assistance on the training side from local permaculture specialist Deston Dennison Deston is an expert on all kinds of local fauna and flora and I might as well be on another planet coming from the tropics. Deston has a large capacity chainsaw and proceeds to cut the timber we will need for our 2-week course. He’s a handy guy to have as a co-trainer.
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The camp kitchen is the first thing the team builds on the first day. Many people in the local community have donated tables, cooking gear, food, stoves, everything one could wish for in a camp kitchen . Several organic farms from the area have donated boxes of fresh vegetables and meat. I’m amazed what these veterans have sourced from their local community. The civilians have really stretched themselves to help these people, especially in these harsh economic times.

I get a donated tent and a couple of loan sleeping bags for my accommodation. Camping in the woods suits me just fine! I browse on the wild blackberries, blueberries, apples and raspberries in the bush.

The camp takes a day to rig and we start the course clearing blackberry prickles from and old fenced area we will convert into a garden. Soon we all look like we have been fighting wildcats as the thorny vines take their toll. Lots of cuts and scratches all round. No complaints. The vets have borrowed a truckload of tools from the local tool-bank. Blue skies and a gentle sun make the living conditions in the forest a pleasant experience. I snack on more wild black berries as well as blueberries I’d pay a fortune for in Australia. We work hands-on for 4 hours each morning in the garden and spend the afternoons in our outdoor classroom.

Deston has rabbits he’s bought as a food source and we devise some methods the veterans can use to butcher them without fear or pain for the animals. Several days into the training we decide rabbit meat would go well as the evening meal. We try the first method of slaughter. Deston screws a large red hook into a post. The idea is to quickly snap the rabbit’s neck using the hook. The rabbit is caught and the group watches as Deston holds the bunny up to the hook on the post. He pulls rapidly down to break the neck but the hook bends…the rabbit doesn’t enjoy this. Oh dear! We all cringe, as the death of the bunny takes longer than planned. Poor bugger! The hook method doesn’t get the best practice vote until we screw the hook deep into the post and try again. This time its fast and almost humane. I wouldn’t use the hook!

One vet has a simple method for a fast rabbit death. He has a very small pistol, a Saturday night special. Stroking the rabbit he sneaks the barrel of the pistol behind the bunny’s skull and pulls the trigger. For a small gun it make a deafening bang! The rabbit shakes a bit and falls dead. He never saw it coming. Definitely the way I’d like to be killed if I were a bunny.

My method is the “whip the head off with a machete” trick. Rabbit is stretched over a stump and WHAM! 9 seconds…Quick, but a bit messy. The vote for the quickest and most humane kill goes to “the pistol shot to the head trick”. No shortage of guns in America. Our team dines on roasted rabbit that night.

We dig several raised garden beds each day. The physical work makes the vets sweat. Many of the vets say they are sleeping well compared to the erratic sleep they get at their homes. We add composted cow manure and mulch the beds with straw or hay. Using the Fukuoka method we seed each bed with a variety of local vegetable seed . No hybrids here. We plant Chard, Collards, beets and many other vegetables that will handle the cool winter months in Oregon.

The vets cook their own lunch taking turns in the kitchen. After lunch we sit on our straw bales under the shade of a fir tree and go over the theory of why and what we did hands-on in the garden. Deston adds the local content giving lists of species needed in these American ecosystems.

I show the vets some films of Uganda with returning soldiers and what they have to experience after 25 years of living in the bush during a guerilla war. No support from the government and only the NGO’s to help if they are lucky. I explain they, the American veterans, are luckier than in most countries. At least they have their civilian population to support them. Here in the US veterans are overwhelmed with options to get funding, are they real options? I explain focusing on what they don’t have will blind them to what they do have. They have to use what resources they can get to set themselves up into sustainable livelihoods now. WAKE UP! The economy in the USA is still heading downwards. There aren’t any other real choices out there at the moment.

They must also have unity amongst themselves to achieve anything lasting . Working with their new skills to create sustainable farms and communities gives these guys a new “mission”, where they can still be warriors. I’ve seen this work many times in many countries for many wounded warriors. Evidence-based best practice. Nobody escapes a war without trauma.

At the end of 2 weeks we have built a fair sized garden, which we estimate will feed a large extended family daily for all meals. We have a fish-boned pattern with a log herb spiral as the fish’s head. Doug has almost single handedly dug a fishpond. We have restored a bunch of blueberry shrubs. A rabbit hutch compost system is also added. We have a trellis that extends in a curved arc on a raised bed planted with cucumber . We call it “Spiderman” due to the amount of string we wove through the sticks. The hands-on is finished and now its time for the final exercise…

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Designing a farm looks easy when students can draw a 2 dimensional plan. To really drive home design, its best when they must instead construct a 3-D model . The model gives the students the understanding how elements are inter-related and where they best serve the system and are to be placed accordingly.

The Veterans model is a futuristic version of Doug’s property and everybody has a hand in its design. Taking turns each of the students gets the floor to explain how the design works. We have a multifunction barn that will house the workers, a pig tractor system, a poultry tractor system, accommodation and vegetable cropping systems as well as the farm’s 100 year old apple trees restored to a productive state. I press them to work out how this farm can make them a living. How will it pay? I make them phase the design so they can show what steps they will take first to make this design a reality.

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The course ends with me handing out certificates with handshakes and smiles all round. It’s time to pack up the camp, and prepare for an exit.

I say goodbye to my new friends and watch Portland slip away out the window of the Amtrak . We speed through farms, forests, cities and along the coast…beautiful America. Too bad it’s going down the g urgler!

The Canadians are friendly at the border control and give me a big smile, as I’m welcomed to their country. I think back on my 3 week experience and silently wish my veterans the best of luck…they are going to need it very soon!

Steve Cran. Boots to Roots Permaculture Class. Oregon. August 2012.

Music and video composition by Mike Walgrave

Steve Cran Green Warrior

Posted by permaculturetv at 5:58 am ecology, food, people, permaculture, pioneers No Responses » Tagged with: , ,
May 022012

Steve Cran – Green Warrior Permaculture, more at PermacultureAid.org

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Jasper Hall Intentional Permaculture Community

Posted by permaculturetv at 7:56 am cooperation, culture, ecology, education, people, planet-permaculture No Responses » Tagged with: , , ,
Feb 292012

Jasper Hall is a 16 year old close knit intentional community (est 1995), certified organic (survival) farm (16ha) and accredited permaculture teaching venue. We are in the breathtaking Upper Coopers Creek valley in the Byron Bay hinterland, northern NSW, Australia. Coopers Creek forms the western boundary of the property.

http://www.vimeo.com/19872708

We are a secular and egalitarian community, dedicated to communal living with no direct ideology but encompassing all aspects of global knowledge. We believe in sharing resources as a group rather than traditional models of personal and intellectual ownership.

The land of Jasper Hall has transformed over the last 16 years from a weed infested run down landscape, to (now) a garden of Eden. We have well-established orchards, containing around 60 different species, around 500 fruit trees that bear a great diversity of fruit all year around. We are blessed to live in the sub-tropics where we can grow probably the greatest variety of food in the world. We have some of the best soil in Australia, plenty of rain, great north facing topography, physical seclusion and a creek that never dries, with a beautiful swimming hole (sacred Aboriginal birthing ground) and waterfalls.
Andi Islinger, who started Jasper Hall has had 26 years of intentional community living and has ever since worked on developing replicable models.

The key focus for us are people and communication, these are the foundations for everything else to fall into place. More than 170.000 hours have been gifted to this project.

Over the years 19 buildings have been constructed to accommodate up to 50 people on the 40 acre farm and cater for all activities needed to survive if need be without outside influences.

We are clarifying goals and visions, but hold no dogmas.

All aspects of the development have been meticulously recorded in digital formats, presentations, time lapse, databases, spreadsheets, images and film.
We play, learn and teach various projects that include community development, agriculture (bamboo, orchard, nursery, rainforest rehabilitation), building and technology, maintenance, community & micro-economic business development and multi-media. Activities are based on what is needed by ‘us’ as a community, by mother earth itself and by the wider community. We share most meals which forms a cornerstone of our community vision. We are working towards income sharing opportunities for our members.

We are a community that is working with goals and visions, but without holding any dogmas.

We seek wisdom, strength and financial support to create the foundations for a sustainable replicable venture.

We are always looking for skilled hands on people, experienced in communal living.

Committed, self motivated and with enough time and energy to further our vision in creating long term sustainable communities based on true equality and non ownership models.

Welcome is everyone, especially seasoned, down to earth individuals and families, with practical skills to make this world a better place
Our focus now is to learn from our 16 years experience and translate it into practical wise and long term solutions.
WEBSITE:
Jasper-hall.com
FILMS
vimeo.com/20418773 (2010) 32min
Http://vimeo.com/22318360 (2010) trailer 2 min 30 sec
Http://vimeo.com/16229460 (2003) 16 min
BOOKS
flickr.com (Andi Islinger)

Extreme Permaculture Survival - Steve Cran

Posted by permaculturetv at 5:50 am culture, ecology, food, permaculture No Responses » Tagged with: , ,
Feb 232012

A former Aussie soldier and now a commando for the green cause, Steve believes the only future for humankind is a sustainable one. So he’s throwing a group of Gen Y and Zs into his intensive survival boot camp to show them how to tune into nature, not just Twitter.

For more Steve Cran or Green Warrior Permaculture

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Green Warrior Funeral - Steve Cran

Posted by permaculturetv at 8:02 pm cooperation, liberation, people, permaculture, permaculture.tv, pioneers, planet-permaculture, transition No Responses » Tagged with: , , , ,
Nov 292010

The vultures seemed to know it is a funeral.

I watch the huge turkey sized birds drop out of the sky and land under the big shady tree to watch the mourners. One of the Green Warriors has died of a mystery illness. He was definitely one of the best we’ve trained here in Abim. First he felt stomach pains, then his nose began to bleed, finally he vomited blood and died. I can see his grave behind his mothers hut as we sit under a tattered tarpaulin waiting for the other mourners to arrive. The custom here is to bury the loved one 2 days before the funeral. Good idea in the tropics.

We wait quietly for 2 hours. Finally the God-botherers arrive, three of them, and sit in front of the four staff that brought me here. The priests take it in turns to sing hymns, say prayers and, without missing a beat, slip in a sermon or two. I make a mental note to have these guys banned from my funeral if I get one. Stand up, sit down, sing this hymn, stand up, sit down, …if we speed this up it could be good exercise.

We stand for another hymn and the villager’s voices sound beautiful on this fine afternoon. I watch the mother and the 2 wives. The old mother begins to cry but she continues to sing. I feel a lump growing in my throat. What a shame. These are good people who have lost a valuable member of their family.

The father tells the mourners how he took his son to hospital and the doctor wouldn’t see him (probably holding out for a bribe) and without diagnosis, prescribed his son quinine. Quinine’s a strong malaria drug and everybody knows you don’t vomit blood from malaria. Those slack medical bastards!

They drag me up to say a few words about my former Green Warrior. I tell them he was a special guy and I’m so sorry for them losing him. I tell them on the next training, please send me another of their family and Ill give him or her a position. We have our obligatory warm coke and shake hands with the father and the mourners. They wave as we drive off. What a shit day… I hate funerals.

The pick-up’s full of hand tools and woven plastic bags. We’re speeding through the savannah leaving a jet trail of red dust behind. Along the way we come across the many people on Indian-made bicycles, usually with someone sitting on the rack. Most of them peel off the road and crash into the long grass. I ask the driver why they always crash like that. He laughs and says it’s rare for them to have working brakes so it’s easier to crash. The crash victims always smile and wave as we pass. Lucky there’s no hills here.

This village has a passionfruit project and a vegetable garden. They have one bore pump and the dry season is upon us. Our plan is to dig a sump and line it with earth bags and then cement-render the bags. This sump catches all the wastewater from the hand pump instead of it creating a mosquito breeding swamp at the end of the cement gutter. The villagers under the guidance of Titus, another Green Warrior, have dug a 3-meter deep cone shaped hole and it is ready for the bagging. I get the villagers to start filling the bags and Alfred and I jump in and start laying the heave sacks like bricks. The men hang back and its mainly kids at first filling the bags. As we get the wall up, more villagers appear and slowly begin helping. I grab a few guys and make them take over from me so I can photograph what we are doing. This earth bag technology is great stuff. So simple and effective. We are inventing new earth bag structures every day.

Once we finished rendering the bags, the villagers are impressed. I tell them they are moving ahead now with their resettlement village. This is sustainable development, step by step. This formerly wasted water will now service their garden and passionfruit until the rains come again in
a few months. I pull Titus aside and stress the sump must be fenced or one of their cows is going to end up floating upside down in it. Nodding he watches the herd of thirsty cattle lurking under the nearby shady tree… He gets it.

We get back and find out several other people have died of the mystery illness the previous night. Alfred says it might be ebola virus. I think he’s joking but he’s not smiling. He tells me he was in a plague of ebola in 2003 in Gulu. It started the same way. First one guy died and he went to the funeral. Shortly after all the women who helped to prepare the body died after vomiting blood. Then the chief died. After that some of the people that attended the funeral began to die. The army came and sealed off the town. Alfred says there was a lot of fear because they were putting people into rubberized body bags and zipping them up even before they were dead…many people that were sick went away to hide because they didn’t want to be buried alive. Bloody hell! I think of all the handshakes at the Green Warriors funeral.

We are unloading tools and materials on the side of the main road. Once in a while a vehicle speeds past and we all disappear in clouds of hot, red dust. The community wants to build a bakery with one of my Jumbo mud ovens right on the side of the road. They weren’t thinking of dust in the wet season when they sited the oven. As we work the gossip is all about the mystery disease. A lady just down the road has been vomiting blood last night but she is still alive. The women here recon it’s got to be ebola. I’m headed home to Australia in a week and I don’t want to be trapped in a plague. As we lay the bricks for the foundation, I ask my driver what’s the escape route to Kampala if I have to hoof it out of here on foot. He laughs and says he’s coming to Kampala with me. He tells me we mustn’t tell anybody where we are from or they will run away.

Day by day the oven takes shape. An old man stops on the road and yells at our group. “Why are you building a termite mound?” I get the translator to yell back that the termites are paying us for building this one and we have built all the termite mounds around here. Our team of mud mixing villagers laughs at my poor joke. Lots of people stop and watch us. The more it takes shape, the more volunteers join our crew, mostly women.

On the final workday we get 30 women mixing mud and laying the final layer of mud and straw mixed together. Slap, slap, slap as the many hands pat down the mud to get any air pockets out of the chocolate coloured mud mix. This oven is 2 meters across at the base and will crank out some bread, cakes and anything else they can find to cook. Amazingly, I’m the only person that looks dirty at the end of the job. Most of the crew has barely a mud spot on their clothes. Only the women’s feet are muddy. How do they do that I wonder. We watch, as a convey of WHO vehicles passes. A military escort packed into pick up trucks is close behind. They have come to identify the illness. The worst outbreak is 25 kilometers south. One of the international NGO’s has panicked and abandoned their compound and just up and left overnight.
Wimps!

Tomorrow I’m out of here at dawn. The disease isn’t ebola…it’s still a mystery but WHO recon it’s not the dreaded ebola so there’s no roadblocks tomorrow. Whew! I hope it peters out and is gone when I get back in 6 weeks… I walk the compound looking at the many vegetable pumping gardens. I say good bye to my ducks swimming in the pool at “Duck-Vegas”. I say goodbye to Wilimena the friendly piglet. I say goodbye to the 4 turkeys and 3 chickens in the poultry pen. I walk through the nursery and mentally note there are 10,000 trees here that will stay here until the wet season begins again. I say my good byes to all the staff in small groups. “Safe journey” they all say. “Wash your hands and stay away from the markets”, I tell them. “Don’t drink that brew out of those communal buckets either!” I don’t
want to go to anymore sad funerals…

Australia, here I come!

Endless Aid is good business for NGOs

Posted by permaculturetv at 3:55 am cooperation, cooperatives, culture, democracy, food, liberation No Responses » Tagged with: , , , , ,
Nov 042010

Endless Aid is good business for NGO’s, the UN agencies and charities. It means there is always a job, “helping the poor”.

Once a country, province, community or even an individual starts to receive aid it creates a dependency pathway that is hard to return from. Each organization is a generic system “working on the problems”, but it is the individuals in those systems that can make changes on the ground or just roll out the usual suspects. The problem with the long-term aid is people get aid for being poor. Poor people get extra food and other benefits. People struggling out of poverty get little or no assistance.

Subconsciously people try and stay poor to get the free goodies. This endless supply of seemly poor people creates the endless aid food chain. Its been going for 40 years here. Although I have frustration working for organizations, this one I’m working for have finally decided to come up with an “exit strategy”. Its strategic planning time.

I visit many project sites in a week. The soil is the best, the rains are constant, there is labour galore and its so easy to grow just about anything. Why aren’t the people wealthy? If a bunch of Australian farmers had land this good they’d be pumping money out of it. People sell food here to buy food. In other words they don’t store their food well so they sell it as quickly as they can to avoid spoilage. My boss asks me to design silos to overcome the storage problem.

I check out materials available, some villages have stone, some make bricks, everybody had dirt. Timber is scarce and termites eat anything made of wood in weeks. If we use bricks they will need half the forests in Karamoja as firewood to bake them. Not very sustainable…everybody has dirt. Dirt? I remember making bunkers in the army, out of bags filled with dirt. Ah ha! Earth-bag construction is the answer. With all that labour we can build earth-bag silos with few inputs. The construction method is used now all over the world with great success.

I place some orders for hessian bags. No such thing in Uganda. Only potato sacks, which are 3 times too big. After lots of trial and error I end up with 25kg polyethylene rice bags as the material to start the job with. If the bags are too big they hold too much material and people can’t lift them. The trick now is to try them out and do some training at the same time.

I design a curved outdoor bench in our compound. If we are going to experiment we may as well make something permanent. The Green Warrior staff line up and listen while I tell them what we are going to do. They seem a bit bewildered because they have never heard of this type of construction before. Then again, I’ve introduced them to many things they’ve never seen before. I direct them to gather the different materials and tools we need.

“Hurry up, get your buts moving”, I yell. Green Warriors don’t muck around. There’s people scrambling everywhere grabbing shovels, hoes, getting cement bags from the store and shovelling sand into wheel barrows. I get my hoe and scrape out a shallow footing in the shape of the bench. Once everything we need is piled around the project site, I begin with showing them how to fill the sandbag only half full. The half full bag swells out with the earth inside, I put a thin layer of cement in the bottom of the footing and lay the first bag flat and pound it flat with the shovel, taking care not to break the bag. After 4 bags the team push me out of the way and begin laying bags like pros. We put a dry mix in between each layer to fill any air gaps. This prevents slippage and reduces problems with settling.

It’s a whole days work and we finish up with beautiful curved cement rendered bench. The team are proud of their achievement but something is wrong. We used 11 X 50kg bags of cement and one half bag of lime. On a larger scale this will blow out our budget entirely. I ask the team how we could have used so much. I do a forensic investigation on our methods. One problem area is the African cement mixing method. That is piling a bunch of sand and splitting a 50 kg bag of cement onto it. There is no precise mixing so they over use cement. Ok I can see this is exactly what the villagers are going to do. They will run out of cement unless we control the mixing.

Another area of waste is the cement inside the walls. We don’t really need to use cement there as filler, we can use clay. The team and I work out the innovations for the next mini project before we are ready for the real thing.

We’ve implemented a new breakfast system here at HQ. Everybody gets a free breakfast here from our kitchen each morning now. Even though we give our team allowances to buy food they don’t, they just starve and save their money. Each morning, the staff are like zombies, with no food in their bodies. It’s hard to motivate a starving person so the boss agreed to my proposal. Unfortunately for me the staff like Ugandan millet porridge. Its ground millet mixed with peanuts, some spices and sugar. It tastes to me like Satan’s armpit.

We are ready to go and I ask the driver if he got his free gruel. He nods and grins and pulls a japati out of his pocket wrapped in a plastic bag. A japati is some flour and water rolled flat and fried in genetically engineered soya oil from the US, shipped in as food-aid. Much of it ends up for sale at the markets. The driver has his emergency japati just in case we break down.

Ten minutes drive from Abim we swing onto a bumpy track and head through the long grass to the village where one of our two test silos will go. I have to pick villages that have over 60 hectares of arable land to support the silo. We need 20 hectares to make the silo viable. If the silo collective can pay on the spot for produce, a low fee, and then pay the balance on receiving the sale money then we have a way of stretching out the farmer’s income. These guys have a big drink-up if they get a lump sum of money with nothing left afterwards.

The chief meets us and takes us over to a shady tree and points out the area put aside for the silo. My brain calculates the amount of loose soil we’ll need to fill the earth bags for the construction. I ask the chief where he’s got some soil. The soil he shows us is a few small piles around the village, not enough by far. Hmmmm…What if we dig a cistern and use the soil from that? Alfred the engineer grins and gives me the thumbs up. He translated to the chief who also nods and grins. We can harvest the rainwater from the silo roof to fill the cistern.

The chief and my team jump in the pick-up truck and we drive through the savannah to a water source about 400 meters from the village. Lots of cattle have been through here. Alfred explains that the people get no products from the cattle. “Its just for the elders to look at”, he says with a shrug. The cattle have flattened most of the vegetation and its still the wet season. In the dry season this place will become a desert.

The water source is a spring leaking into a hand dug shallow dam. I tell the chief he has to find a balance between cattle and cropping if we help him. The interpreter explains and he understands. We check out several other sources to ensure there will be enough water for production of 60 hectares all year long.

On the way home we stop at another village to see Bruno, the 2IC of another silo project site. We check out his choice of sites. Its right next to the new power lines running through his village. I notice there are no wires going into the village, no power here yet.

Bruno agrees to the cistern idea and there are 2 other buildings nearby that can channel their roof water into the cistern, plus the rainwater from the silo roof. It’s got to be cheaper to dig and line a cistern than cart the soil by truck. A win-win for all involved.

The best aid is aid-to-trade. Helping people to create a permanent living from what they have on hand. After 40 years of food aid these guys are getting weaned off the aid-drug, as I call it, and its time for some serious rehab. The biggest threat to this kind of project is the aid-drug dealer. If they start dumping food aid into the middle of a volunteer project like this, the workers disappear pretty quickly. Despite the challenges, it feels right and we shake hands.

The chief knows this is their chance to climb out of the hole after being in it for 40 years. The team and I head home to organize the materials and tools. In my minds eye I see prosperous communities with flourmills and bakeries beside the silos in each village…. I am an eternal optimist.

Steve Cran, North Uganda

Water is the key to all self-sufficiency projects - Steve Cran

Posted by permaculturetv at 5:04 am cooperation, culture, design, ecology, education, liberation, people, permaculture, transition 1 Response » Tagged with: , , , ,
Oct 182010

Water is the key to all self-sufficiency projects. How much water do we have? Where can we get more? What do we do with it? Do we have enough water in the dry season? For the next 3 weeks I’m dealing with “Where can we get more?”

The thousands of village bore pumps in Northern Uganda are installed under a government contract system. Some villages have many and some villages have only one that they share with several other villages. It’s not always a fair share system. It takes a lot of pumping to fill a watering can. To generate continuous food crops we need other sources. You can’t interfere with the village bore pump if it is overcrowded already.

We are tearing through the scrub at 110 kph in the Nissan Patrol. The crew are thirsty and they never carry water with them ( I’ve told em!). We pull up at a rural bore pump so they can get a drink. The usual suspects are at the pump, a bunch of children and a few thirsty cows and goats. Lucky it’s the wet season and there is much less demand from the animals on the only village hand pump for miles.

A young girl is crying loudly. The other young women in the line yell abuse at her. She cries even louder. Finally one of the larger girls grabs her and drags her away from the pump. Whack! She slaps the crying girl in the side of the head with an open palm. The girl begins to wail and the larger girl pushes her violently so she falls to the ground. She lies there in the dust crying like a sick cow. The driver explains it’s a common dispute at the line up to get water. The girl has been waiting hours and she’s been bullied out of her place in that line. Nobody pays attention to the wailing girl; they don’t want to lose their place.

About 15 kms from base we are looking for a certain project village. There it is, hidden in the long grass on the side of the road. What a mess. These guys must be the poorest of the poor. We exit the main road and drive inbetween the huts. I see a tumble down building with rock walls. The rocks have been glued together with mud but half the walls have caved in and the rocks have rolled out onto the track. Inside the ramshackle building are rows of log seats sticking out of the dirt floor. This is the school ,and on Sundays a church. I wouldn’t tie my goat up in there let alone educate my child!

We pass through the hovels and into the scrubby valley behind. We are off to the swamp…

The chief is young, only about 20 years old. He brings his work party down to the swamp. The engineer and I have wrestled 2 Honda pumps down to a black hole full of water at the bogs edge. I strip off and climb into the bog hole and position the suction hoses. As the village work party arrive, they chatter nosily and seem excited. The engineer explains the guys have never seen a white man covered in mud. I laugh and reply that soon I’ll no longer be white.

The pumps empty the bog hole enough so we can begin digging out the heavy mud. It’s tough work but I make sure I keep pace with the locals. Soon the mud we have shovelled out must be raked back because it’s starting to slide back in to the well we are digging. The deeper we go, the harder it is to throw the mud over the spoil. I call these water systems “swamp sump wells”. We will line the walls with stacked stone brought down by the villagers next week. They claim there is water here all year round, even in the dry season so it’s a good source for a community garden. They are building the garden near the well.

The young chief has a good following in this village. For some unexplained reason this village has been marginalized politically. The people are tough and hungry. They work well together. The chief and I plan out some more work together. I tell him “If your people are here working, I’ll help you. If they are slack, I’m working in another village”. We understand each other. In a land that has been over-aided, finding workers for the grunt work is rare. Food-aid makes them apathetic and lazy. I cringe when I’m called an aid worker.

It eventually gets too hot for all of us to work so we pack up and hump the equipment back to the vehicle. In the long grass I see the remnants of huts. The chief explains the people fled this place seven years ago because of the raiding and the LRA conflict. They now live on the road where there is electricity and security. It’s a shame, I think, this is a good spot. The chief reads my mind and assures me that one-day soon they will return. First the water…

It’s a few days later. I’m travelling to project garden number 24. This village garden had a problem a few weeks ago because tomato blight killed off their tomato crop. I came not long after with some Green Warriors and helped them pull up and burn the remains of the plants.

The old Mama is watching me as I enter the fenced 1-acre plot. She has a bucket of large eggplants on her head. Actually they are very large healthy organic eggplants! I imagine them cooked on my dinner plate so I offer to buy 20 of them at 15 cents each. Deal done. I got ripped off by local standards, but imagine what I’d pay for them in Australia!

I have some replacement seeds for the dead tomatoes. Out of my satchel, which contains a bottle of water, a can of emergency sardines, a paperback novel, a knife, a camera and some secateurs, I pull out some non-hybrid seeds. I have watermelon, green amaranth, Italian parsley and silver beet.

These are mainly new varieties of vegetables for these people. They usually only grow corn, sunflowers, and sesame seed. Little by little I am helping change their diet and their money situation. I get a bucket of sand and make a mix up of all the seeds. I get the women to sow the sandy mix and we all cut some long grass and mulch the curved raised beds.

There are 5 women from the village working plus a 10-year-old boy who works like a trooper. His mum is sick so he’s taking her place in the work party. I ask him to tell me 4 ways the mulch helps the plants. He gets them all right and smiles. Great! The knowledge is penetrating the kids as well.

The vehicle to pick us up is late so we trudge into town under the weight of our extra tools and a bucket of large eggplant. We find a shady tree and we wait. The emergency paperback comes in handy at times like these. After 2 hours the vehicle shows up and it’s already full. We must wait until it returns, if it returns! Bugger that, I think, lets see how many people fit into a Nissan Patrol.

With 2 people and Honda water pump on the roof rack and 12 people squashed into the patrol we proceed home. Nobody bats an eye as we pass people on the road. This is Uganda and if you can fit then it’s all go! Lucky for us most of the Green Warriors are skinny so it isn’t too painful.

It’s another community garden. The chief has ambushed me several times until I see his mob are dead serious. He leads me down a newly cut track into a 3 acre, freshly cleared farm plot. Wow, there are about 80 people already working tilling the land and removing the grass tufts.

He wants me to train his workers in the basics. The soil is a rich beautiful black colour. Some of the best I’ve ever laid eyes on. I line them up and tell them if they are organized with this many people they can work faster than a tractor. I give the “go” command and the line of villagers dig like crazy. They want to keep up with the Muzungu. We dig 4 raised garden beds in 15 minutes. I show them how to seed and mulch each bed.

An old woman grabs my arm trying to get my attention. She points to her foot. Somebody has slammed a hoe into the side of her foot cutting it open to the bone. Shit! The blood is pouring from the wound. That’s gotta hurt! Quickly, I tell the chief to get 2 blokes to help her to our vehicle. They don’t carry her and she leaves bloody footprints in the mud as she hobbles to the road. I try with the translator to get these guys to help her but she recons she can walk. I make arrangements to take her to local clinic. I have to pay but I cant bring myself to send her to the local hospital. I picture the filthy grey 2 story building…that place gives me the creeps.

I always hear kids screaming in terror when I pass by the hospital. The driver takes her away and I find out the clinic stitched her up then tried to stitch me up. They wanted her to have 4 types of antibiotics. The Muzungu is paying. That many different drugs could kill an old woman especially as she already has malnutrition. I sort her out with another clinic eventually.

There’s only 3 weeks of funding left for this project. My concerns now are to finish the projects we have started. The gardens we leave behind will be the trainers for the future. It’s a balance now between getting them finished and keeping up the quality. Somehow the Green Warriors are unconcerned about the project finishing. They tell me they have prayed to God and he will hear them.

I watch the squalid villages through the windows as we pass through the Abim valley and hope God has pulled out his earplugs…

The Badlands of Karamoja - Extreme Permaculture with Steve Cran

Posted by permaculturetv at 3:41 pm cooperation, culture, democracy, design, ecology, education, food, gaia permaculture, industry, liberation, people, permaculture, permaculture.tv, permaculture.tv, pioneers, planet-permaculture, transition No Responses » Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Sep 292010

I’m in Nuccups, Karamoja in northern Uganda, close the Kenyan border. This area has had the biggest impact from cattle raiding and illegal weapons.

Development here is retarded, even by Ugandan standards. It’s still seen as the badlands of Karamoja by outsiders. To me, its amazing mountain scenery and rich soils with the potential to turn this area into Uganda’s food-bowl. Before that happens there are some serious challenges here to address…

It’s 8am and I’m waiting in a vehicle with the driver for the military escort to arrive to escort us on a 40-minute drive to Namalu. I observe the villagers in the huts opposite our stationary vehicle. They are totally drunk. Two people are having a fistfight, one is a woman. She throws a punch and trips and the man she is fighting kicks her in the guts as she goes down. The driver tells me they begin drinking the local sorghum brew made in plastic jerry cans at dawn. I ask him where they get the sorghum if they are drunk all the time. They couldn’t farm it because they can barley walk by 10 am. He tells me it is the sorghum delivered as food-aid. Great, the world aid programs are helping these people stay drunk for the rest of their life? Do the donors know what they are paying for?

The pickup truck with 4 soldiers arrives and after a quick radio check we take off following the pickup belching black exhaust and dust. I tell the driver to keep well back so we don’t have to breathe their dust and if the lead vehicle is ambushed we have some measure of escape. It’s a beautiful day and the sun reflects off the shear rock faces on the side of the mountain range, wet from the nights rain. I can make out jungle canopies in the ravines sloping off the mountain ridges. I bet there is some cool wildlife up in there, I think to myself. We pass small villages of mud huts with their stick palisades and grass roofs. We could be travelling back in time for all I know. A few raggedy school kids are trying to flag us down for a lift as we roar past them. In the bigger settlements I see the same problem, more drinking. Men and women are staggering around and the driver sits on the horn to warn the drunks off the track.

In Namalu I scope out the training venue, a guesthouse-café under construction. I’m here for a week’s master training of the Green Warriors. I have checked out their village projects and worked out their weak points. During this week, we’ll sort out those problems. Integrated Pest Management, fencing, Inter-planting and seed saving are the subjects for this stage of the training.

The guesthouse is a concrete building, on an acre of land with a beautiful craggy mountain behind but no water supply. The mountain has caves and ledges and I can see a troop of baboons making their way across the ridgeline.

I spy a bore-pump in the clinic next door to the venue. It has about 3 acres of fenced land and I can see the local community use the bore-pump as their water supply. That’ll do nicely! I take my translator and we pay a visit to the manageress of the health clinic. In a short time we have worked out a mutually beneficial 1-week project. My Green Warriors will build the perfect bore-pump garden at the front of the clinic grounds with 14 types of vegetables, some passionfruit on the fence and a stack of trees around the outside. The health clinic staff will attend the training and maintain the garden. The staff get the produce and the community will watch and learn and hopefully copy this type of food production system. It’s the women mostly, visiting the community health centre.

We begin the digging, 25 Green Warriors and a few health staff. The wastewater from the hand pump will irrigate the garden. At the bore-pump there is a group of skinny children trying to pump the handle. I go over and take the handle and begin pumping for them. These little dudes don’t speak English but I gesture for them to fill their 5 litre containers. It’s hard to tell the boys from the girls as they all have baldy heads and are wearing dirty rags, the type you dig up out of a rubbish pit. I see sores un-healed all over their legs. Some sores are weeping puss. From the looks of their teeth they must be between 8-10 years old but their bodies are the size of Australian 4 year olds. These kids are starving to death slowly.

I ask the matron what’s the deal with all the sick looking children. She explains the parents are too drunk most times to care for their children. The parents feed their kids only the brew waste at the bottom of the Gerry can. She says that even the kids here are drunk and she has treated many 3 year olds for alcohol poisoning. The brewer’s waste is still quite potent in its alcohol content. She continues to tell me the other health problems in the local communities. Malaria is the biggest killer in the local people. For women the next one is pneumonia. The women do all the work here from early in the morning to late at night. In a day they must gather firewood, make the meals, plant and harvest crops, carry water from the borehole and sometimes work late into the night with never a days rest.

The rains come when the woman is in the field and she gets drenched when her body is run down. Where are the men? There are waiting at home sheltered in the hut waiting for the woman to come home with the water and firewood to cook dinner for them. The man is the head of the household and tells the woman to do all the work while he kicks back with some local brew. The men’s health problems are STD’s from raping enemy village women on cattle raids, the matron tells me. Not many smiles in this part of Karamoja. I reckon the women also drink to get out of working so hard.

The weeks’ training goes well. There are now over 80 trained Green Warriors across Karamoja. In the short time we’ve been doing this project we can prove this is the way forward after 40 years of food-aid. The sites where the Green Warriors have set up gardens are productive and many new vegetables and growing skills have been introduced. The next thing to happen here should be working in the schools with the kids. The kids can grow food and tree seedlings at their schools. The kids are capable and learn fast. The adults are too hard to deal with when they drink like this.

I’m walking back to the venue for lunch with a hoe over my shoulder with a few Green Warriors when a man sitting under a shady tree greets me in the Karamajong language,”ajoka!” he says. I say ,”ajok”. He says something else and the Green Warriors laugh. “He is saying God bless you Father, he thinks you are a priest”. Says one of my guys. “Tell him God blesses those who get off their asses and do something” I say. They laugh but don’t translate.

I stand on the hill next to the site, looking across a huge plain with one of the traditional land owners. From here to the horizon many small fires are burning. The landowner tells me the plain used to be a vast forest with elephants, giraffe and all the African animals. Now the charcoal makers are cutting it down for cooking fuel for the cities. It’s a lot of work for little money but poverty drives slavery. ”What’s the solution?” asks my mind automatically…

I imagine the kids of Karamoja growing a million trees at the local schools and replanting coppicing forests to supply charcoal sustainably. Yeah, fast growing trees that one third of the branches are harvested and fed into the charcoal ovens and the trees supply the same again each year. They could feed the leaves to animals. I ask myself how can I help make it happen? If nothing is done then all the vegetation on this plain will go in the next 5 years, then they will start on the mountains. I think about those skinny little sick kids. Maybe, just maybe, we can solve many problems at the one time…HMMM?

Lightning Storm Community Sustainability Course

Posted by permaculturetv at 8:34 pm cooperation, culture, democracy, design, ecology, education, food, people, permaculture, permaculture.tv, planet-permaculture, science No Responses » Tagged with: , , , , , ,
Sep 152010

The second week of my 2-week community sustainability course starts off with a bang, literally!

A huge lightning storm is moving through our valley. I watch it coming from my hut window. I like seeing nature getting a recharge from the lightning strikes. Suddenly there’s a huge bright flash. A lightning strike hits maybe 40 meters from me on the other side of the road. The sound is so loud my skeleton just about jumps out of my meat suit! The light from the strike for an instant almost gives me a suntan. SHIT! I find out later the strike fried our Internet. Back to the stone age…

My filmmaker friend Zaff is back. We collaborate on making short, how-to-do-it films for the Green warriors. We work out a basic script and I line up the students as the actors. Its nerve wracking for some of these Karamajong. Zaff pushes them pretty hard to get a result but hey, they’re Green Warriors, they can take it. We do films on making a banana pit, building a trellis, constructing and planting a home garden and planting trees with mulch and tree guards made with African bamboo. The biggest problem for Zaff is background noise. People talking, constant hammering from our other projects and the annoying revving of vehicles, which local drivers like to do before driving off somewhere.

Duck-vegas...Fertilizer factory

Our duck pond is complete. I watch the newly arrived ducks happily splashing around in the above ground brick tank. This system works as a fertilizer factory. Each week we use watering cans and fill them up in the pond. We water everything that is planted. The duck juice gives a real boost to the soils. We get eggs, meat, fertilizer and pest control and feed them only the scraps from the kitchen. The Ugandans love it!

On the second last night we hold a talent competition between the three groups of students. They act out plays and sing songs and end their show with traditional dances. It is a wild night supercharged with another lightning show from Mother Nature. I’m careful not to blaspheme!

One group sings a beautiful song about the environment. It touches my heart and I feel a lump growing in my throat.

These are the words to their song:

What will people say when the land is dry?
What will the animals do when the bush is burnt?
What will God alone say about the environment?

Nature forgive us
Mother forgive us
Nature forgive us
Mother forgive us

Cheetahs are crying loud
Monkeys have done the same
Buffalos are running away
Birds have done the same
Where will they go will be the question mark.

Chorus

Brothers will plant the trees
Sisters will plant the trees
Youth will plant this land
Fathers will protect our land

Their beautiful African voices beat any choir I’ve ever heard in Australia. The competition finishes with the usual grand finale every in for the big dance. The drummers are almost flogging the skins of their traditional drums as the feet slam into the ground. The energy of these dudes is fantastic and I have to call it to a halt because I have to announce the winner and the rain is almost upon us. At the very end I tell them what a wonderful crew of Green Warriors they are and we do our final African clap to close the night.

One, Two, Three! CLAP A huge lightning bolt slams into the mountain behind the warriors and lights up the surroundings like daylight just as the group clap. WOW!

I head back to my hut as the sky bursts open with another deluge.

I say goodbye to each of the groups of Green Warriors as they depart in various vehicles. I know this has been the best experience in their life for some of them. Their new hand tools are loaded into the vehicles and there are hugs and handshakes all round. They will miss each other. These people over the last 2 weeks have built many things together and solved many difficult problems to stretch their brains.

I watch them drive down the muddy track, hands still waving as the cars disappear around the bend. Go well Green Warriors!

Source: Steve Cran, Uganda

Ugandan Community Sustainability Specialists alias Green Warriors - Steve Cran

Posted by permaculturetv at 6:15 pm cooperation, culture, democracy, ecology, education, food, liberation, permaculture, permaculture.tv, transition No Responses » Tagged with: , , , ,
Sep 042010

I’m alive and I’m back training the next batch of Community Sustainability Specialists (alias Green Warriors).

I’ve been back in Uganda for almost 2 weeks now after repairing my body in Australia form the ravages of malaria, typhoid and a lung infection. It’s amazing how fast your body caves in once your immune system is compromised. The trick is to give yourself enough time to repair before going back into the field. Maybe I should listen to my own advice more often!

Before the training starts, the staff and I conduct interviews to determine who’s suitable to become a Green Warrior. I sit the team down-wind of the interviewees. This is so I can smell alcohol coming from their body and clothes. In Karamoja, heavy drinking is a pastime for people in poverty. In fact a lot of their grog is home made from the food given to them by aid organizations. Sorghum and millet are brewed in plastic jerry cans which sell for $3-$7 a jerry. If a candidate reeks of alcohol at 3pm we have a good idea he or she is a heavy drinker and we bypass them for a more suitable person. Some dudes smell so strong I ask them one question, “what’s your name?” and that’s the end of the interview. The team and I have special signals with our eyes when we have a winner or a loser.

The training kicks off with the trainees getting issued a tent, bedding, a sleeping mat and a set of farm tools, quite a haul by local standards. Salome, one of our staff has to take the women to the toilets and teach them how to use it hygienically. Most of them have never seen a toilet or a flush system. They watch Salome push the lever and gasp in amazement as the water spirals down the pan. It takes them a few days and an irate cleaner to get it right. The men have to use a pit toilet we dug at the back of the field away from the camp. It has several luxury features like 2 squat holes with wooden covers and an ash bucket to smother any flies on the faeces. It also has a tap and soap outside for personal hygiene. We’ll fit a roof, next training.

There’s a brick kitchen now with a large 2 burner mud stove that the last course built. The cook ladies tell me it is very efficient and they want one at their homes. The builders are still building the bush kitchen around the cooks as they work.

We begin the training with 50 trainees but only have the resources for 44. I have to wean the numbers down over the first few days by watching them during the fieldwork. The lazy ones go home and don’t come back. Fieldwork sorts them out quickly. I give them the rules of the camp, which are quite simple. Get along with each other and no drinking in the camp unless it’s a special occasion authorized by staff.

Each day is the practical field work first and the theory second. This may seem upside down to conventional trainers but I find it gets a better result. After the trainees for example have constructed a home garden, they are much more interested in the theory and they comprehend it at a greater depth.

On day three Salome comes and sees me with an urgent problem. She tells me 2 trainees were drunk last night and almost caused a riot. One was riding his motorcycle between the packed rows of tents pissed out of his mind on local brew. I front the 2 idiots up out the back of the training hut. Unfortunately they are 2 guys from the same village and they show great aptitude for the training…I decide not to send them home but they must be punished. An hour later they are stripped to the waist, each digging a grey water pit 1.5 meters deep, out the back of the new kitchen. The other trainees have a laugh at them while they are eating breakfast. If these dudes weren’t seen to be punished the trainees would have done it themselves the next night.

Today is Election Day and half the students have walked off to their villages to cast their vote for federal and local leaders. The handful of trainees left, and I, construct a brick duck tank. The duck tank has a multifunction purpose. Our ducks get a swim and we get duck manure infused water to irrigate our gardens with. It’s a self-producing liquid manure factory.

The women mix the mortar and the men lay the bricks. I join in the digging and the students tell me they have never seen a white man dig before. I tell them I have never seen a black man on a computer before, we all laugh at each other. At lunchtime the team wont break for lunch as they only have one more course of bricks to lay.

They are a solid bunch of Green Warriors. They do what has to be done. In a few weeks they will be training their own people and setting up demonstration community gardens. Karamajong teaching Karamajong, creating the Green Warrior ripple effect., so far it’s working!

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