ドキドキしながら太陽が昇るのを見て、また素晴らしい朝をむかえることができました。子供たち、ありがとう!そして毎日7時半には寝て6時前に起きるといったスローな時間が送れることに感謝!私たちのように熟睡できるのは特別なことのようにも思えます。日本では誰もが疲れていて、子供たちは睡眠時間をけずって‘がんばら’なきゃいけない。その睡眠不足を通学中の電車の中や教室などで補っていました。ここでは毎朝、様々な自然の恵みに出会えるのです。今朝は美しい緑色をしたアマガエルを見つけました。子供たちがあまりにも興奮していたので、私は彼女たちに大事にされすぎないようカエルを守ってあげなければなりませんでした。
朝食のあとで(雑穀入りのホットケーキが日曜日のおきまりです)地元のマーケットに行き、このあたりにまだ残っている雨林の中のオオコオモリの生殖地を訪れてみました。木の間を見上げると、身体をくねらせ羽をばたばたさせてキーキー鳴いているコオモリたちがいます。怖がらせることのないよう大きい音をたてないように注意します。ここは私たちの大聖堂なのです。自然は神様がお造りになった大きな教会で、日曜日にお説教を聴くために教会に身をおくことはなんら悪いことではありません。今、私の娘パチャはキリスト系の学校に通っています(家から近いし、少人数クラスだからです)。校長先生は‘キリストの教え’を強制しないと言いましたが、パチャは神様の歌を持ってかえってくるし、キリストの話をすることもあります。彼女は神様の賢明な使者(ブッダ、ムハンマド、ダライラマやバハーウッラーなど)がたくさんいることも知っています。実際、この世の全ての創造物が神様から託されたものなのです。私は生きとし生けるものを敬い、重んじることがとても大事だと思っています。パチャやヤニが大人になって彼らが信じるものを何と呼ぶようになるかはさほど重要ではありません。神聖なものへの畏敬の念、そして優しさ、尊敬、敬意、愛情さえあれば彼女たちは(そして私も!)幸せになれるでしょう。
パチャの通う学校が環境保護に熱心なのでとてもうれしいです。地元のランドケア(土地環境保護)グループの一環として岩礁保護プログラムを持ち、クリーンアップオーストラリアデイに参加、雨林や熱帯の果物の果樹園、パーマカルチャーによる有機菜園を広げるガーデンプロジェクロも推進しています。私もすぐさま活動にとびこんで今ではプロジェクトの‘コンサルタント’を勤めるまでに。できればこの仕事を手伝ってくれるボランティアがもっと来てくれるといいのだけれど。
この辺りも涼しくなってきたので野菜の種まきを始めました。パチャも自分の畑にほうれん草、ビート、たまねぎ、ひまわり、ヒャクニチソウを植えました。馬糞を十分に加え耕した私の畑には、大きなキャッサバ(タピオカ)の木をはじめもう少し野菜を植えました。キャッサバは熱帯に適していてこの一本から私の庭いっぱいに100本は育つでしょう。9ヶ月もたてばでん粉を含んだ根を付け、これがほとんどの熱帯の国々(エクアドルもそうです)では主食であり、とてもおいしいのです。サツマイモとこのキャッサバが私たちのこの先何ヶ月かの主食になるでしょう。それに果樹園の長期計画もあります。まず手始めにパパイヤの種を20個植え、レイシやパッションフルーツも植えました。
最近とても忙しいです。学校の先生の助手になるコースを取っているのですが、他の女性と一緒に学ぶのがとても楽しい。授業の教材のほとんどは常識的な内容ですが。理論の上では、オーストラリアでは文化的多様性やそういった側面を積極的に増長する教授法が重んじられているのですが、現場では多くの先生方が個人的な人生のお荷物を抱え込んでいて、教室では生徒に対して独裁的になってしまいます(とりわけクラスサイズが大きくなればなるほど)。親の(世界の多くの場所でそうですが)労働時間はますます長くなり、子供と過ごす時間が減って子供の子守りをテレビにまかせてしまう。私は実際にクラスに行って、状況がどうなのか見てみたいと思います。
私の家をお客様やボランティアの方々をお迎えする居心地のいい家にする計画も少しずつ進んでいます。イタリア人の修理屋さん(ギノ)に手伝ってもらって小さなお風呂とトイレ(どちらも地元の不用品集積所で2ドルで買いました)を据え、私が床と壁にタイルを張りました。ギノは72歳でコーヒーとタバコで生きているかのよう。毎週、日曜の朝早くに来てくれますが、お金がほしいから働いているのではなくて、働くのが好きだから働いてる!(生きるために働いてもいるでしょう)といった感じです。それほどおしゃべりではありませんが、作業は早いし、それにきちんと寸法を測っているのを見たことがないのです。彼がトイレの配管の目測を誤ったので、今日の私の午後は下水管の溝を掘るのに費やされるでしょう。終わる頃にはミスユニバース・ボディビルディング・コンテストに出場間違いなしです!もちろんこの穴掘りだけで200ドルの値にはなるでしょう。でも、できるのなら自分でしたい、私がするわといった気持ちです(汗かいて顔が紅潮して、大きな満足感が得られるから)。もしお金が余ったら他にもしなきゃいけないことがたくさんある。私が支援を必要としている世界の国々で何かプロジェクトや運動を始めるときに必ず考えることです。
ここオーストラリアやエクアドルでボランティアをしたいという日本の方々からもうすぐ連絡が入ると思います。私の友人たち(ヨーロッパ北部に在住)も呼んでここにしばらく滞在してもらえるかもしれません。新たに旅程を5月10日から18日に設定したディープなエコツアーの計画も進行中です。今回をきっかけに定期的なツアーになればいいなと思います。
もう少し野菜を植えて、私たちの陽気なにわとりたち、モリー、ホリー、ルーシーにえさをあげる時間です。みなさんが今回の私の話を楽しんでいただけたらうれしいのですが。
いのちのために
アンニャ、パチャそしてヤニ
【翻訳:山下美朋】
シンガーソングライター、環境活動家、2児の母としてスローに生きるナマケモノ倶楽部共同代表、アンニャ・ライトのブログです。 . Anja Light (singer song writer, environmentalist and mother of 2 kids) shares her learning process of living a slow lifestyle for the Mother Earth.
2006-03-19
Another glorious morning, with us excitedly watching the sunrise! Thanks to the children and our Slow time we still all go to sleep at about 7.30pm every night and wake up before 6am. It feels like such a special privilege to be able to sleep deeply. I remember how tired everyone seems to be in Japan and how even children have to 'gambate' and exist on just a few hours of sleep, catching up, if they can, on the train, or in classrooms - or anywhere else! Every morning here gives us some kind of blessing - today we found a beautiful green tree frog - the children were so excited that I had to save it from being loved too much!
After breakfast (home made millet pancakes are traditional on our Sundays) we went to the local markets and visited the colony of fruit bats in the remnant rainforest. You look up into the trees at hundreds of twisting, flapping, screeching creatures - careful not to make a big noise that would disturb them. It is our cathedral. I have always felt that nature is God's greatest church and never feel guilty about not sitting in a building listening to a sermon on a Sunday.
My daughter, Pacha, is now going to a Christian School (mostly because it is very close by and has very small classes) and although the school principal assured me that 'doctrine' is not enforced, Pacha sometimes comes home with songs about God and mentions Jesus. I make sure that she knows there are many emlightened messengers of God (Buddha, Mohammed, HH Dalai Lama, Bahaoula etc) - and that, in fact, all of creation is a message from God. I think a spirit of reverence and respect for Life is so fundamentally important - whatever name Pacha and Yani will decide to call this in their later life doesn't matter - as long as they have a sense of the sacred and basic principles of kindness, respect, reverence, love! I think they (and I!) will be happy.
I am very happy that the schoopl has a strong conservation theme. It is part of the local landcare group, has a reef guardianship program, participates in clean up Australia day and has a big garden project including planting a rainforest, tropical fruit orchard and a permaculture vegie garden. I couldn't help but volunteer to help and find myself now listed as the 'consultant' for this project hopefully some volunteers will soon arrive to help me with this task!
It has begun to cool down enough here to start planting vegetable seedlings. Pacha has her own garden patch and has planted Spinach, beetroot, spring onion, sunflowers and zinnias. My patch, deeply mulched with horse manure, has a few more plants - including a big cassava shrub. Cassava is the perfect plant for the tropics and from this one bush I will be able to grow a hundred more throughout the garden. In 9 months it will yield big starchy cassava roots - the mainstay of so much of the tropical world (including Ecuador) and so delicious too! This, along with the sweet potato, will provide a lot of our food in the coming months.
Then there is the longer term plan of the fruit orchard. I have started some 20 papaya seedlings and recently planted lychees and some more passionfruit. I have been quite busy lately. I have been attending a part time course to become a teacher's assistant. It's been fun to learn together with other women - though most of the material has been commonsense so far. In theory there is a great respect in Australia for cultural diversity and teaching methods that focus on positive reinforcement. Unfortunately, in the real world, many teachers carry their personal lifetime baggage with them and become mini dictators in the classroom (especially as classes grow in size).
Parents (like so many places in the world) work longer and longer hours and participate less in their children's lives and rely on the TV set to do most of the parenting! I look forward to actually going into the classrooms and seeing how things are.
My project to convert under the house into a comfortable room for guests and volunteers is coming along slowly. With some help from a local Italian handyman (Gino) - we have installed a small bath and a toilet (both found for $2 at the local dump) and I have tiled the floor and walls. Gino is 72 years old and seems to survive on coffee and cigarettes! He regularly comes to work early on a Sunday morning and I think he works not because he wants more money - but just because he loves to work (maybe works to live)!
He doesn't talk much and works quickly and I've never seen him actually write down measurements. He made a mistake with the calculations for the toilet pipes - which means I am now spending my afternoons digging a deep trench for the sewerage pipes when I am finished I will be able to enter the Miss Universe body building contest! Of course I could just pay the $200 to get a digger in - but my feeling is if I can do it myself, I will do it myself (and I feel a lot of satisfaction in it - with every flush!). Even if I had the money spare - there are so many other things that need doing, and that's before I think of the many projects and campaigns around the world that need support!
I hope I will soon hear from people in Japan who are interested in volunteering here or in Ecuador. Maybe I will even be able to entice my good friends (the Scan clan) to come and live here for a while! And the new deep eco-tour plan seems to be going well, with the revised dates of May 10th to 18th seeming to be more suitable. I hope this will be the start to regular tours. For now it is time to plant some more vegies and feed our three happy chickens, Molly, Holly and Lucy. I hope this finds you well!
For Life,
anja, pacha and yani.
After breakfast (home made millet pancakes are traditional on our Sundays) we went to the local markets and visited the colony of fruit bats in the remnant rainforest. You look up into the trees at hundreds of twisting, flapping, screeching creatures - careful not to make a big noise that would disturb them. It is our cathedral. I have always felt that nature is God's greatest church and never feel guilty about not sitting in a building listening to a sermon on a Sunday.
My daughter, Pacha, is now going to a Christian School (mostly because it is very close by and has very small classes) and although the school principal assured me that 'doctrine' is not enforced, Pacha sometimes comes home with songs about God and mentions Jesus. I make sure that she knows there are many emlightened messengers of God (Buddha, Mohammed, HH Dalai Lama, Bahaoula etc) - and that, in fact, all of creation is a message from God. I think a spirit of reverence and respect for Life is so fundamentally important - whatever name Pacha and Yani will decide to call this in their later life doesn't matter - as long as they have a sense of the sacred and basic principles of kindness, respect, reverence, love! I think they (and I!) will be happy.
I am very happy that the schoopl has a strong conservation theme. It is part of the local landcare group, has a reef guardianship program, participates in clean up Australia day and has a big garden project including planting a rainforest, tropical fruit orchard and a permaculture vegie garden. I couldn't help but volunteer to help and find myself now listed as the 'consultant' for this project hopefully some volunteers will soon arrive to help me with this task!
It has begun to cool down enough here to start planting vegetable seedlings. Pacha has her own garden patch and has planted Spinach, beetroot, spring onion, sunflowers and zinnias. My patch, deeply mulched with horse manure, has a few more plants - including a big cassava shrub. Cassava is the perfect plant for the tropics and from this one bush I will be able to grow a hundred more throughout the garden. In 9 months it will yield big starchy cassava roots - the mainstay of so much of the tropical world (including Ecuador) and so delicious too! This, along with the sweet potato, will provide a lot of our food in the coming months.
Then there is the longer term plan of the fruit orchard. I have started some 20 papaya seedlings and recently planted lychees and some more passionfruit. I have been quite busy lately. I have been attending a part time course to become a teacher's assistant. It's been fun to learn together with other women - though most of the material has been commonsense so far. In theory there is a great respect in Australia for cultural diversity and teaching methods that focus on positive reinforcement. Unfortunately, in the real world, many teachers carry their personal lifetime baggage with them and become mini dictators in the classroom (especially as classes grow in size).
Parents (like so many places in the world) work longer and longer hours and participate less in their children's lives and rely on the TV set to do most of the parenting! I look forward to actually going into the classrooms and seeing how things are.
My project to convert under the house into a comfortable room for guests and volunteers is coming along slowly. With some help from a local Italian handyman (Gino) - we have installed a small bath and a toilet (both found for $2 at the local dump) and I have tiled the floor and walls. Gino is 72 years old and seems to survive on coffee and cigarettes! He regularly comes to work early on a Sunday morning and I think he works not because he wants more money - but just because he loves to work (maybe works to live)!
He doesn't talk much and works quickly and I've never seen him actually write down measurements. He made a mistake with the calculations for the toilet pipes - which means I am now spending my afternoons digging a deep trench for the sewerage pipes when I am finished I will be able to enter the Miss Universe body building contest! Of course I could just pay the $200 to get a digger in - but my feeling is if I can do it myself, I will do it myself (and I feel a lot of satisfaction in it - with every flush!). Even if I had the money spare - there are so many other things that need doing, and that's before I think of the many projects and campaigns around the world that need support!
I hope I will soon hear from people in Japan who are interested in volunteering here or in Ecuador. Maybe I will even be able to entice my good friends (the Scan clan) to come and live here for a while! And the new deep eco-tour plan seems to be going well, with the revised dates of May 10th to 18th seeming to be more suitable. I hope this will be the start to regular tours. For now it is time to plant some more vegies and feed our three happy chickens, Molly, Holly and Lucy. I hope this finds you well!
For Life,
anja, pacha and yani.
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