Muchas gracias

A big thanks to all who have donated and supported our ongoing work in Pisac and the Peruvian Amazon.
We know that things are tight for everyone in the present financial climate but for those who are able please do consider helping us in whatever way possible. 
In addition to our ever present need for financial donations of whatever size we also welcome visitors to Peru bringing in quality school supplies.
There is a specific requirement for my woodcarving and carpentry classes that maybe a kind visitor could bring in from outside Peru.  I have plenty of big carving gouges, but we are lacking in fine detail gouges.  There is a brand called Flexcut which makes really nice tools.  I have one set of six and the children take it in turns to use them, but another set or two would be really nice to have.  Also beeswax wood polish - Jason kindly brought me a jar from the States but it is getting low and we could use some more.
Please contact me regarding any type of donation at martinstevens@juno.com
Or call my cell 011 51 84 984 982 168
House line 011 51 84 775 285
Thanks again for your support
Lourdes and Martin

Our Food Program




  In addition to our participation in the Kusi Kawsay school, Lourdes and I also have a program in which we provide a hot meal on every school night for fifty children in the town of Pisac who attend evening classes after working as domestic servants during the day.  These children are mostly orphans or come from families with alcoholic parents who neglect them.  The government provides a very minimal education for them in a seperate school from that attended by the rest of the town's children.
We began the program almost four years ago and it has become clear that many children attend the evening classes mainly to get the hot meal living as they do on the margins of society.  Since starting the program the children have been attending school on a more regular basis, so it seems that the food is instrumental in ensuring they get an at least minimal education.
We also give each child presents at Christmas time.

Sixth grade field trip



Huge adobe walls over volcanic stonework at Raqchi



1. We hired a rather dilapidated bus and headed South.  Thirteen students and five adults.  The theme was geology and our first stop was a chalk mine where the mineral was burned and turned into white plaster.  There are many such mines on the road south of Pisac on the way to the hot springs above Sicuani on the Altiplano, our final destination where we spent the night in a primitive hostel after bathing in hot, mineral-rich waters.  Along the way we saw how the geology changed with some areas displaying red and yellow rocks, the sign of iron present in the earth.  We stopped at Raqchi where the Incas had made use of volcanic pumice to build a huge ceremonial site.

Woodcarving class

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Senior woodcarvers with lamps they have been making

We are now halfway through a four week woodcarving class for our senior students.  Almost all the students have completed a lampbase.  We learned how to apply gold and silver leaf to wood.  Now we are moving on to making a variety of other objects including candle holders, bowls and salad servers.

Seed planting day

6th grade preparing to plant

The Sacred Valley of the Incas has for many centuries fed a large human population.  It is famous for its large-kernel maize called choclo.  There are thousands of varieties of potato as well as other crops such as habas (broad beans), quinoa and kiwicha (amaranth).
Our school is attuned to the ancient agricultural calendar of the Incas and their predecessors by way of getting our students in touch with their ancestral heritage which was for many years repressed by the Spanish colonial system.  Today we had a ceremony in which seeds were blessed by all the children in a short ceremony in which thanks were given to Pachamama, who is much more than just 'mother earth'.  In the Inca cosmology she is also the feminine principle of the cosmos, her male counterpart being Pachacamac.

Parent and shaman Rene Franco blessing seeds prior to planting

Afterwards each student planted the seeds in his or her own garden plot cultivated throughout the school grounds.

New Kindergarten Kusi Kawsay Pisac

The kindergarten now has its grass thatch roof and mud-plaster walls

Kusi Kawsay means 'happy life' in Quechua  and that is the primary notion behind this new school located high in the Andes near Cusco.  Its educational philosophy is a blend of pre-conquest Andean cultural values with Waldorf pedagogy.  Our physical situation at the entrance to the Sacred Valley of the Incas is a fortunate one as there is still an active adherance to the ancient agricultural calendar here with corresponding festivals that happen throughout the year.
Our school is markedly different from the standard Peruvian state schools which are based on a military model.  During my first year in Peru I was amazed and appalled to see very young children participating in parades on patriotic holidays dressed in uniform and goose-stepping like German soldiers in the 1940's.
Our school seeks to demonstrate a more peaceful alternative in a modern way, but with roots that stretch back to a time before the people were conquered by the Spanish military and the Church.  Five hundred years of forced colonialism have left deep scars in the collective psyche here which we are attempting in a small way to heal.
Our new kindergarten building is rapidly taking shape as seen in the photos above.

Philosophical Musings - It's about waking up

It is considered natural for children to pose the deep questions; "Where do we come from?  Where are we going?  What is the meaning of our life in the world?"  But by the the time most children enter adulthood most seem to leave these basic queries behind and settle for lives spent tackling the immediate pressing concerns of paying the bills, keeping the house in order and the children fed.  However, a seeming minority of adults, myself included, never lose their basic sense of wonder towards nature, humanity and the cosmos and spend their lives considering the deeper questions til the very end.  Some become philosophers, some involve themselves with an established religion, while others concentrate on one of the many branches of science.
Myself, I've stayed a generalist, looking into the Great Mystery through a variety of lenses.  In childhood I was fortunate enough to have had, with no effort of my own, what Abraham Maslow calls "peak experiences", mystical moments when my consciousness, normally only focused on the mundane details of daily life, suddenly expanded into a state of much wider and deeper perception with an accompanying feeling of ecstatic euphoria.
Later in life I was able to correlate my own experiences with such well-known historical figures as Walt Whitman, William Blake, even Dante and St Theresa, to realise there have always been human beings who have reported back sublime experiences such as my own beyond those felt through the five senses.
In my own life I was drawn to join the Quakers at fourteen years of age as a way of joining others in a meditative setting, then at eighteen I became a disciple of an Indian guru.  His organization was permeated with irrelevant layers of baloney and spiritual bureaucracy, but there was an essence connected to the most ancient yogic wisdom of India that kept me in its orbit for over twenty-five years.  Eventually there was a natural falling away from this path and I found myself drawn to two seemingly opposing ways on my personal quest to fathom that most basic of questions; "What the heck is this all about anyway?"
One of the ways was extremely cerebral:  Cutting-edge science with its focus on holograms, quanta, string theory, astro-physics, new understandings about the role of consciousness and the like.  The other way was not cerebral at all; in fact its focus was on the deep past when humanity was in a pre-rational state, namely shamanism, the original spiritual way of early humankind that is still employed by many indigenous groups who have maintained their traditional roots.

SCIENCE

I was attracted to the path of science because it is clear that at this very point in time we are cresting a hill, leaving behind one paradigm that has been in place for the last three hundred years (and has brought humanity to the brink of destruction and Orwellian enslavement) and just at the beginning of another that portends to complete a huge cycle.  What appears to be coming into focus is nothing less than the merging of contemporary science with the most ancient of human wisdom traditions.
It is really easy to get bogged down in the minutae of scientific investigation.  What I am always after is a distilation of basic scientific concepts to their essence without over-simplification to the point of incoherence.  My own approach echoes that of Einstein's who attempted to "create the simplest possible scheme of thought that will bind together the observed facts".
I've read dozens of books from such notable authors as David Bohm, David F. Peat, Fritjof Kapra, Carl Sagan, Isaac Bentov, Michael Talbot, Lynn Taggert, Rupert Sheldrake and many others, but the writer who has helped me the most has been Ervin Laszlo, most especially with his work entitled "Science and the Akashic Field - An Integral Theory of Everything".  In it this scientist-philosopher demonstrates that in addition to the existence of ever subtler energy fields from the Gravity Field, the Electro-Magnetic Field, the Higgs Field, the strong and weak Nuclear Fields, we now need to add the Akashic Field which can be understood as the original plenum of existence, the Metaverse out of which our universe was born and to which it will return.
In directing our attention to the Akashic Field he bravely paves the way for a reunification between the poetic mystical language of ancient Indian rishis who referred to Brahman as the absolute ground of existence and cutting-edge science which is now at the beginnings of a revolutionary change all the way down to its historical foundations.
Three hundred years ago the fledgling discipline of science and the scientific method had no choice but to distance itself from the Church which had hitherto been the sole arbiter of knowledge regarding the natural world and cosmos.  By rightfully insisting on measurement and repeatable experiments it began the long journey towards the absolute materialism that today dominates academia.
The great revolution underway today can be expressed thusly:  We are moving from a science which sees matter as its basic foundation to another perspective which understands that consciousness preceeds material existence - which is precisely the view held by the ancients.  Or to put it another way; matter-before-mind is being replaced by mind-before-matter.
There is an enormous difference between these two viewpoints and right now there is a battle going on between the old guard of rank materialists who dominate discourse in the universities and scientific publications and more open-minded scientists who argue for a whole new pardigm in science, one that is inclusive and wholistic, one that is willing to consider all phenomena, however anomalous.
The stance of the materialist old guard can be labelled 'Scientism' and it can be identified as a particular level of consciousness no different than religious fundamentalism.  It starts with a premise - everything is material - then all incoming data is forced to fit inside the narrow defining box of the premise.
That worked for three hundred years since Descartes and Newton, but now that line of thought finds itself trapped in a dead-end. 
Finally there is no objective ground on which to stand.
Time for a paradigm shift.

SHAMANISM

The majority of pop music has always been mono-thematic in its choice of theme for lyrics.  It's almost always about romantic love which can get tedious.  So it was refreshting to me in the early 70's to hear ex-Beatle George Harrison put out the song 'My Sweet Lord' which breaks out of the mold entirely.  The words of the song are a mystic's cry for direct perception -'I really want to see you, I really want to be with you'.  Not faith but direct experience.
Direct experience has always been my compass needle and has steered me away from getting involved with any religion.  Religions seem to me to be about faith, belief and also the sense of belonging to a community.  Not for this loner I'm afraid.  Yes I like to feel part of a community, but not at the expense of individual direct experience of the transcendent, by which I mean the world of expanded consciousness beyond the mundane (yet paradoxically immanent within the mundane as well, exemplified by William Blake's  'a universe within a grain of sand').
A shaman by definition deals with direct experiences.  She or he leaves the world of the mundane behind and enters subtle worlds of non-ordinary reality to effect healing, to have questions answered or to contact ancestors.  He or she also experiences directly that the universe is a vast interconnected web of wholeness.
A shaman or shamanic practitioner knows through direct experience that this world of consensus reality is but one station on the dial and that there are many other stations that can be tuned into.  This world that the vast majority of people belive to be the only one is in fact only one of many.  Cutting-edge physics is only now beginning to agree with this perspective but it is one that has been known by shamans, mystics and clairvoyants for millennia.

PABLO AMARINGO

In 2009 I and a friend were fortunate to visit the studio of visionary artist and ex-shaman Pablo Amaringo in the city of Pucallpa in the peruvian Amazon a few months before his death.  He graciously agreed to a video interview for a book my friend is writing.  Using an artist's brush for a pointer he stood beside one of his pictures and talked about his cosmology gleaned from direct experience as a shaman for many years.  He said that this world is but one of many inhabited universes that interpenetrate with this one.  He said that our sun and the planets are all inhabited by non-physical, but nevertheless totally real and alive beings.  He said that all of nature is alive and conscious, even rocks, and that there are spirits animating all living things.  He said that for him Christ was a very real presence and that he had met him during ayahuasca journeys many times as the force of absolute good in the universe.  He said the spirit of Christ was absolutely central to the whole history of humanity.
What struck me with my background in Steiner education and anthroposophy was that he was echoing exactly what Rudolf Steiner had tried to communicate in the early years of the twentieth century.
Steiner was a clairvoyant who was able to perceive the Akashic field directly to gain the same insights as a mestizo shaman in the western Amazon.  I like that.


To be continued.....

Saturday Sweatlodge

Yesterday we had a sweatlodge for parents and students of Kusi Kawsay school in Pisac.  Yes, this ancient ceremonial way has journeyed South from its origins in North America and landed in South America.  Two parents from our school, Roman and Fielding, have kindly organised an open lodge to be held every Saturday morning in the garden behind their house.
I got to be the firekeeper, the one who transfers the red-hot rocks from the blazing fire into the lodge, a womb-like dome structure made of thin branches over which are placed canvas cloths to make the interior pitch dark and to keep in the prodigious heat and steam.  There is a hole in the earth in the center of the lodge around which sit the participants in a circle, in this case about twenty of us.  Hot rocks are placed in the hole to which is added ladle after ladleful of water.  The steam produced has the effect of a sauna, but a sweatlodge is much more than a simple sauna, it is a also a traditional ceremony in which the participants come together in a way that is both profoundly spiritual and undeniably physical. 
This particular lodge is based on the Blackfoot variation of the Northern United States in its physical design, and the way the ceremony is divided into four rounds, but it also manifests as a fusion of Andean culture and that of various North American tribes.  All indigenous cultures use the altered state induced by singing to affect healing entry into subtler states of being than the merely mundane and our lodge featured songs from the Blackfoot and Lakota peoples as well as healing melodies from our own Andean region.
There is also a time for verbal prayers and when my turn came I introduced the group to the Lakota phrase, used in all their traditional ceremonies; "Ho-mataqui-asin" which translates as "all my relations".
All tribal peoples who have not lost their traditional roots have the common understanding that everything is related to everything else, that fundamentally all is one.  This is also expressed in the Mayan greeting; "In-L'akesh" which means "I greet you as another one of myself".
Our modern industrial culture has largely lost this basic orientation and understanding with the unfortunate results we see and feel all around; alienation, disregard for the environment, painfully short-term thinking; the quarterly report over regard for seven generations into the future as practiced by many native peoples.
It was a pleasure to come together in this way with young and old, feel our essential human oneness underlying our everyday roles as students and teachers, parents and children and for a little while step out of time into the timeless ceremonial world.

All is well

What a pleasure to be working with these Peruvian students.  They are all very creative and keen to learn about woodcarving.  Tomorrow we are going to explore wood decoration including how to apply gold leaf as part of an overall design.
Yesterday's rather chaotic beginning has all been resolved and today our two hour class flew by without problems.  I feel grateful to be working within this new school which is not only providing a quality humanitarian education for local children but is also serving as a pilot project by way of practical example that there are alternatives  to standard-issue state schools.  We have the approval of the Peruvian ministry of education and the support of UNESCO.

Secondary students carving lamp bases

The kids are all right

It was total chaos today starting my woodworking class with sixteen secondary students. I didn't have enough clamps to attatch the blocks of wood to the workbenches or sufficient carving mallets as I had come prepared to teach eight students but instead had to work with sixteen very enthusiastic teens all very keen to carve wood in short order. I had to remember to just stay relaxed and let the story unfold. In the end it all worked out OK and tomorrow I will arrive better equipped.
The project is to make an electric lamp with a wood base which will combine woodcarving with a practical application of the physics course the student have just completed which included an introduction to electricity.

Lourdes Jibaja de Stevens

was a teacher at the Lima Waldorf School for almost twenty years.  As a class teacher she accompanied two groups of students for eight years from first through eighth grade.  Although she very much likes Waldorf education it always troubled her that the Lima school only catered to the Peruvian elite.  Her university degree was in sociology and she always felt personally drawn to offer a better level of education to Peruvian children further down the social ladder.  During her sabbatical year in 2005 she accepted an invitation to temporarily help out at a state school in the small village of Taray near Cusco to replace an absent first grade teacher.  She thought she was just volunteering for a month or two, but now it is six years later and she is still here teaching the same group of children. 
Following difficulties with the state school authorities a group of parents decided to form an association and start their own school.  A beautiful plot of land was donated and the Kusi Kawasy school came into being.  Lourdes is really the axis around which the whole school functions.  In addition to being the class teacher for the sixth grade she is also teaching our 'unofficial' secondary school study group comprising sixteen students whose classroom is at present a makeshift structure until a real secondary school classroom can be built.  As a very experienced Waldorf teacher she is training a new body of younger teachers in this alternative educational approach.

Lourdes with secondary students

Noya Rao school in the Amazon

Shipibo children at the Noya Rao school

I just got back from a few days spent visiting our other educational project being put together by our Shipibo friends in the western Amazon basin.  It is located three hours upstream by boat on the Ucayali river from the jungle city of Pucallpa in the village of Ceilan.
The idea is for it to be a complementary program to supplement, but not replace, the rather inadequate state school in the village.  Consequently classes are held in the afternoons and feature some elements of Waldorf alternative education together with an attempt to revive core parts of Shipibo culture which are in danger of being lost.
It was great to arrive and see the children all dressed in their Shipibo traditional clothing, even the boys who had on hand-painted cushma tunics with some youngsters sporting feather crowns as well.  Women and girls wear the traditional embroidered skirts and iridescent blouses quite a lot, but the cushma is only rarely used by boys and men nowadays.
I had with me on this visit two companions from the 'Friends of Waldorf education' organization based in Berlin and they really liked what they saw in this brand-new initiative.
Our two Shipibo teachers, Maria and Alberto are keen to attend a seminar on Waldorf education to be held next year in Lima.

The new kindergarten building is advancing rapidly

day by day.  It is a wood frame and will have a paja grass thatch roof to blend in with the natural suroundings.  There has been a real effort to build the school in an environmentally conscious way.

The Kusi Kawsay school

is situated in a fabulous setting right below the ancient Inca ruins of Pisac with a view of several sacred mountains including Apu Linli and Apu Pachatusun.  Just attending the school guarantees a built-in exercise program as students and staff have to climb a steep hill every morning before classes.  There is no car access just a footpath which is quite a challenge getting building materials and tools up to the site.
The school is less than one year old and construction is still ongoing.  I just completed the fabrication and hanging of four classroom doors which will eventually have glass installed.  Note the traditional Inca trapezoidal design of the doors and windows of the classrooms.
Two of the classrooms were built as one long space so they can double as a small auditorium when we hold plays and presentations.  I also built and installed two big soundproof divider doors which will normally be in the closed position making a wall between the two classrooms but can be opened up when the need arises.

The Kusi Kawsay school

has a kindergarten, elementary school grades one through six and an 'unofficial' study group of older secondary students.  I'm due to begin a four week woodworking course next week.  The problem was that although we had tools and workbenches, we had no roofed area to shelter us from sun, rain and wind.  The solution?  Me and the students are building a temporary carpentry workshop.

Kusi Kawsay School Pisac, Peru

Sept 1 2010

I just spent the last month building doors for four classrooms.
The school is really starting to come together with the new kindergarten rapidly taking form.
Don Sebastian from the Q'ero nation held a dispacho ceremony a few weeks ago for the students and teachers.
Now I'm making plans to teach a four-week carpentry and woodcarving class to the secondary school students.

KUSI KAWSAY means happy life in Quechua and is a new independant school in the Andean market town of Pisac.  It offers an alternative education based on the traditional Andean cosmovision combined with Waldorf teaching methods.  My wife Lourdes teaches 6th grade as well as guiding new teachers based on her more than twenty years of experience in Rudolf Steiner education.