WATERFALL!

Yesterday volunteers Andres, Freya, Andy and myself hiked to this waterfall only 30  minutes from my house.

Making a start

Three days ago we started the remodeling job on our new Waldorf-inspired community outreach center here in Sauce, Peru.  We are beginning with the necessary basics; new plumbing pipes and the foundation for what will be the bathroom.  Because of humidity concerns the bathroom is to be built of bricks but the rest of the planned structure that will comprise of a classroom, two bedrooms for our volunteers, kitchen and clothes washing area will be built of 'kincha', a traditional building material in this part of the Amazon basin that is essentially the same as the old English 'wattle and daub' whereby mud is applied to a woven wood matrix to make the walls.  It's a tried and true method that is eco-friendly, cheap and we like the soft aesthetics of the earth-tone finish.  These walls will be topped with the traditional palm-frond roofing.

Maestro Simon and helper putting in plumbing pipes and foundation for the bathroom.

We are making an effort to make the whole stucture wheelchair friendly as we plan to be able to accomodate both volunteers and community members with disabilities in the future.

An open letter

TO ALL GOOD-HEARTED CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH.

The 21st century belongs to us. We the people. There are grounds for optimism, we are waking up.  They are few, we are many. And they are shaking in their boots, hence the increasing repression and mind-control.  Hanging on to an outmoded paradigm with bloody fingernails.  It's got to go, has to.  We are increasingly seeing through the Great Lie.  What is the Great Lie?

 Selling arms to both sides and posing as an angel of peace.

 Keeping an unjust economic system alive after it has clearly died.  Time to pull the plug.

 Pretending there is democracy while converting the system to a one party kleptocratic dictatorship.

 Emphasizing illness when it's health that we all want.

 Orwellian distortion:  War is peace, hate is love, bad is good, slavery is freedom etc.

 Lies after lies, you know what they are, fill in the blanks yourself........

It's time to build a whole new world based on values of mutual caring, equality and support for basic human needs, not control and cynical manipulation. Let's find a way to bring kind people to the fore and retire the psychopaths.  They have had their day.  And not just human needs either, support for all life forms in this amazing planetary ecology.

A perfect world?  Unlikely.  But it could be a whole lot better than this.  We are all individuals and we are mostly kind, good and caring.  We are all inherantly powerful and we all know there is something dreadfully wrong in our society.  For a start, it's all gotten way too big and bloated.  Time to downsize across the board.  There is enough for all, but heading for smaller units is generally the way towards fairness; ask anyone who has given the matter serious thought.

George Orwell said, look to the proles, and he was on the right track.  But I would say, look to the indigenous.  Terence McKenna talked about the archaic revival.  Yes, but it's got to be totally modern as well.  Modern but with some ancient essential understandings that are now being increasingly backed up by cutting-edge quantum physics:

  All is connected.

  All is conscious.

  We are each made of atoms.  Each atom contains mind-boggling power.  We are all
  tremendously powerful but mostly don't know it.

  This place is just one of many dimensions.

  Circles over hierarchies.

  We are eternal.  We came from somewhere and we go back.  Want to call it the Zero Point Field?       OK by me.  The Kingdom of Heaven?  The Void?  Nirvana?  Fine, whatever.


 The essence of all is love.


There is much to be done so we must proceed slowly  -  The Buddha

Thanks for all the help

Also the good wishes and positive feedback.

Heading to Germany

During the first week of June I'm off to Germany where I have been invited to attend a conference about volunteers.  I will also be visiting the offices of Freunde der Erziehungskunst Rudolf Steiners to talk about our Estrella del Sur projects in Peru and to thank them for helping us make the step of aquiring a building site for our new center in Sauce.  This help was in the form of an interest-free loan.  We are really happy to finally get a place of our own that we can shape into a very welcoming educational and social center for the community.

 Here are our volunteers from Germany, Andreas and Freya, in front of our newly aquired building site in Sauce.  It measures 11 meters wide by 20 meters deep and is one block away from the lake.  It is a different site than the one we first looked at back in February.  We had problems with the price which kept going up. The new site is just a few meters away and is better in that it has a large sports area behind it which will give the children more room to play.
We would like to thank our friends who responded to our appeal for help to buy a permanent home for Estrella del Sur.  Shortly we will start remodeling this traditional jungle-style building using funds kindly donated by various friends to double its size to create a classrom space.  We also plan to build two bedrooms for our volunteers, a bathroom with shower, a kichen and dining area, gardens, a playground and a covered area for woodworking and other crafts such as candlemaking.
We welcome visitors.
We also welcome the donation of more funds so we can complete our remodeling project.

We have recently started  Friday workshops for senior citizens 60 to 80 years old from 3-5 pm which is attended by 20 people.  We offer weaving, embroidery, knitting and other crafts.  We encourage participants to tell their personal stories and it has been interesting to find out more about 'the old days' when Sauce was a much more isolated place and there was a lot more magic.  Several report seeing mermaids in the lake when they were younger, also balls of fire, which is likely because the whole area is seismically active and it seems to have been more so in the past.  After a glass of fruit juice and a piece of cake the participants go off home happy.  This is the first such gathering offered in Sauce for older people.  Lourdes is glad to have all these new friends.

Help us buy our Waldorf community outreach building!

 When Lourdes (who is currently back in Cusco teaching a Waldorf education course to new teachers) and I first moved to Sauce some months back we were kindly lent this humble building with adobe walls and a dirt floor to use as a classroom for our Waldorf-based educational and community outreach program.
Recently the owner, who is the director of one of the local primary schools, told us that he has decided to put it up for sale.
Hey folks!  We'd like to buy it.  Can you help?
As they say, there are three important factors when buying real estate:  Location, location and location.  This building and adjoining garden space has all three.  Many people have expressed that Laguna Azul is one of the most beautiful spots in Peru and this property is one block back from the lakeshore.
Once we have become owners we can remodel and transform the structure into something much better for our purposes and make the garden into a beautiful play area for the children.
The lot is 300 square meters (about 900 sqare feet) and is selling for 40,000 Soles (Peru's national currency) which translates as $15,000 US at today's exchange rate.
We would love for anyone who would like to support the foundation of a new kind of Waldorf-based initiative, not a school, but a center for artistic and academic life enrichment for children and youth living close to the bottom on the social totem pole to come together and give us a hand to raise this amount.
Unfortunately there is the possibility the property will be sold to another buyer which would leave us looking for another place to start afresh.  That is not a scenario we want as we have already invested somewhat in painting the building, doing some repair work and putting in a new cement floor.  We would love to stay and make the place even better for the years to come.
We envision this as a pilot project which will hopefully provide a new model to inspire others to begin similar ventures in other communities.  The emphasis on arts and handwork is to engage the right hemisphere of the brain and provide some balance in worldwide education which increasingly only focuses on left brain processes.  The aim is to support the emergence of balanced human beings.
This project also provides a venue for young volunteers from the developed world to come and have a life-changing experience.
If you would like to make a donation large or small please contact me at  martinstevens@juno.com 
Thank you!

Sailing/rowing skiff

Steel rudder

Skiff with shallow-draft keel

Because I'm presently all wrapped up in building our house in Sauce I have had to put my large sailing catamaran project on hold temporarily.  In the meantime I had the notion to have a 17 foot wooden skiff built by a local boat builder which I would then adapt for sail and rowing.  So far I have added a shallow-draft keel with steel rudder to the bottom which I have also fiberglassed to prevent wood borers entering and then painted the exterior.

Home made oars

Next step will be to turn the boat over, paint the inside and fit out with seats, a tiller, mast, boom, oars and oarlocks.
It won't be winning any prizes for speed but rowing it will be good excercise and it should remain pretty flat when sailing in a blow.  Lots of weight below.....

Our new dock with renovated dugout canoe