Honey grubs, bow strings, and babies with a crush on Mama Gaia....

So it seems obvious to me that this oil-based civilization/economy isn't going to last much later; which is why I'm doing everything I can to learn skills long lost, including the good skills of communication, community and love. These skills, I found while I was in Africa, have long disappeared from our culture, if you compare our culture to cultures abroad.

In Malawi, people spent a good 80% of their day with family and friends, socializing as they cooked meals, nursed babies, carried water and took afternoon siestas. They moved at a very slow pace, paid no attention to time or clocks or schedules, because in Malawi, where you live in a village that is made up of your extended family, to not spend a little time talking with everyone you see during your day to day life is a level of rude that Americans can't understand.

The other Peace Corps volunteers I was with perceived the Malawians as lazy...they said it was our job, our American duty, to teach Malawians to stick to a schedule and show up to things on time, to not spend afternoons lazily napping under trees with family and friends, to not spend 45 minutes in the morning just greeting everyone around them. They said it was backward behavior, and that in order to move into the modern world, Malawians needed to learn to dismiss their natural inclination to love and be loved, to build community with everything they did, and instead, join the rat race and make some cash.

But Malawians told me the same thing, over and over again. "Our children, our families, are everything to us...we don't have anything [material] but we have beautiful children..." And they did. They had children who didn't know the meaning of lonely or bored, because they where always with someone, always doing something interesting. Mental illness and depression are almost unknown among the Malawians, because people are genuinely happy...something I don't see all that often here in the states. I left the Peace Corps super early, because I didn't want to hear any more about "teaching Malawians to stay on task.." As far as I can see...we are the ones who need to learn to leave our tasks and live again...

So that is what I'm attempting to learn, through rewilding. I want to leave this system of time, commitments, schedules and deadlines, and instead, live in a world where community, relationships, love, loyalty, living, breathing people and animals and plants are important, not money or job title or the number of people I have working for me.

So I'm teaching people around me to be more interested in these things too...the two-year old I watch is rewilding with me...we learn about plants together as we explore his neighborhood. I'm proud to say he was hugging and kissing trees yesterday...also, he already knows a ton about elephants, lions, gorillas and chimps...I'm fostering wild awareness in him and in me, at the same time.

I also patiently learn from others...beautiful Zac taught me to make a bow string yesterday out of artificial sinew....I'm going this morning to Forest-Park to shoot before I meet with Rhonda at my school to talk about my financial aid...

Last night, Theressa fed me honey-grubs from a batch of honey she was processing, while Wood and Patrick regaled us with stories...about everything from aliens and UFOs, to their travels, to their adventures in brewing and tincture-making....

What can I say? I'm blessed I live next door to some of the most beautiful people in the world...

You do too...I guarantee it...but to find that out, you have to go make friends with your neighbors...

Love ya,
Carrot