Waking up in HEPA – our first week

It’s cold and wet here.  Unusually so I am told.  Floods in Qld before we left, earthquakes in NZ and Japan, it feels like the planet is trying to shake us off like a fleas off a dog.

But I woke up this morning to the sound of gurgling water.  After arriving at HEPA in the dark of night what a surprise to see a river not a stones throw from out hut.  It may be wet and cold, but this place is truly beautiful.  One of the goals of HEPA is to allow people to live in harmony with nature and they have chosen a great place to do it.

To a degree we are guinea pigs here as we are the first lot of foreigners (other than Dave, Joni and Robert who have been here for a while) to come and stay for an extended period.  As such it has been a learning process for the SPERI/HEPA staff about what to tell people to bring, what to expect etc.  For example gum boots and raincoats are a necessity here at this time of year, as is winter clothing, and I mean like going to the snow winter clothing!  Well it’s not that cold but as it is quite humid it feels colder than it really is.

My feet were soaked and cold for the first few days until we had some boots brought in.  Nights are particularly cold so some thermals and probably a good quality sleeping bag would have been great.  But we have plenty of blankets and we built a fire in the hut – yes, an open fire that is pretty much just a slab of clay in the middle of a timber hut.  But the locals seem perfectly comfortable with this and have been doing it for a long time so who am I to argue?

There is no chimney, the smoke just goes up and out the ventilation in the roof except if the fire isn’t lit properly, it can then get a bit smoky in here.

Living in a community is an interesting experience.  Our house is still being finished (no toilet yet).  So, meanwhile we are sharing space in House number 2 (there are 3 houses in this compound so the imaginative names House 1, 2 and 3 are used).

Some partitions have been constructed but they are very thin and only about two meters high so there is very little privacy.  But everyone is very nice and everyone gets along fine.  In our hut we have Cassy and Sai in one room, Tia and me in another (the twins alternate between me and Cass).  Then we have Paula and Tyo her son in another room, and one room was used by Lawry and Jessica but they have now gone to Simacai (another farm near Chinese border) where they will be teaching English so Djit gets her room back.  We also have Ryan, Vin, Djit and Huong living here in house 2 with the occasional ring in, for example Anong (Lao student) has been crashing here lately.  Jasmine is in House number 1 with Eva.  Eva is like the queen bee of HEPA.  She is from Spain and has worked with aid organisations such as Geenpeace and other intentional communities for a very long time.  She is the organiser/manager/instigator of song and dance, and just an all round awesome person.  She is the one on the far right in the photo above.

It seems if anything is going on it happens in our hut.  We have movie nights here (yes I can still download with my trusty 3G stick and we have a projector, screen and Karaoke sound system!).  We have sing alongs, pancake cooking,  cassava cooking, Karaoke… its all happening here!

The Saturday after our arrival we had a huge welcome party.  There was a feast of Vietnamese and Laos style food, lots of corn wine (rocket fuel if there ever was any) and rice wine brewed up by the Laos students.  I don’t drink so had a few mouthfuls and spat the rest out discretely, the corn wine is like drinking metho!

 

 

The music was pumping and there was lots of dancing and singing.  Needless to say there were quite a few sore heads the next day.

Where we are staying there are about 30  of us.  HEPA covers about 400 hectares and most of the eco-farming (Permaculture) students live out on the farms while the staff and volunteers live in the communal huts I’ve already mentioned along the river near the entrance to the property.  In order to avoid chaos, we have a set schedule that looks like the following:

• 6:30am Breakfast
• 8am start work (usually meetings happen at this time)
• 11:30 Lunch
• 2pm back to work
• 6pm dinner

Meals are communal and consist of rice, eggs, greens, tofu, fish and pork from the pigs here on the farm.  It is pretty much the same for every meal but they do mix it up on occasion.  For example sometimes we get sticky rice with a mollases/peanut sauce for breakfast which is quite nice.  The cooking is done mainly by one guy (Mr Luoc) and everyone helps to clean up.  This is done by hand using a three bowl system, cold soapy water, rinsed in clean water, then rinsed again.  So a chain gang gets gets underway which makes the task quite fast.

 

 

On Fridays we have ‘sharing day’ where someone will share something about what they are doing in the morning and in the afternoon we will have workshops or activities around this.  For example last Friday Robert went over the design of his small farm and then we all helped with coming up with ideas to improve it (all based on Permaculture).  Then after lunch we got stuck into it and split into groups to build a few new garden beds, build trellis for tomato plants and so forth.

On Saturday mornings we do community work which involves activities such as cutting firewood for the kitchen fire, cleaning up, and do anything else that we all need done in order to be able to live here.  Then we have the rest of the day off as well as Sundays.   It is not as draconian as it sounds, no one is forced to join in with this work (but most people do) and during the week things are pretty cruisy.

In the local village adjoining the HEPA property is a hot spring bath which is just awesome in this weather.  There is also a small army base close by and a resort of sorts that Ryan and I checked out yesterday.  It is quite pleasant with a little coffee shop and hot baths there including a hot spring heated swimming pool.

There is a town not too far away (they call it Central Town, not sure on its real name) and then a larger town called Pho Chao (pronounced Fur Joe) which is the main place we get supplies from.  We took a trip in recently to get some clothing and other essentials, like jars of Milo and biscuits!

We have plenty of Permaculture design and practice workshops here so I am definitely in the right place to increase my knowledge and practice.  I also have to figure out their IT systems here which is going to be a challenge as all the sites are so remote.  Internet access is by 3G or satellite here but the power is flaky and we often have whole days with no power.  I traced the power from our hut back to the mains and it is just tapped in to the main line, no circuit breakers or meter box.  But of course the management at SPERI understand these limitations so I’ll just do the best I can with what we have and learn as much Permaculture are possible.