3 days to go. Its been fairly lousy weather in London - grey, cold, wet. Sort of good as it means I don't mind being inside and doing errands, and also I don't get nostalgic for staying here as London is great when the sun is out. Andrew & Renae are enjoying the northern lights in Iceland so I can take the opportunity to spread my stuff out for packing.
Last night was brilliant, Jimmy organised a surprise party for Ali & I; 13 of us all up, great food a few drinks and a bit of wii sports. I'm really going to miss everyone, such a great bunch of people and we've really had such a good time over the last few years.
All things have to come to an end though, and I'm really excited about the adventures that await. I think I have done everything that I wanted to do here; most of what I had been looking forward to for this year in the UK was all out of London - more mtb, cycle tours, hikes, festivals, etc. I think when it comes down to it the big city starts to erode my enjoyment of life. There is plenty to do, but it isn't necessarily the experiences that I am looking for any more.
So not to bigger & better things, but very, very different things, a whole new way of life that I can't yet imagine. I really hope that Kufunda will allow me to integrate all the things that I have been learning to date, and put them into practice in a really practical sense that has benefits for the people that we are working with there.
We still don't know exactly what we will be doing there, or exactly what the set-up / system is. We do know that they are doing some very innovative things and that the approach appears to be a practical application of a lot of things I really believe in, but we shall see! We are both really excited and ready to get going, it really will be a relief when we get there so we can stop talking about it and get on with doing it!
Trans Flores Highway......
14 years ago
Dear Ali and Alexis all sounds interesting: looking forward to hearing how you decide to become involved. Do you know HDRA (now Garden ~Organic)'s work on tropical composting? I am sure you know lots about using mulches to hold water from evaporating and so avoiding having to water. HDRA also did a lot of work on plants that grow well with minimum water~known as drought resistant. I also visited years ago a project in the Negev desert where they were growing using an annual rainfall of just a few inches over a period of a couple of weeks, and they grew grain, vegetables as well as desert trees like pistachio quite successfully using the practices of the ancient Nabuteans. However that project had a key factor that they had Loess soil which is very fertile , of quite some depth and can hold water as long as the surface is tilled after rain to create a dust mulch. This is a very brief summary but thought you might be interested. Shame I could have shown you the book I have about this project when you were visiting. I think dust mulches aere quite good even here. All the BEst Anna
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