Back on the mainland

So after a month long disappearance or so, I´m back in the land of computers. Or at least back on the mainland of Nicaragua after three weeks on Ometepe Island, a volcanic island in the middle of lake Nicaragua. I was living and working on a finca taking a permaculture design course. It is hard to begin to describe it, and perhaps this is a matter of needing more distance, or perhaps it will always be confusing. It was a time of contradictions.
What is permaculture-this may depend who you ask. Officially, it stands for permanent agriculture and permanent culture-the idea that we should design agricultural and social systems that are not only sustainable, but regenerative. That will nourish and heal the environment and the people who are a part of the environment. Systems that will have the potential to last forever.
I am interested in permaculture because I see it as one of many solutions driven approaches to addressing food insecurity on a local and global scale. I don´t want my own little piece of land in paradise. I don´t want to go live on an eco-village, and frankly, i don´t even see myself leaving the city. But it don´t matter. Or at least i believe it don´t matter. That is what is cool about permaculture. It is a framework for approaching community and environment and it can be applied on any kind of scale, from massive commercial farms to your city community garden plot. I´ve heard it can be applied to your sock drawer, but if you´re doing that, you have way too much free time on your hands and you should figure out some way to be useful or at least get dirty.
So i´m not going to get into a whole lot about permaculture design, but i´d love to talk about it when i see you. (Mysterious ´you´ who is apparently reading my blog.) But in a nutshell, permaculture can be used to help regenerate the soil, micro-climate, landscape etc. in areas that have faced environmental destruction (which is to say-everywhere) and create healthy environments in which an abundance of food can be grown to meet human need and the landscape is designed to promote positive community development. I really feel that Finca Bona Fide is doing an amazing job on these fronts, leading by example in the community. They seem like a great example of small scale sustainable development work that really addresses the specific needs of a community, that is willing to adapt to changing needs and situations. They offer a holistic approach to increasing food security and economic development while promoting environmental regeneration.
But...I felt a major disconnect between the politics that seem to be running the organization and the framework that was brought to the course. It´s a lot of the same old shit of other environmental movements-unackowledged white privilege and a failure to recognize how the language we use in our movements can be incredibly alienating to certain communities-serving to perpetuate the very imbalances we are supposedly working against and creating major roadblocks to the creation of an inclusive movement. That´s a whole lot of jargon basically to say that i felt the course was taught to the white ´nothern´ (largely US) participants and assumed a great deal about their reasons for wanting to take a permaculture course and did not adequately include the Nicaraguan participants in a meaningful way. This is not to say that i didn´t learn tons from the course-i did. The instructors were incredibly knowledgeable and really engaging. We did a whole lot of theoretical work and plenty of really practical design processes and solutions too. I´m definitely ready to get some more farm work on when i get back to the states. And i want to learn to weld. I figure i like to solder, it´s just a slightly larger scale.