Eco Cycle-Yatra- Hand Clap 'Choco-la-de' in Moratandi

Imagine, over fifty barefoot children in a circle, chanty South-Indian houses in the background, some curious dogs sniffing your toes, a group of about ten mothers observing from a safe distance, twenty volunteers from all over the world and... ' CHOCO-LA-DE' hand-clap smiles where-ever you look. This is the image that comes to my mind when looking back at my first Eco-Cycle Yatra experience last Monday (19/01/10). Since the launch of the project in September 2009, aiming to share, interact and connect with people from the villages surrounding Sadhana, this was the first time so many volunteers joined in.

We spend the afternoon in Moratandi, a village at walking distance from Sadhana Forest, so bikes were abundant this week. The fact that a Turkish body percussion expert taught us some techniques and songs beforehand -making music with our hands, legs, fingers- certainly put all of in the right mood for clapping and chanting. And the kids... they loved it too! Surprisingly, so did their mothers, fathers, the Tamil villagers passing by bike, passengers stopping in front of the spectacle,  all of them were eager to join in. Soon we were clapping hands with one villager after the other. It felt like giving out free five-fold high-fives. To put it in Lamie's words (one of our Korean volunteers): “everybody twinkle in eyes, singing, so beautiful, I had tears springing out my eyes. Wow!”. When everybody got the flow of the clapping game, Ana and Diego used the middle of the circle as a performance stage for a true Capoeira show.  After some hesitation, the first kids tried to imitate them and participated in the musical combat-dance, encouraged with loud cheers and songs of their friends and family.  Even one of the fathers showcased the flexibility of his Indian body with handstands and acrobatic stunts. He got a loud applause and a subtle suggestion by Ana that he would even dance better if he would abstain from alcohol. Hopefully he will leave a fragrance of pineapple juice when he dances with us next time :)

The ' Choco-la-de song'  caught on. Even five days later, during the chant-and-plant workshop in Children's Land,  girls and boys came up to us in the garden with inviting hands and a huge smile: “choco, choco, la, la, choco choco, de de, chocola, chocode, chocolade!”

Auro Sadhana hammock thoughts

One week in sustainable Utopia. I can't imagine that it is only and at the same time already one week ago since I entered the wooden steps of Sadhana Forest. Even more unearthly is the thought that it is today exactly two weeks ago that I set foot on Indian soil. So many things have happened, so many people I met in just two weeks, so many new thoughts (or at least recycled ones) in my confused mind,... In just seven days Sadhana Forest managed to make me cry. First because of the onion cutting (the amount of onions necessary to feed 110 people is impressive, also for my eyes), then because of the itching-and-I-should-not-scratch mosquito bites on both my legs, arms, belly and back. But most of all the beauty moves me, realizing that people who are living and volunteering here really live up to the philosophy of the founders while staying here: eat vegan, unschool your kids, make no business and participate actively in reforestation. A fifth aspect would be the eco-factor, which deserves a separate article later on, because, really, it is a completely new way of living, from going to the compost toilet to drinking dynamized happy water. Even my daily rhythm has changed, starting with waking up at 6 am, followed by a morning circle with over 100 people in which we make ooooooohm-sounds and play energizing handclapping games and ends in the hammock of the main hut, with a laptop (charged with solar energy during the day) on my knees around 10pm and finally a night in the company of rats, snakes and hundreds of little insects in my mosquito-net covered improvised bed with sticky sheets in the sleeping hut. The food is also different, even though I have been a vegan for more than a year now. My diet was mainly dominated by soy, corn and fried products: vegan burgers, cornstarch, fries, noodles wokked with oil and salt. Here the founders added some ingredients to the 'forbidden' list. Besides all animal products (meat, fish, eggs, diary, gelatine, honey), we are asked not to bring any sugar, sugercane, alcholol, salt, coffee, tea, masala, chili or any processed foods. All these foods have some ethical, environmental or social dillemma and are for this reason eliminated from our daily meals. Interestingly, none of the meals is cooked with oil, sugar or normal salt. To give a sweet taste to the porridge in the morning, we add jaggery, a natural sweetening plant. Salt is avoided, but you can put some Himalayan salt by yourself. Cooking without oil seems not to be a big problem. None of the food I have tried so far was burned and the absence of fat didn't change the tastiness.

I decided to live in an ecovillage, temporally, maybe one day for the rest of my life. I seek for freedom, understanding, peace... But at the same time I long to be with people who work towards the same goal, the same utopia of a world in which sustainability is put into practice, where people are conscious about the essence of their lives, themselves being part of nature, the world at large... I don't want to loose myself in spiritual vagueness, but I don't have the feeling I could easily get caught. How could you get caught in searching for the core of life, striving to reach 'Sadhana', seeing beyond the matrix of fixed thoughts? I am living about 45 minutes (by bicycle) from Auroville, a universal city in the making. Even after one week, the community aspect of Auroville is still hard for me to grasp. To me it still seems like a forest with some guesthouses between the green and some tourist shops with colourful hippie clothes and organic coffee and smoothies around the Visitors Centre and at the borders of the Auroville area. The upcoming weeks I will update you all about my experiences in Sadhana, my fieldwork (on Aurovillian Youth) and the challenges of living 'truly sustainable' in an utopian community. Is Auroville rally the city the world needs? Or is Sadhana Forest a better exanple?