Unfamiliar faces appear in my field of vision. They speak English, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Portuguese. The first Erasmus+ participants have arrived. Languages are mixing. Tents are being set up. Belgians, Greeks, and Italians are also arriving. About twenty people from six countries are joining our small team of companions for a dozen days. The goal of these twelve days is to exchange knowledge and know-how between different countries related to ecosystem regeneration through agroecology, permaculture, regenerative hydrology, eco-construction, collective intelligence, human permaculture, and community living.
This is the first time that Les Alvéoles is organizing an Erasmus+ stay It was supposed to take place last year, but for various reasons, it was postponed at this year. This gives me the opportunity to participate. As part of the compagnion program, we were offered the opportunity in February to participate to Erasmus+ and be part of the support team. Supervising workwhops, do activities, and « give care » to the membrane. We would offer a presence and care to the circle, to the Tribe gathered for a time. Of course, I said yes.
Élodie, a Permaculture Design Advisor from Les Alvéoles last year’s class, is our guiding light, our roots. She coordinated all the preparation, logistics, and preliminary discussions with the participants, and she manages the overall coordination during the stay, supported by François P. for logistics. Aurélie, Esmée, and François G. are in charge of the Wicking Beds and Air-Prune Beds workshop. These are two nursery techniques that allow to grow plants while saving water and with healthy root systems. Antoine is in charge of the pond workshop below the Jardin des Vignes. Stephen and Pascale are managing the installation of beaver structures on the small stream that crosses the Alvéoles grounds. I am in charge of the eco-construction workshop (creating an insulated shed made of straw bales and earth plaster to store fermented extracts, seeds, and grafts). Guillaume is in charge of the vegetable garden workshop and tours. We also offer activities as an Introduction to Permaculture, a Soil and Plants course, Vegetable Garden sessions, a tour of the Alvéoles grounds, and an introduction to Water Management.
The days unfold in a dynamic, collective atmosphere punctuated by positive energy and collective intelligence. Tent immersion, internal weather, energizers, workshops, vegetarian meals, SEVA times, games, meditation, speaking circles, discussions, swimming in the Drôme, walks in the surrounding area, partner presentations, songs, Greek dancing, « guinguette », sauna, evenings in the greenhouse… Sparkling eyes, laughter, joy everywhere. I feel like I’m on vacation. I feel like I’m in a dream. Every day is a « pépite ». Sure, there are a few « cailloux, » but the power of what’s happening here is far too great for me to pay much attention to the scratching details. I jot down in the margins of my mental notebook the details that need improvement and review, and I let go. Just being here, just here, enjoying this enchanted interlude.
This Erasmus+ stay offers me a clear connection to the permaculture learning and the Permaculture Design Advisor Training I have been doing at Les Alvéoles since February. I am learning a lot about myself and putting my skills into practice. I am working on my facilitation, coaching, and transmission posture. I am feeling what I like and what repels me. Every moment is a teaching. Hands in the earth in contact to the matter, I observe, I learn, I transmit. The clay used to make the coatings for the fermented extract storage area is used to build beaver structures on the stream below. After reading Baptiste Morizot and Suzanne Husky’s book « Giving Water Back to the Earth » a few months ago, seeing beaver structures being built on Les Alvéoles land by a multicultural team evokes something very strong in me. Dialogue with the environment, seeing through beavers’ eyes, vibrating together at the sight of the water reappearing. The power of the Living within us that connects us, far beyond our differences. At the Wicking Bed and Air Prune Bed workshops, a female empowerment is at play. In the pond below, a stone mosaic is taking shape in the ground. I don’t have the opportunity to participate in all the activities, but that doesn’t matter. New friends tell me about their experiences and share their stories. Connections are formed, bonds are forged.
Each group of participants, per country, presents the partner organization they represent (Regen for Italy, Southern Lights for Greece, HortaFCul for Portugal, GEN Ukraine for Ukraine, Community of Kardokai for Lithuania, and Fais le toi-même for Belgium). Projects are already well established and offer valuable, concrete feedback. Ecovillages, Autonomous Communities, Urban Permaculture, Miyawaki Forest within a university—everything is extremely interesting and enriching. Welcoming and hospitality care is at the heart of our approach so that everyone can share and enrich the content of the days. So everyone speaks from the center of their world. Everyone speaks with their own sensitivity. These cultural exchanges bring for me a huge plus about the appreciation of the experience.
I have always loved intercultural exchanges. Accents that sing, words spoken in another language, gestures and glances that help us understand each other. Since returning from my four years of traveling abroad at the end of 2018, I have missed it enormously. So, having the opportunity here at Les Alvéoles to meet and interact with people from other cultures fills me with joy. More diversity, more points of view, more possibilities. Having this incredible feeling of reuniting with « the tribe, » kindred spirits from elsewhere yet so close. Beyond cultures and borders, the mycelium of connections expands, and we pulse together to the rhythm of our songs.
I barely have time to begin to discover the depth of the Tribe’s members that it is time to say goodbye. The twelve days are already over. The return to reality is brutal. I question the length of the stay. How can one live and integrate the ethics of Permaculture and its principles in such a short time? Is it even possible? Is this stay simply a moment outside of time? Or a first encounter that heralds others? The short duration of the stay creates the intensity of the relationships and sharing. And the jet lag that goes with it. But I come out of this collective adventure happy and enriched. Inside me, things have moved, questions have found answers. A desire that has never really left me since I returned to France, and that I put aside in recent years, has returned in force. The desire, the obviousness of hitting the road again, of wandering the roads of the World to discover eco-places, Permaculture sites, concrete utopian imaginaries, shared learning. To go see friends’ projects. Learn from others. To give myself the time to taste a diversity of possibilities, to forage like a butterfly feeding on multiple nectars. Life always puts me back on the path I must follow, I just have to follow it.