Work continues, tribe members are slowly trickling in, about 30 of them have joined us on the beach thus far, and we find ourselves with a cross-cultural community that works.
Our first earth-bag dome is finished and we have begun the second one. We have filtered running water in the kitchen and in the compost toilets, a work deck for our solar house, and our crops are beginning to grow. Our local crew is working hard and we promised them a bonus if the second earth-bag dome is ready for Christmas. We have begun promoting the project to the Freetown crowd as well, offering a local tribe package, and continue to do numerous PR, locally as well as internationally; with presence on CNN, Reuters and the Telegraph on a weekly basis, just to name a few.
And so it is, that this new found balance, besides allowing me to read Mandela, Che, Gandhi and Tao, gives us time to focus on the bigger picture, on why we are here. We have begun a clean-up project in the neighboring fishing community and have begun compiling a fishing log, thanks to the help of one of our visiting tribemembers, a marine biologist. We have created a Tribewanted Solar team and begun promoting solar and wind power to neighboring tourism projects; the country has great energy needs (as most of it is still powered by old generators or nothing at all), but it also has massive potential of providing most of it via solar, wind and hydro.
Last week we hosted our first workshop at Tribewanted for 20 or so environmental NGOs focused on protecting the forest in the Freetown peninsula, where we are located. We presented our work, showed them our solar tower, earth-bag building, compost toilets, bucket showers, permaculture projects and more.
Hopefully we will soon be able to replicate these projects in neighboring communities in order to provide sustainable development. There is a dire need to protect the forest in Sierra Leone, as logging is rampant to make charcoal, which is used everywhere in Sierra Leone to cook. Finding affordable, environmentally sustainable cooking alternatives to charcoal will be one of the biggest challenges for Tribewanted and the country as a whole.
Yesterday, we hosted the first market research forum for Salone Microfinace Trust (SMT) to provide micro-loans to the John Obey community. SMT, of which I'm on the board, provides micro-loans to over 6,000 men and women in Sierra Leone, and their arrival at John Obey would change the lives of many people in the community. We met with about 80 of them, and Tribewanted will soon begin fundraising efforts online and offline, reaching out to its tribemembers, who can then meet the recipient of their loan when they visit us. Tribewanted will provide the first five micro-loans to jump-start the process. Linking microfinance and eco-tourism can be a highly successful practice to bridge cultures, and as far as I know, Tribewanted and SMT are the first two organizations partnering to begin such an innovative endeavor.
Finally, we have begun to look for strategic partners globally, to take Tribewanted to the next level online and offline by next year, launching new locations in other parts of the world.
Back on the beach, the bats are migrating and the ants have subsided, but a new species has recently popped up, known in krio as "the champion ant", with lots of acid that leaves some nasty scars, not fun. The dry season has begun, but we still sporadically get rain and strong winds at night, something very out of the ordinary according to the locals. The lagoon therefore had filled up to the brink and was about to overflow; so yesterday, as I returned from a supply run in Freetown, the boys had dug a small canal where the river used to meet the ocean until a few weeks ago. Within an hour the small canal had turned into a 30-meter wide, 100-meter long river rapid, with dozens of permanent waves the size of roller coasters. We rode in them at sunset, at relative personal risk, from the lagoon all the way far into the ocean. Sometimes nature gives you these unexpected gifts that leave you stunned, thinking "holy cow!"
We have been fortunate in finding this location, this community, this team, the international crew and the local crew all working together, six days a week, in relative harmony. Life is getting easier on the beach, and New York, with its Facebooks, Twitters, Blackberries, iPhones, reality shows, cookie cutter Hollywood blockbusters, and whatever else might have been invented in the last three months, seems so far away. I don't intend to run away, but its good to have a foot in both worlds, it puts you in touch with what's really important. I recommend a dose of this to everyone.
The lunch bell just rang, Abigail "Omo" Scott has just prepared her weekend specialty: fufu with pumpkin soup, and I don't want to miss out...