Creating the New Communities		Two experiences in Portugal: Totenique and Tamera. By Jonathan Evelight - May 2001.

Like many people who share the feeling that society appears unstoppable in its unsustainable down hill track, Jonathan Evelight and friends are seeking to build a new community based on cooperation and resource sharing. After discovering an abandoned valley in S.Portugal, they report on their own plans to create an eco-village plus their experience of a nearby established eco-community, both dedicated as World Peace Gardens. The goal of society must be toward sustainability - of our lifestyles and communities. For me this implies a holistic society. Our present world is anything but sustainable or holistic. I feel we’ve got stuck in rigid parental states where anyone who imagines they can make changes faces a barrage of refusals and objections. Society is deeply flawed. How many of us know life can be so much better? When a new baby is about to be born the waters have to break. The old structure has to break down first and we cannot be attached or dependent on any part of it. Its values were founded on competition and corruption whereas the Earth’s future depends on trust and cooperation to restore her natural balance. England’s planning laws stifle new design and creative energy. It is hard to shape the new wine out of the old. Everywhere there is needed new communities of sustainable lifestyle free of dogma and man made law, a bridge from the old to the new civilisations based on trust where the earth and her children can flourish and be cared for, established in places of sanctity away from pollution. So when Jenny, Chris and myself were asked to help our friend Alcyone move to a remote part of Portugal we jumped at the chance. This story is a glimpse of how two quite different approaches are leading to a new horizon.	Tottenique Village, our first impressions In SW Portugal, 25 miles from the wild West Coast, there exists a beautiful and tranquil valley in need of care and protection for its abundant wildlife, its indigenous trees and plants, rare butterflies and clear springs. Walking down into this overgrown valley, fertile and well watered, we came upon earth dwellings and abandoned buildings in disrepair. A village in the middle of Europe all but deserted by the local indigenous people – yet here we were to helping Alycone set up her new home. Tottenique is like a lost valley from a distant land but it’s actually in Alentejo, SW Portugal, inland from the Algarve so less well known but in fact the countries richest source of grains and produce. In just two weeks we had to clear away brambles, recover the natural water supply and install solar lighting, to get to know a little of the local country and make friends with people and the nature. Alcyone and Chris found a photo album from the 70s, faces of some of the 300 people that used to live here, now perhaps only 30 remain. Most of the rest have gone to the cities, as they have done the world over. Cont/. Page 1 of 4

Virtually all the old houses are rammed earth construction, except they are ruins now as nature is melting them back into the ground. Every one has a wood fired bread oven outside, a bit like outside latrines in the UK’s pre-60s houses, but not even that luxury here.

As we are clearing the land, its value emerges. Amongst the brambles which had flourished for seven years, overgrown orchards emerged with terraces of mature trees including orange, olive, pear, apple, fig, nespera, lemon and peach. Vegetable gardens which have been deliberately protected by briar hedges lie close to springs and the river. The rest of the land remains wild, in the capable hands of Mother Nature.

The valley is fertile and unpolluted, which is not the case everywhere; Portugal is in danger of becoming a desert as they have not escaped the peril of modern mono-culture stripping away natural trees and bushes that have protected the soil.

Wildlife abounds in the valley. Wild boar, deer, mongoose, badger and fox are just a few of the inhabitants together with butterflies as big as your hand and a multitude of birds including nightingales flourish in this unique and beautiful landscape.

We have dedicated the land as a “World Peace Garden”, the first in Portugal, and as such we hope to deter the indiscriminate hunting.

The Permaculture designers in our group are like children in paradise.

There is space to grow food and the most delicious oranges are abundant. Cork oaks even provide a small but useful cash crop.

Using traditional materials and the greenest technology, we wish to restore the existing buildings to provide accommodation for those wishing to study permaculture design and forest gardening or to simply retreat into an idyllic landscape. Yoga, meditation, horse riding, swimming and wildlife walks will also be on offer in due course.

At present we are in the process of buying more land in the valley in order to protect it and its creatures from the devastation caused by monoculture farming methods, such as eucalyptus plantations which destroy these delicate ecosystems and turn the land into a desert. Volunteers are being sought to assist with the project, in return for bed and board on a short term basis. Conditions will be very primitive to begin with and only permaculture gardening and building skills being sought.

You can build on the land with far greater flexibility than in the UK. Whilst others are recovering the old rammed-earth dwelling, Jenny and I are going to build a Swedish eco-timber house and later a round turf roof earth house.

The Swedish method is relatively easy and environ-mentally friendly and makes super energy efficient tough and attractive homes. It is also low-cost, for £30k or so I consider better value even than Walter Segal self-build UK type. It is quick to build, standard design or modified to your own needs and includes everything even the kitchen sink. We have a plot where we plan to build such a timber house for guests and later we hope to build a round house with my children but right now we’re living in our tried and trusty yurt.

Cont/.

Page 2 of 4.

[UPDATE Oct. 2003 …

After almost two years in which we learnt a great deal in so many ways, Jonathan and Jenny are leaving Totenique valley. We are preparing to move to a much larger plot of land that can be shared from the outset by people of like mind and inclination for leading cooperative lives with more social cohesion than we were able to realise in the valley. Despite its beauty, and our investment in goodwill and hard work, we failed to realise that the group comes before an individual planting of the seed, a group that resonates to common principles. Even if such a group hasn’t materialised one must learn to live as if the community in mind can also become real in time and the given space. Whilst we were able to adapt and get on with the entrenched attitudes of neighbours the consequences compromised our original inspirations and ideals. ]

Visit to Tamera Eco-Community

During our journey to Portugal we had a unique opportunity to visit and experience “Tamera” an already established eco-community.

We rose with the sun dissolving a thick blanket of mist rising from the lake surrounding the little peninsula of white dwellings where we have rented a small cottage. We found our way by road to arrive later than intended to join 60 or more people at a gathering at Tamera, an eco-village, where the community are holding an open day. Instantly I am listening intently to a talk about the bio-energy and deep ecology of these people interacting fully with nature “with no enemies”. It’s in German but several small groups with translators indicate an international audience.

We join in song to end the morning, with memorable words, “Even though you have broken your vows a thousand times, come on, come on, you are welcome into the garden.”

Tamera is 330 acres of land that includes woodland, natural water, and hills. It is evident that the community is creating structure and new bio-diversity based on Permaculture amidst the eroded landscape that urgently needs reforestation across Portugal.

Founded 5 or so years ago by six people from Germany who had previously extensively researched holistic community and natural ecology. Mostly Summer University supporting an international Peace Camp, a small community of people live year round, some resident in dwellings, tipis or mobiles. The children have their own accommodation, a haven all by itself.

We were shown around. Permaculture principles are evident everywhere not just in growing food but as people interacting with nature. As an experiment to show soil fertility, a sapling has grown 7 metres in as many months. You wont see naked earth as you do in so many fields. Mulching with organic materials, even large timber – a technique borrowed from Brazil creates new soil. Beans, legumes and vegetables are sown directly into the earth.

Now in construction is Tamera’s own Peace Garden that shows how people can truly cooperate without enemies in nature. It is normal to go beyond companion planting to talk intuitively with trees, plants and animals. What kind of plants want to grow here? What skills were used in older times? Non-aggressive trust building, even with the rats who are told only to eat one plant a week and no more, seems to really work. But your own associated feelings have first to be changed to learn this way.

The School for Trees and the Horse Project is dedicated to this learning of trust through feeling in close relationship with other kingdoms. Tamera opens for guests and visitors in the Spring and runs not only a Summer University focussing on creating “Healing Biotopes” new community building, a big youth camp, and some wonderful courses on Community, Forest Gardening, self-sufficiency, horses, art, spirit and world peace work – which they actively network and participate politically.

Cont/.

Page 3 of 4.

The vision, and impression of Tamera, is of a vibrant community of people, some of whom are genuinely seeking ways to live together in trust and in harmonic cooperation with nature; people inspired by their ideal to co-create a healing “bio-tope” or model as part of a new global culture emerging to restore the earth whilst fully realising our human potential.

It is by no means a utopia with the temporary nature of most residents and a very liberal approach to free association between partners. With a core group of mostly german folk with a deeply rooted and inspired philosophy by their founders Tamera Community is a place to visit, to learn from and to experience.

Now the community has for example a 10 guest room chalet with another planned, an annual programme of workcamps and workshops on spirituality and ecology, a summer university for over 300 people, research activities, world peace workers forums, and a Youth school for global education.

Cohesion comes through participation in the life and through the community’s Forum. Solar energy and some vegetarian food is resourced on site, the economy seeks to self-support from its programme and by individual trades.

For further information contact: Tamera – Centre for Humane Ecology, Monte do Cerro, P-7630 Colos, Portugal. Tel. +351-283 635 306, Email ‘tamera@mail.telepac.pt’ Web Site: www.tamera.org/english J

If a new and better way of life is to exist it must be created. Eco-communities can be the new oasis in the midst of modern societies desserts. As Simon Fairlee of Chapter 7 News (UK Planning and LA21) concludes "We have tried informing people for over a decade that change is needed but information has little or no effect." Putting energy into local planning and social change can be frustrating and dissempowering. We believe what is needed is people putting energy into creating sustainable lifestyles wherever they are and the first examples are likely to be in places less restrictive and more conducive to supporting an ecological future.

Tottenique Village, our first impressions

Visit to Tamera Eco-Community