Eddie

I got in bed the first night and was about to turn off the light when Fidel Castro came in, looked me in the eye and said “I will speak with you tomorrow.”

That was how I met Eddie, the only other person on the farm who was not a full-fledged community member, though his own search in life may be leading him there.  He is actually British (it was just the hat and darkness that made him Castro by the way) and I got the feeling his life could inspire a helluva lot of blog posts.

Eddie has a mild manner, speaks little, and has a gentle English accent when he does.  His humble, almost diffident manner might send him to the background in some settings, and I suspect many people in this world would not really listen to him.  Luckily Netzak, the head farmer at the community, is not one of those people, and treats everyone with respect and generosity.

That is a good thing because Eddie seriously knows his shit.  He has worked on farms all over, and knows more about plant origins and behavior than anyone I have ever met.  He has a vision of farming that I would absolutely love to see put into practice somewhere.  He envisions a more natural sort of agriculture, plants placed where they want to be, harvests only partial, allowing individual plants to survive year to year, or generation to generation, through which they would move about to find their preferred niches.  He was delighted to find some chard that had grown up in the shade of a workshop where the seeds had fallen accidentally.

Agriculture and horticulture are so important in Eddie’s life that his occasional snores sound exactly like a puttering tractor engine.  It’s uncanny, man.

Eddie has the dark brown skin of a life spent outside.  His hair is pulled back in the style all the men on the farm used, and he has compassionate deep blue eyes.  While planting dried corn kernels and beans into the dry Spanish soil under a bright afternoon sun, he opted to take off his sandals and feel the clods of clay break beneath his bare feet.

On Friday we finished the tasks left to us by Netzak, who was away from the property on other business, and we had an hour until lunch.  So we went wild herb gathering.  Eddie walked along the path, explaining plant genealogies and behavior while plucking a leaf here and there, or harvesting a whole young plant in such a way as to thin the area, improving the conditions for the other sprouts.  Enjoying the dappled sunshine and watching this process I realized something:

Eddie is a druid.

I have met a lot of green thumbs in my day, such as Netzak, in whom the Tribe did well to place their trust for the agricultural side of the community, but Eddie’s gentle appreciation of growing things borders on the holy.  (I mean “druid” in the sense of plants growing in his footsteps, not sacrificing goats and drinking the blood on full moons.)

Eddie was the one person whose picture I asked to take for this blog and he consented, so here you go: a British druid (and the farm's cow, who we had just fed the bitter lettuce to and was loving it).

Sort of intro to the 12 Tribes farm.

(Just to explain, I am starting the Camino de Santiago tomorrow, and am anticipating far less internet access, so I am bombarding the blog today just in case someones want to read some stuff while I'm out walking and getting sunburned...)  The pics are a field just below the lodge, the main farmhouse, the Single Brothers Room outside and inside, and the lower field with the highway below.

In practice, the community is something like a kibbutz, if that is more familiar.  The people work together for the community in various fields from farming (which seemed to involve a surprisingly small number of people) to carpentry and installing solar panels as sub-contracted by a German firm.

The days are tightly structured, from the 6:00 AM wake-up song, the 7:00 AM and PM meetings, three communal meals followed by group clean-up, and work hours in between.  Dress is conservative for all, utilitarian and sturdy as befitting their various tasks; adult women wear long baggy cotton pants similar to pjs, with modest floral patterns, and loose blouse-like tops.

Wood stoves push out heat at either end of the large, open “lodge” which serves as meeting hall, dining room, and occasional classroom, while the kitchen takes up the eastern third.  The property came with a pool, but this is not a pool-using sort of community, so the lodge was built on top of it, and the basin below the floorboards is now used for storing agricultural equipment.

The large farmhouse stands three storeys tall opposite the lodge, living quarters, office, bathrooms and classroom inside.  Niched into the rear corner and accessed by a separate entrance is the Single Brothers’ Room, the bunk-room where I was quartered.  I suspect there is a Single Sisters’ Room, probably nestled up, protected, in the top of the main house, but the tour pointedly did not include its location.

Having a large family seems to be the one respected measure of individual success here, and smaller buildings and trailers have grown up around these two focal point buildings to house the larger family groups.  In this same ring of structures are classrooms and workshops, though the distinction is minimal, as the workshops are as likely to be used by adolescents welding a wagon frame or soldering repairs to farm equipment as an adult.

The fields and greenhouses reach out beyond, across a recently cleared creek bed on one side and down to the highway on another.  International shipping trucks speed by and insane Basque cyclists streak down the asphalt lanes without a glance up the hill to where rusty hoes clear rows between straight beds of green onions, leeks, and lettuce.  Dropping dry corn kernels and green bean seeds by hand into the ploughed rows I could look across to the commuter trains hurrying along their way, and feel glad of my place.

A couple more notes about 12 Tribes childhood.

I wanted to add a couple quick notes to the post about the children, education and whatnot.  And since I didn't take any pictures of the kids (or people in general, sorry) here are some mostly irrelevant but hopefully pleasant other ones, a wall of the main house, harsh and gently, and the walk up to the old (abandoned and growing ruined) farmhouse.

The quick/trivial one is the importance of music in the community, which is extremely high.  Seemingly everyone plays at least one instrument, and usually well.  The kids who grow up there play at least 2, usually more.  At least once I saw a group of around a dozen youngsters with various styles of guitar, a couple flutes, and cautiously a drum or two, practicing on a grassy hillside.

Of course, I heard no “outside” music while there, so this musical expression is almost entirely a religious skill, and the paramount importance of not promoting oneself leads me to believe there is not a lot of diversion from the norm.

Let’s see.  Oh, and they believe that an important way to prevent children from becoming selfish and spoiled is to have a lot of them.  If your parents’ attention is split between your half dozen siblings, they are not going to spoil you.  This seems redundant in a communal living situation, but that was what one of my liaisons conveyed to me.  I think.  And that parents who do NOT have a lot of children are selfish, and not sufficiently committed to their progeny.  Harumph on that one!

But the item that really stood out to me though was body image.  Unfortunately, with everyone being healthy, and not getting to really talk to too many of the kids, or in any depth, I can’t say for sure, but it seemed to me that these kids have a massive advantage in that department.

When I think about raising children, I find myself far more apprehensive at the prospect of having a girl.  And not just because she’d have to put up with the last name “Tendick” (although that thought has occurred to me a time or two).  The world we live in is unbelievably hard on girls.  No offense to my male companeros, but it seems to me it is much harder to be a girl.

Specifically, the expectations and messages regarding body images are sufficient to drive me insane, and they are not remotely targeted at me.  Adolescence is mind-bendingly hard enough as it is, then we heap mountains of photoshopped images of celebrities whose primary career is staying skinny anyway to produce an unattainable notion of femininity.  Barbie.  Disney heroines.  Come on!  And I am sure I don’t even have a tenth of an idea of it all.

In the community, they don’t have these images.  The Bible does not describe Eve’s waistline, breast size, or complexion (though maybe it should on that last one…but the ethnic veracity of religious imagery is another topic).

Again, everyone on the farm works, eats very healthy food, and dresses in baggy, conservative clothing, but I would bet that the comparative rates of eating disorders on 12 Tribe properties is ground-scrapingly low.

But then again, maybe I am just being intentionally optimistic as usual.  Anyway, I wanted to mention that.

It hurts so good.

Going back to traveling by myself in Europe, I have become reacquainted with an old sin. The kebab.  They are Europe's version of our fast food hamburgers, and make me miss burritos oh so very much.  Here's a picture of one...but keep in mind, this is the official publicity version, so the relationship between it and the real thing is the same as the relationship between what's on the menu at Burger Thing and what you actually receive, wrapped in greasy paper.

The dinner combo meal of Doner Kebab, fries, and a soda are truly a Clash of Evil Titans.  Eventually you realize that the healthiest (least deadly) member of the Trio of Terror are the cheap greasy fries, and shudder.  It is one of the times when being unwilling to waste food is a vice.

Basically, kebabs are the culinary equivalent of a trip to Las Vegas.

When you arrive you feel a certain guilty excitement.  You know it's not going to be good for you, and you hope the details never make it back to your family, but that guilty pleasure draws you on.  Once it's really in front of you the appearance of it all is kind of disgusting, but still appealing in that short-sighted way.

The first taste continues the reluctant enthusiasm.  Yummy self destruction.  But the pleasure is already starting to sour, and your awareness that you are making a big mistake grows.  You go a little further still.  Definitely a mistake.  You kind of wish someone would come stop you, save you, but the ball is rolling, and you increasingly realize it is rolling right over the top of you.

The sheer sinful momentum carries you through it all.  But it's okay, right?  Lots of people do this, and they survive.  Right?  You search for a moral compass.  You don't do this often.  You could stop any time you want...

Finally it's over and you stumble away.  The armpits of your shirt are stiff with dried sweat you don't remember feeling.  Your pants have smears of shiny unnatural colors on them and you think you will just throw them away when you get home.  You skin is pasty and pale, and your hands are damp and shaky.  You feel an urge to pray.

98% of what's functioning in your brain resolves to never do this again.  But if you look through the blinds into the semi-secret office of the remaining 2% you'll see that it is calculating how long to devote to recovery before you come back for more.

12 Tribes Education

At 6:00 in the morning a community member wakes you up by playing an acoustic guitar outside your window and singing a song of devotion to Yahshua (as in the ancient Hebrew form of Jesus).  You have an hour to get ready for the day, which will be tightly scheduled.  First thing after getting up is a collective meeting to sing more of the songs, dance, give thanks, and discuss aspects of the faith and lives in the community; it is the community’s equivalent of a church service and will be repeated before dinner.  Everyone wears braided headbands which are symbolic of the crowns that they expect to wear after the second coming of Jesus, at which time the 12 Tribes will be the Brides of Jesus and will help him rule during the 1,000 years of peace on Earth before Judgment Day.  Children are home schooled, only a few key people are allowed to have cell phones, the internet is a remote concept, and the outside world is seen as corrupt, horribly selfish, and utterly doomed.

(No full mirror in the Single Brothers' Room bunk house, but for functional need there was this little one available on top of the rack for dusty work boots.)

The easy response when you hear about a group like this, living apart in a religious commune, is to mock it as a cult.  Nutjobs!  Do they have a secret handshake?  Arcane midnight rituals and speaking in tongues?

But it quickly became apparent to me after I arrived that this community is something very different.  I can’t claim to understand it at all well, and I wish I had the time to better process it, and to be honest I would love to write an entire book on the place, but lacking that time and energy, I will pick a couple of points to mention.

The principal complaint of the other volunteer worker (www.wwoof.org) who was there before me concerned the children, who are home schooled and largely isolated from the outside world; she asserted that being raised in the community was child abuse.  I can see her point (and apparently the governments of some of the countries where the 12 Tribes have communities occasionally do too) because after all, the children didn’t choose to grow up there.  But no children get to choose where to grow up.  The children growing up with televisions as babysitters didn’t choose that, nor did the children in South Africa choose to become orphans and struggle to find enough food every day (just a little reminder that you may want to donate to help us this summer).  And it was glaringly obvious to me that these kids had a pretty good lot in life, or at least a damn good start.

Children are entirely home schooled at the community, which produces its own text books.  This is a terrifying concept, and it is one of my principle regrets that I was unable to see any of the books, particularly the world history ones.

According to one of the two community members who became something of my liaisons (this was mostly conducted in Spanish, so I may be a little awkward on the semantics), the education emphasizes wisdom and proper attitudes more than knowledge.  Sort of like how schools are supposed to emphasize critical thinking skills above rote memorization, only in a defined set of religious ethics sort of way.  One of the fundamental principles of the community is the importance of serving others (and primarily of course serving God) and you could clearly see this reflected in the actions of the children.

They work.  Maybe alongside their parents, maybe at relatively menial tasks, and always at mealtimes and during community activities.  (This is a half of a foldable bike cut off and welded to a frame to form....um...a mobile hoeing machine?  It was very possibly made by an adolescent welder.)  Sounds like child labor, but these are not neglected children slaving away in coal mines.  In fact, I have never seen a group of children so open, friendly, helpful, gracious, generous, and all around gall-darn good-natured.  It was almost creepy.

One tiny example.  The community eats very basic food, not a lot of spices, healthy, staples.  There was one dessert during the week I was there, on the night of Shabbat, and it was clearly a special occasion.  They had homemade (of course) éclairs, though with about a fiftieth of the sugar of what I am used to.  The night’s squad of young helpers walked around with trays, handing them out to anyone who wanted one.  After this was completed, I saw one of the helpers, a girl of around 6 years, finally sit down with her own dessert.

Her mother pointed out that her younger sister had not had one yet.  Without a squeak of complaint she handed hers over, then went and got herself another.

A 6 year old, after delivering the week’s only dessert to others first, graciously handed over her own to her younger sister.

I don’t mean to be pessimistic (which is the grand failing of the community), but what percentage of 6 year olds would do that without any complaint or temper.  And this was completely typical, not deserving of any remark whatsoever among the community.  It is expected.

As regarding the education I can also say that the children spoke English very well (plus Spanish of course), and I got to watch one bright eyed youngster explain all about the solar oven he had built in one of his classes (to demonstrate they baked some apples, which were kind of like the community's version of apple pie, no sugar, no cinnamon, no sauce, no crust, just wholesome appley goodness).  The classes are actually called “teachings” and many of the adults in the community share the responsibility of teaching, each to their specialty apparently.  Class sizes seem to be small, with the ones I saw ranging between a couple students to maybe 10, although most of the teachings were conducted in the classrooms away from casual observation.

(The land overlooks a gorgeous Basque Country valley near the border with France on the edge of the Pyrenees Mountains.)

Man, I just got started and that is already too long for a blog.  And I am hungry again.  And I need to get my butt to Pamplona to start the Camino de Santiago.  Crap, once that starts, I’m really not going to have time to tell you more about the farm.  And I haven’t mentioned my first experience with couch surfing yet!  (Spoiler: it has been fanfuckingtastic.)

Vamos a ver.

Important update regarding the Africa trip

Oops, I need to update some stuff about our fundraising goals.

First off, I was so focused on the first two projects we are raising money for that I made it sound like $700 is our total budget...  We are actually hoping to raise much more than that.  We were working with a budget of about $2000 in mind.  But...

Secondly, the projects were reassessed and the costs are about three times what we first anticipated.

It turns out the cost of painting the orphanage and the daycare center is more like $500.  Each.  $1000 there.

Then the transportation of supplies and personnel to Zambia is another $1,000 by itself, $700 for gas, and $300 for the border and road fees, plus ferry crossings.

So we need at least $2000 just for those two projects.

If we do not raise enough we will basically have to cut either the orphanage or daycare center.  I don't know about you, but that is not a choice I want to have to make.  If we make even less than that...

But there is very good news!  The generosity has begun, and we have already raised $570!  We can see the quarter-way marker, but it is behind us!  To all those of you who have donated: you are awesome!

Now, I know there are a lot more of you who want to donate, and my explanation of donation dynamics got pretty scattered before, so here is a summary, hopefully tidier:

To get a US tax deduction, donate straight to Afnet, but tell one of us so we can make sure it gets to our projects:
1.  Online at www.afnet.org  or
2.  Mail a check to 3630 Charter Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95136

Other countries or if you don't need the tax deduction:
1.  Cash or check directly to Katrien
2.  Donate via paypal to me via the button at the top of this blog page.


For further information and updates please also check out our facebook group, Tim and Katrien's Trip To Africa, which might be found at this link?
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=120928061269892

Hello and good night

It’s amazing how quickly the present moment takes over the past.  I am sitting here in an apartment in Vitoria-Gasteiz, some fluffs of white dog hair in the corner, a Spanish bocadillo resting peacefully in my belly, and I have to pull a couple layers of gauzy forgetfulness off of my memory of the farm/community where I spent the last week…even though I woke up there this morning.

I spent the last week with a community from the 12 Tribes of Israel.

I don’t know if you have heard of them, I hadn’t, and I am supremely unconfident of attempting to summarize the group, but basically they are a series of religious communes around the world who devote themselves to following the original covenant as they see it between the Judeo-Christian god and the (can you guess?) 12 tribes of Israel.

That being said, they are adamant that they are not a religion.  And I can clearly see a picture in my head of anyone from the community reading that last paragraph and shaking their heads, disappointed that I didn’t quite get it.

I am tremendously tempted to start telling you about them, and about my impressions and responses, but it is after 1:00 in the morning, my eyes are gritty with allergies, and I cannot do it justice right now.  So instead I’ll pick a purty picture fer ye’s and go to sleep.  But come back soon and read about them.

Let’s see…how about…a San Sebastian sunset last week…and…the plaza in Campeche, Mexico last August.

Good night.