Taller Colibri Rocking the Permaculture

It's been half a year since we started our alternative school project, Taller Colibri. I've learned so much from my children, the other children in the project, the parents, the people we have met on the weekly field trips, and our inspirational maestra Suzanna.

The key epiphany I have had has been about momentum. Once the children understood that they owned the school and the curriculum, they stepped up. They run in with projects already in their minds, sometimes with supplies they have brought from home. They tend to the garden, they check the supply closet for art materials, they turn on the light and music for quiet time, they cook food for meals.

Some of the smaller aspects of the school have also made a deep impression on me. For example, our start time of 9:30. I can't tell you how incredible it is to not wake up my children, to allow them to get up naturally and not be tired. In the morning, we have time to eat, play, read, visit the cat, clean, whatever. Not having homework has also been so liberating. No longer do we have to chop off a significant part of the afternoon, or break it up inconveniently. We sometimes do far more educational and inspirational things than homework--play at the park, hike, cook together, read at the library, see an art show, visit friends, go to drum class--and we sometimes just hang out at the house or the zocalo. This gift of time has been powerful, even if it means sometimes wondering what to do with it when the kids are fighting or I'm not feeling like interacting.

Creating units based on the children's interests was fascinating. To look back on it makes me realize how far we have come: Force and Motion, Caves and Prehistory, Story boarding and Clay Animation, and Building with Natural Materials. Field trips to archaeological ruins, caves, swimming pools, the organic market, libraries, parks, farms, villages, history museums, art galleries. What a life.

Last week, when Maestra Suzanna suggested that Taller Colibri head up the Oaxaca mountains above Huayapam, to see a farm with permaculture farming practices, I sensed we were in for something different. The little ones had to stumble along the steep trails, but it was worth it. They delved into worm compost bins (we honestly had to pull them out of them), wandered greenhouses, looked for fish and turtles in ponds, walked through buildings framed in local carrizo, and cooked lunch on a mud and sand stove, una estufa Lorena.

That's when I realized how they already understood the place. They had mixed their own adobe at the river to create mud dwellings. They had used carrizo to frame their playhouse in the backyard. They had caught tadpoles in the river and spread compost in the garden, digging up worms to show each other. For them, permaculture was the only culture, as they had only gardened organically and built sustainably. I found they had learned more than I could have imagined, and I believe these are lessons they will carry with them.

Scary but True

We bought a house. I've done this now three times, this buying/selling a house, but this time it's in Mexico and what in the world do I know about buying a house in Mexico?

It's extremely excruciating to try to understand real estate, legal, business vocabulary. Sometimes they use a word over and over again, and I have no idea, and then I ask a factual question about the thing they had just gone on about for many paragraphs.

I have to ask it again: What do I know about buying a house in Mexico? Right now, a few things. There is no multiple listing service. You find an agent, they sell only the houses they represent. There is no way to see the properties from driving around. Everything is behind giant concrete walls and gates. There are very few websites dedicated to real estate in Oaxaca. I have found the few that are, and the prices seem directed toward gringos. The newspaper has very few ads, mostly just listings by agents. Most people sell their houses themselves and sometimes would rather hang on for years than bargain the littlest bit.

But, still, we bought a house. It's new and very urban, packed between a couple other houses and no yard, though there is an inner courtyard, a real favorite house feature of mine. And so we're developing the roof into a rooftop garden. The builder is putting in stairs from the terrace and bars around the roof's periphery to stop wayward kids. I've sketched out a little palapa-type hut with a tin roof supported by posts upon which we can hang a hammock, and a spot for yoga. I've plotted, with my pen, container gardens, hopefully some vegetables. I've planned an outdoor shrine, and an area for bamboo to grow and give us privacy. Steve, in an astonishing turn at conventionality, has insisted upon an umbrella table.

Did I mention that this house is still being built? And that we don't know how we are going to get our ever-weakening dollars transferred over here without paying a ginormous fee? And that I met with the notary today, which is Mexico's version of a real estate lawywer, a supposed disinterested, objective party, and still don't understand the documents she drew up? Add to this that we own nothing, absolutely nothing, having sold off all our assets up north, so we will actually need to buy a house of stuff, the kind of stuff I haven't thought about since college, like mirrors and frames and silverware. Suddenly, I must acquire things, and kind of rapidly.

We're going to live on Calle Sauces, in the Reforma district, across from Tortilleria Elvis. But I know what you're really wondering--will we still have the free guest space? Yes! There is a separate guest quarters, with full bath, on the back patio. Someday, when the dust settles and I am able to sleep again, I will paint the guest room a beautiful blue, perhaps to trick our visitors into believeing that we live near the coast.