Village elders saddened by globalization

Joe,

I was moved by your essay "Nine Billion Little Feet". I enjoyed the read, but what moved me was your epiphany of self discovery among the third worlders. I've lived among those people here in Taos New Mexico. Joe, I really do applaud your venture, in the same spirit as Thoreau or Gauguin -- my heroes. The great adventure! Where you are now is not what the folks back home would consider real or maybe even sane.

In my travels, I came to a point where the vision of eluding the "real world" came up against this question: "Is what I am doing have any value or should I hoist the white flag and return to a relatively secure and well paid slot in the educated semi-elite back in the real world?" That was 35 years ago and honestly I was scared. For the first and last time, I got some LSD and went into the mountains with my mind set on an finding answer to my dilemma. I got the answer and I'm still here because my heart is here.

So anyway, if you'll give me some way to send money, I'd like to send a sum (I live in a dirt house beside the Indian Reservation, but it would be a sincere sum).

Lee

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Lee,

Truthfully speaking, LSD played a major role in my life arriving at this point. It is one whole chapter in a memoir I am tampering with. And coincidentally, I am now starting to work on indigenous housing here (traditional Mayan style, pimento stake-lime plaster, thatched roof). Comes right out of the earth around here and we have 100 year-old examples (though not many) that have withstood hurricanes, etc. I can build a very nice, small sanitary Caribbean cabana for these folks for $1,000, and one for a large family for under $4,000. But the traditional Mayan house can be built for free, if a family wants to build it under the guidance of an elder -- or even built from a book on the subject if someone who can read is present.

I use the proceeds from my book to do my own private little NGO down here as best I can. So sending money is not necessary. But if you want to do so, I would simply use it to establish healthy basic food sources for families. Garden seed, chickens.

Food scarcity, which has not been a significant problem here until recent times, is rapidly becoming a major disaster, thanks to the new world financial order, competing with the Chinese and the rest of the world for commodities such as corn, flour, etc. With no money, of course, they cannot compete at all. Not only for food, but for energy of any kind, electricity, propane, natural gas (in a country where the new foreign built oil operations are burning vast quantities of natural gas off into the atmosphere as a byproduct of sweet crude extraction, oil shipped immediately off to other shores.)

Thankfully, there are a few good Europeans down here trying to teach the next generation to quit buying garbage American food such as cheap chips and colas. And numerous good Americans drop by the village and stay with me, usually gaining insight into the Third World and contributing to the Garifuna family household I live with. Each has a small positive effect as they invariably contribute things like beans and rice to the household, since they are looked up to. Many natives make no distinction between candy, chips and staples. Giving a child a candy bar for breakfast seems perfectly logical in these households -- it tastes good, kids like it, and it's much less work. In one year I have watched my adopted family, which provides a base location for me, go from fresh home baked bread, tortillas, beans and rice, to candy and Kool-Aid like drinks for the children as entire meals -- usually breakfast and lunches, which they manage to provide for the children only one or two days a week at best. I do not preach or even advise because they have no context to grasp the message. HOWEVER, my good wife is building henyards and chicken houses in backyards for protein rich family egg production. If you build it they will come. Because they have no other choice.

Elders are rejoicing at this turn of events, since they have been saddened and outraged at the globalization process, though they don't know exactly what it is, just that stupidity seems to have engulfed the people. As an example of how much indigenous knowledge and culture has been lost, a couple of days ago I sponsored a "wabiniha," a sort of neighborhood house party with drumming and grilled fish or chicken (see attached pictures). The women under 40 built the "fire heart" grill fire. They used Styrofoam plates and food packaging for the fuel. Styrofoam roasted chicken legs!

Anyway, I have to return to the States for book business in mid March, then will retire in late summer at age 62 to this village. I thoroughly look forward a life at the core of the oncoming world disaster, rather than being a fat terrified First World pussy at the fortified edges of a crumbling empire of stupidity.

In art and labor,

Joe