Orion

BIGGER view here.

San Salvador, on the other side of our mountain, about one hour away, was a small and beautiful village between the mountains, in a much nicer valley than the one we’re living in. The bar I told earlier about was also small but crowded with happy people. There was some feminist Spanish stand up comedy. Didn’t understand a thing. Perfect chance to laugh at the wrong spots.

Slept at some guy’s place. This guy, Pedro, had a guest room with probably the softest beds I’ve tried. And several blankets. For the first time on this trip I wasn’t freezing during the night.

Today’s still another party here and tomorrow a seven hour workshop. Then we’re basically done and can start a nice 16 hour way back to Finland.

It’s damn humid everywhere. Once the clouds got to this valley, it’s not too probable that they’ll leave anytime soon. Last night it was raining like hell, which caused the streams coming the nearby mountains overflow. We woke up as the paths leading uphill had turned into small rivers and the front yard was flooding. After building small dams it got a bit better, but it’s still cold and humid inside the house.

We’re leaving tonight to another village to a bar owned by two local lesbians. It’s a freaky place, we’ve been told. Hopefully it’s warmer there.

There’s some fog outside and the internet connection is completely dead. I’m writing this offline.

I guess all the environmentally well informed people already know everything about these vegetable oil cars, but let’s still have a closer look how they work. As I don’t have too much knowledge on anything which has four wheels, this is going to be brief.

Certain diesel motors have the ability to run on veggie oil. As diesel oil, also the veggie oil has to be pre-heated before you can start the engine. Veggie oil, however, needs a much higher temperature in order to start the engine. That’s why you need to build another pre-heater especially for veggie oil.

When pre-heated, the car should run normally. It uses approximately the same amount of fuel as the normal diesel engine, with the exception that you can get your fuel for free from local restaurants and bars which use oil for making food. The veggie oil engine also produces less emissions – but the smell is worse, though :)

If you think vegetable oil motor is old news, have you heard of the motor running with compressed air?

The highlight of today was getting a shower. The water was above zero celcius, luxorious!

I also learned that the nettles won’t sting you if you hold your breath. That sounds as crazy as it is, but it works.

One guy – Richie – arrived here two days ago, obviously an old friend of many. Richie had been eye-witnessing the Oaxaca protests in Mexico in late 2006. We spent the evening listening to the story and seeing some incredible video footage of demonstrations of over 600000 people.
The whole thing had started of the teachers’ strike. The government sent over 3000 police without a warning to the city early in the morning to break up the occupation. The following street battles led the situation to chaos and set several other work unions behind the teachers’ strike. Massive demonstrations and fights between the government troops and locals followed and since June 14, Oaxaca has been in a state of civil rebellion.
Scary, scary stuff. Things you definitely don’t realize even the things would get big enough to fit to the Finnish news broadcasts.

The next days we’ll be concentrating fully on media education methods. Sharing and teaching different workshops and going through different digital media teaching methods with the locals. They seem to be pretty excited about our contents and we’re hoping to get some new ideas in return.

Tuomas had some good opinions on his comment to the latest entry. In return, I wrote a more exact description of the community. Go to the comments.

more photos => Flickr

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In Escanda there has been a hype about the biodiesel motors – turning your diesel motor into a motor which runs with recyclable veggie oil. The idea itself is really cool, but we soon noticed why all the cars don’t use this bio oil instead of gasoline. The main reason is that it stinks.
When you’re driving, it smells like the McDonald’s french fries fat. Everywhere.
The other reason we noticed on the way back from the Gijon demonstration – the car just stopped and didn’t start again. One hour trip turned into three hour wait by the high traffic motor highway.

Well, we’re back and alive.

About the community in Escanda: There are 14 people living here permanently. Most of them don’t have any kind of a daily job. And they don’t need one. They grow all sorts of things in the garden, get loads of fruits, pasta, rice and stuff for free from the markets and shops. There are always plenty of visitors here, yesterday there were over 20 people staying here, today most of them are gone and it’s a bit more relaxed. You can stay here for free, just by working in the garden or helping with household works.

All the costs (food, car repairs, transports, gas, new stuff bought to the house etc), so really ALL the costs of 14 people are 1500e a month. That’s living with 100e the whole month. Most of this money comes from workshops which they run at local schools plus environmental researchs.

This way of living has really opened my eyes. This is SO far away from the society I’m living in back home. If you don’t work there, you’re officially unemployed and the society takes (more or less) care of you. The society is based on individualism, not common good.
Here you can just decide quit working and put all your energy on making the community better. And you’re not considered unemployed, you’re considered free. All the work you’re doing is not for you but for everyone. And the people are so balanced and happy. They have time for themselves and for each other.

After getting over the cultural shock I’ve gotten used to the idea that not everything has to be as tidy and super-hygienic as back home. It doesn’t kill you. On my first post I told what things they don’t have here. Now I’ve realized they have everything you need. And a bit more.

It’s 26C today.

The day’s been good. Tomorrow we’re heading to Gijon to some sort of an environmental demonstration. Before the activism takes over, here are some photos of the Spanish warmth.

And finally, the famous electricity works…
We just love turning the lights on and off every day…

OK, here I am.
The weather is great, I’ve been shooting photos and videos like there’s no tomorrow. It’s such a pity that the internet connection seems to be from the 80’s – down&upstreams are 4kb/s if you’re lucky. Normally they’ll reach 1kb/s. So no photo or video uploads, sorry. They said the downstream works via satellite and when the connection works (not at the moment) the downstream is a bit faster, but the upstream still goes via some old modem.

The 5h bus trip from Madrid went fast and well. Except a small accident with a truck on a gas station and a broken front window, everything went as planned. Asturias is incredibly beautiful area, Pola De Lena bigger than we expected and Ronzon smaller. We are located just 4-5km away from Pola De Lena, surrounded with mountains.

The place itself is very entertaining, challenging and… just different. No shower – or well, you could call it a shower, but no warm water. No drinkable tap water. The canisters in which the drinkable water is, don’t look too good, but it’s the only chance to get something to drink. Damn – the photos would just tell more than what could ever describe. But what can you do.

Edit: I managed to upload two photos. The first one is a view from our balcony, the second just a general look over the fields of Ronzon. The Google Map below shows the exact location.

View BIG on Google Maps.

I’ll be leaving to Spain on Thursday.

I won’t be returning any phonecalls or SMSs except in very urgent cases. Please use email in order to contact me.

My destination is somewhere nearby Pola De Lena (see the map below) in Northern Spain. I won’t be staying in a cosy five star hotel but spending culturally colorful time in some sort of a hippy community. That’s at least what I’ve been told.

They have a wireless network there (thank god!), but only if the wind directions and star signs are correct. I don’t know too much what’s going to happen in the next two weeks, but I’m really looking forward to it. If the WLAN really works, I’ll share the moments of the urban web2.0 oriented guy totally lost in agriculture.

View the map BIG on Google Maps.