WORMS - Part 1: The quizzical hunt

After 4 years of creating a Perma-culture environment along side my Amerikanoestudios community in Esparza, Costa Rica, my arrival in Jinan has been an unhealthy stupefying dose of eco-culture shock. It has taken some time to observe and develop a strategy coherent with the area I now reside in and so begin the regenerative process.

My beloved Xibalba garden. Amerikanoestudios
Esparza, Costa

For those unfamiliar with Permaculture, Bill Mollison puts it like this:

"Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system." 

(Wiki Permaculture article)

For me, this philosophy began to click as soon as I understood that the task at hand was much simpler than I thought; I merely needed to slow down my thinking and start observing much more. Time to confront my own part in our species' hubris: believing that our sub-microbic consciousness can resolve what nature's consciousness has been doing marvelously since the dawn of time.

Typical Jinan soil

That approach had worked all nice and dandy back in rural, dry yet lush forest of western Costa Rica. But what about when there is little left of the natural world to observe? Jinan is just another Oriental bustling town, where progress is measured by the height and numbers of the buildings rising and the color green is a legally regulated distraction to grayscaling as far as the eye can see.

Nonetheless, no matter where you live you can always learn a bit of eco-conciousness from what I call the eco-unconscious (not to be confused with the eco-indifferent); those who out of need or practicality have found ways to live more in harmony with the environment than those of us who mostly just get in the way of what is natural. So, following good perma-culture principles and Marco's dad from Mulberry Street I set off "to see what I could see".

Lunch time in Caillou. 

My first snack time in Caillou, was about as shocking as seeing my homeland, Costa Rica, in the quarter finals of this years' soccer World Cup. Watching the kids learn to throw their seeds and organic waste into the trash can was something I did not want to be a part of. The question however was where could we take such sacred decay. Our school is entirely indoors and the surrounding outdoor spaces are either covered in cement or tarpaulined by grass.

Out worm hunting!

Having no yard to call home, composting was out of the question, next in line, an Originateve favorite: WORMS IN THE CLASSROOM, the perfect way to get eco-skeptic anti-kids-having-a-ball teachers off your supervised shoulder and get the kids between your legs and under your nose, all goeeyed up in a mess of beauty. Nonetheless, since I have long since moved away from "eco-friendly" behaviors that seem to tie you up into the "I NEED TO BUY" scheme quicker than a baby boomer in a bull market, I decided to "keep my eyelids up" for a non-consuming solution to a worm bin.

Styrofoam gardens

After about a 20-minute walk towards nowhere-Jinan, I saw her, the answer to all my problems; here in Jinan all home gardening happens in big styro-foam boxes used initially for fruit only then to be discarded, unless saved by the eco-unconscious who based on practicality not awareness (a prime perma-culture principle afterall) use them for their home-gardening projects.

Back in the classroom Monday morning we were ready to go. Styrofoam boxes were poked in order for the "compost juices" to seep through to the box below. Moist newspaper shreds were placed as bedding and some old freezer burnt lettuce was tossed in for when we came back with the worms. Time for the worm hunt!! This is precisely what I love about doing it versus hearing of others that did it. You stumble upon epiphany, after epiphany, revealing how messed up we are. From my 8th floor window my neighborhood is green, but once on ground level, the wormless earth reveals her thirst. I never would have thought it would be so hard to find worms. The soil all around our apartments is landfill, packed down by heavy machinery. After a 2 hour hunt we stumbled upon 4 little earthworms which we took back and gave an official beginning to Caillou's first Vermiculture box.


We will keep you posted of her evolution.

Instructional on where to put fruit seeds when finished!

Making our worm bin.