Just had a class on environmental ethics at a South African institution and that ish was REAL. Yo, studying in the USA as an international student has its costs. Like never studying about things going on in the world, and finnagling everything so you can do it anyway, like the professor who taught me philosophies of the environment and assumed that only Europe and the USA had those, and the…
Author: Wangũi
postcards from lynedoch
So instead of waiting till I have my Mexico reflections typed out (which I would rather do on a laptop in order to add pictures and whatnot) I’ll begin to write short, as-I-go observations, insights and reflections from my time in South Africa. I (finally) got here towards the end of March and will have a 2 month stay. I have to say I imagined that Lynedoch Ecovillage was a…
ecobarrios bogotá, a reflection
Meeting in San Cristóbal, 25 Jan 2014 @ 9 am. We arrive. There is a group of people clearing the bushes and branches surrounding a particular house. Apparently, a group of thieves/drug users had taken up in the house and this is a way to increase visibility for community scrutiny and improved safety. I am impressed at the group effort evident. Young and old with machetes in hand. The meeting…
uses and abuses
The ab/use of the term ecobarrios. I wanted to know how people in informal settlements and in urban marginalities understood the environment. How they made the environmental movement theirs. Pues, here it is. Whatever I thought eco-neighbourhoods are imagined to be, are not what they are here. What was in the article, was simply the articulation of the elements of ecobarrios, with no application of these elements on the ground-…
first night
We walked up, We kept walking up. I was sure I would never leave the place- What? And suffer this treacherous walk again? No way. Slightly drunk- it was the holidays- he stumblingly stopped, at a dark spot on the curved road. Dark because of the ravine, from which shot up tall tall trees. Dark too because it was night. I half-feared for my luggage, So close was he to…
memory making
We curate our own experiences. Our lives. So that they don’t say we were never here, we did not exist. We were here. We are here. I was noticing how at every event held at La Escuelita, they were always taking photographs, some which would end up in the annual newspaper/magazine, La Calavera, that they print and distribute. Additionally, anytime an article in one of the newspapers mentioned the centre…