East Timor Renaissance and Children of Permaculture - From East Timor to the Future of the World (3)

As I already wrote, in East Timor there is a local permaculturist in government position. That is Ego Lemos of the Ministry of Education, and he has launched an NGO named Permatil (Permaculture Timor Lorosa'e) and is striving to disseminate permaculture. Recently, together with Australian supporters, they have also created a guidebook for permaculture, which is open to the public.

Home - Permaculture Guidebook

Based on this guidebook, East Timor developed textbooks and curriculums, and has started a project to create a model farm of permaculture at schools throughout the country. Ego also produces the project as an agent from the Ministry of Education.

This resembles the policy of Yohei Miyake who became a topic in the previous House of Council elections. Yuhei Miyake 's speech is below, so please take a look if you are interested. The policy on natural farming will be around 39: 53.

Unfortunately he was unsuccessful in the election and it would be a long way to realize that policy of teaching natural and organic agriculture at school and fostering independent persons even if he is elected.

But in East Timor it is being promoted as a government policy now. It opens up the future of East Timor and the East Timor model has the potential to lead the world as an advanced case.

- Permaculture raises multiculturalism?

Since farmers in East Timor have enough money to buy pesticides at all, East Timor's agriculture is very natural and organic. Because permaculture places emphasis on organic circulation, the project may update their simple farming while mediating with the modern without breaking the natural agricultural world.

For example, newspapers can be carbon materials used for making soils, but it is a problem that inks contain heavy metals. So permaculturist appeals the use of soy ink (ink derived from soybean), but I do not hear much that it was adopted extensively in developed countries. It is because the existing industry is run with ordinary ink.

But in East Timor, where newspapers do not seem to be prevalent, they can decide what they use from now. Hopefully they will not do anything special but they can be proud of the bundle of old newspapers. They will be glad to see foreigners admires it every time they come.

There may also be people from mountain area in Philipines who came to work there. Their knowledge on farming in mountains is worth learning and permaculture is to encourage such a circulation of knowledge.

Indeed, East Timor's farming seems to be very rustic, and mountainous areas are said to be plagued by soil erosion as the size of coffee farmlands grows. It seems that the mountain farmers were impressed when Fillipinos told the tips of planting proper fruit trees to prevent the outflow of soil and producing fruits too, which is done in the terraced rice paddies in Phillipines. But it seems they do not feel like doing it (lol)

East Timor currently is dependent on super monoculture coffee production

As East Timor, Australia and the Philippines are basically Christian nations, their affinity may also be useful. If you activate communication, something that is now cumbersome and has been heard in may be gradually adopted gradually.

Many people gather at the Catholic church in East Timor

Isn't it wonderful if permaculture from Australia could help Catholics in East Timor and the Philippines to harmonize and utilize each other's knowledge?

The idea of making use of surplus and expecting something come up from the edge (boundary) of heterogeneity helps people to discover resources and rational methods not yet used in the rustic world hand in hand.

Then East Timor, the emerging country, can incorporate various things to be introduced into the organic circulation from the beginning. This is tremendous advantage.

From the school project promoted by Ego, designers who can implement such circulation around the country will be produced.

- Permaculture to discover East Timor

I think that what you need to really make use of this advantage is something before designing the permaculture garden.

It seems it's not much different from modern plantations, if it is an idea to replace existing fields with "permaculture garden system" from outside. Of course, a deprivative system like plantations that do not produce any organic circulation on the site is anti-permacultural way, so I do not mean such things are to be built by parmaculture.

The problem is that the idea of just sliding a successful system from outside destroys the fundamental semantic system that makes meaningful things grow 'wild'. There is a lack of dialogue there.

Permaculture is not about the garden that makes organic crops. Permaculture is respect for the nature that keeps enriching itself, and attitude to learn from it.

Permaculture garden in East Timor

For that purpose, there are excellent viewpoint that permaculture has refined variously, such as circulation, multiplicity, diversity, rationality. Organic society needs an organic garden, not vise versa.

So I think it is necessary to introduce the viewpoint before you introduce the system. You try to see East Timor's culture with glasses of permaculture. What was the agricultural culture before being filled in by the monoculture? What was circulation there?

May it be difficult since it passed through the colonial period, aren't there something important that should be learned from the culture there at the time before the colonial period, the time when it might have been Islamic, or even the older animeistic era?

I have been to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. The building of that town can only be built by the stones cut out from a neighboring place. That is why there is a heavy and profound sense of unity that the whole town brings up. There was hemp culture in Japan. The sacred rope used in the historical shrine is still made from hemp. A sustainable world coexisting with that versatile plant was possible in Japan.

How about in East Timor? How is that simple and strange small shrine related to agricultural products and material circulation? Among past lifestyles, was there anything useful, like hemp forbidden worldwide somehow? Is it really good to substitute with other products, such as petroleum products?

Traditional culture before Catholic remains even now

On the contrary, is the idea born outside is always correct? There is no reason to think so. For example, although the above-mentioned soy ink seems to be a good solution, it is still unknown whether you can use it permanently if materials and fuels to make it come from outside.

What will happen if the dependent outside resources are exhausted? At that time, so what if soy ink is used in the newspaper? If the society relies heavily on the surplus of the newspaper, what is going to happen? It's not so difficult to imagine.

Rather, as you go back to the use of local materials that existed in the lost old culture, when you start to use the surplus born there for the newspaper, shouldn't it be the permaculture of the East Timor?

What should be taught to children is not only how to make gardens, but also how to discover such various resources. It will be such sensibility as the whole body is excited about a source of the potential possibility on sites, born from respect for the nature and their own culture.

- The guide to read context

Looking at the Permaculture Guidebook listed at the beginning, we see the title A Tropical Permaculture Guidebook. As it says 'Tropical', it is conscious of the specific context of East Timor.

Moreover, illustrations included as design examples depict houses like East Timor. On the other hand, what is written is kept in the general theory such as "a method of reading nature patterns". This allows readers to explore their own permaculture while looking at sense of East Timor.

Such houses are drawn in the illustration

It cites the characteristic of the tropical field "far from home" for some reason. Based on that, it recommends making family garden around the house. From the viewpoint of permaculture, it points out improvements.

The guide also recommends the irrigation system to counter the dry season in the tropical areas, and at the same time to release fish to eat wrigglers. It would be possible for people to eat the fish. In this way you can proceed with rational and multilayered design.

Water is a big problem in the dry season

An almost general guide on tropical area and images of East Timor taste. It would be conscious that permarmulture like East Timor should be realized naturally in that way.

I don't know if it will be possible to deepen the culture as I wrote above by following this guide. It should be up to designers.

That is why I think that it would be better to present the viewpoint of their own culture to children at school. Just because it is not something foreign‐made, when they face themselves someday in the future, it will be a light to explore their own way, and at the same time a seed fire that ignites their mind.

- Towards East Timor Renaissance
So, though I think it's a big deal, it would be wonderful if some projects appear to explore a deeper solution with permaculture design while reading East Timor's history and old culture.

I think that is the best way to make use of the wonderful guide for the country. Moreover, it probably will show brilliant hope to the world.

Foreign supporters should be not only permaculturists and engineers but also cultural anthropologists to make a significant contribution. I would like the East Timor government to emphasize the cultural issues as well.

It is no doubt that a new academic field that leads to mankind's future should spread there. The result will be the contents that people from so-called 'advanced' countries will bow down and spend a fortune to learn.

The children in East Timor are learning it as a matter of course. East Timor will present an educational model preeminent in the world anyhow.

That road goes long distance

Uncovering the old culture to enrich the new system. This is a circulation beyond the time that exceeds the circulation now and here. It is a bricolage that incorporates even the time, and it is something called culture.

So instead of looking at the circulation like sliding sideways, or sliding the garden horizontally at the surface of the national land, soak up "East Timor" vertically from the deep. Like the plants do from plenty of rich soil and stretch branches freely. At that time, Permaculture raises "East Timor".

Doesn't it mean new things are introduced over the uniqueness as I wrote in the last article? It will eventually become an East Timor brand that lasts for hundreds of years. I think that way.

In that way East Timor expands freely its branches and leaves as East Timor, isn't it what they tried to defend in the independence struggle with their lives?

Just as they do not have to think that East Timor is Portugal or Indonesia, they do not need to think that what they are seeing now is all of East Timor. Instead, people in the country think and discover what East Timor is, and learn and assimilate good things from tradition. Perhaps the deceased tried to protect for children to do so naturally.

Of course it can not be achieved by Ego Lemos alone. That is why this situation where permaculture is being promoted nationally, as education ministry project, is going to have a significant meaning.