Perma Culture Vultures

To really appreciate a life of living in hotels and eating all your meals in restaurants, perhaps you have to give it all up for a bit. And so we did. Having met a couple in a restaurant in Koh Tao who had a boy who was: a) 2 ½ , b) English, and c) obsessed with Hotwheels cars (Hotwheels^TM is a brand of replica toys, made in a factory in Malaysia, and is presumably what Max dreams of when he smiles in his sleep. We have been rerouting approximately a quarter of all our spending money to this subsidiary of Mattel). It turned out that the family was on a holiday away from a perma culture farm north of Chiang Mai. If you know as much about perma culture farms as we did, then you can imagine it was a steep learning curve.

“Isn’t perma culture something to do with fish poo?” Kate asked earnestly. The couple, to their great credit didn’t dismiss us as idiots, and said we should come and find out for ourselves.

So, apart from impressing everyone with our fish poo knowledge, the flow of information on the farm was entirely in our direction. As it turns out, perma culture is a holistic agricultural way of living that is as sustainable as is humanly possible.

We were welcomed into the friendly community, and Max soon made his presence felt. We were lodged in an open adobe mud hut, with a high bed, territorial spiders and a mosquito net which we came to depend on with our very lives. The days would begin with some sort of wholesome activity before Max awoke, followed by communal breakfast, morning meeting, 3 hours of work (hacking weeds , building bamboo bridges, composting, hacking weeds, planting, hacking weeds etc.), communal lunch, afternoon languor, communal dinner, communal chilli ginger wine drinking, followed by the early non-communal bed. By nine o’clock, the common spaces would be long-deserted. We figured this reflected wholesome early-rising, living off the land in the rhythms of nature. As it turns out, everyone skedaddled to bed in the evening partly to avoid being mugged by the mosquitoes, but mostly to watch episodes of Game of Thrones on laptops.

In keeping with our travels thus far, the perma culture environment was littered with infant hazards. By the second day, we had encountered 4 scorpions, two of which were in our room. They say the small ones are deadlier, but why take chances? Our kill-on-sight tactic was met with gasping horror at the breakfast table, by some of the more compassionate members of the community. By week two, Max was well trained in spotting and announcing scorpions.

The toilets were either a dry compost long-drop loo, or a worm-based ‘rocket toilet’ that was brimful of writhing maggots. Max, who is very much in the throes of a strong toilet fixation, thought them the most exciting environment he’d ever set foot in. I mean that literally, since at one point he lost his footing and plunged into the cavern of humanure, his toes inches away from faecal contact). The maggots in the rocket toilet, which were enough to keep even the hardy Kate Clark away, held Max in thrall. Anyone nearby would overhear Max from the toilet: “Worms like my poo? They love it? They LOVE it?? They want some more? OK, there you go, wormies. What might they say? They might say YUMMY!? HMMM!” and so on.

For a resoundingly healthful environment, the farm was host to a legion of ailments. The volunteers looked like they’d been shipped in from the triages of the Crimea. The axiom in this sort of tropical, non-chemical-soap environment is that a paper cut can kill you in days. The medical corner was relabelled the ‘amputation station’, complete with red-painted axe. Kate and Max would perch on stools everyday and apply tinctures and dressings, cooing excitedly as the peroxide or surgical alcohol did its work.

Max and his 2 ½ year old buddy brought havoc to the place, careering about, beefing over Hotwheels all day. At one point a suspicious calm descended, and Max was found to have a scorching temperature. When he was clocking a consistent 39.5° all day, and all the advice featuring turmeric and camomile was falling on fallow ground, we borrowed a truck to take him to a slick hospital instead. Predictably, the doctor filled our arms with as much hardcore non-EU regulated antibiotics as we could carry/pay for. Max recovered his normal body temperature, appetite, feistiness and vehicular obsession in under an hour.

The end of our stay deserved a break from the general abstemiousness, and we drank beer around the campfire on our last night. The next morning, all but one of the long-term workers had left for another project in town, leaving the place to a handful of newcomers. As we shuffled about, trying to pack up and to tidy the unwholesome chaos, I heard a familiar yet unexpected sound drawing near. What sounded like fifty Thai school children approaching unannounced turned out to be, in fact, fifty Thai school children approaching unannounced. The cultural differences between east and west can be hard to anticipate; nevertheless, I suspected that the sight of a bunch of groggy hippies mooching about, half-dressed, in a beery mess would confirm only the lowest of expectations. Nick, the only experienced worker on site, dashed off to find a shirt in the lost property. Moments later, haphazardly dressed, we stood in front of the assembled children and teachers, grimacing. I noticed sweat beading on Nick’s face.

“Holy shit Ben, I think they want a fucking English lesson. Don’t leave me here.”

“No way, Nick. I’ve got you.”

I wondered whether I could contribute something about fish poo, but just then, as luck would have it, I heard a shrill and familiar cry from Kate from the direction of the adobe huts. “There’s a poisonous snake under the bed!” I exited sweatily and found Max and Kate in a flurry of excitement, pointing at the stripey, angry-looking, Z-shaped snake in the corner of our room. Max, showing his usual lack of natural concern towards deadly creatures, asked if he could eat it.

I rejoined Nick, who was fielding questions from the group. There were some pauses big enough to drive a truck into. At this suitable moment, to universal relief, Max propelled himself into the situation, which provoked every man woman and child to start filming on their phones. After a quick and appalled tour of the toilets, the school party left, showering us in what were seemingly heartfelt offers to take Max home on a long-term basis.

Nick looked a little harried, “What a cluster fuck!”

Living close to the earth, doing some work, cooking and cleaning for the first time since leaving Goa was a great experience. In almost a month, we bought virtually nothing, used hardly anything, threw hardly anything away and very rarely travelled anywhere. For a change, our ecological footprint was scarcely visible. It was a fine, hearty feeling, and will be a handy juxtaposition to going to Bangkok, and then back to London. We had an inspiring and educational time spent with some amazing people, and we left with honest dirt under our fingernails and lists of resolutions for our life back home.

Danger zone

The east coast of Sri Lanka was badly ravaged by 3 decades of civil war, and as recently as four years ago it was not an easy place to visit. Perhaps a little crassly, the guide book describes it as ‘Baghdad-on-sea'.

Whilst Kate was doing a meditation course in Kandy, I took Max to Trincomolee with our friends Libby and Rosie. After 6 weeks in Sri Lanka, we had found the beach we had been looking for. Beautiful, golden sand, tranquil water, and ramshackle accommodation amongst the palms- perfect.

Having endured 7 hours of hot and dusty travel, with Max rampaging throughout the trains, we sat, begrimed, clasping cold beers, toasting our good luck. What could be better?

Rosie went to order some lunch and came back, menu in hand, looking a little hesitant. We voiced our worst fears: no food?

“Um, all the guys working here are watching the TV. There’s been an earthquake 5 minutes ago in Indonesia. There might be a tsunami coming.”

We clustered round the TV, watching 3 men in a news studio speak in Sinhalese. By way of graphics, one man would tilt his ipad to the camera.

“…something something something 8.9 Richter scale something something tsunami something something Sri Lanka tsunami something something…”

We laughed nervously, keenly eyeing the staff for signs of concern. The manager assured us that if the wave came we’d be okay: “We have a big rock.” We were quick to seize any positive indicators.

The news reporters looked grave, the mobile phone signal was intermittent, people started hurrying a bit. We ordered rice. Then the manager calmly told us to pack our bags.

We gulped our beers, gathered the bags we hadn’t actually unpacked yet anyway, and minutes later a 16-seater van barrelled onto the sand, the tubby driver awash with sweat. All the westerners in the area crammed themselves into the van with all our cumbersome luggage. Some were looking a bit edgy, others traded a little gallows humour.

I asked the manager why he wasn’t getting in, and he explained that the last time there had been a tsunami alert, they’d been looted once they left. He said they would follow on as soon as they had packed up the valuables. We watched this act of guest-house martyrdom grimly from the van window.

In the style of a TV drama with too few actors, the van driver turned out to be Sonju, the TukTuk driver who had driven us from the train station 30 minutes previously. He careered wildly through lanes and alleys, blasting the horn, bellowing on his mobile. Max, in the front seat, was chuffed to bits with all this excitement. We passed groups of people scuttling hurriedly away from the coast with a selection of their belongings. Two men were carrying a fridge. Incongruously, some people were continuing with construction work, chatting, some even walking back to the beach.

It reminded me of my last visit to Sri Lanka, in 2004, when the last tsunami struck our beach and we were evacuated. I thought I wouldn’t share these thoughts just yet.

Sonju ground to a halt in an alley that was so narrow that the doors could only open on one side. “This is my house. This is safe here.” The mostly British van contingent glanced anxiously around. We weren’t really very far from the beach, and at no particular elevation. All the buildings had the hallmarks of recent construction, conceivably less than 8 years old. In amongst the Sinhalese writing on the walls, the numerals 2004 were the only ones I could make out.

We wondered if there wasn’t somewhere a little further away. Sonju mopped his face. “Yes, Okay, we go to my other house.” How lucky we were to be evacuated by a man with a huge van and several inland properties. Libby immediately promoted him to the position of ‘Chief Evacuation Officer’.

Sonju’s other house turned out, to everyone’s relief, to be on a hill. For some reason this seemed already to be a general mustering point for evacuated non-locals, and more arrived in due course, lending the place the look of an affluent refugee camp. Ergonomic backpacks and iphones everywhere. 

Sri Lankan hospitality is such that, even though a repeat of the natural disaster that destroyed a massive part of their county seemed imminent, drinks, food and shelter were provided to the gathering of wealthy westerners.

Max, meanwhile was entertained by a squad of children and a limitless heap of toy vehicles. I could see him chalking this day up as one of the best of his young life.

Just then, a lorry appeared, the back doors opened, and the staff from the guesthouse tumbled out, holding crates of beer, music playing. A carnival atmosphere settled upon the scene. An emergency bakery van pulled up, and before long everyone was brandishing a pastry in one hand and a drink in the other.

Anxiety has a way of diminishing with time, beer and inactivity, and so once the locals announced the all-clear, people headed back the guesthouses. I decided to stay the night in a place in town with Max. I reckoned the threat of tsunami was minimal, but felt sure that Kate would shrug off her meditative calm and give me a sound thrashing for taking her firstborn child back to sleep in a room 30metres from the sea, hours after a tsunami scare.

The next morning, paradise resumed. The locals were joking about the evacuation, Max was chuckling about ‘the salami’, and asking when we were going back to the house with all the toys. We were eating fruit salad under the coconut trees. Again, what could be better? Just then, the scene was shattered by an enormous cracking sound. We sprung up to see a huge coconut tree break in the middle, for no apparent reason, and fall onto a set of sun-loungers, where the local dive instructor was lying, half asleep. Miraculously, the man rolled out of way a fraction of a second before he was to be crushed under the weight of falling timber. To his credit, the chap was particularly sanguine: gamely posing for photos a few minutes later, drinking from the same coconuts that might have brained him. We noted that he had lost a few fingers in a previous accident and decided he might be worth keeping a safe distance from. Local women were quick on the scene, grinning and gathering the coconuts. “Bounty hunters,” Rosie observed dryly.

Max capered about on the fallen tree, reporting the events loudly. One of the staff casually suggested we keep Max away from the tree top, as there was a ‘giant centipede’ in there. ‘What next?’ we asked ourselves. That was answered when a petulant dog bit Max in the leg and drew a little blood.

Kate arrived later that day, fresh from a few days’ meditation. I courageously played down the many hazards of single-parenthood I’d withstood over the previous 48 hours. We had survived, and we were on the beach, altogether. So...What could be better? Rosie went to get some cold beer, but came back empty-handed, once again looking apprehensive. Not another tsunami, surely? Worse, in fact. To our horror, since it was the Tamil and Sinhalese new year, there was no alcohol to buy, anywhere. We were reeling, trying to comprehend the concept of a ‘dry new year’. We mooched about a bit, in dismay, muttering gloomily, until we noticed two huge speakers had been set up in front of our huts. How odd. Minutes later, we were slinging back local liquor, dancing to an impromptu rave. Nothing accentuates a celebration better than boozy pyrotechnics, of course. ‘Look, Max, this man’s lighting some fireworks…’ this was the last thing I said before a cluster of bangers exploded in our faces, and I ran, panicked and deaf, with Max in my arms, to hose off what I assumed was smouldering shrapnel on his tender skin. Retrospectively, perhaps a tad dramatic, but, given the recent run of events, nothing seemed out of the question. Not for the first time, I thought to myself that we’ll be lucky to get out of this trip alive.

The Shipping News

 A couple of months back we were assaulted in our garden by the sort of noxious vapours that you usually only experience when crossing a city bridge in India. Wafts of this sulphurous odour would come with a sudden change of wind, and have us reaching for the incense. In due course, it turned out to be a bedraggled length of mango timber, older than Methuselah, lying next to the garden. I asked our landlord, Sandeep, who at once denied being able to smell anything untoward, and explained that it was his new boat. I could only grimace at the rank black log, unable to imagine how it could ever be sea worthy.

The boat remained dormant for a few weeks until a wild-looking man appeared at the house. If India had an adult film industry in the 70’s, this man could well have been a relic of that scene: skanky polyester tracksuit bottoms, bouffant mullet, strong moustache, and a wifebeater vest which had stretched until the straps were thin as vermicelli, tracing a line several inches shy of his nipples.

‘Car painter’ Sandeep announced. ‘Not many many here, Agonda, Parvem, Chaudi.Hard to find one.’

Odd, I thought, since Sandeep doesn’t own a car.

This marked the beginning of a ten day period of unprecedented household tension. In order to build the rest of the smelly boat, the untamed car-penter had insisted on a day rate. This was a decisive factor in the resultant glacial work rate and the consequent stress on Sandeep’s part. Every day the carpenter would be loafing in the yard next to the incomplete boat, in various stages of repose (reclining, burping, farting, scratching his belly, fully sleeping), whilst Sandeep and his friends would labour away with planes and drills.

The man’s ample quiff seemed to act as a deflector shield, rendering him impervious to every insult, persuasion, imploration and threat. At the rare times when the carpenter would be actively involved, it would require Sandeep to be poised over him, staring at the back of his skull.

Through the whole process, the carpenter remained blithely stoic, whereas Sandeep, by contrast, was visibly falling apart. Having to keep a constant vigil over a man who remained resolutely indolent had driven Sandeep to pre-noon drinking. Even a passing ‘How’s it going?’ would be enough to trigger a red-eyed deluge of scathing recrimination about the man’s constant skiving.

Any available means were employed to coax the carpenter to work. A belly as proud and fulsome as his is seldom unearned, and so it was that all day he would devour whole plates of fish, quaff warm beers in seconds and virtually eat cigarettes whole. As anyone would pass innocently by, the carpenter would flag them down with hand-to-mouth or swigging gestures, whilst making Chewbacka sounds. The ground around the half-boat was littered equally with woodchippings, Kingfisher bottles, fag butts and tali plates.

The entire boat and boat-making process betrayed not a single traceof modernity. Planks of wood were heated over a coconut fire and bowed, then sewn onto the dugout hull with string. Nothing more hi-tech than an adze was used. A crude outrigger was lashed to the bow with more string. It would be hard to imagine that the technology has changed in the last couple of millennia.

On day seven, Sandeep looked up and saw me watching him watching the carpenter. The carpenter immediately asked for a beer. Sandeep winced, and stared gloomily at the unfinished sidings of the boat. For something to say, I asked where the carpenter came from. Sandeep gestured dismissively into the bushes with his chin. The jungle? It seemed likely enough. “No, Salari. Village name: Salari.” Perhaps the perfect hometown for a man so focused on his own payscale.

Days dragged on and the determined inertia of the Salari man had, if anything, hardened. Sandeep wore a haunted look, but, to our communal surprise, suddenly announced the blessing of the boat. The boat puja, it seemed, did not require a finished boat, but would benefit greatly from an audience and an aged guest of honour.

Luckily for everyone involved, my father, notoriously, will dress up in ethnic garb at the drop of a Nehru hat. Off he went to get ready to play the role of Brahmin, coming back shortly after, announcing that his chalwar chemise was in the wash. Before anyone’s disappointment could take hold, Sandeep emerged from his house with a bright orange synthetic two-piece outfit as a replacement. A sense of general glee pervaded the scene.

A plastic garden chair was arranged for the high-caste, Tango-themed VIP, whilst the rest of us clustered around the incomplete craft. A few Konkani words of blessing were uttered by Sandeep, as he smeared red and yellow powder on the boat and everyone’s forheads. My dad was enjoying the sartorial absurdity of his position almost as much as the rest of us.

“Hang on. Why am I dressed up like this, when Sandeep’s stood here in a grubby towel?”

The carpenter looked on with the pride of a new father, smoking a pilfered cigarette. Some sugary prasad was passed round. Sandeep announced that the boat would be named jointly after his daughter and Max. There was a pause, into which my father gamely leapt with a shimmer of polyester.

“May we hereby confer onto this fine vessel all the good fortune in the world, and may it henceforth bring the utmost prosperity to all who set foot upon her!”

“Good words, Daddy. Superb.” Murmured Sandeep in appreciation.

My dad, adjusting his costume, ventured, “Sandeep, in England, the launching of a new ship involves smashing a bottle of wine against the side...”

“Not my boat.”

In this celebratory atmosphere, it was easy to forget that the boat wasn’t actually yet ready to sail. We disperse, and the working/loafing/supervision routine resumed in earnest.

Days later, just when we expect to find Sandeep dancing over the adze-hacked body of the carpenter, there he is, paddling the boat, pootling about proudly in the river, beckoning one and all to come for an inaugural cruise. Sandeep’s smile covered three quarters of his whole face, free at last of the slothful carpainter, captain of his brand new vessel.