For two weeks, Carrie and I put traveling aside to live and volunteer at Sadhana Forest. We had no idea what to expect but were told that we would be planting trees and staying in a communal living environment. When we arrived we found that no description, no email, could have prepared us for our experience. For two weeks we worked hard, ate mostly vegan food, participated in fascinating workshops, drove a rickety scooter all over, experienced the highs and lows of a commune and made great new friends.

The Sadhana Forest project was started five years ago by Aviram and Yorvit who moved their lives to a badly deforested patch of land in Auroville, near India’s East coast. After building some basic infrastructure and huts, they invited volunteers from all over the world to join them and help rebuild the area. Now the young forest is budding and filled with new trees, plants and a hope for the future. The community at Sadhana also continues to grow with a record 120 volunteers there at one time in early 2009.

First work meeting. Everyone is tired and eating a bananna to wake up

Wake up as close to it as you want, but at 6:30am the first jobs are given out and the day begins. Referred to as first work, these tasks are day’s most labor-intensive work, as the air is still cool and the sun is low. Jobs range from planting trees to preparing breakfast, working in a garden, cleaning the main hut, digging holes, cleaning the toilets, building roads or babysitting the founders’ infant. Regardless of your task, it was done with the help of other people and everyone has something to do.

After two hours, everyone is quite hungry and ready to hear the gong that signals the end of first work and the start of breakfast. Prepared during first work, breakfast is always the same: fresh fruit, porridge and jaggery (a local and natural sugar). Second work assignments are also divvied out over the meal and usually involve some sort of gardening or less-intensive maintenance work. Carrie and I always tried to get something indoors or shaded, as by the time work starts up again at 9:30am the sun is already blazing.

Filling up the hand washing buckets next to the bathroom

Once second work ends (as close to 11:30 as possible), people in the community begin to scatter and plan their day’s activities. Lunch is always at 12:30, but other than that the days are up for grabs. Every afternoon, members of the community put on workshops on subjects ranging from creative writing to yoga, dance and the art of tying yourself to a bulldozer as a nonviolent protest. When not attending those some of my favorite pastimes were napping, using the free wi-fi (when we actually had power), reading, napping, relaxing, hopping on a scooter to go explore the nearby area, getting ice cream, just staring off and napping.

The evening’s possible activities are very similar to that of the afternoons. Dinner is served at 5:30, after which there are workshops, presentations, videos, talent shows and other planned activities. All of these are optional and put on by community members. Later in the evening a drum circle around a bonfire is a common sight (despite the questionable need for a giant fire in an 85 degree evening) and goodnights are often said early, as everyone has to get up at 6:30am tomorrow and do it all again.

Bunding in process. The whole mound did not exist a few hours earlier

I know, I know. The idea of me doing any kind of manual labor is funny to you. Heck, it’s funny to me! I’ll be honest; the idea of coming to Sadhana Forest was all Carrie’s. She did the research, put in the time and decided that it was the best place in India to volunteer. It just didn’t seem like my thing, but I figured I would give it a shot anywhere. If it was terrible, I could always leave.

My love affair with Sadhana Forest began during the very first work when I discovered bunding. The concept is simple: take soil and create dams to divert the flow of rainwater (or monsoon water, as is the case in Sadhana) into dug out holes. Once in the holes, the water can not damage the communal area and can seep into the ground and refill the underground reservoir that flows under the land.

While many of these bunds are in fields somewhere, others double as the main walking paths in Sadhana Forest. My job was to take the dirt from people digging in a hole, spread it out across paths and compact it down by foot or with a heavy pounding tool. It was a good workout and, surprisingly, tons of fun. I quickly adopted bunding as my permanent first work activity and even found myself missing it over the weekend when there was no first work.

After a rain storm we got a chance to see how our bunds held up

I realized the reason I liked it so much was because at the end of every two hour period I could see defined progress. A path being built is much easier to guide from start to finish than the growth of a tree. In fact, I became so attached to the project that I was even put in charge of managing it after the previous leader left Sadhana.

While I spent all of my first works doing bunding, my activities varied a lot during second work. A complete list is as follows: I cooked lunch multiple times, sprayed nicotine on leaves to kill mold, transported baby trees across the compound to a new tree nursery, cleaned the main hut, poked holes in bottles for use in irrigation, rode a stationary bike during a rain storm to create electricity, washed bed sheets, painted signs, rotated solar panels and used mud to create walls around trees to stop rainwater from damaging them.

For more on bunding, check out Wikipedia

The biggest dorm at Sadhana Forest

Everything at Sadhana Forest is geared around the community. All meals are eaten together, sleeping is dorm style in thatch huts, volunteers put on workshops to share their knowledge, Wednesday is hummus night and everyone says something about their week during the Sunday meeting. Even the work is community based, both in that it is always done with someone else and that so many of the first and second work tasks are simply upkeep of the living area.

So, if Sadhana Forest is all communal then where do tasks come from and who leads them? Good question. Key jobs, such as bunding and reforestation, are decided upon by Aviram and Yorit. As the founders and the only people who call it home permanently, they have the best idea of what is needed for the actual project and for the long term needs of the forest and community. However, that is where there roles end, as natural leaders within the volunteers always come forth from the crowd.

The main hut during a meal

Sometimes the leader of a task can be someone who has an expertise in that area, either through previous experience or lots of time at Sadhana. Other times it is someone who just wants a new experience or just senses a need. Regardless, everyone has their time to shine and their time to take a backseat. It was very interesting to watch as the process sorted itself out with little to no supervision.

Other tasks need dedicated attention everyday, regardless of first or second work assignments, and are volunteered for every Sunday during the weekly community meeting. These include head chef, hygiene inspector (responsible for toilets, hand washing stations and more), solar panel rotator, wake up crew, work coordinator and anything else needed to keep Sadhana running smoothly. While some tasks are time-intensive, others only need to be done once or twice a week. These were the ones that I volunteered for.

The kitchen at Sadhana Forest. At least 5 people made every meal

While most things at Sadhana ran smoothly, we did notice a few byproducts of the way leaders are formed and jobs are chosen. While a task leader may have a week of experience, they are often not experts. Case in point: one of my second work assignments were to poke holes in more than 100 water bottles and caps to use them for irrigation. However, after all our work we later learned that the leader had no idea what we were supposed to do and we poked way too many holes rendering the bottles useless.

Another place where lines of communication often broke down was in the kitchen. Head chefs were chosen weekly at the Sunday meeting, but every day they had a different staff of cutters and preparers. Also, chefs often had no idea what they were doing going in, but wanted to give vegan cooking a shot. So, when creating on the fly it is tough to keep your staff apprised of the plans…especially when they change mid-preparation. This, at times, leads to much frustration between everyone in the kitchen.

Filling up trays of mud to help reforestation...in a group, of course

Bonds within the community are often a direct result of work being done together and through shared experiences. With anywhere from 30 – 80 volunteers at a time while we were there, Carrie and I witnessed both the highs and lows of communal living. When we arrived, nearly half of the 80 volunteers had been at Sadhana for nearly five weeks completing some coursework. As a result, while they were welcoming and helpful, they had one foot out the door and very few had room for new friends. All of us newer members felt this and formed our own bond, which led to a cliquish feeling in the community.

Once the volunteers taking the course left, life at Sadhana Forest completely shifted. We went out of our way to make all newcomers feel welcome and included, though I’m sure through their eyes the cliques we tried hard to eliminate still existed. I suppose when bringing so many different people together and asking them to live in harmony, it’s a bit unavoidable.

In addition to cliques, another issue that arises in communal living is a lack of privacy. All rooms were dorm style with some huts having dozens of beds. Most of your time awake is spent surrounded by people and volunteers often have to leave the boundaries of Sadhana Forest to get a little peace and quiet.

Me and my scooter in Auroville

Our first ride was a bit dicey, as neither of us had ever driven a scooter before, let alone on the opposite side of the road before. It took about ten minutes before we had our first little crash while trying to cross traffic and make a sharp turn on dirt. It was not in front of traffic, but of course a handful of locals were there to watch the show.

Early jitters aside, I fell completely in love with our scooter and can see why motorcycles have such a cult following. That said, I also see how dangerous they are and have no need to drive one back home. In Sadhana the joy was half having the freedom to get out when I wanted and half the thrill of the wind in my face. That, and caravaning was a favorite past time of volunteers. One night we had a string of eight scooters driving in a line home all honking and passing each other. Too much fun!

Pushing our bikes through the mud

In the end, six scooters made it out of the mud road without incident and the caravan headed to a bakery for some croissants and cheese. We never did make it to get ice cream as the sky was darkening and we feared mud driving at night. Our accident-free track record continued until the final curve before arriving back at Sadhana, which was a giant mud pool that, despite not having Carrie on the bike, caused me to skid out and fall ass-first into the puddle. After a classic laugh first, ask questions later, experience, Carrie came over and helped get the bike off of me and I proceeded to walk it the final hundred feet home.

One of the indoor bathrooms at Sadhana Forest. The bag of sawdust is on the bottom left, the poo hole is on the left, and the pee and bum washing station is on the right

Because I’m nearly 29 and I still find poop funny, let’s talk about the bathroom situation at Sadhana Forest. As you know if you’ve been following the entries, toilets in India are usually squatty potties. AKA, you squat over a hole, do your business and flush. However, in Sadhana this is taken a step further. Instead of water and flushing, toilets have a bag of sawdust next to them which is used to cover your business after the deed is done.

The idea behind sawdust is that when combined with poo it combines to form a very potent compost. At least a few times a week the hole must be stirred, which is usually a first or second work activity that  I avoided like the plague. Once the hole is full, the bathroom is shut down for a few days while the composting process concludes. Then, volunteers scoop out the hole and save the contents for spreading throughout the forest and gardens.

While this is a great way to get amazing compost for planting, it sometimes creates a problem for volunteers at Sadhana. For example, despite the existence of nearly a dozen toilets, at one point only two of them were working for around 60 volunteers. This included the pee areas for the women (men were encouraged to pee on a tree). As a result, there were often long lines to use the bathrooms and first and second work were sometimes begun with that special feeling in the stomach. But that’s enough of that from the nearly 29 year old :P

Serving a vegan breakfast of fruit salad, porridge and jaggery, which is a local and organic sugar substitute

This is me bunding. The shirt and pants I found...and left...at Sadhana

Every time we all went into the mud pool by Sadhana Forest, locals came to watch what the crazy white folks were up to

Painting signs during second work

When it rains we had to cycle here to create power

Taxi waiting for our goodbye to Sadhana Forest

Be sure to check out Carrie’s entry on our experience at Sadhana for a completely different view.

A 40 minute film recommendation: Money as Debt. If you don’t quite understand the roots of our current economic crisis or are wondering what the heck happened, you HAVE to watch this video.

Lastly, I just want to thank my mom for being so supportive in whatever I do and wherever I go. It really does make a difference knowing that.

]]> 3 http://www.adventuresofagoodman.com/sadhana-forest-photos-and-videos/ http://www.adventuresofagoodman.com/sadhana-forest-photos-and-videos/#comments Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:06:19 +0000 Greg Goodman http://www.adventuresofagoodman.com/?p=469