Galungan, a time of celebration

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Galungan is for the Balinese like Christmas for the West. A time of celebration and meeting with friends and relatives, traveling everywhere.

The preparations for the festivities takes place 2 days before, with the man preparing the sate, chicken and tuna. Well mixed version with coconut flakes and cream stuck on a wooden small spear to be seared over and open charcoal. Every family produced masses of these.

The next step is to find the right bamboo branch, very long and flexible on the top. It involves very intricate decoration work. Ours, at Jiwa Damai, is about 9 meters high and the tip is supposed to be flowing in the wind. 

Coconut production

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Our coconut oil production is in full swing. Presently we have many requests for coconut oil. We will export for the first time and are quite pleased to be able to offer our high quality totally hand crafted cold pressed coconut oil to be used for many purposes. To be taken orally, used as a cream, for cooking and many other uses. It is actually, aside from being a health food and food supplement a powerful alternative medicine.

Rains at Jiwa Damai

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We not only lost many trees and bamboos, the gardens top soil, being beaten daily by extremely powerful rains has diminished a lot. Deep trenches were dug to allow the masses of water to drain into the river. Presently we are trying to recuperate as much soil as we can. All is very muddy and the rains are still coming down.

Algae have taken over everywhere, due to the high humidity and are flourishing on walls and stones.

Fruits growing on our graden

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These fruit grow directly on the stem  of our huge “ tree spirit”, Asking the local people how we can use these fruit, looking a bit like figures, no one has been able so far to advise us on this. In the meantime, they fall to the grouse and we use them to enrich our organic compost. Do you know them?

A Monarch butterfly

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A Monarch butterfly chrysalis is mainly emerald or jade green in color highlighted by bright metallic gold trim – a horizontal line about 1/3 of the way down and raised golden bumps set apart symmetrically on its lower portion. About 24 hours before the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis, the surface will darken and then turn transparent. Through this process and even after the butterfly has emerged, the golden stripe and spots remain.

This description was written by Arabella, our volunteer.

A Permaculture Design Course with a transpersonal approach

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A Permaculture Design Course with a transpersonal approach

Permaculture provides a design system which allows to move deeply into our abused eco-systems and release its inherent potential. Ethics of earth care, people care and sharing surplus are one of its unique contribution in our today world. They actually point the way to a new paradigm, from survival and lack of, to abundance and sharing.
 
Permaculture caught my attention quite a number of years ago, when searching for a system to develop the Jiwa Damai gardens in Bali. The book that introduced the practice touched me deeply. I came to respect permaculture’s inherently intelligent and wise approach to regeneration as a way to return to a healthy balance with the earth as a living being.
       
For the past 10 years, I immersed myself into Bill Mollison’s design concept, translating it by learning through doing into our beautiful Jiwa Damai garden. Over time, inviting known teachers, participating in various trainings, and delving deeper in its principles and methods, I introduced permaculture training into Jiwa Damai’s/Lagu Damai foundation educational offerings as well.

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Papaya harvesting

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Nata and Komang just harvested some of our Papayas. If they are very young, we use them to make a most delicious vegetable dish. They have to be green and they taste a bit like asparagus. When they begin to gently yellow a bit, they are harvested as a fruit, placed in a dark corner to turn bright yellow the outside. These special Balinese papayas have an orange fruit flesh. It kernels , crushed and bitter tasting,are a known natural medicine for any kind of liver ailments.