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Reflections From the Land of Brötchen
Harlesiel Salt Marsh in the North Sea, Germany, where I conducted fieldwork for my master’s thesis. I originally wrote this blog post in March of 2025, but somehow I completely forgot about it! So I decided to pick it up again from where I left off… 🙂 March 2025 And just like that, 6 months has passed in the land of bröt, or the land of bread. I know that I haven’t written anything in a long…
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Two teams of Princeton University students have received $10,000 grants from the Projects for Peace program, which supports new and creative ideas for promoting peace around the world. This summer, seniors Darya Koltunyuk and Stephanie Liu plan to introduce chamber music to young people in New York City; and Haraya Buensuceso, a sophomore, and Jacob Scheer, a senior, aim to bring together budding entrepreneurs to address the issue of climate change in the Philippines.
Promoting Peace and Prosperity Through Madhubani Art – India
Madhubani, Bihar is famous for its fertile land, poor economic conditions style of painting has survived these years of negligence because the artistic skills are traditionally passed down from mothers to daughters but in a rural patriarchal society, it is hard for these women to expand or commercialize Madhubani art. The 1960s drought forced the area to look into alternative income sources and the commercialization of Madhubani art started. But how much percentage of the profit goes to the artist?
The Madhubani village womenfolk congregate in the afternoons after finishing up their household chores to work on their paintings. Their art work is collected by private and government agents who sell it to established emporiums and gift stores. These artworks generally sell from $20 to $400 per painting but these artists receive less than $1. There is a lack of enthusiasm and efforts made by the salesmen to boost the sales as the nonprofit, welfare nature of this program doesn’t give them any chance to make extra money on sales commission. There are two identifiable needs here – to empower these female artists by getting them increasingly engaged in the market transactions and to improve the sales of artwork by better advertising and marketing.
The project proposal was submitted as an alternate entry from Whitman College to Davis Projects for Peace for 2012 projects.
Friday August 2nd, Day 63 (tim)
(Maddy and I goofing at the pool)
Well we're done with our physical involvement with the project. As we've said, this is by no means an end to Maddy and Tim's Project for Peace, and as such is by no means an end to this blog – we've still got signs to finish, fundraise for, and send over. We'll be (soon) turning the signs into an online program for students across the island. Jem will be using our lesson plans in his classes. And of course, we'll share with you how the actual building progresses as the progress is shared with us.
Also as we've said... this is awesome. The project was designed first and foremost to last long past these two months, and we have every reason to believe, now, that it will!
In the meantime, Maddy and I are living it up – me sitting with my gangly 13-year-old ghost and revisiting the (now-altered) geography of a seminal and beautiful past. This is where Goldie would leave iguana carcasses! There used to be so many potholes here! Wait... they put a roof over the playground?? Oh my goodness you could never get this product when we lived on island. Etc etc etc. It's enlightening in a way I never expected – having spent 2 years of college throwing around the word 'development' like it was something I understood, I'm only for the first time seeing its many facets in action.
One of the major takeaways for me is that the best way to learn is to listen, not just to the wikipedia pages you find on google or when asking questions, but sitting down and fading into the surrounding foliage and letting people talk about what they want to talk about. And after doing a lot of listening the most striking pattern I've noticed is that Development (which happens everywhere but is especially noticeable on a tiny island-nation with a strikingly active political culture) is never linear. Development is listening to five different opinions and realizing that they're all 'right'. One man tells you about the ever-increasing corruption of Parliament, and the next tells you how much more honest everything is nowadays, and the woman next door tells you about how nice it is that Dominica has decent roads now and the woman down the street is furious that the Chinese built the roads and not Dominicans and her sister tells you that the roads are a terrible curse for family life on island.
Another lesson I'll probably never stop learning is that you cannot characterize a foreign country. I lived on this relatively miniscule island for two years as a child and came away "knowing" Dominica. Then I returned this summer and spent two months on the other side of the nation, and decided that Now, Now I Understand This Place. And for our final few days I've come somewhat full-circle, living momentarily where I lived long ago – and again am forced to revisit any concrete notions of Dominica. I could spend my whole life on the island, moving from village to village and job to job and friends to friends, and still have no cohesive understanding of the place.
It's an important realization. People all around the world have Positions, Opinions, they know Right from Wrong and This from That. And we must! To live is to decide, to differentiate, to build a world-view. But those world-views are not exclusionary, and certainly not objective. There're 7.5 billion world-views and each of them holds a grain of truth.
Today Maddy and I trailed our feet on the tile of a pool, snorkeled in the ocean over a sea of silver fish (easily millions of them), and ate a dinner of lionfish and caribbean lobster at a beautiful restaurant with some of my family's dearest Dominican friends. Everything felt like a dream, but also more real than much of my quotidian life.
There's a quote that's haunted me since I read it in mid-June. Travel and international work is, as I said at the very beginning, so very much affecting for the traveler, and not always in a narrow, tourist-of-the-world or project-worker kind of way. And one of my broader and more significant take-aways is this:
“Upon waking in the morning, think to yourself, ‘I am awake and in a dream.’ When you enter the kitchen, recognize it as a dream kitchen. Pour dream milk into dream coffee. ‘It’s all a dream,’ you think to yourself, ‘this is a dream.’ Remind yourself of this constantly throughout the day.”
- Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, “Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep”
Monday, July 8th, Day 39 (tim)
(we tied pretty much all o dat)
Having trouble typing this as the tips of most of my fingers are lacerated with tiny lemongrass cuts. Maddy and I spent the day tying bundles of lemongrass from our harvest almost a month ago - hard to believe it's been so long! The work was easy and boring, and takes forever. It'd be really fun (listening to your ipod, mind wandering, a bathroom like 20 steps away, shelter for when it rains right nearby), if we weren't getting bitten by fire ants the whole time (they have no shame when it comes to biting sensitive areas) and cut by those dumb, smelly, slightly-molding lemongrass stalks. AH WELL. Not our favorite job but has to be done and we're certainly doing it as fast as we can. Probably tied over half of what we've gathered so far.
(a photo which conveniently shows off maddy's ringworm AND her timeless beauty)
On Friday we hiked to town to get checked up (Maddy for ringworm, me for my finally-gone ear infections), then took the day easy after realizing how unbelievably tired we were from the past two days of cutting and carrying trees. Then on Saturday we went in to Roseau for another early-morning Market adventure, bought some medical stuff for Maddy and Nans and also new shoes for Maddy. Now both of us own plastic knock-off crocs! They're the only thing that seems to hold up in the face of humid heat and constant jungle wear and always-damp-ness! Yay!
(on the freshwater lake hike)
After shopping we took the transport to the head of the Freshwater Lake hike, saw more of this unreal island, and then hiked the over-three-hour hike back to 3 Rivers from Freshwater. It was exhausting but really, really fun. Sunday we spent recovering and doing some much-needed stuff on the internet (figuring out college stuff, etc). Tropical storm coming today and tomorrow, so it's just Maddy and I working on the project for a while. But soon the boys will be back and we will all begin again in earnest on the house, which is really coming along. Much love! Tim
Wednesday July 3rd, Day 34 (project update)
We’re back online! After a week-long power-outage, we are back with many exciting updates. First though, we would like to take a moment of silence to honor our friend and classmate Andrew Pochter who was killed this week in Egypt where he was working as an intern during violent clashes between supporters and opponents of President Morsi. Andrew took part in the early development of this project and was an advocate for peace, love, and compassion. We are deeply saddened by his passing and send our condolences to his friends and family. We would also like to honor Lisa Swaim, whose support has been integral to the planning and commencement of this project. She is a member of the Center for Global Engagement at Kenyon. Since our last post, we have made a great deal of progress in the way of additional planning, construction, and implementation of the wind turbine. Last Thursday we finally collected the parts for our wind turbine and six solar/wind batteries in Roseau. Two of these batteries were funded by the generous donations on GoFundMe from friends, family, and supporters of Projects for Peace and 3 Rivers Eco Lodge!
(Waiting in the Tropical Shipping lounge. Lots of waiting and filling out forms.)
(Finally, we acquire the parts to the wind turbine!)
Over the course of the next few days, the solar house (the heart of renewable energy storage here at 3 Rivers Eco Lodge) was rewired with the new batteries and set up in preparation for the addition of the wind turbine. With the installation of the new batteries, 3 Rivers has more than tripled its energy storage capacity! Plus we now have internet again!
(The solar batteries installed in the solar panel. The grey box above the batteries (right) will connect the wind turbine to the batteries once they are installed) Work on the educational building has continued as planned, barred only slightly by a surplus of rainy weather and a few technical issues that have since been resolved. As of our last blog post, we have cut and installed a 30 ft. long center vertical support post (we actually had to do this twice, as the first post was determined too short to provide adequate support), installed two parallel support posts on either sides of the top frame (a risky and admittedly harrowing task for which we owe Lincoln infinite credit for having orchestrated it), and begun drying and tying the lemongrass into bundles that will comprise our roof.
(As the most experienced member of the group, Lincoln was also the most competent in scary and increasingly frequent moments like this one. Here Lincoln attaches string to the top of a support post for measurement purposes)
After several talks with Jem, Nans, and the boys, we have concluded that our building is a candidate for a traditional clay floor, created by mixing clay from the jungle, grass, and water. If this type of floor is, as we think, indeed possible, it will mean that our building is nearly 100% sustainable! The only non-natural elements remaining will be concrete and nails necessary for stability and support. We are very encouraged by the progress of the last week and feeling confident about the work left to accomplish. From here on out, the plan is as follows: harvest grass ties (wood to which we will attach the lemon grass bundles), harvest and tie additional lemongrass, cut bamboo into handrails, install top beam, install rafters, finish leveling the floor with gravel, attach the grass ties, attach the grass bundles, install the bamboo handrails, and mix and install the clay floor.
While some aspects of the project – installation of the wind turbine, finishing touches on the building, and installation/delivery of the signs – are not likely to happen while on island, there’s a good chance that we’ll leave without a few other aspects quite finished – perhaps the roof will take longer than expected, or the clay floor will have to be finalized after we’ve departed.
(Still finding ways to balance the hard work with relaxation. As you can see, we are both growing our beards out)
This is ok! And why we chose 3 Rivers as the location for the project – an able-bodied crew is happy and ready to tie up any loose ends, and even more importantly, after that 3 Rivers will begin hosting school groups and using the structure and educational materials for sustainability education. Looking forward to more exciting updates. Much love to all of our readers, Maddy and Tim
For more project pictures, check out our album on the 3 Rivers Eco Lodge Facebook page
