The path of the Wānanga of Love has touched the ground. On the island of Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu, in a rainforest valley of rivers and waterfalls held between the Raovi and the Sali, East of Eden is becoming a Living Ark, a New Earth Sanctuary and the first meeting house of the Wānanga, and this June the Earth Heroes project came to film the seeding of it.
The year began with listening. Friends in permaculture landscape design flew the valley and mapped the clearing at Paka Sari, the crew stood together over the printed plans to see the land from above, and the first industries were named: a place for woodworking and curing bamboo, composting and worm farming, a covered nursery for a thousand young trees and Syntropic gardens on six to twelve month rotations, all under one rule, that no animal is killed on the land.
Around forty local men and women work the land, bringing the village knowing of gardens, cooking, building and kava that no design could hold, and at the heart of it rises the Wānanga house, an eight-sided meeting house that the families of the valley have begun to call the nakamal, the meeting place.
Surrendering to the process. Emergence. Staying present.
The greatest challenge, as named in the East of Eden concept design brief
Here the seeds of Syntropy that came quietly into this story two years ago are going into real soil, and the dream of New Earth Sanctuaries first written in 2013 is standing on its own feet, on land, among people, in the slow and beautiful work of a village learning to live in Syntropy with Life.
Read the full story on the East of Eden, Vanuatu page.