In a year when borders closed across the whole world and the islands of Vanuatu held themselves apart to keep their people safe, the story of East of Eden turned inward too, and Souvereign‘s years of service there, from 2018 into 2020, came full circle.
I really sat there to deeply contemplate the complexity of intergenerational community forming, and what there is to foster, and how we can feel, as so-called foreigners, to be belonging on land.
Souvereign
What the valley taught is that belonging is not claimed, it is grown, the way a Syntropic garden grows, in succession, each layer making room for the next. The plans, the maps and the drawings of the Wānanga house were the pioneers, and what came after them was the real work: the families of the valley, the crew who brought their village knowing, the land with its two great rivers and its grandfather and grandmother trees, and the long practice of listening before acting.
The Pacific has always known that the ocean does not divide its islands, it joins them, and in this year of closed doors that knowing feels more precious than ever. What was seeded at East of Eden lives on in those who tended it, and in the Wānanga of Love, which carries on now as a School of Remembering that meets wherever hearts gather, in the garden, around the fire, and in the quiet places within.
Read the full story on the East of Eden, Vanuatu page.