A day of pictures

Yesterday I had a somewhat heated discussion with Pierre about the problems we had with the last lot of volunteers who were turning Buddha Garden into a party place with drugs and alcohol. Pierre wanted to put up posters about the sort of behaviour expected. But I didn't want a lot of stuff around the place saying 'no' and in any case I am tired of being Big Mummy trying to keep everyone in order.

This morning, however, I woke up with what I should say just there in my brain. Something that talked about what we are trying to create, rather than just saying 'no'. So the first job was to make two posters for the Jalabhoomi area and the stone circle. Then I spent quite a bit of time posting pictures and descriptions on the website of things that are going to be prizes in our fund raising draw. So I felt I have done a lot with pictures today.

Progression

This is how the left side of my body seems to have progressed since I fell down and injured my foot. These images derived from my yoga practice. At first it seemed very red and clunky, then the colour faded and today it feels as if everything has been smoothed out.

Despite that my foot still aches and I am also having trouble with my eyes. My right eye is very swollen, I think because I got bitten by something on the side of my right eyelid last night. It was very itchy but felt much better this morning when I woke up with the swelling. My left eye feels as if I have something like conjunctivitis and it is weeping quite a lot.

My body feels as if it has a lot of hurts in it. When I am in the midst of trying to sort out a lot of things in Buddha Garden.

Clear space

This is a picture of part of the cashew field that we cleared up this morning. It seems to symbolise a lot of the clearness that is going on at the moment. This includes a large number of volunteers leaving, some of whom have been here for some time, making way for a large number of people coming next week.

Hopefully it is also making space for the money to flow in that we need to build new accommodation for volunteers and a new kitchen. Maybe there will be new things for me too as well as a space in which to breathe in the middle of all the busyness that seems to be my lot at the moment.

A toy for the boys

Today a group of volunteers (all men) seemed to have a very enjoyable time with the chaff cutter. This is an old and very basic piece of equipment used by many farmers to cut up food like maize stalks for the cows. We tend to use it for cutting up stuff for the compost although in this case we were cutting up material that we had cut yesterday from around the kitchen.

I don't like the machine very much because I am always worried about getting my fingers stuck in it when I feed through the material to be cut up. Volunteers often find it quite hard because it gives a very good work out as its hard work pushing that wheel around fast enough.  As a result they don't usually want to do it for very long. This group was different in that they really seemed to enjoy themselves getting a lot of material cut up.

I am writing this just before going to yoga. I will try not to push myself hard like I did last time.

My left foot

In this picture my left foot looks OK, but I have had quite a time with it today. This morning I was walking through the gate into the cashew orchard when I was knocked over from behind by the dogs rushing through. I think there probably wasn't enough space to get out of my way in time. I fell down quite heavily on my left buttock (not my tail bone thank goodness) and jarred my foot and ankle. My foot felt very painful as it was quite cold at the time.

It was a bit of a shock to the body and my foot has continued to give me little tweaks of pain all day. I just hope that it won't stiffen up over night. Despite this I somehow managed to wrap up all my Christmas parcels today and may even get them to the post office tomorrow.

I have had a lot of problems with my left foot over the years. I remember on the day before the cyclone I fell over and hurt it but somehow managed to get over it to do all the things I needed to do after the cyclone had struck. I often think it happens when I need to slow down. At the moment I don't feel that I am going too fast but I do have a huge amount of things to deal with and maybe I do need to slow down in terms of dealing with each thing as it comes rather than try to juggle everything simultaneously.

Feeling fragile

Today I have been feeling rather fragile after a bad night. I went to yoga where I think I rather over did things – our teacher is away on a course and so we are having an 'open space' and at times I pushed myself too hard. I woke up in the middle of the night and was aware of having jerked my neck turning over and for a while I was rather dizzy. It subsided after I kept my head still but it took a long time to go back to sleep.

Despite that I did a lot today, especially on the fund raising, and feel quite tired as I write this. I think this picture of one of our roccolla seedlings which we are offering to the community expresses very well how I have felt today.

Poster up

Today is the first day of our fund raiser and so we put the big poster up in Buddha Garden to tell everyone about it. I am so short that even when I got on a chair I couldn't reach to tie up the poster and had to get someone taller to do it!

Over the weekend I set up the website and wrote letters to various unit holders asking them for prizes for our draw. All contributors will be eligible and I want the prizes to give 'A touch of Auroville'. I was surprised at how I felt as I wrote these letters – that I didn't have the right to even ask for their help...... Yet four have replied very positively.