ExpoLife

2010-04-17T15:16:00.000-07:00

The verandah is ready. Here we can see the older roof cover on top of the new one. Again, the new roof is made of recycled Tetra Pak milk, juice, tomate sauce packages - you know the packaging material used for Long Life milk and so on. This kind of roof is very good for the tropics or near tropical areas. Our verandah is very cool depíte several days when temparatures have gone beyond 40º C. My goal is to change the whole roof of the house for this or simliar material and technology.

The under side of the roof cover looks lihe this. You can see that it has many colors and peices of plastic and other material. In some of the I can still read iformation and instructions which makes happy to remember that this could have ended up in city dumps throughout the country. Also something very important: all the lumber that I have used has been somewhere else before; I bought the in a plae that sells used building material. So they have been reused - which is one of the three Rs I want to practice.

The ExpoLife project is back

2010-04-17T14:26:00.000-07:00

I am back! The CheRoga (My House in Guarani) Expolife project is back. Everything I have written in former posts thus far is outdated. What I will start writing from now is brand new. The former house where I was supposed to live and where the project was to be housed was bartered or exchanged for the one you see in the photographs on this page.

It is a very simple house just like the other two before this. This is a small project. Bottom up. Not because I want or have chosen to be bottom up. It is the only possible way. Some friends of mine have said that I should be ashamed of showing pictures of such a beginning. But it is OK. I am proud of it all.

The first thing we did when my family and I moved in was to paint inside wall in order to get the dirty out of them. After months of waiting we were finally able to add a verandah so that we could keep the sun away from the room. That is what you see happaning here. I hired two friends to do that for me.

Under my wife's command I had to give in and spend some money on this drive way. I tired to convice her no to do it like this since we do not own a car and that I will try my best not to. The ohotos can already show that we have made some basic progress. The progma now is how to transform this litttle house into an ecological small home. Among the things that are going to happen here are the urgent substitution of two flush toilets for two dry compost toilets; taking care of all kitchen-produced waste inside the compound walls; produce some food; have a place for meditation and where I can receive some people for thereapies; to install home-made solar heaters and as sson as possible to be able to produce some electricity based on photovoltaic cells.

2006-12-20T19:30:00.000-08:00

Swallow-tailed hummingbird photo by Flávio C. Brandão more HERE The site has beautiful photos. I put this photo just to track it back.

Yes, we are sailing

2006-12-17T12:12:00.000-08:00

Hello friends
This is just to say that I already have a lot of good news about the CheRoga ExpoLife. The Urban Agriculture work is well under way and things are beginning to look very beautiful. It is possible that I may post photographs of what is happening next week. I am trying to buy a digital camera right now!

2006-10-14T08:57:00.000-07:00

I am posting this new note just to say that I have found a beautiful Earthship contact. It is the EarthPower1 site that has given me an idea of what an Earthship really is like. I will send the family there an e-mail and propose an international partnership/convenant program. I have read a lot of information on Earthship sites. The right thing was to buy the books and videos.

But for me someone that has been living off the grid - not the electricity, but the money "grid", it is not easy. What I am looking for, firstly is for someone who might be able to donate books containing plans to "earthships". I could in turn offer to send donnors the things from South America (Argentina/Brazil) they might be interested in as long as nothing illegal, or against international conventions: books, t-shirts, photos, projects and mainly a place where these friends could stay - simple place, family environment, community etc, with the possibility of learning Portuguese or Spanish and the like.

I will be back with more on this!!

Inspiration

2006-10-14T08:20:00.000-07:00

The following text is from an article by Mary DeDanan on Peny Livingston-Stark, I have put it here because this is inspiration to my house,garden. See photo on site. Stark is from California.

Men at work

2006-10-06T22:14:00.000-07:00

I am testing and checking the new blogger beta site

CheRogakué

2006-10-06T21:55:00.000-07:00

This is the saddest picture I will post anywhere on this blog. According to the principle of recycling and reusing that I do believe in, I bought this old, wooden house with the purpose of dismantling and moving it to another address. I paid BR$ 1.000,00, roughly US$ 700,00. Paid another R$ 400,00 to dismantle it and take it to a land lot that I used to have about 50 blocks from the present location.

I never succceded in this endeavor. Later on and due to a lot of difficulties mostly with money I was not able to turn the dream into reality. The house was to be an important part of the CheRoga ExpoLife Project. I was so deceptioned that I decided to consider may failure with the house as my last attempt at anything in the Foz do Iguaçu area. Deffinetely not the place for small and simple ideas.

I have transferred the project to the city where I presently live andall of the present plans and activities regarding the ExpoLife Project is happening here. Che Roga means "My House" in the Guarani language. This post's title is Che Rogakue where "kue" means former, ex, what was but no longer is. But the dream has stood fast. And that is what this blog is all about!

Urban Agriculture

2006-10-02T22:12:00.000-07:00

As a Proutist I tend to support and help implement disciplines and life-styles like Urban Agriculture proposed nowadays as the most revolutionary and radical kind of life-style one could spouse, namely being able to produce as much as possible of one's own food. The ExpoLife project is a candidate to be a showcase of city farming. As of today, the CheRoga ExpoLife house has over 30 species of vegetable plants, fruit trees, herbs and a variety of flowers for the happiness of having them!

Principles I live by

2006-10-02T22:06:00.000-07:00

Prout - Progressive Utilization Theory is part of the things I live for. There has to be something after capitalism.

"PROUT always stands for the cause of exploited people, irrespective of race, nation, religion etc., and always opposes all types of exploitation. But as poverty is the main problem in the world today, PROUT gives top priority to opposing economic exploitation, as this affects the livelihood and existence of the people."
-- Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, Founder of PROUT

"Alternative visions are crucial at this moment in history. PROUT's co-operative model of economic democracy, based on cardinal human values and sharing of the planet for the welfare of everyone, deserves our serious consideration."
-- Noam Chomsky

"PROUT is the alternative to Capitalism and Communism."
-- Ravi Batra, Economist and Author

"PROUT is very important for grass roots groups and for all who yearn for a liberation which starts from economics and opens to the totality of personal and social human existence."
-- Leonardo Boff, Founder of Liberation Theology

"Sarkar's theory is far superior to Adam Smith's or that of Karl Marx."
-- Johan Galtung, Founder UN Institute of Peace Studies

More at Proutist Universal

CDT Toilets

2006-10-02T21:55:00.000-07:00

Dry compost toilets rank high in my personal sustainability agenda. I love the DCT campaign above that questions the "sanitary" wisdom of water intensive flush toilets. My city has no offical sewer system. Every house either has sceptic tanks or has illegal connection to water bodies. More to come soon. Learn more about the DCTs Here

The scarcity trick

2006-09-24T20:03:00.000-07:00

"In economics, scarcity is defined as not having sufficient resources to produce enough to fulfill unlimited subjective wants. Alternatively, scarcity implies that not all of society's goals can be attained at the same time, so that trade-offs one good against others are made. Neoclassical economics, the dominant school of economics today, defines its field as involving scarcity: following Lionel Robbins' definition, economics is a science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses" - This introduction on scarcity I have copied and pasted from Wikipedia.

I understand that scarcity is an artificial trick in order to strip people of their personal god-given, nature-given power. The story of how I came to own a house is interesting. To begin with, I bought a simple house in a small town (population 15.000) for Us$ 3.000,oo. Maybe a little less. The house was pretty much run down. Dirty. Ugly. Ever since the day I bought it I have been working in order to improve conditions. I have added a front wall, floor tiles inside and done little changes, like building an extra iner wooden wall. But a lot has to be done.

I have been working with my hands like I have never done before. The most abundant material on my lot and all over the city is rock, basalt rock. People in town don't like rock. They prefer bricks that they can't easily buy because of money scarcity. Here is the first point I make on my rebelion. I do not want their bricks even though I have used "their" bricks for my outside front wall (that was a concession to my wife). Salaries and wages have been historically kept low in Brazil in order to reinforce the scarcity ideology. I am talking of an average minimal wage of R$ 12 a day - that makes for something like US$ 5 a day. That is an ideologically thought anti-empowerment wage!

In later posts I will explain what I am doing in order to radically and revolutionarily empower myself, live well and not have a heart attack - how can you have a heart bipass surgery on that kind of money. It is sure death! Well later on, as I said, I will add photos of the different stages the house has been through up to now and also show the improvements with no mortgage (which is impossible for at least 30 millionm Brazilians), loans, Government programs etc. The key words are independence, urban agriculture or permaculture, recycling, reusing and influencing others, no flush toilet, using rainwater and all that. I hope to be able to get to contact and get to know like-minded people from wherever they are living... OK that is it for now.

Feeling tired

2006-09-22T13:30:00.000-07:00

I feel tired. I have been trying so hard and for such a long time that I have decided to say: enough. This is election year in Brazil. We must vote for president, state governors, senators, federal congressmen and state congressmen.

I feel that I am not voting for president Lula. I will possibly vote for Heloísa Helena, an outspoken female senator from the small Northeasten State of Alagoas - by accident the same state I was born in and into. But that is not the reason I am voting for her. I wiil vote for her just as a way not to vote for Lula.

Lula decieved me, betrayed me, has let me down. He has given the country what the country did not ask for, namely, a highly neo-liberal agenda. He forgot people and has direted his Government to what can be sold, exchanged or turned into a commodity.

The environmental agenda is very important for me. He did little about that. Instead he wants to spend billions of US dollars in a project to get the San Francisco River out of its bed and forcing the river to make a long trip through the land of several different states. That is a way to fight droughts and bring "development". There is no ecological understanding of this.

Powerplants are also high in his agenda. Every Brazilian river that can be made to produce electricity, will have a powerplant. No deep questions. Brazilian rivers are losing fish species as population grows. Dams are killing the rivers. And yet that is where the big money is.

Now also comes the biodiesel idea. Brazil will have to produce extra sugar cane, castor seeds, soy beans in order to supply the world with Brazilian miracle fuel. These are some of the reasons I will not vote for Lula, again. Even though I think he will win election. What he will do is another problem. I see his second term in office as very troublesome and the country will suffer in the end.

Welcome: Che Roga Expolife

2005-11-07T08:51:00.000-08:00

Dear friends: I have been trying to get the CheRoga ExpoLife Project moving for a few months now. I announced in August 2005 that an old wooden house had been bought and that it should be transferred to the land I am paying for in the Jardim Ipê (Tabebuia) area of Foz do Iguaçu. The dream has not as yet come true. But is its close. I have been able to get some money and it is almost sure that this week - the first week of November the frame of the little house will be up and covered. Then I will start posting the news and so on. A few funny things have happened. First: I spent hard won money on the wrong land lot. I had the foundation laid on a neighbor´s land. I lost precious financial resource. But now the foundation is in the right place. As I have said earlier in this blog the house will be a center where alternative technologies and ideas will be shown. I have singled out 31 principles to be practced in the house. It will also be the Deva Sumeet Holistic Corner in the region.

The new thing here is that I decided to create a new blog for the house. The Holistic Ecotherapy bolg will be kept exclusively for the therapies.