Meet the participants

Every morning, ARI comes together after breakfast for morning gathering, which is a chance for one of the community members (participants, staff, volunteers) to share something about his- or herself. It's a time to reflect about our time here at ARI and about what we want to do after ARI. This morning, one of the participants spoke about the political situation in his country. First, he asked everyone to put away their digital cameras (most participants record the morning gatherings), because he was afraid that someone would post the video online and that his government would find it. "If they find it, I go to heaven too soon," he joked. "I don't want to go to heaven, I want to do development." He then talked about growing up in a country without an effective government. He talked about political turmoil, about fleeing his village with his family as a child due to government persecution, about demonstrating as a student, about hiding and fighting in the jungle as a rebel. He said that, after years of armed resistance, he decided to turn to development work. As he described it, both seek to build community in a country without an independent civil society, but development work is more effective because the government doesn't try to kill development workers.

I had read in the papers about the political situation in this participant's country, but hearing about day-to-day life under a violent, despotic government from an actual person was shocking. This man will return to his country in three weeks and continue his work with an NGO - his courage amazes me. He knows that when he enters his country, his USB drives will be wiped, his email will again be subject to surveillance, his organization will be monitored by the government. "Sometimes I still want to fight," he told me. I asked if he thought development work is more effective than fighting. "Yes," he replied, "because then no one dies."

The participants here at ARI are amazing, inspiring people. They left their countries nine months ago to participate in an intensive community development training project in rural Japan. Most of them had never left their countries before - leaving their families and communities required a huge leap of faith. All of them have a deep commitment to service in their communities, whether that service be through agricultural or development work, through teaching, or through religious leadership. The man I wrote about above works for an NGO involved in providing rural communities with access to education. Others work with micro-financing operations, with liaison offices connecting farmers with the government, with public schools, with churches and individual parishes.

Pikolo from Kenya

Shelia from Myanmar

Maiko from Japan and Marie from the Philippines

Kingsley from Ghana and Ruth from Myanmar at the Halloween party

The participants will return to their countries in just two weeks! After two months in ARI, I feel like I'm just starting to know these people - I wish they could stay in Japan a little longer.

Welcome to the farm

I thought I would take advantage of the gorgeous fall weather to take some pictures of the ARI farm. The ARI campus is not just the farm (the main office, kitchen, chapel, and dorms are also on campus), but the farm is the focus of my life here as a farm volunteer.

Crops and veggies: ARI has fields both on ARI campus and around the town of Nasushiobara. We grow over twenty different types of crops, ranging from rice and wheat to sweet potatoes and broccoli to persimmons and kiwi. Our harvest goes to feed the ARI community (we supplied an estimated $150,000 in food to the ARI kitchen last year!) and to local consumers (so the farm section generates income for ARI). For the participants, the farm functions as their outdoor classroom - they have morning and evening farm work, and they also manage their own plots of land. But since the participants also have classroom work and cannot always be on the farm, volunteers like me provide the extra hands needed to keep the farm running. During my two months at ARI, I've sown Chinese cabbage and spinach, harvested tomatoes and carrots, dug storage trenches for taro, cleared fields, threshed soybeans... it's an ever-changing job!

Soy beans in the greenhouse, post threshing

A participant field, the "Garden of Rejoice"

A row of broccoli in the field

The vegetable harvest arranged for the kitchen

Livestock: ARI also raises chickens, ducks, fish, cows, and pigs. We have 900 chickens, around 50 ducks, two ponds of carp, and around 30 pigs. ARI butchers our own chickens and ducks, but the pigs are sent out to the local slaughter house due to government regulations (which suits me - I'd rather not have to slaughter a 400 pound pig!). Just like with the crops and veggies, participants are responsible for managing portions of the livestock section as part of their training. Volunteers rotate sections every month - this month, I'm in Fish and Duck, which means that I feed the ducks and the fish every morning and evening with one of the participants.

The view down to the duck pen from my bedroom window

One of the pigpens

Piglets! Just over 2 months old.

The entrance to the fish pond area

A ukokkei chicken, a special Japanese breed of chicken

So welcome to the farm!

Playing catch-up

First, apologies for my long absence! November was a very busy month at ARI - the participants left for a tour of western Japan, leaving the staff and volunteers with a little extra work around campus. So now you get several backlogged blogs at once!

I went to Tokyo last weekend to attend a missionary conference in celebration of 150 years of Protestantism in Japan. My first trip to the big city! We started the weekend with a general meeting of the Protestant Church in Japan (the Anglican Church in Japan is actually not included in this grouping of Protestant denominations, but I got to attend the meeting anyway). The meeting, oddly enough, took place in a church in the middle of Shibuya, the equivalent of Times Square in New York City - across from the Apple store, between the Disney Store and the Gap! Although the entire meeting was in Japanese, I still enjoyed the service and learning a little about the history and the activities of Protestants in Japan. I also got to meet a lovely Japanese organist, who, after I told her that I used to play the organ, played my favorite Bach hymn for me! It made me miss playing for services at St. Mary's, my home parish in Virginia.

I also got to do a little sightseeing while in Tokyo - Shibuya, Ginza, Asakusa. Each section of Tokyo that I visited was dramatically different from the last. I'm looking forward to visiting again soon and exploring more! (Although, after the weekend, I was definitely glad to get out of the noise of the city and back to quieter Tochigi prefecture...)

Asakusa shrine

Me and Heejean, a Korean volunteer, in Asakusa

A standard Tokyo scene - a traditional Kabuki theater next to skyscrapers and construction projects

Otherwise, it's pretty much life as usual at ARI. During the participants' trip to western Japan, I got a little taste of what ARI will be like after this year's participants return to their countries in December - quieter, certainly, but also cozier in some ways, as the smaller numbers encourage people to talk more and to share more. I think that by the time the next class of participants arrive in April 2010, I'll know the Japanese staff and the other volunteers much better than I do now.

I hope everyone had a very happy Thanksgiving!

Chickens

ARI, as I wrote about in my first post, is a training center for rural leaders, a type of agricultural school for those who work with or who advocate for farmers in their home communities. Most of the participants are not actually farmers, but NGO workers in the field of agriculture or community development. They're interested in learning about different agricultural techniques can that benefit their home communities - better ways of irrigating rice, of raising livestock, of processing crops. So the ARI curriculum involves work with vegetable crops (rice, wheat, tomatoes, soy beans, Japanese pumpkin, komatsuna...) and with livestock (chickens, ducks, fish, cows, and pigs).

After a month of working with the veggies, I got to help with the chickens for the first time this week. ARI has over 900 chickens. Participants help incubate and hatch the eggs, raise the chickens, and then butcher the birds for the ARI kitchen. I started with the end of the cycle, as I was asked to help butcher one pen of chickens with some of the other volunteers. (Vegetarian friends and family, please forgive me!) We butchered 44 chickens within two hours - first cutting their windpipes, then plucking them, then disemboweling them and preparing them for the kitchen. I was exhausted by the end, both physically and mentally, but it was a good learning experience. I now have a greater appreciation for every piece of chicken I eat. And a greater understanding of chicken anatomy!

Later in the week, I spent time with some live chickens, collecting eggs and preparing feed and cleaning out the pens. At first, I didn't really enjoy working in the chicken house. Chickens are not very endearing animals. In fact, they remind me of the velociraptors from Jurassic Park, except without the smarts - just try grabbing an egg from under an angry hen, you'll get quite the glare. Then Jackson, a teaching assistant and ARI graduate from Myanmar, started talking about why ARI raises chickens, and I gained a new appreciation for the little dinosaurs.

First, many of the participants have some experience raising chickens, since the birds are a relatively easy source of revenue. But the participants (or their communities) often rely on imported goods to raise their chickens, which makes them dependent on outside resources - so ARI tries to teach the participants how to utilize local resources to make their communities more self-sufficient when it comes to raising chickens. For example, many participants' home communities rely on concentrated feed, which must be imported and is therefore very expensive. So ARI introduces the participants to fermented feed, which is simply fermented food garbage (i.e. compost) from the ARI kitchen - it works just as well as concentrated feed and costs nothing. In addition to basic feed, chickens also need nutritional supplements to help harden their egg shells. Traditionally, many farmers use crushed oyster shells or some other type of imported shell, but ARI uses our own crushed egg shells, collected from the kitchen, as a cost-free alternative. Many of the participants' home communities also buy their chicks rather than incubating eggs from their existing flocks. ARI teaches the participants how to incubate eggs (using both electric and non-electric heaters) in order to reduce costs and resource self-sufficiency. Jackson told me that before coming to ARI, he had bought all his chicks. After graduating from ARI, he was able to hatch his own chicks, and he wrote an article teaching other farmers within his community how to do the same. So there's a lot to learn from these feisty birds (although I still prefer working with the veggies).

In other and totally unrelated news, I got to go hiking! Last weekend, I went to Shiobara with some of the other volunteers to see the beautiful kouyou (changing leaves). Shiobara offered some interesting insights into Japanese culture. First, the Japanese are huge nature enthusiasts - it seemed like half of Tokyo had joined us on this pilgrimage into the mountains. But in spite of this, or perhaps because of this, the nature was not very far removed from all the trappings of modern life. The highways continue almost to the very peaks of the mountains, and all the hiking trails were only a stone's throw from the traffic and restaurants and souvenir shops. Yet somehow, it was still a beautiful place and a very peaceful experience. As the German volunteer on the trip said, "The Japanese have a wonderful ability to block out the ugly things and only see the beautiful" - I guess I was able to enter into that spirit and just enjoy the beauty of the trail, which wound through autumn kouyou and tall cedars, past waterfalls and forest onsen (natural hot springs). The day ended with some delicious soba and my first onsen experience (so relaxing!). All in all, a wonderful day of natural and cultural adventures.








That's the news from Lake Woebegone! Thanks to everyone for all the recent letters and emails - it's so nice to know that people are reading and to hear what's going on back home. I'm thinking of you all...

Happy Halloween!

They say that Americans abroad are often the most American - I certainly found myself more excited about Halloween this year than I have been since I was five and I got to dress up as a ballerina bunny. So I decided to introduce ARI to our strange American ways by throwing a Halloween party, complete with candy, costumes, and more candy! With the help of some very enthusiastic Japanese volunteers, I made sugar cookies, pumpkin pie (using fresh Japanese pumpkin (kabocha) and fresh orange pumpkin), roasted pumpkin seeds, and caramel - a recipe for an ARI-wide sugar-high. And then we carved pumpkins! Or, as Marie from the Philippines put it, we made "mottainai (wasteful) pumpkins." (I'm hoping to remedy the mottainai factor by chopping up the pumpkins tomorrow and cooking them.) Here are a few pictures of the prep work:

Collecting pumpkin seeds

Nazi from the Philippines

Swae from Thailand carving his pumpkin

My roommate Ayumi and me

The final products!

And the party, to my relief, was a big success! Everyone loved the jack-o'lanterns and the sweets, and most people even showed up in costume. I unfortunately chose the wrong costume - I was a rainbow (wearing every color, including a wonderfully bright yellow jacket), but the participants thought I hadn't dressed up at all! Which tells you a little about ARI fashion. Finally, I place where I can wear all my favorite, bright clothes without attracting odd stares...

Halloween dance party ARI-style! Just imagine a mix of Indian hip-hop, Lady Gaga, and "Country Roads" (for some reason, it's wildly popular in Asia).

Chunxia and Thsushara exchange traditional dresses

I hope everyone back in the States is having a good Halloween weekend!

A good morning

Today started with one of those mornings that makes you pause and give thanks for the beautiful world around you.

I start every morning in the field, working among the veggies against a backdrop of distant blue mountains. This morning, the peaks of the mountains were covered in storm clouds, while the foothills were glowing in the morning sun. Gorgeous. As I harvested wing beans and red chilies and Chinese cabbage, I felt very close to the mountains. I felt very thankful for my time at ARI.

The pictures don't do justice to the morning light, but here are a few anyway:



Now time for breakfast - itadakimasu!

Almost one month!

Sometimes I almost forget that I'm in Japan. I'm busy working with people from 20 different countries, learning about how chili sauce is prepared in Myanmar or what plants grow in Nepal or how anti-malaria programs work in Kenya. And tonight we (the Euro-American volunteers) made baguettes with cheese fondue for dinner! True, I hear a lot of Japanese, but I feel very removed from Japanese culture.

And then I go running. Running past fields of rice (harvested earlier this month) and broccoli and cabbage (still un-harvested), past the vending machine pit-stops, past the stunning Nasu mountains. That's when I experience the deepest sense of dislocation - I'm listening to the same running playlist (with M.I.A. and Kayne West, I must admit) but I'm in a totally foreign world. The landscape is different, the buildings are different, even the light is different. That's when I start to think about how I got here. If someone had told me four years ago that I'd spend the year after Dartmouth volunteering as a farm hand in Japan, I don't think I'd have believed them. Me? This Lizzie, the girl from suburban Washington who hates yard work?

So what am I doing here?

Mostly I'm learning. Learning how to distinguish between sweet potato varieties, how to harvest winged bean and egoma, how to make green tomato jam, how to back out of a room so as to properly line up my slippers. Learning how to communicate and share with people from completely different backgrounds and with completely different world views. Learning how to walk rather than dash through life. I'm struggling a little with the last one. I'm a very future-oriented person - always planning for the future, my mind disengaged from the moment (that's why I'm so hopelessly oblivious to my physical surroundings...). At ARI, I sometimes have trouble being truly present. Especially during repetitive farm work, my mind is often off to the next meal or the next day or the next year back in the U.S. - not on the opportunities at hand or the friends present. Not to say that I think I should concentrate on every single edamame that I shuck, but I think my tendency to focus on the next thing prevents me from fully taking advantage of the present. So I need to slow down. I struggled with the same problem during the first few days of Trip to the Sea, a week-long canoe trip that I did last spring down the Connecticut River. We paddled for six to ten hours every day, usually in two- to three-hour stretches. At first, the hours of uninterrupted paddling seemed endless - the same motion repeated again and again, the same scenery sliding by at a walking pace. But then I learned to accept the speed of the canoe and enjoy the slow scenery and the quiet passage of time. I learned to be present on the river. I'm still working on being present in the farm shop...

I'm also here to serve, although most of the time I feel like I'm receiving much more than I'm giving. But the volunteers do help keep the farm running, since the participants divide their time between classroom and field instruction. With the staff, we're often the ones finishing the harvest or processing the crops (today, for example, I threshed egoma, a seed similar to sesame that's used to make cooking oil, and helped husk the rice harvest). And as I learn more about how the farm works, I'm able to be more useful.

Some highlights from the past two weeks:

I turned 23! Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes - it was so wonderful to hear from you all! One of the staff members made me a delicious banana cake, so it was a good day.

Learning how to make jam and yogurt. (Now I can satisfy my yogurt cravings when I get back to the U.S.!)

Celebrating Halloween with some local Japanese children. I was given a Snow White costume (as if I don't already look young enough...), and I handed out chocolates to an adorable parade of pumpkins and black cats.

Looking forward to:

Halloween party! (I'm organizing it with some of the other volunteers, so we'll see what happens. Dancing, sugar cookies, and Japanese sweets will be involved.) Hiking in nearby Nikko. Learning how to drive the farm trucks (although it could be a little hazardous with me behind the wheel of a stick vehicle...).

Right now my stomach is full (onaka ipai!) of delicious cheese fondue, my fingers smell like onion, and my hands are stained from the sweet potato harvest. I'm ready to go to sleep to the sound of the typhoon rain. O yasaumi nasai, friends!