The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia

Being a Graphic Designer and running my own business as a visual / brand communication company based in Mauritius. I have been thinking about this for some months before taking my PDC and Internship at Zaytuna Farm, PRI Australia in April of this year 2012.

How do any of us know what is normal? I didn't even know what was normal for me. All I knew is that at the time normal was not what I am. We fight all of our lives just to enjoy the simple things. People have told me life is unfair that way. I am inclined to agree.

Life is incredibly unfair and if you are fragile for any reason you can't escape it.

I sometimes believe that my illness was not caused by my past, but it's just a symptom of modern life, the western way of life. Wake up, get ready for work, arrive at work, deal with any issues at work locked up behind walls in front of a computer all day, do your job as best you can, maybe work late (maybe work late a lot), get home ( spend nearly 3 hours of your day on the road in traffic jams and road pollutions), do chores if needed, do family time (Possibly the only real respite of a day), maybe have a bath or shower, go to bed (and then the best part), START ALL OVER AGAIN.

Now… when you start questioning yourself and our modern life you realize, (it is like a waking up)... you open your eyes to our societies' biggest problems: Economic collapse & unequal distribution of financial resources, peak oil: Petroleum has powered the modern world for almost 100 years; today, many industry insiders say that we may be reaching a permanent peak in oil production. Global Water Crisis, Pollution & Natural resources running out, or being degraded. Species extinction, soil degradation and rapid climate change.

Madness has its own dynamism. It just goes on… We grew up in this vicious endless loop of materialism and massive consumerism blinded by the medias, massive advertising, and aggressive marketing strategies.

We human beings need to stay in touch with nature for our own sakes. many studies shows how much better people feel when in sight of trees. Yet even more to the point, nature itself needs us to stay in touch. Many politicians and scientists have told us that we can and should "conquer" nature, and have called this "progress". In reality, nature will always be beyond our ken and way beyond our control, except here and there, but we do have the power to destroy vast swathes of it. In the end, the fate of all our fellow creatures and their habitats depends largely on our attitude towards them. But also whether or not we ourselves survive, and in what numbers and in what state, depends on how well we look after the rest. For our sake as well as theirs we need to give a damn. But how can we give a damn if we spend our lives indoors?

We are a generation who frankly are disconnected from the land, from our mother earth. Population are migrating from rural areas to the urban cities, and our crops come courtesy of Monsanto, and our livestock lives in factories. If we settle for the ultra-urban life, if we allow all wilderness to be compromised and hand our farming over to industrial chemists then, quite simply, the world will fall apart, as it is doing already. So it isn't simply sad that we, as a generation, are so cut off from nature. For the future of the whole world, it is a very dangerous state of affairs.

All these personal thoughts, lots of research, and a major awakening brought me to take action by completing my PDC and 10 week internship program at the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia, where I discovered the following statement from my teacher Geoff Lawton:

"You can fix all the world's problems, in a garden. You can solve them all in a garden. You can solve all your pollution problems, and all your supply line needs in a garden. And most people today actually don't know that, and that makes most people very insecure." (Geoff Lawton)

We have to rethink our lifestyles, and what agriculture is really for, and why, and why conservation matters to us, as well as to other creatures. Changes of strategy begin with attitude and attitude begins with awareness.

So now... I am converting my company Rainmedia into a Non-Profit Organisation (www.rainmedia.org) which acts as a promoter for environmental awareness, community developments with non political views, and provides info on materials & strategies for green renos, plus articles, explanations & insights on the present social & ecological situations; and how we can improve the efficiency, sustainability, and wellbeing of our lives, together.

Numerous projects on the stove, including setting up PRI Mauritius on "Art & Racines" Permaculture Farm with the help of local NGO's, like minded local people, and the support of PRI Australia.

The Permaculture Project is located on the hilly south-western part of the Island, on a 1.2 acres of land surface, just before the entrance of the "Black River Gorges National Park".