Odissee

American vegephile (95% vegetarian; don't eat mammals, or, now, fish) of European and Caribbean ancestry now living in Congo-DRC. Interested in sustainable ways & means. My grandparents' house in the West Indies had a rainwater cistern which was their only source of water from 1936 to 1986 - then "Progress" arrived... Now the island experiences water scarcity but no one remembers how people managed without "city water." In DRC, war has broken the passing of traditional survival methods (farming, crafts, ...) from generation to generation (and each generation is just 15 years!). The knowledge void gets filled with fear, superstition, and nonsense – churning out more violence. Women here are treated with brutality and contempt, and yet without their slave labor the men wouldn't survive a day. Education for both boys and girls, and sustainable low-tech methods are absolutely necessary to change the downward cycle toward utter chaos and destruction. The Congo basin forest is Earth's second lung, we're all going to need it to survive. We must quickly implement carbon credit systems so that every time you take a plane, a poor farmer here (or in the Amazon, etc) gets paid to plant and nurture a tree to repair the atmosphere you're damaging. My blog is at http://odile216.blogspot.com I subscribe to Ode magazine because I don't know a better source of news about sustainable methods and people who make a difference. I wish this down-to-Earth, real stuff wasn't mixed in with neo-spiritual New Age mumbo-jumbo. Because of this, I CANNOT BUY GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS for friends and family. Also, I almost cancelled my own when there were too many bosomy "covergirls" (see point about women above). But Ode is a human institution, so I'll have to take the good and try to overlook the bad.