Okay, it's official. Heifer Project ROCKS!
Our junior high youth group just spent five days at Overlook Farm, in Rutland, Massachusetts. Rutland's just North of Worcester (Why they don't just give it up and change the spelling to "Wooster," I'll never understand). It's a working farm: a couple acres of garden and a good deal of animals. Let's see... there were llamas, alpacas, goats, sheep, cows, horses, chickens, ducks, guinea pigs, turkeys, rabbits, pigs, a donkey, a yak, and a dzo. Not to mention two sheepdogs. Our group got to take care of just about all of 'em at one time or another.
In addition to the regular farm chores, we also did service projects to the farm. I got to weed a garden and a rice paddy, and the kids did some painting and pasture maintenence -- digging up thistles, burdock, and rosebushes so the animals wouldn't have their hair all tangled. We had opportunities to help out in the kitchen (oh my goodness, the food was amazing -- almost all the produce was straight from their garden to our table... and even the meats had been raised on the farm right there. SO much freshness!), and when we weren't working, we had seminars and stuff about world hunger. One was on food systems, another on sustainable agriculture, another on the distribution of world population versus food supply, etc. Very, very interesting stuff, and inspiring to us all. I think we all left wanting to change our purchasing and eating habits!
Probably the coolest thing they had at the farm was their "Global Village." Global Village is kind of like EPCOT Center in that there are different areas set up like countries Heifer Project is working in. Each site has a house typical of the local poor population -- so, for instance, the "North America" site had a trailer on it. Other sites included Thailand, Peru, Guatemala, Tibet, and Kenya (still under construction). Future plans include Poland, as well.
Every group that comes to the farm gets to spend a night in Global Village. The day before, you're cut off from any between-meal snacking. Lunch is a peasant lunch (we had ugali in Kenya because one of our chaperones, Aggrey, is from Kenya). Dinner... well, they set up a market, gave our kids 12 "yuan" (we were staying in the Tibet site), and told them they had to come up with a meal. One chaperone got to be the "village elder," who could give advice and talk, but couldn't do any work; the other two chaperones (this includes me, of course) had to pretend to be three-year-olds. Oh, man, did I have fun with that one -- refusing to listen, wandering away at inopportune moments (well, they didn't assign anyone to watch me!), being a bit of a general disturbance... ahh, so much fun. Anyway, our meal consisted of barley (half of it ground), boiled in water, with an addition of two scrambled eggs (split eight ways, mind you) and fried onions. Tasty, and it got us through the night, at least.
Breakfast the next day is a porridge made from ground millet. Again, fairly tasty and it fills your stomach, but it's not very nutritious. We were all feeling it -- low energy, a little crabby, etc. After a nice big lunch back in the regular kitchen of sesame-peanut noodles with vegetables, we were all feeling much, much better. We did a nutrition analysis, and it turns out each of us had only consumed about 425 calories in that 24-hour period. No wonder we were low on energy.
But the whole point, of course, was that it got us in touch with what the rest of the world has to deal with -- that constant, gnawing hunger, the lack of energy but abundance of work to do. It was a very eye-opening experience. Plus, on the upside: we got to sleep in a yurt. I mean, for real: 200 pounds of yak-guard-hair tent. How cool is that?
But now I'm back in Ithaca. Seriously considering running away to work on a farm somewhere... but instead, I've got a job at Target. Had to take the drug test this morning. Hopefully everything will work out such that I can start next week and I can get on with life. We'll see how it goes!