A Low Tech Eco-Village

For a long time I've been a big fan of the various efforts people make to live lightly on the earth. Bicycling instead of driving, eating locally grown organic food, sharing homes and sharing cooking responsibilities to save labor and costs.

It strikes me that around the world, a lot of these ideas are demonstrated best by people who don't have a lot of choice in the matter. People in Haiti carpool with 15-20 people to a single small pickup truck. They seem pretty comfortable with the idea of four people sharing a bedroom. They generally don't use any of the fossil fuel powered appliances that tend to run day and night in the US, because it's just not feasible for them: water heaters, refrigerators, (yes, you can get by without a refrigerator!) etc etc. They eat tons of locally grown chemical free food, food that often has never been transported using fossil fuels.

A lot of what makes this possible is living together and depending on each other, and a lot of what happens when we depend on appliances and so on is that we depend on each other less. We get convenience but sometimes what we lose is a sense of being connected to each other. But let's not only think about the bad sides of this technology. Plentiful treated water, refrigerators, private cars, etc often give us opportunities to accomplish work and keep ourselves safe from disease, in ways that otherwise wouldn't be possible.

Strikes me that Haitians and Americans have a lot to share with each other on how to be deeply connected to other people, live in an environmentally sustainable way, and still get the benefits technology can offer us. Also check out my post about food in Haiti...