Second Week in Bali - ROLE foundation

Unfortunately the project I came here for did not work out.

Luckily there is a foundation nearby which needs help, the ROLE foundation.  It has two campus'.  I'm working on one a bit like a small version of Ceres Park in Brunswick.  I've been organising a crew of staff to plant seeds and prepare vegie beds.  I'll be teaching a bit of Permaculture and may help with fund raising.

The Foundation has a truck which collects rubbish from the local village every day.  The rubbish comes here where it is sorted:

Most of the waste is organic.  This is composted in bays, and used on the garden beds.

This is Tini, helping me in the Nursery.

These are the raised beds, under shade cloth which we're fixing up. There's no manager on site and they need someone who understands permaculture, so I've kinda drifted into it.  I want to show how to grow five or six valuable crops, like tomatoes and eggplant which they use a lot, and they can use the produce in their Wurung and at their other campus.

ROLE also does womens education and a heap of other stuff I haven't got my head around yet.

Drive down the road from ROLE though, and this is the development all along the coast, south of Nusa Dua.    Hotel after hotel. 10ha each.  You can work in one of these and earn 60,000rp a day ($6) or work as a farmer growing rice for 20,000rp.

This is what they look like when finished. It's another world.  Mike, who 

founded ROLE works hard at getting grants and donations from these guys.   

I spent last wednesday up at IDEP (Bali Permaculture research institute) learning about Integrated Pest Management.  I rode up with other ex-volunteers from the first project.  Unfortunately two bikes (four people) fell off on the way.  Just grazes luckily.

IDEP has great experience and resources.

And some tourist pics. The hero shot of the temple

Beach at Jimbaran, before dinner. It goes on like this for miles.

And during dinner.  Last night I went to the Continental with Mike for the launch of a new English language newspaper, close to this. It was the usual swanky affair, just as you'd find anywhere else.