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HOW did Katoomba resident and renowned permaculture teacher and writer Rosemary Morrow end up in Kabul last month, one of the most depressed and dangerous cities on the planet?
Last year she was approached by a group of young Peace Volunteers in Afghanistan who were keen to learn more about permaculture to help them cope with living in a severely polluted, war-ravaged city that was running out of water, grew very little food and was nudging 80 per cent unemployment.
None of them had ever known anything but war but, despite the increasing number of civilian deaths because of the war, they were also identifying inequality, pollution and climate change as equally serious threats to their survival.
Rosemary and Lis Bastian, also from the Blue Mountains Permaculture Institute, began teaching them permaculture via Skype.
With the constant blackouts in Kabul limiting this technology, Rowe eventually responded to their requests and, a year later, travelled to Afghanistan to share with them her many years of bringing the regenerative design approach of permaculture to war and crisis-ravaged communities.
According to Rowe: “Teaching these 68 young people as the helicopters went over and a huge blimp watched everything we did, and as we got news that the defence department was blown up and 15 people were killed, I had to deal with their tension, fear for the future, and grief for their families which have been decimated.
“You wonder how much more a young person can take.
“And yet you have this wonderful spirit of together we can do it.
“I think what the permaculture design course gave them was a way to concentrate fully on how to look at their environment and solve problems, even to the point of building a tiny little water generator that would recycle water from the roof and run two electric lightbulbs at night if the electricity was blown up.
“We were looking at small solutions to seemingly intractable and desperately serious problems.”
The Afghan peace volunteers, aged mostly between 14 and 19, work with the street children and women of Kabul, making duvets for the poor and homeless, running a Food Bank, planting Peace Parks, helping girls learn to ride bikes, running a school for street kids and providing workshops on mediation, consensus building and non-violent communication.
They are supported by the Borderfree Non Violence Community Centre.
Rosemary Morrow and Lis Bastian will be teaching on a Permaculture Design Course in Blackheath, running Friday nights and Saturdays fortnightly, from May 13 to August 27.
Phone 4787 7533 or email lis@bmpi.com.au for more information.