Becoming a mosquito...a good one.

From Ryan Brown:

If a year ago someone would have told me that I would be living off the grid, I would have laughed and told them to stop lying. Well here we are today and I am living at Durga’s Den, a five-acre plot of land in Jamaica completely off the grid (see their Sustainability Workshops here). By off the grid I do not mean, no cell reception and in the middle of nowhere. I mean no water bill for running water. no electric bills. the site sustains itself. Solar panels provide all the electricity the facilities need. There is a rainwater catching system that supplies all the water onsite. It is like something out of a movie. All the food we have eaten (mostly vegetarian) has been grown on the farm. All in all while staying at Durga’s Den I have learned so much.

Confucius said, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” For many years I have heard about living sustainably but I forgot all about it once I was removed from the conversation. Now that I am hear and I see what living sustainably and organically is, I am in a position to always remember what I been presented with. Moving forward with the idea we are living sustainably at the moment and that helps all of us understand and be able to apply it to our lives.

Durga’s Den’s owners, Lyse and her husband Michael, have made such a large impact by one small action. They have stuck a very powerful cord in their small community on the outskirts of Ocho Rios. The widespread influence they have had is astonishing. We have witnessed a few people come to Durga’s Den and stay the night just to get the experience; couples and families come as a vacation and to embrace the fully immersive nature of the site. Homegrown animals, compost, and food…Durga’s Den has it all in such a small package. The lessons I have learned thus far, the experience that I have had, is truly something that is not and will not be easily forgotten.

“If you think you are too small to make an effective (difference), you have never been in the dark with a mosquito, said Betty Reese. Believe me, we have enough mosquito bites to understand how much of a difference or how effective one small person or action can make.

Right now, I strongly encourage people to get up and start making a difference in this world. Each citizen should begin to think globally about the impact of their actions and start to take small actions count for the positive. Mother Nature is screaming out for help.

It is our turn to provide relief for her as she has protected us for millions of years.

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I am reminded of a recent blog post by Andrew Revkin at the New York Times blog, DotEarth titled, "Can Engaged Global Citizens Foster Earth-Friendly Diplomacy?" Given school's role in fostering citizenship in general, perhaps it's time we rethought what good citizenship in such an obviously interconnected world. As David Orr argues, the new benchmark for education should be "ecologically literacy." An ecologically literate person would be a lower-negative impact citizen who might, as Ryan notes, "begin to think globally about the impact of their actions and start to take small actions to count for the positive." But I guess this begs the question, "What is positive?"