I have a background in international development from an era before the permaculture . It excites me and gives me hope that permaculture leaders are organizing many of the principles and practices that I learned back then. I had a political epiphany in 1983 in Nigeria where I was working as a physiotherapist to get basic rehabilitation services to disabled village children. I’d not been long in the country and had just been driven out to a village where there were many kids with polio but moreover most of the kids looked malnourished. I was pondering how it was that the villagers weren’t meeting the nutritional needs of their kids and looking at verdant fields and it just didn’t make sense. I asked the driver what was growing in the fields. Tobacco! British Imperial Tobacco Inc. ARRRGG.

I continued to work in international development through the 1980s primarily as a physiotherapist in Nepal but also in Grenada for a short time before the US invaded and in China when the country first opened to foreign English teachers. When I burned out I became an academic researcher and restored my own health and peace of mind through the practice of Holotropic Breathwork. I’ve contributed to the independent research of health technologies including pharmaceuticals for about 25 years providing an alternative perspective to the large corporations.

Currently I volunteer at OUR Ecovillage in Shawnigan Lake on Vancouver Island in British Columbia on the west coast of Canada in addition to working on my own non permaculture projects. I completed my Permaculture Design Certification in May of 2015. I have myself gone back to the land and live in a cabin in an intentional community in a rural area. I aim to adopt permaculture principles and practices to transform my surroundings and be part of the permaculture movement locally and globally. I’m not sure what that might look like but it is sure to be an adventure!