The Calm Before the Storm

The last week and a half has been blissfully simple, perfectly balanced, constantly stimulating, and almost too healthy. Morning call to prayer at sunrise from the local mosque (about 20 feet from where I sleep), Yoga at 6, breakfast at 6:30, olive picking until lunch, then crushing and pressing the olives for oil before a authentic Turkish dinner. Our group is now in a rhythm (physically, mentally, and socially) but the end of the workcamp is drawing near. Yakabagh House is more than a place, it is a state of mind.

I apologize if the above paragraph sounds a little flaky and/or corny, but this place and my time here are difficult to describe in prose. The house is surrounded by citrus trees that are yielding fresh oranges, pomelos, and mandarins, I spend my nights sleeping in a treehouse under the stars, and the olive grove is perched on a hill overlooking the Xanthos valley and the ancient Lycian city of Pinara. That is just the setting, the work itself is stimulating and satisfying. Olive picking is obviously monotonous, but climbing trees on warm Mediterranean mornings is not so bad. The group is also involved in the actual oil production, in which we use custom machines to extract the oil from the olives and to process olives into food. I've learned a lot, including that raw olives taste TERRIBLE and that green and black olives are not different varieties- green olives are just young black olives.

The people I've come to know here are also very special. It is a very international group as I mentioned before, but what makes the situation even more unique is that the couple which runs the farm are also intercultural. Sinan is a native Turk, but his wife, Isabel, is Cuban and speaks only Spanish and Turkish. At any given meal there are five languages spoken - Turkish, English, Spanish, French, and German. This makes me painfully aware of how mono-lingual I am, something which I am determined to change in the coming years. Although I've learned little to no Turkish, I have learned more Spanish in the past few days than in all my Spanish classes combined. A casual environment, encouraging teacher, and proper motivation are infinitely more conducive to learning a language than a classroom setting. I really didn't expect to come away from Turkey with more Spanish, but I like these kinds of unexpected twists.

So despite a fall from a tree which left me with a swollen knee, and the rain today which has kept us indoors, my time here has been better than I expected. All of the fresh fruit and vegetables have been the perfect antidote to the loads of white flour and cheese that I consumed in Georgia, so my body is beginning to regain its former shape. It is hard to believe that one week from now I will enter the madness of the Indian sub-continent where a whole new phase of my journey will begin. But, for now, I will try to be more mindful of the present and enjoy each moment as it happens . . .

Sorry I have no photos, but I can't upload them on this computer, so here are a few from the Yakabagh website. I'll post again and add pictures when I pass through Istanbul in about a week on the way to the airport.