Who are the people at Gaia Ashram Ecovillage?

In the last article you learned about the idea of doing away with “away”…that is, how to better take control of your consumption and disposal of the never ending amount of stuff you accumulate in your life.

In this article you’ll learn about the people and social dynamics at Gaia Ashram Ecovillage.

Who are the people at Maia?

When I was visiting there weren’t very many people there. Initially we were about 5-10 guests and just one long-term volunteer.

The guests: Enzo from France, Marie from France, Laura from Luxembourg, Danielle from London, Bianca from Austria, and me.

The long-term volunteer initially that greeted me and ran the show was Maria from Germany. Her boyfriend, Robert, visited for a few days and then Mae (from Thailand) arrived, as well as Om and Tom – the owners from Thailand and the Netherlands – along with their son, Jake.

Then there was Shlame from Israel who only stayed a few days I think because of the heat. Guests came and went with most of us staying about two weeks. Others who arrived were Mirko from Italy, Bird and his friend from Thailand, Vadim from Canada, and Anki from Hong Kong.

Overall it was a great group of people. We all seem to get along well. Nearly everyone here seems to be quite a bit younger – aside from Mirko and me.

There were some tensions in the group every now and again. One thing that I struggled with a little bit was cooking responsibilities. Marie and I were in a group and she liked to take charge with the cooking which was generally okay with me. But I did have a hard time taking orders, especially when I was told how to chop fruits and vegetables…rather than what the objective was.

But then Anki joined our group and tried to take control of things…even more so than Marie. I remember when I was stirring the stir-fry and she showed me how to stir which seemed a little crazy to me because I couldn’t really tell the difference in how she was stirring. She had a very precise way of making stir-fry in which she fried each ingredient separately and then added it all together. I thought the idea for stir-fry was to simplify and just add more and more ingredients.

Anyway, like a mentioned before, we all pretty much got along and had a good time.

That’s all you get for now. In the next article you’ll learn about ecoliving and fasting.