Lakabe et Arterra
Hola Buenas! Here are our moments in community life. LAKABE Let's let Lakabe present themself to introduce our story. " Lakabe, land of forest. Lakabe is a small village located in the Arce-Artzibar valley in Navarra. It was abandoned during the 60s and squatted in 1980 by a group of young people from the consciousness objection movement. They dreamt to build a communitarian, alternative and transformative space to adapt to the rhythm of nature. Today, this project continues with the same essence: enable and experiment the utopia."
This village life, reminds us the old times, stories of our grand parents, dreams of our parents and here it is real now. Since 40 years, the inhabitants act to re-build, giving life again to this little village in the mountain, all of this in autonomy, almost. We spent two weeks there with 20 other volonteers. Yes, here, to limit people invasion, they created open doors periods where everyone can come to help during these times. So they can keep a private life and a inner-inhabitant life more balanced. When we where there, there were around 30 adults and many kids living there: a gig intergenerational family.
Everybody work inside the village, and this is very beautiful. Each one has a role: taking care of animals or gardens, picking wild plants, cuting wood for winter and for building, cleaning compost puplic toilets and common spaces, making cheese, meat, beer, and their main activity: making bread.
That's true, 70% of their income comes from the backery 100% organic with flour from another ecovillage close to Lakabe. Three times per week they make bread in team, everybody here is kind of a baker. They sell their bread in villages around, ans also in organics shops in Pamplona, the closest big city. Their flour is made in the backery, and coming out of their old traditional oven, the smell of hot bread and fresh cookies give us a nice pre-taste. The 30% of the incomes left comes from what they sell in the little shop (beers, soaps, creams, oils, books,...) and from workshops that they give in Spain (about dance, women circles, singing, backery, group facilitation,...). All of the incomes of the village are not so big, they earn what they need to live, so few, because they build and make everything! They use money to buy basic products, to travel, to study, for activities and for gaz. Even if they use the old fried oil from restaurants nearby. Little interessant thing: Only 20% of fried oil are recycled in general. If the old oil is used for fuel (until 100% of the tank), the ecological impact is less important than any other kind of gazoline. Here we have an nice economic alternative for people who want to ride more ecological (there are a lots of informations on internet). They are also 100% selfsufficient in the energetic level, the water comes from the mountain and people take care to take only what they need, and the rain water is kept. The electricity comes from solar panels on every roofs; a little windmill, and a little water turbine in the river. Piss are outside, and poops in the "kakaleku", luxury compost toilets everywhere in the village, really clean, ecological and usefull for the compost.
The meal in commun is the lunch, all the inhabitants take their turn in the kitchen to prepare it. In the evening each one eats alone or in family.
Kids are in the scool in the village until the middle school where they go in the city. Two women are taking care of this education through different pedagogies (Montessori, Steiner,...). Each one live in their own house, more or less shared, some families are alone, some other share their house with other inhabitant. Their houses are nice and look like their resident.
To enter in the community, you have to pass different steps, witch are: coming there to spend time, starting with one week, then some months, to see if this kind of life is for you and see if there is a good feeling with the other people. When the decision is taken to come in; it is like a wedding, with the community, each side engage itself to the other and the money is put together with the comunnity, all of it. And of course, each one can take the money that he needs, always with the agreement of the group if the need is more than 500 euros. To take decision there they use a meeting, every months and, every weeks they have a little meeting to talk about tasks to do during the week. Us there. Every morning, in this beautiful landscape, Stasis, inhabitant of the village, gather all of us, after a little body wake up, we choose which activities we will do during the morning: wood, weeding, planting, picking, cooking, cleaning, building,... The thing that we will remember is that the utopia is real and possible. During a pic-nic in the nature, everything came from Lakabe: bread, vegetables, meat, cheese, milk, beers and of course, humans ! And, their economy works really well, their human ecology also ! We will also remember the general joy of life, the will to share and the liberty of kids. The other part that we really enjoy is the group life with the others volonteers. Everyday we participated, shared and proposed different activities like massage, traditionnal danses, women circles, storie telling,...
Thanks for welcoming us warmly and thanks to our friends met there! Their website in English: https://lakabe.org/en/who-are-we/ (Picture credits: Anna, Aymeric and Marc) ARTERRA After our nice weeks in Lakabe we went near by in a really different project of living together called Arterra.
(Picture credit: Arterra.)
5 years ago, a group of people arrived in this old thermal hotel to renove it and transformed the old rooms in flat for each of them. The project is pretty new and there is still a lot of work to re-build everything. Each inhabitant help when they can. Yes, because here people are working outside of the community and pay a rent to live here, thing that they want to see evolve. Two people work inside, in the garden to feed some families and the main kitchen witch is the communal meal at lunch. The sociocracia is the basic idea to experiment this way of living together in an ecological and transitional way.
A project really nice who will evolve quickly hopfully!
Thanks for your welcome and for all your smiling faces!
link to their website in english: https://arterrabizimodu.org/en/arterranas
Always happy to be in Andalucia, see you all soon dear friends for a big news that we will tel you... you can keep your 11 and 12 of August free!! With love, Aymeric and Anna