A Year of healing in Ecuador - Part 2, the Recovery

Back on the healing path in April, 2021 we had a series of 'weekend lockdowns' yep, only locked down on weekends (???).  And I had decided to step down off the prednisone which has to happen gradually lest you rebound back into the pain. Where I live is tranquil and our community on this ridge side of the sacred Mandango mountain that dominates the Valley calls itself the Hill Tribe, and 6 households live cooperatively centered around the Pyramid I co-created and built (and have blogged on) in 2012. The Pyramid was built and designed to attract and focus the energies of the Mandango. The Pyramid shaped bamboo frame and thatch covered roof (using scaled down dimensions of the Great Pyramid of Giza) is built over a 9m square earthen platform, the whole structure is in alignment along magnetic ley lines and the 4 directions very important to indigenous tradition. We share shamanic ceremonies there, plant medicine ceremonies, yoga and qi gong, meditation, women's and men's groups, workshops, sound healing offered by Hill Tribe members and people in the community.

Built with all natural materials the Pyramid is perfect for transformational activities; those that support people wishing to delve into their current illusion and evolve a different reality. As a natural structure, standing in a natural setting the Pyramid decays and needs renovation constantly, every-changing as is everything in our world. This representation of impermanence preludes non-attachment and non-judgement which are concepts inherent in nature and which while supported by traditions like Buddhism are so lost in our modern world. I believe this is largely where we have gone wrong as human societies, that we stopped living in and listening to nature. We have a running funding site to help support the ongoing rehabilitation of the Pyramid and I invite you to take a look and please donate if you can.

Lots of pix of the Pyramid here on the FB page @MandangoPyramid

What I wanted to say was that these lockdowns were in fact welcome weekend retreats for us, moments of calm. On each of the 4 successive weekends we the Hill Tribe led sessions in the Pyramid of movement medicine, meditation and breathwork, such a perfect way to be locked down! It is important for me to locate for you why this place has been so essential to my healing and why I travelled across the world and away from my sons to be here and do the necessary healing and be a healthier and better father. I couldn't have picked a better place to ride out the Covid-ness affecting the world.

I joined and left a 'polymayalic arthritis' online forum, a support group for people with this 'affliction', recognizing that most of the people were resigned for life to their medicated condition and coping with that. I was not one of them, I had from the beginning understood that there was a light at the end of the tunnel and that pharmaceutical medications were not the way forward. Life had been insanely busy and stressful and I took it that this condition of mine was the universe telling me to slow down and reflect on who I was and where I was headed. And I am forever grateful for all the lessons I continue to learn.

On my beautiful west facing terrace I started training with a new friend from Colombia, Daniel who embodies positivity, TRX and rubber bands for the isotonic approach. Many months of inactivity had caused my body to consider this weakened conditioning to be it's 'new normal' and certainly on prednisone while I might have been pain free I still wasn't anything like 'back to normal' in terms of strength and activity level. At this point I had been away from my sons' for longer than I had thought and it didn't seem like the end was coming anytime soon. In school in Switzerland and living with their Mum they were doing fine, each adapting differently to a new country and culture and curriculum and to my absence. It has been painful to be away from them, and I know that my resistance to reconciling this has not helped my healing but it has been part of the process and only recently as a result of heart-centered therapy have I learned possibly why this is so, I'll save that for another blog.

The training and nutrition regime was going well until one day I tweaked my left shoulder (another nemesis injury 11x dislocated) while training even though we were going slow and carefully, my body reacted saying it wasn't ready yet. Then over 4 weeks, once I had stopped the prednisone and with the shoulder injury, pain slowly started to return. What I know now is that I hadn't taken long enough to wean off the drug, mistake number 2. Closely followed by mistake number 3 when I did a 5 day water fast in week 4 without the commensurate colon cleanse, and I suspect toxins released during the fast that should have been flushed out, triggered again an inflammatory response and oh boy did I suffer. In late March, rebounding big-time, I fell back into pain and stiffness. There was more inner work to do.

This time I lasted 3 weeks losing mobility, independence, in constant pain, my spirit descended in a spiral again. In the early hopeful days as I was tapering off the prednisone and at the beginning of those 4 weeks I had been considering returning to Europe to be proximate to my boys and to try to set-up a wellness practice there. But that wasn't to be. Instead in late April I reluctantly went back on prednisone and was again, nearly immediately 'cured'. Amazing really the sense of being well again on this drug, and I realise that for many it is truly miraculous and I see why people stay on it. Unfortunately there is a plethora of side-effects of prednisone, some of them to the long-term detriment of the body's integrity.

Skip to the chase. I remained on prednisone through May, June and July, I was on it during my son's visit in July so that I was able to be pain free and mobile with them. The day they left I started to taper off again. This time the taper would take 2 months and by the end of September I was feeling like it was the moment to leave the drug altogether. I decided to stick only with the same diet and not take supplements of any kind so that my body could normalize and not be in anyway dependent on anything else besides what I was eating; food as medicine. I realised also that years of being 'toxified' were a part of my dilemma. I grew up through a time when fertilizers and pesticides were being introduced into the food chain, and when the genetic modification of food began. With respect to the scientific community and their efforts to improve crop yields and support farmers in poor countries, in the interest of ensuring the availability of food for more people, we have known since the '70s that the real problem with food scarcity has always been global distribution, not production and that these methods of chemicalization and modification do not necessarily support population health. Another heady topic.

In addition I have spent much of my adult working life living in countries where there has been a lack of regulation in the use of chemicals in food production. I have lived in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Nepal and Myanmar where poverty, war and corruption have resulted in the poisoning of the earth. In Myanmar for example the entire Irrawaddy basin, a food basket of rich and fertile soil is toxic. Getting an organic grower certification there is impossible because the water source is contaminated with chemicals. Ironically in many cases low quality fertilizers and pesticides illegally transported from China thwart the efforts of countries to regulate such additives because they are cheaper, and farmers are mis-educated to use greater concentrations on crops than is needed. So who knows what I ingested and what has accumulated in my system over these years. Also growing up in Canada at a time when so many things were being experimented with in terms of increasing crop yields. Wheat or beef or chicken or soy, etc are far from the same as what I started off eating as a lad. Nowadays you can't find GMO, glyphosate free wheat products on the shelf unless you go specifically for organics. Beef, chicken, pork and even (especially) salmon, anything 'mono-cropped' are all antibiotic, steroid and hormone 'enhanced'. In Afghanistan, in 2003 I was in the north-west province of Farya, the Iranians were shipping containers full of robust frozen chickens to remote town markets, a welcome change from the scrawny farm-yard chickens you could get in the market. Yet by their size these were chickens highly inoculated, hormone supported, being force-fed chemicalized grains chickens. The bird flu scare halted the importation of these chickens probably to the betterment of the general population and my personal health.

Statistically we have seen a steady increase in cancers over the past 30 years, particularly in those who are over 45 years old today. We should not be at all surprised given the abuse of the food supply by corporate interests. I don't think I am the only canary in the mine, I think we are many, a whole huge flock. I believe it is not in the 'corporate' (food industry), nor in the western medical community's interest to see this because if it was, we would be seeing big changes in how we steward the earth, and how we cared for ourselves.

Add to all this I have unknowingly injured myself with two more insults: one the mercury amalgams in my teeth and whatever ails they might bring to heavy metal toxification of the body. Secondly I should not forget air toxicity; I have lived in some remarkably toxic cities, like Kuala Lumpur, Kathmandu and Yangon and it can't be underscored how urban living in such places can only contribute to the toxification of body systems. Fortunately my lungs have had a break now and again with good lengths of time a year in East Timor, the coastal town of Dong Hoi in Vietnam where I lived for 2 years, and Vilcabamba here in Ecuador. I admit also to have been a more off than on smoker for much of my adult life and with long breaks, but still, that can't have helped.

Here in the Sacred Valley of Ecuador there is a firm growing commitment on the part of farmers to grow chemical free food, the air is clean clean clean and it is the perfect place to detoxify and heal the body and spirit. And so through this time here I have eaten mainly organic foods. We are not educated about the importance of the health of our gut, and the effect of the damage done to a healthy gut biome by antibiotics. In 2003 I had an insidious pneumonia on the upper right lobe of my lungs and this was treated with nearly 3 weeks of rather harsh antibiotics. I believe my gut was destroyed then and as soon as the doctor could give me a clean bill of health, I ended up back in Afghanistan right at the time when those steroid chickens were available. Who knows what harms came to my system then, and with the various stressors of the job and poor availability of nutrient rich food, no probiotics, certainly I did nothing helpful to rebuild my gut.

Another digression, I know but to explore the understanding that our gut is our second brain is huge. In fact many would posit that our gut is our first brain and without a healthy gut we really cannot think straight, do a search on this! I would concur, and healing my gut has taken time. Post-prednisone I took extreme care to ensure a proper balance of pre and probiotics, fiber, plant and animal proteins and nutrients were in my diet; I was finally attending to my gut biome. I became more regular with my meditation practice, and through this crazy 2 years of the Covid pandemic, have made decisions from the heart, not from a place of fear and this has all helped me to see things much more clearly than would have been the case without such practices. I blogged about my perspective on the global Covid response in January.

In December my eldest son came for a visit, that lifted my spirits considerably and it cannot be understated how a positive frame of  mind does wonders for reducing stress which in turn supports the immune system and thereby supports healing. I will be forever grateful that he made this trip (not easy as I describe in the 'Stuck in Paradise blog below). Thank you son!

A key step that I took was to do a liver cleanse in January 2022, using a clever protocol from 'the Medical Medium' that I can tell you about if you ask. I highly recommend anyone over 45 start a regime of a least annual colon and liver and kidney cleanses to mitigate against the possibility of cancers or other diseases resulting from our years of toxification, and of course to reduce the likelihood of a 'perfect storm'.

Here I am writing in March, 2022.  I now understand that healing really has to take time and is not only about the physical state of being. I have been pain free for nearly 6 months, though weak from a year of nearly no physical activity and nervous about over-doing it to rebuild. A year ago I bought a vehicle, because what is only a 10 minute hillside walk from or to town had become too much and I was constantly tired. Recently, though the original knee dilemma has been largely unattended, I have started to walk down to town and started going to the gym to try to bulk up my quads and shoulders.

It has been a long path towards healing, though as my wise friends say, it took a lifetime to arrive at the place I've come from. I am grateful for this time and place, for the people who have challenged me and those who continue to support me. This journey has enhanced my understanding of what others go through, those in 'chronic' pain who come for some kind of respite. And I am more than before an ardent advocate for prevention. Nearly 9 years ago, when I turned 50, I posted on my FB to my friends 'if you haven't evolved a movement practice by now, it's not too late' and I stand by that. Conscious movement is critical, what we eat should be medicine not poison, we need to cleanse and to be healthy of body and we need to be healthy in mind.

To people in need of support on their journey I am available, and for others I would request that you share my website email address: elementalenergy.daniel@gmail.com or message me on WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal: +(593)996545233 or FB/Instagram: @elementalwellnesstherapies with anyone you know who needs support, or just wants to start a meditation of movement practice.

Finally to my sons who I speak to nearly daily and who have come to Vilcabamba twice in these past 15 months, please know that I left when I did because I had to, you know I miss you. I am rebuilding. I will come to Europe soon, who knows for how long, it depends what works and if I can find work. I have to go slow in the process of recovery because I don't want to end up back down the rabbit hole of pain and despair. Despite whatever restrictions and all the challenges the current situation in Europe has thrown into the mix, I'll be there. Meanwhile I'm building my quads like a '......', great advice from my NZ physio friend who I was another man-mum in Kuala Lumpur 18 years ago! 

I know it has been a challenging time for Cécile, single-parenting teens! And it is wonderful that she has been able to maintain the boys in comfort and safety. That I didn't return when expected was not anticipated neither by me (or maybe it was a 'be careful what you ask for' by one or both of us moment?). At least an absence this long probably wasn't ever thought of. The problematic of staying in arguably one of the most expensive constituencies in the world, was anyway untenable due to Covid so even if I was healthy I wouldn't have been able to work. 

The whole Covid overlay has meant that their Mum has spent more time working from home and except for the end of term last year the boys have been going to school since they started in Suisse back in Aug 2020, so that is something positive. As most of this generation of screen-committed teenagers do, they retreat to their rooms after raiding the fridge after school, and emerge from their dens to again forage for food at dinner-time and then retreat again. It means Mum is around the place. I taught them to cook, and they are quite good, skills that are already proving to serve them well! It has meant a lot for my healing to know the boys are thriving, performing well at school, not without health concerns for our youngest, but overall they are doing better than ok. I will blog again about my concerns for this generation through a period of 'de-socialisation' which doesn't fit with our usual concept of a healthy environment for teens. Covid has kept kids at home and 'off the streets', for the most part, though at least on the street you're getting some sunlight. Anyway, this too shall pass and they will be fine. I am sure of that.

A Year of healing in Ecuador - Part 1, the Perfect Storm

I have been living in Ecuador for 15 months! A difficult year on many levels that began a healing journey after falling foul to a 'perfect storm' of circumstances that started with a small knee injury in France and led some painful months later to a diagnosis of polymyalgic arthritis and recovery in Ecuador. I write now early in March enjoying full recovery, pain free, meds free and mobile (yaaah!). This is the story of that journey.

For some of you in Europe where I had just moved with my sons after spending their whole lives and my past 25 years in Asia, or the Middle East or South America (most recently we lived in Yangon, Myanmar), in December 2020 I disappeared off the family map, remaining there only virtually. After 15 years of being the stay at home parent for my boys I was suddenly not where they were any more and this bears some edification because I know many of you have no idea what happened, or why I am still away.

It began in mid-October 2020 when I stepped off my bike on uneven ground in a field in France and injured my long-problematic left knee. We had arrived in mid August, the 6th country the boys have lived in, for them to start school in Switzerland (that journey is documented here!) and where Cécile (their Maman, my partner in co-parenting) had secured a post at the HQ for the UN Refugee Agency in Geneva. As it turned out she had to return to finish up her engagement with UNHCR in Myanmar until late November so it was me and the boys for the summer and much of the fall adjusting to our new reality after most of their lives had been spent in Asia and the Middle East. Anyway that day in October something slipped in my left knee and it became painful and inflamed.

This wasn't the first time; I injured my knee initially in 1983 and had a surgery then to fix my posterior cruciate ligament, these small mishaps had happened a few times over the years, but this time, a week or two of rest and anti-inflam/pain killers, just didn't work to get me mobile and pain-free again... maybe age had something to do with it; I'm 58 yrs on with many hard miles on the knee, from the Canadian Rockies to the Himalayas, the Alps and the Andes! In the ensuing two months as things really got worse I went to three doctors in France each one amping up the pharmaceuticals and none really helping. Between doctors two and three I was given a referral for imaging which showed a knee with little cartilage remaining to cushion the articulation between bones. Then I had lab tests, more imaging and an orthopedic surgeon who wanted me to have total knee replacement surgery (just shave 5mm off here, 7mm there, put in this cushiony stuff and sew you back up) in which ultimately they disconnect your leg at the knee and then reconnect it with some new bits inside and offer a 65% success rate.

I wasn't very keen on TKR surgery nor that there was a long waiting period for the surgery- and that the ski season would soon be upon us and I wouldn't be able make a turn for the whole winter so I'd be immobile, cold and miserable, and without an income.

To make a long story shorter (but not by much), over those 2 months I became like the tin man left out in the rain; stiffening in more joints particularly my hips and knees. This made walking, sitting, standing up, going up and down stairs all so painful, then my shoulders got in the act and then my hands. Not nice and blood tests were not revealing much, except that I didn't have rheumatoid markers which was a relief of sorts. Temporary relief came only from a hot shower in the morning.

I have reflected long-time about what got me into this situation, the perfect storm. Certainly the knee thing was where it started and just today I recall also how body-damaging scooters are (those 2-wheelers now popular in European capitals for 'scooting' around) and I had been a scooting fool around Geneva. It had become my main and preferred mode of transport. So, my lower back was compromised from over-scoot, that one-foot-lower-than-the-other-backward propulsion is not at all good for the lumbar/sacral spine. I had felt this before at some point scooting around London with the boys when they were little (a great tip for parents btw, kids too big to stroller love it and you can whizz around cities with ease) my back was killing me afterwards. The nerves that serve the knee exit the spine in the upper lumbar (L5 to be precise) and to confirm involvement at the spinal level the entire big toe nail on my left foot (the irony doesn't escape me), innervated from the same location in the lumbar spine, turned black as if I had dropped a brick on it. I liken the ensuing inflammation to a slow algae bloom the way it started in one joint and spread to the others supported rather than suppressed by the anti-inflammatory pharmaceuticals.

As winter approached and it got colder with humidity where we were not far from Lake Leman and Geneva, the cold got into my bones making matters worse. Nutrition played a role. It was part of the storm. Cécile had been there when we arrived in August and I continued cooking for two veggies and our two boy meat-eaters so once she returned to Myanmar in September I reverted to meat eating also to bulk up a bit for winter (or so I thought). I surmise that my diet changed too radically without the softer tropical fruits and veg I had been used to for 8 years and this change in my internal flora contributed to my troubles. 

Along with these physical changes (the climate, the nutrition, the inflammation, the meds) there were emotional and mental stressors; a relationship that had ended 3 years earlier far from a 'conscious uncoupling', logistics and lobbying issues around the school where Kasem was in one and Zaki in another (for the first month), problems getting a driver's licence transferred (that in itself is a story) meaning for a while I was driving on a Myanmar driver's license all the while daily crossing the border between Switzerland and France as you do as a 'frontalier' (cross-border dweller). Stress is a killer and I carry it in my lower back, the water element, the seat of emotions, the element of balance, potential and flow... ebb and flow so why be surprised when the nerves and I was not getting the reinforcement of a better perspective from community and so with everything else going on, I fell foul to my own lassitude, we are indeed our own worst enemies.

To add to the problem, Brexit was reaching it's writhing twisting finale for Brits residing in Europe. British people (am a Brit by birth) who could prove they resided in France by the end of 2020 had to apply for residency pronto. Cannot express enough how I loathe the 'rule Britannia' media driven bullsh*t that warped that appalling decision. There is a Catch-22 in many countries, where to get a bank account you needed a fixed address and to rent a place you need a bank account. Fortunately with foresight my name was on the tenancy agreement for where the boys and Cécile were to live in France (they have now moved to Switzerland). In France you can't work out of your house so you need to join or set up a 'cabinet' (clinic), you can't work without liability insurance, you have to register as a business; a minefield of administration and bureaucracy. And really I have a very strong aversion to bureau-crazy. I had registered and then applied to become a French resident just before the final deadline on 30 June, 2021 and still haven't heard back from the French, I'm told it could take years.

Unable to manage well and in such a declining condition in France with my status uncertain and sadly UNHCR and all it's concern for 'family reunification' of refugees doesn't extend that concept with visa facilitation to it's staff in 'blended' families. I was at a loss and dependent on one particularly supportive friend (thanks again Joe) to get me to appointments with labs and doctors. And then I spoke with another friend in Myanmar who suggested I needed to 'go home', and I am forever grateful for this advice (thanks Christina). And to her question 'where was home' I easily answered... Vilcabamba in Ecuador. Don't be too surprised dear reader who may not know me well, it is in Vilcabamba between Afghanistan missions 22 years ago that I established a presence (coming and going, sometimes for weeks, and sometimes months) in this little town of the southern Andes, building community, centered now around two houses and a project called the Pyramid on Mandango. The boys have been multiple times to Vilcabamba, a respite in nature's harmony. It is also Ecuador where friends in Vilcabamba had had success with more heinous knee problems than mine, through stem cell injections, a much preferred approach than hacking the knee apart, so going to Ecuador was not such a long stretch and though I haven't yet, it could still be that I have stem cell injections into my knees.

23 December 2020 I left for 'home'. This was a very difficult moment; my definition of home is where your family lives and my sons are my family, as their 'at-home parent' their entire lives my departure though planned to be only 3 months, was still heart wrenching. Over a year later my return to France or Switzerland where the boys are in school and living with their mother is pending a full recovery. Over this time it has been thwarted by the covid restrictions overlay (at the time of writing these are ebbing) that would require me to get vaccinated (against medical advice having an auto-immune reactive system) and make working as a therapist nigh on impossible in Europe. I am very grateful the boys are with their Mum, they moved from France across the border to Switzerland last year and very close to their school, they are 15 and 17 yrs old, young men. 

I made my first mistake early on stopping cold turkey the anti-inflam meds the minute I set foot in Ecuador. The trip had been alright, I was coked up on pain-killers and for the first time in my life I wished I had checked in as 'needs assistance' because the walk first through Schipol airport and later after a 11 hour plane ride, transiting Quito airport nearly killed me; but I survived. Arriving in the evening I lapped up the hot humid night air of Guayaquil my final airport. In the morning I went immediately to see the stem cell doctor, who straight away told me I was not a candidate for stem cells in my current 'inflamed' condition. He did a round of unexpected and very painful neural therapy injections (injecting procaine under scar tissue to stabilize the autonomic nervous system), well-based in science but doesn't help alleviate the pain at least not immediately. All in all my knee has seen more action than your average knee and is full of scarring. Said doctor sent me off with liver and kidney support homeopathics, and prescriptions for vitamin injections and advice to adjust my nutrition with the aim to reduce the inflammation.

I had arranged for a taxi truck to drive me to Vilcabamba, no flights these days to the nearest airport at Catamayo (LOH), it is a 9 hr drive east, climbing dramatically up into the Andes arriving at Ecuador's third (and most beautiful) city of Cuenca at 2400m and then south along a stunning road, running the spine of the Andes to Vilcabamba at 1600m. I was glad I paid the expense to do this as I am not sure I could have managed the bus. As it was by the time I got to Vilca after 3 days of travel, I was stiffening up big time, and within that first week when I was ensconced in my the guest room of my tenant's house I could hardly get out of bed on my own.

Those early days of pain are a bit of a blur, my memory is befuddled. I was hoping that following the good doctor in Guayaquil's protocol to support liver and kidney function and boost my immune system, this along with enzymes to try to reduce the inflammation and a transition to an organic dis-inflammatory and alkaline diet would reduce the pain. Alas I learned, that isn't how these things work, at least not as quickly as I needed it to. It was a good learning. Diet/nutrition adjustments and the appropriate supportive supplements can be mitigate the symptoms of many ailments, but they take time. I was in so much pain and while I had great care and compassion from my friends here, especially my friend and tenant (for 10 years) Rebecca who (put me up in her spare room, then cared for me until I could move into the small guest house, the Casita right next door). She brought me food and made nutritious smoothies for weeks after I arrived.

By February 2021, my spirit had spiraled so low due to the ongoing pain and loss of mobility and independence and also because I was acutely missing my sons, I had thought I would be away from them for 3 months which would be the longest period in their lives, yet here I was no further ahead and no end to this process in sight. This emotional stress did not support healing at all. I got a prescription for prednisone from a locally based Egyptian doctor. Prednisone is a steroid anti-inflammatory and by all accounts it is miracle drug for many. I could move freely and nearly pain free for the first time in months, within 2 days of starting the steroid... wow it was amazing. I kept on with an anti-inflammatory, alkaline diet hoping it would yield results given the chance to return balance to my system. I visited a reputable homeopath who diagnosed gout but neither did my profile fit nor did the diet changes and supplements give any respite, so it wasn't gout which would have made a fix easy. Then with the supportive counsel of a dear friend on Vancouver Island (thank-you Amanda), I saw a rheumatologist who diagnosed me with 'polymyalgic arthritis' a dubious condition that some say is lifelong and he advised me to take prednisone, a steroid anti-inflammatory that is to be honest quite the miracle drug. 

Among many things I have learned is that despite medical diagnosis and prognosis who will tell you differently, this kind of affliction is not permanent, and the medical diagnosis is self-defeating. The treatment does not serve to support a curative ethos, instead it prolongs the ailment and promotes the mind-set of a life-long illness and drug dependency. If the whole approach quite distasteful.

I had made that initial mistake of stopping the anti-inflammatories, and made several more along the way and in my own defense note also that I was without a 'guide' and advocate. This is a role I play for wellness clients in my occupation as a therapist. I knew I needed someone who had followed my process as close to the get-go as possible and who could give me advice as to 'what next'. Who could that have been? I needed someone aware of the pitfalls when a medical diagnosis for something not really explainable is only a description of the condition. I strongly recommend a health advocate if you are facing an illness that is characterized as 'chronic'. It happens to many folks, and they end up relying on their doctor who may not have the depth or breadth of knowledge to consider different approaches from the western medical model (or they are sold out to pharmaceuticals as the only solution). Diagnostics are tricky, finding a treatment plan that gets to source, explores all options and solves the problem, is even trickier.

'Arthritis' is a modern-time conundrum, more and more people become arthritic and it is thought nowadays to be an inflammatory response to an auto-immune trigger. In my case I discern that my trigger (the source) was a 'wrong' immune response to streptococcus bacteria; one of the first blood tests I had when things got so bad I couldn't get out of a chair without help (and a lot of pain), showed high levels of this streptococcus antigen (ASTO). So if I let a scratchy throat progress, my body thinks I may be getting strep, antigens are produced to fight off the bacteria but they get carried away (an over-response) and lead to an arthritic inflammation. Thinking back as I have over these months it is quite possible that I had a sore throat when I had that knee incident in the french farmer's field or soon thereafter, but these things never happen in isolation and this 'man from Asia' was not used to the chill breezes of autumn in the Jura mountains. The perfect storm set the stage, created the fertile field for illness, how to regain wellness became the question and the challenge.

I mentioned stress earlier and as a causal contributing factor it is pretty clear that at least in my case, going deep into this and finding where it comes from needs to be a big part of the healing. Here in Vilcabamba, there is an incredible menu of traditional and alternative healing modalities available from some very talented therapists. People from all over the world come and live here, holding workshops, seminars, classes and sharing therapies most of which are out of the western medical model, and that work. I benefited from many of these treatments, and from the easy availability of organic food, of amazingly clean air and water, and importantly the acceptance and support of community. 

I made some blunders on the way, suffering set-backs too painful to mention here, but all part of my path. I have seen a holistic chiropractor, had heart-centered therapy, muscle testing, worked on the question 'am I fit for Love', worked with RIFE technology, hypnosis, massage, taken courses, attended seminars, embarked on plant medicine journeys, and I have had a deep dive into my dark side. I realised that likely I was suffering delayed PTSD from a few incidents in Afghanistan, and had deeper scars likely originating even before I was born, and then adopted. With great gratitude I have been able to exchange craniosacral treatments for many of these therapies. I know this inner work has been essential and integral to my healing, and with the intention of preventing future 'calamities' of this sort.

Part 2 of this writing gives you a break, and will reveal some of what worked on this journey and where I am headed next.

Three bags, two boys, one daddy....oh, and a goat.

After only three days back in Vilcabamba we are proud goat-owners....but that story is for another blog. This one is a brief recount of our recalibration and arrival; a recap of the journey from France to Ecuador.

As Kasem would say, and said at every leg of the journey since mid-July ".....the three travellers continue their journey". We had rather short and rushed weekend in St. Pryve with visits from Cecile's cousins and plenty of last minute things, packing, etc that followed a relaxed week on the coast of Portugal just north of of Lisbon. Ericeira, on the beach and riding bikes, eating sea-food (I had mussels 3 times in 4 days) and generally just hanging about.

Ericeira, Portugal...this beach is right in town!

Monday morning, August 20th dawned and we bid au revoir to Mami and Papi Fradot, headed to Orly airport in a taxi shuttle, the boys and I to board a flight to Madrid and on to Guayaquil, Cecile continuing to CDG and to Beirut later in the day. An emotionally charged moment that had been coming for a while, the excitement of travel and anticipation of Ecuador seemed to eclipse the idea of leaving Maman behind but this is the third summer with a similar configuration so perhaps we are used to it...probably not. Time will tell with the kids.....it always does.

Iberia didn't have seat-back screens on the 2hr flight to Madrid, so the boys reverted to their portable screens; iPad, Gameboy or DS.....they have choices such is the modern age of transcontinental travel with kids these days....admittedly I too succumbed to sudoko on my iPhone, like father like sons. To our credit we all had a read of books as well....in fact I finished mine which is an odd way to start a trip. We had two hrs in Madrid Airport enjoying the thrall of summer travellers tanned and tarted up for their trips to or from Mallorca, Les Canaries and other fun in the sun destinations...until we changed terminals and hit a more southern latino flavour, destinations for Bogota, Caracas, Buenos Aires and Guayaquil of course.  It makes the boys so happy to play their (age appropriate which among its meanings also means 'no blood') games that its hard not to cave in when Zaki sends Kasem and his doe-eyed diplomacy, which is too hard to resist, to negotiate for screen time.   On the 11hr flight to Guayquil both pissed about on the seat-back screens before caving in to exhaustion in hour 5 then to sleep for 4hrs so it wasn't too bad.....resistance is futile, I just let them go at it.....games, series, movies....after 2 movies (and 2 bottles of wine) I also slept.

Zaki woke in a grump upon arriving at the terminal....he refused to wake up before that, to eat or pee or anything. Kasem was a star, full of humour and infectious excitement for the couple of hours before landing....poof...11hour flight over. We got through Immigration (using our European flavour of passports) with 90day entry visas and sailed through Customs where curiosity normally gains us special attention...three bags, two boys, one daddy....on this trip we have 2 lap-tops, 2 iPads, an i Phone and then games gadgets......criminney.....travel has changed since the days when the old SLR camera was the only bit of tech in your back-pack (age-alert).

Changing tack completely we got picked up by a hotel and spent the night in Guayquil....in past adventures to Ecuador, including in 2010 when the boys were 3 and 5 years old, after 21hrs of travel we arrived at 6am, caught a flight at 9am to Cuenca and then a 4hr taxi to Vilcabamba arriving in time for a late lunch. This year, arriving at 9pm we were picked up at 9am by a Vilcabamba taxi-truck (which turned out to be a Hyundai truck engine on a van body) and its most excellent driver Jaime, and 8.5 hrs later arrived in Vilcabamba. The drive was spectacular. A new highway traverses the lower Andes to the east and gains heights of 4100m, then remaining between 2500 and 3500m up and over passes to Cuenca. We had a very pleasant cruise stopping in Cuenca to buy a used mountain bike for me and a chicken lunch and then the amazing drive through Ona and Saraguro to provincia Loja arriving at 5:30pm having left at 9am. The 8.5hrs drive was fine for the boys, I mean, did I mention they are stellar travellers? They had the whole back of the van to cruise around, the ubiquitous gadgets, easy naps and amazing views. In 2001 I had gone from Guayaquil to Vilcabamba on the old southern route through Machala by night bus that took 16hrs to Loja and 1 to Vilca.

Casa Roja, Vilcabamba.....all the info you need for a precision bombing...or just to come and visit.

Greeting us were our old friend Vicente, and friends (and tenants) Rebecca and James and Chaupi-Tu-ta their 1yr old black labrador now united, the boys finding a new best friend. First time I have had such a greeting in many trips up to the house. I remember once arriving to find the house locked and the tenant at the time, not home. This wasn't before mobile phones but mine wasn't picking up a signal despite the visible presence of 5 towers (now there are 7). I fell asleep in the hammock on the front terrace until she turned up.

Not this time, Rebecca and James had just carried their last box into the casita they had been building for the 3 months previous. They will live there while we live in the casa roja. A stalwart and gallant effort resulting in a quite lovely little two room cottage-like place but with a rather nice bathroom. The terrace is pretty cool sitting about 2.5m off the ground and with a yoga extension. It has been an intense slog for James and Rebecca, getting the casita finished, the past month quite a trial as I was off-line for most of that time and time compressing the number of things that needed to get done. And so, minus one terrace door, they had moved in just as we appeared at the garden path. It was very nice to arrive in time to see the casita in the setting sunlight, glowing the new 'caterpillar' yellow that fits the monastic motif....good choice James! The two house complement each other nicely and they are well-congratulated for a hard job well done.

So we are now installed. Did a big shopping today in Loja and also bought some carpet to lay upstairs in the loft/schoolroom/yoga therapy practice and studio, plywood to make small furniture including desks for the boys, goat food, housewares for the casita and groceries. Two workers have been fixing up a few things.... including re-planting/replacing the boys club/playhouse, re-building a chicken/goat pen and fixing up the fenced area. The boys bikes are running, mine is cranking....lucky to find a light-frame, good gear bike my size. The kids love the biking, we get around town so much faster and with so much less effort.....has to be said I will be glad when the helmets arrive.  We have visited the site of the coming Waterwoman festival next weekend which will be a rather excellent time....I'll be volunteering and the kids in the Children's area going wild (no doubt). Tomorrow its yoga and generally just hanging about visiting with people, Sunday innit?

Slowly weaning them off the gadgets they love so much.

Kasem and the biggest cactus of the year award winner

Casa Roja and Casita Amarillo

Casita Amraillo

Casa Roja...the big house

Small boy, big gate

Muchacho alert

........and a goat.

Skype is keeping everyone connected. The time difference makes things a bit tricky. Thus far I have stayed home all evenings.....will need to get out one of these nights but have been very tired at the end of long days, waking early and trying not to sleep too early. The boys are adjusting nicely, enjoying having a dog, freedom to roam. And did I mention the goat?

Planning:2012

Planning. Whats that about? We can try to plan but when your destiny appears to lay in the hands of others it is not so easy, you have to do what feels right, be courageous, follow your spirit guide.

In summary, our plan for the rest of 2012:

Boys (all 3)
10 July 
Beirut  - London 
(in Wales and England with Auntie Margaret, family, friends)
18 July 
London - Switzerland
(with friends from KL!)
22 July Switzerland - St. Pryve
(kids stay with les grandparents)
Daniel
25 July  - 13 August
on Elemental Yoga Therapy Course in Portugal*
Cecile
04 August - 20 August
On leave to France

Boys
20 August
Paris - Guayaquil
(inVilcabamba to Jan/13)
Cecile
19 August
Paris Beirut
(visit to Ecuador Oct/Nov)

Early 2013 we'll likely move to the next post destination which is for now an unknown. Read on if you have an interest in the why's and wherefores, otherwise, if your plans and ours coincide in dates and locations, let us know. All are welcome to the sunny south of Ecuador!

This year we knew we had to move on from Beirut with the expiry of Cecile's time here with UNHCR. The process requires her to apply for a new post and so she looks for family duty stations, where she can work as a Protection officer and at the appropriate P4 middle-management level and...there are other considerations, like good schooling, work opportunities for spouses (me), availability of skiing for spouses (haha, but a good bonus!), clean air, etc. Think of these as filters which in effect reduce the number of possible jobs to apply for. Add to this that UNHCR's staffing pyramid shrank by 30% in the past 5 years of reform and budget strife (even though the number of refugees and internally displaced has grown globally), and so the higher your grade level and filters the fewer jobs there are.

Finding a suitable post is much more challenging than for a young singleton and the competition fierce...permanent staff have to do this every 2-5yrs depending on the post duration (which depends on the country). Suffice it to say UNHCR staff fight the battle to find work against the demographic odds and economics of the times like everyone else. We are lucky in a way, Cecile has a 'permanent contract' so there is a certain job security in that and although the built-in uncertainty doesn't go away.

We knew from the get-go, the year of the dragon was was going to be an interesting year. Without being appointed to a post yet, Cecile will be on a temporary assignment (TA) until the next round of posts comes up for January. It was only earlier this month that the office in Beirut got around to offering Cecile a suitable 6 month TA, she will work on the crisis of Syrian's displaced in Lebanon until December, before that she could have been going anywhere.  

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My own career path isn't so easily defined, it is more like that tangled spider's web from the spider on bennys experiment (watch the vid to the end)(at least I quit coffee!) so I can deal with another convolution, twist or turn. Good that one of us stays on track.

Now they say everything happens for reason; in this uncertainty I saw the chance to give the boys a break from formal schooling, to my mind an option while they are young and something I have been wanting to do for a while. The best place for this.....Ecuador of course! The house and land in Vilcabamba is really what makes such a possibility real. It also gives the chance to finally live in the house we built in Vilcabamba in 2003....a chance that has also been elusive so in a sense things start to come together. On the schooling question we consider that Mark Twain said 'don't let your schooling get in the way of your education' and Thoreau who said 'travel is the best education', I am working on the modality we will use for an informal home school.

Even not to planning to return to Lebanon may be wise the way things are going; the hard analysis says that unless the Syrian situation starts evolving differently, Lebanon stability appears like a small boat on the outer swirl of a spinning vortex going round round round and down down down. The pessimists view? I hope so and we pray that the power-brokers remember the damage of the long civil war here, and recognize the potential that awaits Lebanon that can only come with a sustained peace and proper governance.

Apologies friends in Lebanon for the visual metaphor but if things keep going the way they are, it could get quite shitty.

So by 20 August us boys will wing out over the Pacific to southern Ecuador until the end of the year. Work progresses on the construction of a casita adjacent to the casa roja in Vilcabamba to serve as a guest house. Construction is being supervised by our most excellent tenants and they will be the first 'guests' to live there. Rather than having to move away when we come, they'll just move next door!  They will manage the rental of the casita once we leave....a good option for all!

The footprint and foundation. Rebecca surveying.

So thats the plan, by remote I am working on this casita project, getting things ready to move to storage and closing the apartment, studying for my yoga course and looking at the education programme for the boys while we are in South America, I'll blog on that anon, stay tuned. busy is as busy does.

*The course is in Elemental Yoga as I build further on a different modality bringing therapy back to yoga practice and hope to work with people open to the notion that yoga as a life science can help them better manage their spiritual, mental and physical wellness. The more I practice, the more I realise how important this is in today's fractured and confusing world. This idea fits into a longer term vision to open a yoga/meditation site in Vilcabamba on the land, a project which has started and will grow organically as interest, time and commitment will allow, being there this year will help catalyze things significantly.