Porongo Land | lukemalkin

Life on Life

Posted on October 14, 2018 by lukemalkin

30 before 30: #24 – Plant half a dozen trees

Completed: 13 Oct 2018

My subconscious goes at it quite a lot, and it likes to talk to me through music. Whatever song happens to be playing on my mind’s jukebox each day is often there for a reason, usually inspired by some stimulus that only makes sense to me a few minutes or a few hours later when I stop and think about the lyrics that I’m being played.

It wasn’t long after I started clearing out vegetation on my land that “Colours of the Wind” from Pocahontas started playing. In particular the line, “You think you own whatever life you land on, the earth is just a dead thing you can claim”. Great, my subconscious is an eco-warrior.

It isn’t lost on me that although my name is on the documentation, I’m not the only life here. The weeds don’t care if my signature is on the derechos reales, they’re going to keep growing as much as they can. In comparison with my business, which if I leave alone will start dying, if I leave the land alone it’ll be teaming with life.

So this land certainly isn’t a “dead thing I can claim”. Now the rains have started to come, life in its variety has started to surface. I found little mushrooms on the land hiding under some of the grass, there have been a variety of small but cool spiders, and I also found this colourful insect.

Colourful means stay well away, right?

The discovery of the day though was of some violet flowers. What makes violet flowers particularly poignant is that they’re already a symbol for my newly-born niece. Her name is Ianthe, and it means purple flower. It’s one of those happy coincidences on a day where I was to plant 4 trees, but didn’t know where.

There are also some white flowers on the land, but I don’t have relatives for that name

The four trees I planted today are a tajibos, mara (mahogany- endangered in Bolivia apparently), something semi-cactusy, and a mystery plant I’ve forgotten the name of. I was given these by my good friend Ubaldo. They’ve been growing in milk packets for the past two years and are now ready for the real earth. The mystery plant has gone next to the purple flower, so we’ll see what that turns into. Who knows if Ianthe will come and visit on a backpacking through South America trip in 20 years time? It’ll be a cute story for her if she ever does.

At least for now in these early stages, I’m also quite into dedicating growing life to the memory of people passed. I’m going to wait until the trees take hold a little more before dedicating anything specifically. People say everything grows here, but I’m new to this so everything will be bit by bit.

Including the bamboo that I put in a couple of weeks ago, there are now 8 trees growing on that land. It ticks off the 30 before 30 objective, but I have no plans on stopping there. In the coming weeks I’d like some more bamboo in, as well as experimenting with some fruit trees. I’ve also started my own fledging tajibos and mara trees in plastic cups back at my house in the hope that they could be transferred to the land next year.

I just wanted to show you my protractor t-shirt

Now we wait for rain, and for life to do its thing.

So that’s three down, twenty-seven to go. See the whole list and why I’m doing it here.

Days remaining: 239

500m2 of Potential: Becoming a Landowner

Posted on September 11, 2018 by lukemalkin

30 before 30: #23 – Own a plot of land

Completed: 4 Sept 2018

When it comes down to it, my pulse runs at the pace of a small village. I grew up in one.

Cresswell, 25 minutes outside Stoke in the middle of the Uk, is a little isolated. Pub, church, postbox. When I was a child there used to be a bus service that could pick you up on a Tuesday morning. The return service was Thursday morning. I didn’t get out much.

Next to my house there was a field. My dad once asked me what I’d do if I won the lottery and my small town dreams told him that I’d buy that field and put a go-kart track on it. Of course, for most lower-middle class Brits that’s the only time you’d really think of owning land; if you won the lottery.

But the world is not equal. I’m not lower-middle class here, and the price of land in Bolivia – where I now call home – is substantially lower than in the UK. I remember that pioneer land-owning dream creep into the back of my mind when I came back to Bolivia having bought a one-way ticket and a stake in a company. Maybe if things go well, I joked with a friend, I might be able to buy some land and build something for myself out there. That’d be nice. That’d be freedom wouldn’t it?

Porongo, 25 minutes outside of Santa Cruz, is a small town the other side of the river Piraí and it’s suited to the laid-back lifestyle. A step up from Cresswell, there’s a football pitch on the town square. Milk ice-creams and alligator meat are served from the small restaurants. Oh, and there’s fruit everywhere. Ever had an achachairú? You should. You should have several.

They taste better than they look.

Go down the road that goes past the wooden Jesuit church for 10 minutes from that plaza and there’s a 500m2 plot of land that is mine. Next to it is a 500m2 plot of land owned by my friend and business partner, Joe.

Credit where credit’s due; this was his idea. The seller wasn’t going to sell anything less than 1000m2 at a time, and neither of us had the money for the whole chunk- so now we individually own half each.

Like most things that involve lawyers in Bolivia, no-one really knows what they’re doing. But anything worth doing (especially in the developing world) takes much longer and costs more than the initial, wildly-optimistic timeframe and price that you start off with. When it comes down to it, it’s a good deal when the raw price of the land is $15 a m2 though. A damn good deal.

See that white stick? That’s my white stick now, because I just spent my savings on it.

It’s a long rectangle, so maybe a go-kart track isn’t the best idea. It’s much more suited to archery, a bowling alley or a shooting range. Whatever it’s good for, 500m2 of potential is my favourite thing about it now. If I saved up, I could have a pool if I really really wanted. Or a treehouse. Or a bamboo forest. Or a fallout shelter for the apocalypse.

Santa Cruz has a cultural thing called quintas. It’s your house in the country and your weekend escape whenever you want it. Most wealthier families here will have one or share one and they’re just what you need to escape. That’s the aim right now. Something small for a little shelter and make the rest pretty with fruit trees and bamboo.

Clearly I have no idea where to place my expectations.

I’ve never done anything like this before. The land has a few youngish trees on it at the moment, but I feel there should be more. All I really know right now is that I’ll plant a tree in memory of a green-fingered friend of mine we lost, and then a few more to see if I can’t get some fruit to offer to weekend guests.

Joe and I have started potting around already. It’s mostly weeding and cleaning right now. Joe managed to put some grass down in a way that totally didn’t look like we’d just buried someone.

The machete just makes it look worse doesn’t it?

This adventure calls for its own blog and I’ll keep updating here with how things are going. We’re spending quieter weekends dropping by with better tools, beers and ideas each time we go. We have to fence off our bit (although we’re not separating our parts from each other) and then we’re just free to take it at our pace, though I hear the best time to plant here is in November.

It’s really the beginning of an adventure, but it’s a check off the list. Two down, twenty-eight to go. See the whole list and why I’m doing it here.

Days remaining: 280