Volunteers preparing the garden

At Jiwa Damai all plants, grow at an extraordinary speed. Kadek, our gardener and Mariano, our Spanish volunteer and Koko our Japanese volunteer are cleaning the area, to be mulched and prepared for ginger, garlic and other plants.

 

Read Full Post »

Cooking together

Cooking together in our kitchen with Margret, our Spanish volunteer – Mariano and our kitchen fairies. At Jiwa Damai, volunteers, interns and guest can learn about the Balinese cuisine.

It is a wonderful experience!

Read Full Post »

Christmas Tree decorations

Our Balinese team and our international volunteers from France, Spain, Japan, Austria and Germany decorated our Christmas tree. We are hanging some lovely ornaments on the Frangipani tree at the entrance of the dining area. We hope the strong rains will leave our beautiful decorations hanging 🙂

Read Full Post »

Balinese wedding

Gede, our gardener invited us all of Jiwa Damai to his wedding. And what a wedding it was! Here you see the groom and the bride in their incredible festive traditional Balinese clothing and make up. Both are very heavily makeup, as tradition demands. I was told it took five hours to prepare it.

The festivity went from early night the previous day to early morning two days later. About 1000 people were invited and fed throughout this time.

Read Full Post »

Balinese blessing ceremony

This Sunday brought a surprise to Jiwa Damai. Wira’s family came, mother, wife and brother to dedicate and bless the new car. Looking at all the various offerings which they had prepared and brought, it was still considered a small ceremony. The hood of the car was covered with special cloth and decorated with fresh flowers. Goods, fruits and other items were offered to the gods, on the left for the negative energies to leave and on the right for the positive to come in. It was all sprinkled with holy water and supported with incense smell. The lower part of the car was hung with elaborate bamboo creations and will remain on the car.

Read Full Post »

EM made from scratch

Our permaculture garden is looking very rich and green at this time. We had more rains than normal and the veggies and salads and fruit are growing in abundance.

Our local team, Kadek, Gede, Fendy and our volunteer Cedric are carrying the rice straws to mulch the beds. Cedric had made some EM (effective micro-organism) from scratch and we are now looking at the difference between the beans with and without his brew. The first plants are without, the second with. We would say that the difference in height is quite visible. What do you think?

Read Full Post »

Open House and Independence Day

We were happy to celebrate the Indonesian Independence Day with an Open House event at Jiwa Damai in August. We know that it has been a while, but we want to share some of the images with you! Our team and their families began to come around 11 am. We used the pool until around 4 pm and plenty children games were organized.

 

Read Full Post »

Preparing the Jiwa Damai Open House

During August we celebrated the Jiwa Damai Open House day and we are happy to share now some of those moments.

Early morning balloon blowing in preparation for our Open House at Jiwa Damai for our team and guests. They were given to the children of our local team members. It seems that the adults have much fun blowing them up as many were exploding as well 🙂

Read Full Post »

Our volunteers and staff opening coconuts

After working hard Kadek, Tyrone from Germany, and Maxwell our American volunteer with Made, the coco nut oil fairy. Today they have been opening lots of coconuts, which we will use to produce our own organic certified coconut oil.

Both Tyron and Maxwell enjoy a healthy lunch.

Read Full Post »

Gifts for the Jiwa Damai team

The 24 day yoga teacher training has come to its final day. The lovely participants expressed their gratitude by making a gift basket for the Jiwa Damai Team which took care of them and tried to make Jiwa Damai the home away from home during the 24 days.

Our team will share the gifts equally, for kitchen and garden since each was involved hosting and providing for the really great group and their teachers.

Find out more about our workshops at Jiwa Damai here.

Read Full Post »