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As an environmental education student, the school decided to take us on a trip to a place called CELL which is a Center for Ecozoic Living and Learning and there center aims to contribute to the Great Work, whereby humans learn to move from a stance of destroyer of the Earth Community to a stance that is mutually enhancing and they also aim to operate a spirituality center that will propagate the New Story of Creation as a means of alerting the human to the current ecological and social crisis, and awaken in them a vision that will give a direction for action at the present moment in history. There center’s goal fits what the school advocates and it would really help our institution in visiting this place to raise awareness to other students not just in our elective. And we can apply what we experienced in our daily lives and through exercising these learnings many people would be influenced in trying this out.
Moving on, I will share to you my experience when we went to the place. At first, I thought I would not be interested in the activities because we were unaware of what will happen since we were not really oriented about the place but as we got to the place, I realized how beautiful it was and you can really see how they really took care and maintained the environment of the place. When we got there we went to a place to leave our bags then went straight to the conference room. In the conference room, we did a ritual that would make us reflect and appreciate the wonderful creations of God and how we should take care of it and maintain its beauty. After that, we were oriented about the activities that we will do there and a map of our destinations then the speaker gave us a background about the center and there vision mission.
After the orientation we were asked to go to the “biodigester” where they used human stool and it will go through the pipes and it will go into a process then it will eventually emit methane gas which they will use for cooking and other stuff that needs heat. After that, we were divided into two groups and each group will be assigned to route where they will see there different ways on helping save the environment. On my group, our facilitator presented to us two plants and he let us taste the leaves, it tasted minty and the other one tasted like a rootbeer. On to the next place in our route, he showed us a tree that was planted years ago and they call it “Love Triangle” because if a part is missing there, the process would not function. There are also particles attached on the tree that shows how clean and safe the air in the environment and it struck me the most because I really appreciated how they really took care and maintained the safe environment there.
On to the next destination, he showed us junks that they will recover to be sold and be used again then the money that they will earn will be given to a school. That place is what they call “Materials, Recovery, Facility” (MRF). After that, we went to their farm and we saw that there planted different kinds of plants and the first one was a citronella which is for mosquitos because of its smell. As we walked around the farm, there was a path of rows of plants that were circularly shaped and inside the circle were a plant of sili. We were allowed to pick some to take home but I tasted one and at first I didn’t taste any spicy flavor but as I ate it, it was really spicy. After that, we we to the poultry and there we saw chickens and turkeys. Then, we passed by a reservoir that was destroyed because of the typhoon that happened before. After passing by, we went to the aquaponics. They used a catfish (hito) then this fish will excrete ammonia into the water then a pump is lifting the water from the basin, where the fish is located, up to the grow bed. The water is dripping down through the porous filter, passing through the roots of the plants before discharging back into the basin of fish. The plants roots absorb the water and nutrients that they need to grow, cleaning the water by this way from the nutrients, returning back to the basin fresh and clean water that fish need. After discovering the system of aquaponics, we went to the “Waterless Toilet System”, it is where you excrete your waste then the waste also contributes to the biodigester system. On to our last destination, we passed by their chapel and you can see in the picture posted below it is made up of bamboo sticks that were build together to form the structure and another picture which is the inside view of the chapel and you can really see how everything in there is also made up of bamboo like the cross, the altar and other stuff (picture posted below).
We took a break and went again to the conference room to synthesize all our experiences and we were divided into groups to collaborate and share our experiences. Each group shared what they discussed to the big group. There were questions posted to us to be answered by each group and each group gave answers that were really meaningful and you can really notice how each of us learned many things on each activity that we have done. Before ending this blog, I would like to share to you what our group discussed about. In our generation today, we are ignorant and selfish beings because we often only think of ourselves so we are not fully aware about what is happening to our Mother Earth. We tend to be not concerned about others ways on how we can help in reducing the issues of our environment especially the climate change that has a great impact to us. We should always have the initiative to correct other people like when you see people littering all over the place, try your best to make them aware that what they are doing is really bad that is why in CELL they encourage us not to leave our garbage in the place and take it home to help them maintain what they created and worked hard for. Practicing good behavior to the environment is really hard because we can’t avoid to produce waste since we are so used to the lazy lifestyle that we usually just leave our garbage everywhere we go and not really care about it. In the end, I realized how irresponsible our generation today is and I sincerely feel guilty on what we have done to Mother Earth because she doesn’t deserve this type of treatment.
