Rainbow gathering in Portugal

No, it's not about gays and lesbians, it's more like hippie style community gathering for few weeks to live together in the nature. I have heard about them by accident and since then I knew I have to check this out. I had no idea what to expect..

The camp was located deep in the middle of nowhere, in Portuguese countryside. If you didn't have a car the only way to get there was a lot of walking and hitchhiking. First you had to arrive to a small 5 000 inhabitant town, then find a car that would take you to a tiny village, then from this village you had to continue 6-7 km on a country road, and muddy roads, to end up in the valley.

The camp consisted of few bigger tents, many of them were actually just the tent roofs, with a campfire underneath, and the small tents of people. There was a tea tent, chai tent, healing tent, children tent, and the kitchen tent. In the middle of the camp was the big fireplace where people gathered two times per day to sing, om and then eat together.

First thing that surprised me was that it was not allowed to use soap. Or shampoo, or toothpaste. Nothing chemical, unless it's some special biodegradable solution. And of course I did not bring any such with me. But there were replacements. I didn't know it before, but ash works with dirt exactly like soap: it binds particles of fat, and dirt is basically fat. So there was a process for cleaning everything with ash: from doing the dishes to washing your hair. Since the ash was used for cleaning, nothing else than wood could be burned in the fireplaces. For brushing teeth one could use coconut oil.

The people could walk around naked. Some people were always naked some were never some were sometimes. When people showered then they were naked of course. After a while it feelt very normal, and I noticed an interesting phenomenon: after looking at, speaking with the person who is naked, you get a fuller picture of this person in your head. I realised that clothes make us all look very similar. They hide big part of the body, they hide the body shape, the skin colour, the skin facture, they hide for example how the skin around the stomach ripples when people sit down. When you see the person naked you see the full person, it makes up a consistent whole. Also, when people wear clothes they sometimes wear clothes that don't match them. Or they don't feel comfortable in. But the body always matches the owner, and therefore it is always beautiful. There is no ugly bodies. We made ourselves such a matrix with this obsession about how we look, unbelievable!

And kids, there were also kids. Of various ages, even a mother with a 1 year old baby. The children really seemed to have a good time there, they were constantly running around without having to do anything specific.

Alcohol was not allowed there, also no synthetic drugs. Having stated that it's worth mentioning that marihuana is not considered drug but a medicine ;) Also, all the meals were vegan, often raw, often with oatmeal or soaked grains, with a bit of sand or dirt that you could often feel between your teeth. But I agree that it's not a bad thing to have contact with dirt sometimes, to be more resistant to various allergies for example. Also, while at the beginning it was difficult for me to eat this food at all (it felt like eating grass), after a while I realised that it keeps me full even though the portions were small. And I even missed this food after coming back home! 

About the people - there were all kinds of people. Just like in society there's all kinds of people: smart people and stupid people, kind people and jerks, people with personality problems, and finally people who did not completely fit there. Also many people with unsatisfied need for belonging somewhere, I think such groups attract them. Also people with low self esteem who like to present themselves as expert in something, in order to compensate for their low self esteem. And appearing as expert in paranormal stuff seems easy for them I think. No one can prove then wrong. But I think you can still spot them easily, by amount of 'I' and 'me' in their sentences.

What I really liked was the quality of human interaction. There was no empty meaningless behaviours. If someone didn't feel like speaking to you they wouldn't. They didn't care to "make new friends", to appear social, they didn't care about none of those superficial things. They wouldn't ask a question about which they're not interested to hear the answer. And they were always smiling at you and they were always ready to help you. And find you a place to sit among them, share their food, offer you tea. Another thing is that I never felt judged by where I am from or how I look, which I feel that normally happes a lot.

At the last day what struck me is that all those people seem to be at some point of a process. I am talking about magnitude of years here. Some are just starting some are pretty far. Some will never get there :p This process seem to be transforming people. And those transformed people - they are all so different from each other! like completely different style, different way of speaking, of dressing, of everything. I never saw such variety of people. I never knew people can be so specific, individual, yet each is different. As if each of them was a different character from a different children fairy tale. Each bringing a different mood, but specific only for this person. It's amazing what civilisation did to us. We all became copy paste.

They call the people from the city, and the city itself, civilisation, they call it Babylon. And they differentiate strongly between "we" and "them". But it's not the racist style differentiation, it's indeed a huge difference in the way of thinking and in the realities that the both groups live in. And it's not that there is some hate or dislike (except some pathological individuals of course). It's like two parallel worlds, and people from one world cannot understand how the people from the other world can at all live there. But it came to my understanding that both groups are valid. Maybe one is significantly smaller but they are equally valid. Let's start from a simple example: there's many people who cannot imagine that they would ever go camping. Because there's dirty. Because there you sleep on the ground. And there can be bugs in the tent. And some people are even more scared as believe you can actually die from being bitten by a beatle or an ant. And some people cannot imagine bathing in a cold river. Because it's cold. You can get a cold and die. We go further: it's not possible to live outside for long time. Because there's no heating, no electricity. How are you gonna cook? Eating only bugs or plants? Impossible, you would die of some disease. Drinking water from the spring, without cooking it? Impossible, you can die from it, it's not been processed properly. Not using soap? You would get some disease and die. And slowly, slowly we are coming to a conclusion that a human is not able to survive in wilderness. That we are not able to survive without factories, plastic, and chemical industry. But wait, didn't we come from wilderness? ... such a paradox, such an illusion that we live in. Oh and it's so true! I trust much more something that's been processed than something coming from the nature. But wait  minute - what the heck, why? Isn't it... silly? 

Isn't it silly to work 8 hours per day 5 days a week to later be too old to enjoy whatever you could do with the money you earned.. There's so many contradictions we don't notice. We work to earn vacation, so we spend a lot of time to earn a tiny bit of time. We do this all thinking we exchange it for security, but it's false security. I have health insurance but it can happen there will be no place in the hospital, or the doctor will mistreat me, or even kill me if they can get the organs - dead people don't speak anyway. Do I trust the health care? No I don't. I put my money in the bank, can I trust the bank? No, there can be another crisis. Or the bank can be a false bank. I pay for my pension, can I be sure I will get pension at all? No. So what kind of security is it? Imaginary, I guess;) Illusion.. Food, can I have food without working? So much food is getting wasted nowadays. We have too much food around here. I spoke with one guy who said that it's not a problem to find food. And he was not even skinny. He has a shelter - a tent. He finds fresh water in streams. And he needs nothing else. Why is that we do need more? And who is happier? As indeed, all those people were always happy.