Chez Joelle: great place to visit & quite easy to get to

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monkeychris
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Chez Joelle: great place to visit & quite easy to get to

Post by monkeychris »

Hi this is Chris here, Olivia's partner - we are in Totnes Devon and I met Joelle in the summer - when the Big Green was cancelled at the last minute, she drove down in her truck to visit us - the first time Olivia & Joelle had met for about 25 yrs I think!
Joelle invited us to visit her wonderful community in Provence and Olivia found some tickets on RyanAir for £5 each to Marseille a couple of months later in the year. The air tickets ended up costing us about £125 in total for our family of 5. I think that deal is not available now but stlll it's not too expensive to fly, carbon issues notwithstanding, but there's another issue... If you can afford it it is obviously better to take the train (Eurostar London to Marseille: £119 return or the coach). Anyway, due to our very limited budget we chose to fly out to Marseille and picked up a pre-booked hire car for a reasonable price and drove up, about an hour and a half to the Community which is near the lovely little market town of Forqualquier in the hills of Provence (with a family it would be hard to get there without a car. Joelle had agreed to pick us up if it had been necessary but we also wanted to see Olivia’s brother so we needed a car).
After getting hopelessly lost on the french roads we arrived at Longomai around 3am, to be welcomed by Joelle (yes she was still up!) and shown to a lovely converted barn. The Community has been in existence for about 35 years, having grown out of the events in Paris in the sixties, they own many hectares of land on a hilltop with beautiful surroundings and have about 80 permanent members.
They have a radio station ( Radio Zinzine available over the net , they produce a large proportion of their own food, vegetables, fruit, meat, they are very experienced shepherds, they cook piles of loaves of amazing sourdough bread twice a week for their own consumption, they produce a newsletter in a couple of languages (to which you can subscribe), and they eat communally twice a day, sharing cooking etc in a central refectory.
The Community has a history of activism and currently is pursuing various issues on behalf of humanity against vested corporate interests eg nano technology ( something which hasn't got much of a profile in uk), genetic patenting of seeds etc etc.
Given the general political focus of the community, I was a little unsure how we would be received and what the people would be like - although I have a lot of interest in many of the issues which concern the community, I am a bit wet when it comes to most forms of activism - the French as a nation are generally a lot more politically aware than us Brits.
However I had found Joelle to be pretty jovial when we met in the summer and as we got to meet her friends and colleagues working alongside them in the fields or in my case helping to make hemp/lime rendering for a bit of eco-building, we found we had plenty to talk about and had some very interesting exchanges on all sorts of topics.
There is a pretty amazing relationship between the people there - obviously there are conflicts, but to us as outsiders there was an obvious sense of equality and co-operativeness, and some of the principles which the community has developed over the years seemed to us to encapsulate some fine principles which create an amazing foundation of comradeship.
For example there are no financial exchanges within the community - everyone works a certain amount of the time, so when you visit you are allocated a team whether in the gardens, fields cooking or building - and this brings an entitlement to subsistence needs - accommodation, food ( varied, depending on the day's chef, always good and often really delicious) and a small weekly allowance.
There is a sense of abundance in Grange Neuve, (Olivia writes) which is so strange considering that France is soo, soo expensive (or so it seemed to us), and the resident’s personal income is so low. Nevertheless, the feeling around was of generosity and good living.
We enjoyed taking part in the gardening and helping wherever we could and would have like to have more time to find ways we could contribute more. Being at Grange Neuve gave us plenty of food for thoughts and opened many discussions, which was one of my wishes for our trip, to expose the children to another way to live and think, and challenge their assumptions of life. In fact it did this for her too.
Seeing the power of what could be achieved by a committed group of people, socially, politically and as a living community,  was very inspiring and she has returned more determined than ever to carry on creating a community of people working together, if living together doesn't feel a possibility right now.
Overall it was a great trip, the weather was fantastic, Joelle was a great host, the space we stayed in was comfortable and beautiful.
There was good food for our bodies and minds. We had the space and freedom to do what we wanted when we wanted,  feeling invited to join in but not pressurised. We enjoyed the chats, walking around the community and in the beautiful local landscape, taking part in the radio show, working alongside other people, visiting the markets and other places locally...and we were well cared for. We would really recommend anyone to take a trip there.
If you want to know more, get in touch with Joelle or send us an email (chris@manheart.com or olivia@birthcreation.com). We’d be happy to tell you more...
Olivia + Chris
Last edited by Joviale on Tue Jan 12, 2010 7:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Sticking it in a more appropriate place, changing the title so as it refers to joelle and making paragraphs to improve readability.

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Chris S-S
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Re: Grange Neuve-great place to visit & quite easy to get to

Post by Chris S-S »

Thanks a lot for posting that it does sound a terrific place.
Maybe we should start looking to travelling south this year and visiting Joelle.
Chris S-S
Chris Selwyn-Smith

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Joviale
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Re: Grange Neuve-great place to visit & quite easy to get to

Post by Joviale »

:oops: Oh dear, i'm embarrassed! :oops:
Thanks chris and olivia, welcome anytime, and you chris as well of course, as most old groadies. Give me a bit of advance warning though to make sure there is available accomodation.
If i can't dance to it, it's not my revolution

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