Jennifer: High Hopes for Community Living

Hey guys,

For those of you who may not know I've been spending the last 7 weeks of my summer living at the "Peace House" in Indy. It's owned by the Indianapolis Peace Institute which has helped all 8 of us living here to arrange internships for the summer. The program also focuses a lot on community living. So of course as I've been going through this program I can't help but compare it to what I imagine Riley Court to be like next year. While I've had fun here I know Ubuntu is going to be even better!!


Of course there are some differences - there are 12 of us in Riley Court (compared to 8) and we're going to have to live together for an entire school year instead of a mere 9 weeks. We'll be living in the somewhat secluded little village known as Bluffton whereas here I'm easily within walking distance from downtown Indy. But I think the biggest difference between the Peace House and Riley Court is going to be the students.


While I've made some great friendships here in Indianapolis, we were all kind of thrown in the house together with different goals, ideas, and expectations. The ability Ubuntu has had to sit down in advance and to discuss our vision of community living will prove vital to our success. For example, one of the similarities between the Peace House and Ubuntu is our community meals. Here in Indy the Tues. evening meals are a requirement of the program and therefore can feel very forced because not everyone wants to be involved. Instead of being excited about community time together people complain and argue.


Now, conflict isn't a bad thing - in fact it can be very healthy - but it hasn't always been handled that way. During orientation we had a meeting to go over community expectations and rules. One of the rules causing the most conflict is one of the most simple - clean up after yourself in the kitchen; don't leave dirty dishes out or in the sink. However, after our first community meal, we had leftover pesto sauce. The next day the pesto appeared on the stove and stayed there, out in the open, for 5 entire days. I will admit my bias - I'm a little bit of a neat freak - but that is gross. This simple thing, pesto sauce, was causing a huge uproar in the house. To no avail, people were trying to drop hints to the person who was responsible for leaving the pesto out. Eventually, after 4 days a note was left on the pesto asking (not so politely) that it be cleaned up. This only made the issue more divisive than ever. And while the pesto eventually did get cleaned up, another nasty note was left and the house would never come together as one again. It’s a pretty sad story actually.

Here’s what I see about our Ubuntu group though, while I’d like to be optimistic enough to say there will never be a pesto-like problem in the community that’d be lying. Things aren’t going to be perfect and each of us will probably do something which will annoy the other. There will be conflict. The difference is going to be in solving it. As a group we have recognized that there will be conflict we’re going to have to approach it directly and with love. The behind the back conversations and malicious notes will not be acceptable. We each aim to respect the other person and to grow as a group. Bluffton has instilled in us an ability to look beyond ourselves and to have bigger motives at heart. I am confident that our group will be able to talk through issues of misunderstanding instead of disregarding any rules the group has agreed to and turning everything into an “us” vs. “them” conflict.

It’s embodied in our name, Ubuntu. It means “I am, because we are”. As a group we will recognize each person’s individuality as a member of our community – to grow, learn, share, experience, disagree, agree, eat, clean, and garden together.

Kristen: Preparation

So, I've never really written in a blog before, but I guess it's about time I did.

This next year is going to be a great adventure. I'm looking forward to being part of a community of people, instead of just living on a floor of students that I don't know very well. I think it's great that we've all come together in sort of a common purpose-- to live simply in community together.

I think I am most excited about our "green" focus. Several of my friends have gotten to calling me a tree-hugger, and while literally hugging trees is not my hobby, I think it's so important to be aware of the impact our lifestyles have on the environment. One of the main ways I'm excited to see this happen is to eat locally. This summer we're helping out with Devon's family's garden, as well as Tig's. Also, with Devon's work at Suter's Produce, he has easy access to lots of delicious locally grown fruits and veggies.

Clearly, though, most of this food is ripe and ready for the picking now-- in the summer-- and we don't start living together until the end of August. Thus, it's really important to store up for the winter. After reading Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" about her family's experience living locally for a year, I realized how much planning and preparation goes in to making local living a success. You really can't expect to just pull fresh sweet corn from the freezer unless you've actually taken the time to put it there. As obvious as that sounds, I think it's actually very significant. Many of the big ideas we have will remain just that--ideas--unless the appropriate thought and planning goes in to making those things a success.

So far, Devon and I (with the help of my Grandma!) made some freezer strawberry jam from Suter's stawberries-- hopefully it'll be enough to last us through the year! I'd also like to freeze some corn and maybe make up some spaghetti sauce once the tomatoes are ready in the garden.

Anyways, I'm excited to plan/dream/do/fail/persevere/live/grow with this wonderful group of people.