For a long time, ever since I was little, I have been influenced by the idea of ​​a world that is in harmony with nature or at least closer to that harmony that nature originally brings. So in recent years I have been increasingly influenced by the idea of ​​ecological construction and the use of natural or recycled materials. When I saw a video of my acquaintances who were building an outdoor kitchen using these old natural methods, together with many other people, united by a common idea and cause, I felt the desire to be there too. To help together with other people to develop a greener world and to learn as much as I can about all the methods and technologies that I myself would happily use one day to build a natural home.

So thanks to the European Solidarity Corps in November I found myself in a small town called Megalopolis located in southern Greece. There would be my home for the next few months, shared with a group of volunteers. When I arrived, I was initially impressed by the large garden with many trees and the structures that were built from natural materials – wood, stone and clay.  I settled in the ‘pigeon tower’ which I learned that many years ago it was used to raise pigeons, and a few years ago it was restored by volunteers to accommodate other volunteers. During the first weeks, several key things happened. Little by little, I started to enter the activities and daily life of the community, which were related to daily and seasonal needs. For example, in the autumn season, one of the activities was pruning certain trees in the yard and collecting their branches, cutting them to certain lengths and organizing them for a future project related to permaculture. Another activity that I was assigned was related to painting a mural. Meanwhile, during these first weeks, our group significantly increased due to an influx of new volunteers. The more social the space became, the more the challenges on a daily level were felt, such as the lack of hot water, places to eat at our common table and solitude that I sometimes needed a lot as an introverted person. Of course, during this period I also met great people from the volunteers with whom I got along well and found comfort even in the sometimes crowded house. Another activity that I was able to try was the typical Greek olive picking. We spent a whole week helping Thassos, an elderly Greek who was extremely hospitable and kind to all the volunteers, who had large olive groves. By the end of the week I already felt like a professional in pruning olive trees. Honestly, as much as it was nice to do outdoor activities, I felt that my work was tiring in combination with our other tasks related to maintaining the villa and the yard. Perhaps the social aspect of living in a community, as interesting and rewarding as it was, was also very draining for me personally.

Sometime around the olive harvest, we started a large group project to build a stone path on a nearby piece of land that was being developed. I admit that this was perhaps one of the most difficult tasks I faced during my stay. The work was very physical, requiring digging the ground down a few centimetres, levelling it and then digging large stones from small mounds that had probably formed over the years. As a result, the stones were arranged like a puzzle, choosing the most even and suitable side, but also taking into account the other sides of the stone. It was a much more demanding job of fitting the stones than I had imagined. In this sense, no part of this project was easy. Even digging the stones was often thankless, with only smaller stones or those that were too crooked for the path. Although I was able to get involved in every stage of the construction, I am glad that I had other activities, such as finishing the mural or repairing the tipis in the garden, that saved me from the hard physical work that was not helpful for my back problems, which I had had for years. This whole project took about a month of work, with one of the volunteers optimistically stating that we would probably be able to finish it before Christmas. Although not everyone was sure about this due to the slow progress, with joint efforts we did manage to finish it before the holidays. Then came one of the best periods for me while I was in Megalopolis. We had about a week in which we rested, cooked together, made Christmas cookies and enjoyed the area with cycling and walking. On Christmas we had a big table with dishes from different cultures and countries and a very warm and sweet memory when exchanging gifts in the game of ‘Secret Santa’. The owner Alex took us to a Christmas ball with the idea of ​​introducing us to the local community and having some fun, and New Year’s Eve was also fun with a big table and a Dragon with wishes, which we lit. I managed to introduce the other volunteers to the tradition of the Bulgarian banitsa with good luck and I believe I also created a warm memory for all of us. So much had happened, and it was only the first month of my stay there.

Typical for the season, January began to feel a bit more silent. Many of the volunteers were leaving, some to return to their hometowns, others to continue their travels. Our group had significantly decreased and we spent much more time inside due to the frequent rains. January and February really felt relatively mild in terms of climate compared to the cold I was used to in Bulgaria. During these months, due to the few volunteers and me moving to another room with a wood stove, I learned to chop wood with an axe, which in my opinion was especially rewarding considering that I learned to do it myself. During this period, due to the numerous trips of Alex and Pam, as well as other long-term residents in the community, there were periods when we stayed 4 to 5 people in the entire villa. Certainly a quieter period, but again demanding in terms of maintaining such a large villa and yard. During the same period, I learned to take care of the chickens, which I definitely had an inner desire for, along with taking care of all the other animals including the five dogs living in the villa and my own dog, which I had brought with me. We continued our activities on the land across- I arranged the large logs that were left from cutting down the large fig tree, I helped organize and prune the thinner branches, and all the wood residue that could not be used for anything else we put into a machine that crushed it into wood chips, part of it we used for the stable, which was being prepared for an adult horse that had not arrived yet, and the other for organic material, which we layered around the small, freshly planted fruit trees. As a result, we also started building the paths of branches around the trees, whose function was not to compress the soil around the trees when we walked around them. Time passed, different volunteers came and left from the villa, and the evenings became quieter and everyone indulged in their own hobbies or activities in the free time, which often did not seem like much to me. Somehow, additional tasks to do kept coming up, which were urgent, and as time went on, my fatigue increased.

Around February, a volunteer from Poland, who was pleasant to all of us, joined us and she was involved in gardening. Then, more intensive preparations and plans for the garden began. During the same period, there were many tasks with wood that I joined and learned to work with a circular saw, a sander and a wire brush, which brought out the natural texture of the wood, and then varnished it. The longer I stayed there, the more tasks I was seeing that had to be done as if in an environment that you already know. Several times, I had the opportunity to be in the kitchen when our cook was away and to prepare food for a large group of people. With the other volunteers, we began to visit Kalamata often, which was a coastal larger city nearby, since Megalopolis was a rather small town. The first time we went there, I was impressed by all the oranges and lemons on the trees, which were literally everywhere. Every time I left the city, it was a breath of fresh air from the usual tasks at the villa. Spring came early, and with it came blooming trees but also various viruses that almost no one in the community skipped. I had started restoring an old mural whose plaster had peeled off from the humidity, we whitewashed trees in the yard and weeded where needed during the last weeks of my stay, when the pain in my lower back had worsened a lot. I felt my back was sore and neither exercise nor my attempts to rest helped me. In the last three or four weeks my back problems had only gotten worse, and our daily work, which often involved a bent position or sometimes moving heavy objects, only made my problem worse. So I had to leave the villa and Megalopolis earlier. An interesting and new experience for me, which involved me in a variety of activities and met me with diverse people from all over the world and at the same time showed me the realistic and laborious part of life in a community.