Natural Solutions Foundation
The Voice of Global Health Freedom™
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
The Valley of the Moon™ First Anniversary!
Natural Solutions Foundation is about more than just educating decision makers about Health Freedom, our First Freedom. We are about solutions… natural solutions to the many health, food and freedom issues that face the people of Planet Earth. Yesterday was the First Anniversary of the Natural Solutions Foundation in Panama, where one of our two Eco Demonstration Projects, the Valley of the Moon™, in the beautiful, temperate and bountiful Highlands of Panama, is located (the other is in Benin, West Africa).
And what an Anniversary it was! What would you say if I told you that General Bert and I spent the morning of our First Anniversary in David, the Provincial Capital of Chiriqui, with the First lady of Chiriqui, Mrs. Amara Fernandez, the wife of the far-sighted Governor, Dr. Enrique Fernandez, beside us, teaching willing (and eager) 16 and 17 year olds from the prestigious San Augustine Academy and their professors how to create an Intensive Urban Agriculture Garden.
We will also be working with a public school in the town of Pedregal and are creating similar gardens on the grounds of the Governor’s Offices in David. Everywhere we go, other people ask if we can teach them to do the same. There is a general awareness on the part of literally every person we meet that the contaminants in the food here in Panama (and for the rest of the world) are really terrible, but people do not know that they have options to change that.
We are teaching them how to apply those options successfully.
People say that things move slowly here in Panama and, in general, we have found that they do. But when an idea is right and it touches the hearts and minds of people who can make things happen, slow suddenly becomes warp-speed.
Just under two weeks ago we had an appointment with the Governor or Chiriqui, a physician who “gets” environmental dangers and also “gets” what it means to have virtually all of the country’s food produced using dangerous chemicals (the same ones people in the US are eating!). Governors of Panamanian Provinces are appointed by the President of the Republic and therefore represent significant central authority.
So when we told him that we were interested not only in setting up a medical training and service facility but also a BeyondOrganic, Bio Dynamic Zero Emissions™ farm AND farm school for the people of Panama and elsewhere, he became very, very interested. He sent one of his aides to summon his wife from her office. Mrs. Fernandez is a really warm lady who is working with the wife of the President of Panama to teach children how to grow their own food! Of course, when we explained that we were eager to do that, too, through our Intensive Urban Agriculture Program (IUA), using small spaces, little effort, little money and enormous results!
(see www.FOODFreedomeJournal.org)
She was instantly interested, as the Governor knew she would be.
Suddenly, we were outside on the balcony of the Governor’s office suite looking at a patch of ground which was being prepared for a garden. The Governor and his wife asked if we could do our Intensive Urban Agriculture there as a pilot project. We said we certainly could. They then asked if we would do a pilot project with them in a public and a private school. “You bet!” we said and suddenly we had an appointment for the Governor and his Lady to visit us in Volcan, about 45 minutes away, on that Sunday so that we could show them what we are doing with our Intensive Urban Agriculture.
We also had another appointment to begin work on the project the next week at the Governor’s Offices AND to meet with the head of the private school since Panama’s public schools were off for a week of vacation.
Sunday arrived and we had a lovely lunch all set for the Governor, his Lady, Yolanda, the lady who introduced us, Gail, our good friend and my Assistant, Gen. Bert, Giselle and Hernan, two bilingual friends who agreed to translate and, of course, me. Yolanda arrived with a friend. No problem. Eight can stretch to 9 with no one but the chef noticing.
The Governor and his party were delayed a couple of hours. The rain (a rainy season late afternoon phenomenon) started and we began to lose the light. At last they arrived. In two large vans, about 22 of them. Hungry. OK, now try stretching 8 to 31! HOSTESS HORROR! Gail and Yolanda, however, knew just what to do. Yolanda sent Hernan out to the store for little disposable plates (of which we had precisely 8 china ones) and Gail turned to his wife, Giselle, and said, “Quick! Bless the fish! We have to do a miracle here and make it feed everybody!”
What emerged, with smiles in place, were lots of little plates for all those hungry people with some salmon, salad, marinated veggies and one of Gail’s astounding cookies (THE best you have ever tasted, no matter where you have ever been) for each person there. Somehow, Gail had brought over exactly the right number of cookies and everything else was just as perfect. We did a slide show on the Valley of the Moon Project in Spanish. Someone had translated our English version into Spanish for our application to the City of Knowledge BUT, as it turned out, very poorly. So, while we waited for the Governor to arrive, Hernan corrected our serious grammatical and other errors. Not to worry: we have been advised to wait a bit before submitting our COK application (to let the political dust settle from the recent presidential election, before we wade into that arena) and so we were spared that embarrassment!
So, slide show accomplished, people eating and beaming at us, off we went, in the torrential downpour which the sky delivered to us just as we left the house for the Grand Tour, to see the IUA boxes, the large and small greenhouses, the very-much-under-construction seminar and medical facility, etc.
The ladies were not shod for wading but that is what they did with, I must say, smiles on their faces. You see, what we have built here is so unique, and provides such a powerful model for reclaiming the production of food that everyone there —
1. Was excited and wanted to be a part of the growth of this idea
2. Wanted to offer their help and get involved.
I cannot begin to convey the sense of excitement and the glowing eyes of this large group of people.
Of course, naturally, wouldn’t you know it! Two days before the visit, we were spraying the gardens with an organic, certified product to control mold on the plants. This is a humid climate and such precautions are necessary. The product is made from specially grown grapefruit seeds grown by a community in Peru which is focused only on this product. It is certified for Organic use in Europe (which I personally trust a lot more than USDA Organic Certification since the industrialization of organic foods is moving downward at a rapid and disturbing pace. For example, there is strong pressure to allow genetically engineered foods into the Organic supply so that Monsanto and others can control every segment of our food, even the possibly still clean foods that we are willing to pay a premium for!
We followed both the written directions carefully, used a very good sprayer which produces a very light mist, treated both sides of all the leaves and awoke on Sunday morning to find that the product had burned huge gray patches in all of the leaves. The magnificent lush plants in our garden boxes when we went to bed with were replaced, as if by a malevolent fairy, with ugly, blotchy leaves and wilted plants.
Heart stopper.
Take a deep breath.
Get the camera out.
Take pictures.
What we realized is that our teaching garden boxes had just taught us something: this spray needed to be diluted by a factor of 10 times more than the label, and our conversation with the specialist in organic agriculture who sold it to us, said to dilute it.
Gulp.
So, when we took the party on the tour, we told them just that. Instead of pulling up the plants and pretending they had never existed, we said that we had learned about grapefruit seed extract and that we had taken pictures so no one else would have to damage their plants in this way. (Over the next several days, I am happy to tell you, the plants have recovered amazingly. Three days more and no one would ever have known. Now that was NOT fun!
But, back in the house, getting dry, the Governor and I had some deep conversations together talking about the environmental hazards of the chemicals used here and the medical hazards of the poor, with few vegetables, diet consumed by many people in this country. Rice and beans and a little chicken or some pork, pastries, bread, cake and sweets. That’s about it.
The Governor is not only enlightened concerning health and health costs, he is enlightened as a physician, a rare reality in the US, I am afraid.
Yes, there are docs like those in the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, www.AAEM.com, and the American College for the Advancement of Medicine, www.ACAM.org, who are awake. But, tragically, still today, the majority of docs know only drugs, surgery and radiation for pretty much everything.
Obviously, they teach internists a whole lot more about health in the medical school Dr. Fernandez attended than they do in the US! In fact, every doctor I have met here understands the dangers of the “Typica” diet. But, aside from a smaller diversity, it is pretty much what hundreds of millions of people eat in the US, although the rice and beans part is a little different.
The number and amount of US export junk food options is appalling here. And then there are the local junk food look-alikes. “Lo mismo.”, they say here, “It’s the same thing”.
So here we were, showing the government of the Bread Basket of Chiriqui a real facility with real progress, offering real hope. They could not have been more eager for us to begin.
Dare I say — We have a Dream — of Chiriqui becoming the BeyondOrganic, BioDynamic breadbasket of the Americas?
When everyone came into our office, one side of which is lined with computers, and the other side of which is lined with our private reserve of supplements (all organic, of course), they were agog. I do not believe any member of the party had ever seen such an array, or so many, supplements in one place.
They asked, every single one of them, if we ran a store. “No,”, I said, “These are our private supply.” Then I pointed out that Gen. Bert is 79 years old and I will be 66 next month. Jaws opened and they just stood there for a while. Then the next thing happened:
Virtually every person in the room asked if they could come to see me for their (or their family’s) health issues.
I explained that we will be setting up the Natural Solutions Wellness Center this Fall (Yes! We need Volunteers and Volunteer Sponsors! See: http://www.NatSol.org) and that we will, of course, be happy to work with them and their families. Some had urgent problems and I agreed, of course, to do some initial consultations.
Wednesday of last week came and we trooped back to the Governor’s Offices to meet with the woman in charge of making sure our project was going to get the support it needed, under the direction of the First Lady. They asked us if we were going to provide the wood, the soil, the string, the plastic, the seeds, the organic compost, etc. We said, “No. The Natural Solutions Foundation will, as our gift to the project, provide the first three gardens, for a total of 20 boxes of 16 1 foot squares, with heirloom, organic seeds. But we do not have the budget to provide the rest of the materials for these projects, let alone the entire nation of Panama. To make that happen, we said, the government would have to get involved. Immediately, the governor suggested that the trees which had been knocked down by the floods last November had been turned into lumber and we could use that enormous amount of wood to make boxes. Other people got into the discussion and soon resources were being suggested.
There were press people there and they promised us some serious coverage.
Everyone at the Governor’s Offices wanted us to start planting right away. Of course, IAU takes a bit more planning than that. We laid out what we would need and were just about done when the Governor’s Press Secretary asked us what we could do about the building. I must admit, I turned around to look at it without any idea what she was talking about. She was kind enough to explain that there were really ugly plants in equally ugly planters which are built into the side of the building. Since the planters never receive any sun, and are apparently watered only as an afterthought they really do look awful.
I suddenly had a wonderful idea: why not create a secondary school contest to design and install a garden under those conditions along with a flower garden in front of the building? Have the kids present their designs, and, for the winners, install them. Then we would have a Chiriqui Beautification Day with a parade (Panama loves parades), a fiesta with dancers, the school band of the winners would get to play, and the media would cover it. Community is important here. Happy people loved the idea. It is in the works now.
“Can you be at the San Augustine Academy at 8:30 AM on Saturday?”, the First Lady asked. “Of course!” we said, “Why?”. Because that will be the first school program and we want you to talk to the teachers and Principal of the Academy.
So that’s how we got to the back field of the San Augustine Academy talking to these lovely young people. They had begun digging in a nice shady spot which we told them they needed to relocate to allow 6 hours of good sunshine per day or more. They willingly agreed to do so.
We gave them their assignment (build 6 boxes, fill them with 50% clean soil (hard to find here, everyone agreed) and 50% rich humus which has been lying on their grounds for almost 30 years without chemicals.
We told them that these young people and their teachers are the seeds of the future and that they would be making real change possible for everyone in Panama so they needed to work carefully, document faithfully and not be afraid to make mistakes. I believe that it is from our mistakes that we become smart, not from our successes. We told them that and they beamed. They just beamed!
Their assignment includes taking and recording 4 pH readings for each box (total 24) because we know that the soil here will be acidic.
They asked what time we would be back next Saturday and suggested 8 AM. Ugh! Since we are 45 minutes away, we suggested that we meet at 8:30 and they agreed.
The day before, however, we had a success of a completely different kind.
Halfway down the hill (or up it, of course) between Volcan (nearly a mile high) and the near sea level town of Conception, there is a little area called San Vicente, home to a small dairy that makes astonishingly good yogurt and white cheese. We have gotten quite friendly with the couple that runs it, but had to wait until their daughter was home from school in the States to have any in-depth conversation. We did have that conversation about 2 weeks ago and we were asked to come to a Milk Board meeting at MIDA, the Ministry for the Development of Agriculture on Friday, August 21.
We thought that the meeting was going to be about our ideas for the better processing of milk to preserve its health benefits through raw processing of a type that we want to introduce. Instead, it turned out that we were meeting with the Board of the Rural Agriculture Association, with a MIDA representative present. When we told them, representing meat producers, dairy producers and crop farmers, what we bring to Chiriqui, and why, we were met with a level of excitement and warmth that is truly heartening. No one is saying, “But we do it the old way and we are content!” Instead, what we are meeting is, “YES!” Let’s make it better! Let’s bring back wholesome food!” and, everywhere, “YES!” Show us how to get rid of the chemicals because they are killing us!”
In fact, after our wonderful encounter with the kids and teachers at San Augustine Academy yesterday, we stopped to buy some marigolds because we know that they help to keep pests off crops and we wanted to add them to our greenhouses. We gave the owner and his wife (who has a little restaurant by the side of the road next to his shop) our cards and, in their non-existent English and our badly wounded Spanish, we managed to tell them what we were doing and that we were working with the Governor’s office.
They lit up like Christmas trees, took our hands and pulled us to the other side of their restaurant, pointing to a bamboo framework which we could not make out the reason for as we stared at it.
“Hydroponica! Organico!”, they said. They are putting in an organic hydroponic greenhouse of their own design to grow food for themselves, their neighbors and for the little restaurant they have because they are fed up with eating chemicals!
We invited them to the Valley of the Moon, of course and then they asked us if they could bring their friends. Of course they could, we said, but how many friends are they thinking of (we were still rather shell shocked from last Sunday’s loaves and fishes deal). Not more than about 10 – these are an association of friends and neighbors who have formed a group because they share such a passionate interest in natural health, natural food and natural production methods.
There is enormous excitement about our natural methods for curing the devastating fungus, ojo de gallo, which we have put into practice on the Foundation’s Coffee Farm (what? You haven’t had your first cup of Health Freedom’s own coffee? Well, we have to fix that right away!
Click here, www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org, to get yours right now! Supplies of this GMO free, pesticide free, herbicide free, toxin free coffee are very limited. Plan on giving freshly roasted coffee to everyone on your Holiday List now and we will ship to them if you let us know in advance. Green Corporate giving has never tasted better!
When we chose Panama, I must tell you, we did not expect this level of readiness. Our eco demonstration is meeting welcome we never dreamed we might find.
Exactly one year to the day after General Bert and I moved to Panama to continue the health freedom fight AND create the global teaching and service facility called the Valley of the Moon Eco Demonstration Project we were already working with the government of Chiriqui, the province which produced virtually all of Panama’s food and, at their request, disseminating the methods by which anyone, anywhere, can grow their own food.
What else have we accomplished during this amazing year?
Well, we have purchased a headquarters with two houses, renovated one of them, in which we are living and which serves as our offices, undertaken the major renovation of the second house which will house our initial health center, seminar facility, organic restaurant or boutique hotel and built one and a half greenhouses (the second is under construction, but will wait until the Seminar Center is done before we have our workers finish it.
We have initiated our Natural Solutions Conservation Corps and volunteer program with a rebuilding of the houses for the Indian workers which we partially accomplished. The completion of it will require another set of volunteers and we have lots of folks coming!
Those who are interested in bringing their enthusiasm and skills, or who can sponsor a Volunteer, can go to http://www.NatSol.org and join the NSCC Yahoo Forum.
We need much more than just building skills, of course, as there is a great deal to do and we need eager, able people to do it (and Angels to support those volunteers who are not self-sustaining).
We have refined our financial structure for participation in the Valley of the Moon, including IRA and 401 funds for legal, tax deferred investment and created financial structures which benefit us all. We have opened dialogue with health professionals and other who want to become Joint Venture Partners of the Valley of the Moon Eco Demonstration Project and created a contract which Joint Venture Partners can sign to become part of our success.
We have looked at many, many pieces of property for our final home and, through ups and downs, been relieved of the problem of having made the wrong choice as if we were being cared for by the Great Real Estate Agent in the Sky!
The Natural Solutions Foundation has been assembling the documentation and letters of recommendation necessary to apply for our affiliation with the City of Knowledge, a uniquely Panamanian organization devoted to bringing “best practices” to Panama, which our methods surely are. Twenty five farmers have pledged anywhere from 1 acre to 67.5 acres to use as farm schools to teach other farmers what we teach them so that we really can reclaim the production of food on a demonstration, and then a global basis.
We have, of course, continued the health freedom fight well beyond Panama. The effort to stop GMOs, prevent Codex “HARMonization” and protect against forced, dangerous vaccines, continues with the new joint effort (with Gary Null, PhD, Tedd Koren, DC and others) to “Stop the Shot” and prevent FDA final approval of the “Swine Flu” vaccine (without safety testing!). See: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=3312
Gen. Bert and I do dozens of radio shows each month with Alex Jones, Jeff Rense and many, many other people. We have gone to Europe several times to lecture and participate in Codex and other international meetings.
People are coming towards the Valley of the Moon to participate, acquire the right to build their homes here, become part of the Seminar Center, Performance Center, Health Center and build a new way of doing things, including reclaiming the production of food.
So that’s how we spent our anniversary.
Oh, yes! Then we celebrated with a dinner at the outstanding Italian restaurant here in Volcan, Il Forno. Here’s a picture of the owner, Joe, from New York!
If you want to know more about how you can support or get involved with the Valley of the Moon Eco Demonstration Project, please join our NSF-Panama Forum, contact Ralph Fucetola at ralph.fuectola@usa.net or email me at dr.rima@gmail.com.
And, of course, donations are much needed and are fully tax deductible. Click here, http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=189, to make your recurring donation now. We are changing the world and we appreciate your participation enormously.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
