First Ever Rheenendal Blitz Barter

The brainchild of some neighbourhood friends, the Rheenendal Blitz Barter is aiming to become a regular, weekly event where we can all get together to trade or surplus supplies. The main aim is to have a venue where we can regularly trade surplus produce, skills and supplies, without trading fiat currency (which is in short supply everywhere!)

Excellent!

Of course we were expecting everybody to arrive with their surplus Tomatoes (it being That Time Of Year) but in the event, only one person there had fresh Tomatoes. We doubted, at first, that anybody would want them, but it wasn't long before they'd been traded away.

The light rain and cool weather deterred nobody. We were all extremely happy at the turnout, while still hoping that the event will gain momentum (and many more barterers) in the coming weeks and months. More than 10 people arrived, despite a complete lack of advertising. We really need to get a banner attracting attention to it and some notices on local noticeboards.

Personally I was looking for someone who would be willing to barter our goods (homebaked Rusks, Jams, Muffins and a selections of vegetable seed varieties, organically grown) in exchange for a lube job for my pickup. (The day I start fiddling with mechanical things, you can reliably declare them Dead.) In the end I traded some of J's Rusks for Olive Tapenade ( which we love) and a jar of preserved Figs. The Chocolate Cherry Muffins mostly traded for cash - not quite the spirit of the thing, I guess, but nobody could resist the aroma of muffins fresh out of the oven! ;-)

I don't think we'll be able to make it to next week's barter session, since we're on our way to Gansbaai and points West for a week or so, but I certainly look forward to future Blitz Barters. Our community so sorely needs a place where we can get together without an overt agenda. A Village Green. Without a common space for casual gatherings, any community is doomed, and a growing segment of the Rheenendal community are really keen for us all to get onto a more sustainable path. I certainly aim to support the Blitz Barter as much as I can, and I have high hopes that it will be a great community-builder.

We're very grateful that Portland Mini Mark - our best-by-far- community shop, selling everything from Chicken pieces to Tractor Oil - is willing to host our barter events, since the shop is such a visible, central venue. They're a true pillar of the community!

Transition Strategy

I had a visit yesterday from my wonderful friend and neighbour, Debs.  We connect on many levels, and share much common thinking on the coming energy-collapse popularly being called Peak Oil. We spent quite a bit of time discussing the Olduvai Theory (pdf), and the surprising number of people we've both met recently who have become aware of the Peak Oil/Energy Descent debates, and are actively implmenting plans to cope with a looming energy, economy and possibly population crash, with the attendant social problems that may possibly ensue.  It surprised both of us at the unlikely suspects who were among the names mentioned.


A common meme seems to be "how to manage a transition strategy". On the one hand we live in the ordinary early-21st-century Western "market-economy" materialist-lifestyle world - or, as I have long termed it, "The Golden Age of the American Empire" - with all the things that it means.  On the other hand, we wish to prepare for a very different future that we believe likely to unfold.  The status-quo is harshly unforgiving of alternative lifestyle and economic choices.

According to the Olduvai Theory, we should expect rolling blackouts to become a permanent feature of life throughout the world starting in about 2008 and getting worse as time goes by.  Of course in the Western Cape we've been experiencing quite a lot of rolling blackouts recently, and we expect more this coming Winter.  Some will argue that the current blackouts result from unusual circumstance and should not be connected with hypothesized energy-descent blackouts.  They're wrong.  The theory makes no statement or prediction on the source or reason for blackouts.  The theory further predicts that some day some blackout will simply become permanent.


The only real questions about the energy descent are "how fast"  and "how far".


And these are precisely the questions we have to grapple with in planning and implementing a transition strategy, whether at a personal level, community level, regional level, national or global level.  Taking the personal case, how do I remain functional in the current status-quo while at the same time getting structures and systems in place that could make me, my family, friends, neighbours and community self-sufficient in a very short space of time, and with little or no warning or lead time? In truth, self-sufficiency is a concept that is only realisable at the community level. It is unattainable by an individual or family group.


We did not come up with any good solutions (yet), except for some tentative discussions of how to begin sensitizing and preparing our own community.  But at least the debate is broadening.