In the summer of 2011 I left my degree in advertising to live on a
commune, high in the Andes of Ecuador, South America. In a month I
lived with a wig maker, a novelist, a professional criminal and an
advertising creative from New York...amongst other interesting
characters. Their stories made even the most unrealistic plots of
Hollywood movies seem very, very possible. And after learning how to
import fake Victoria’s Secret underpants into the city of Quito, the
bachelor of advertising I took a year off from turned into a whole new
certificate of randomness.

However, while preparing meals for the community and completing my
daily labors I began to stop associating with where people come from,
what they wear or how much they earn and started doing the simple
stuff, like cleaning donkey hooves.

I’ve always wanted to do something different, so living on the
backpacking hostel circuit was punctuated by a sense of irony. After
flying across the world, I´ve found myself bunking in with people the
same as me. Middle class, suburban guys and girls with an intense need
to find an experience far from any Lonely Planet guide book.
Conversations are often irritably repetitive. Who got ripped off? Who
got the best deal to the Galapagos? Who snorted blow. Who got a
Columbian girlfriend. In fact, the amount of people I’ve met who have
sold everything…their house, their car and quit their job to explore
the world is starting to become somewhat of a cliché. After leaving
home for a foreign country, I needed to escape again.

The mountains surrounding the commune made me feel closed in, hidden
from everything I’d previously known. The view through the kitchen
window, over the ravine and onto the exact location marking the
world’s equator expanded my mind into a mental process far from what’s
needed to calculate the total of a shopping list. The only way to
access the outside world was by walking along an isolated driveway,
lined by cornfields and threatening farm dogs. Feeling the blood rush
to my head while breathing deeper in the altitude, the habits of my
fully-grown synapses started to change. And as time travelled further
down the rabbit hole of this small mountain community, I gradually
realized the deeper reasons for why I came.

 Communal life was far from a hippie’s dream. Time was kept with a
bell, which everyone would get up to, eat to and even in my case, go
to the toilet to. After every way out conversation about taking MDMA,
or how someone hated consumerism I would go and direct my urine into
the front hole of the toilet, or my poop in the back, so they could be
separated for future composting. I forgot the romantic element of
living organically as quickly as I needed to start adjusting the way I
took a crap.

With volunteers to manage, people to cook for and animals to take care
of the routine of communal life began to seem more like the practical
side of running a business, rather than a hippy’s dream. You can’t do
reiki on the crops, or they’d die. Period. Everybody worked a daily,
allocated, and focused five hours. This meant that there was an
average 50 hours of watering, building and composting going into the
community every day.

This didn’t mean there wasn’t some time for self-exploration,
particularly when we cooked space cake. The organic, strong kind,
mixed with banana, vegan chocolate and loads of organically grown
marijuana. And as my third night passed of pasta and tarot cards the
commune’s resident novelist slowly and clearly punctuated the final
draft of his new piece. Everyone I’d known for just over 48 hours
culminated on the snuggle pit, slipping into their own floating, fuzzy
space of nana land. As everyone´s trip began to extend into that ‘see
you on the other side’ space, the solar powered lamps dimmed along
with the past of the author’s protagonist. A lying, cheating monolith
tired of the known world entered the room, illustrating a time of wild
barbaric existence better digested on a page than the immediacy of
spoken word.

While I´d only just met the people dozing around me, I began to
realize that I had the broad themes of all their lives very close to
my soul. Every one of us had a need to see familiar objects through a
new pair of eyes, because we were weary of where we came from or
curious enough to explore what else was possible.

One community member described being penetrated in two orifices as
‘rather nice’, very similar to the Oreo ice cream I ate after lunch
today. Another mentioned she couch surfed in Kabul, Afghanistan
similar to how I would explain sleeping on a friend’s floor. I even
learned what it was like to be strangled at the bottom of the living
room stairs during a domestic dispute, while watching equal servings
of chocolate avocado mouse be portioned onto a metal plate.

Perspectives clashed. After lentil burgers, an ex Irish army officer,
a wig maker and an anarchist argued about ‘the good life’. The officer
looked ready for war, even after traveling solo for years. A digital
watch was constantly clipped onto her heavy belt, making an impeccably
pressed breast pocketed shirt cling to her skinny frame. And even
during such intense conversation, the wig maker had a practiced way of
drawing her eyelids close together, while taking the first drag on a
new chain of menthol cigarettes. Sprawled with the cats on the couch,
the two, plus the anarchist reminded me of seeing a member of the
socialist union buy an iced coffee at Starbucks. Worlds collided.

Feed the pigs. Repair the fence. Water the tree. Being a hyper active
aspiring advertising creative I started to learn to accept the simple
and mundane. The simplicity and clarity of my work translated into my
social life. I began to meet new people and remember their names for
the first time. I started to share my laughter with others, instead of
chuckling privately while forwarding a ‘hilarious’ YouTube clip to a
friend.  While this lifestyle wasn’t sustainable for me on a long-term
basis, it was great to get back to the simple things we criticize
ourselves for forgetting to do.

So when I was asked to make a new irrigation system for the veggie
garden on my first day, I was confused. The closet thing I´ve ever had
to do with plumbing is dialing the number for Paul down the road when
the toilet won´t flush. I couldn’t Google the answer. And I couldn’t
remember the number of my best friend in kindergarten, who is now a
successful tradesman.

All I had was common sense, old pipes, chicken wire and a pair of
bicycle tubes. I felt a great sense of pride in my work, simply
because I was given a fair go and the opportunity to be creative.
After a month, the whole community was sharing in the vegetables of my
labor, when cabbages, onions and lettuce started to pop out of the
ground.

I was living with many people who literally built whole careers, not
just their time on the farm, around incredible ingenuity. I slept
across from an ex New York advertising creative who left the world of
‘the pitch’, to pursue a career in permaculture design. He not only
created, but recognized the link between two very creative worlds,
often directed at different levels of sustainability.

And like any entrepreneur, the professional criminal was able to spot
a hole in the market. In that case, it was the potential for exporting
fake Victoria’s Secret underpants to Ecuador, so the people in Quito
were paying for that feeling of sexiness at an inflated price. It was
simply another example of how if a person can use a bit of ingenuity
and creative thinking they really can do anything. Literally, well,
anything. He was even writing a children’s book for his daughter.

Yet while I loved everyone I was living with, I started to need space.
When you’re sleeping, eating and dancing around bonfires with the same
people 24/7 you begin to need time away. It’s just as important to
know when to leave, as it is when to stay. My time was up.

But in a time when I originally intended to be different, it was great
to realize some very simple things. If your tummy is full, you have a
safe place to sleep and a
set of meaningful relationships around you…it’s not such a lonely
planet, after all.

Fin. 

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