Blog

Today we are heading to Ecuador where we will be spending the next two weeks traveling the country meeting people and conducting interviews for the projects first trip to South America. I am flying from San Francisco (via Houston) to Quito, a city some say is the most beautiful in South America. It is situated at the base of Andes in the shadow of the large volcano Pichincha, one of the 58 active volcanoes in Ecuador. We are traveling with a man named Juan Alfonso Pena who has kindly offered to host us at his home in Tumbaco, a small town 20km from Quito. He will accompany us as we travel through Ecuador, interviewing shamans in the high Andes and Amazonian jungle, politicians in the cities, nuns and priests working with the poor in the barrios and others. Our schedule is quite ambitious, as we set off to explore a country whose bio-diversity is listed as one the highest in the world, and where you can drive from the snow capped mountains to the jungle in just one day.

Ecuador is a country in the midst of change, having recently undergone economic collapse and major political reform. I'm looking forward to talking with people we meet about the kinds of economic and political changes taking place in their country. I’m curious to know how people we meet and interview will respond to the idea of oneness, especially since there is no direct translation for the word in Spanish. (We will be using the term 'unicidad global', which I understand is as close a translation to 'oneness' as possible, but maybe people we meet will come up with their own translations.) It will also be interesting to see how the indigenous people we talk to describe oneness in their own native languages, and the meaning and roots of these words. What will we learn from the indigenous men and women from the Quicha, Naporuna and Yachak peoples we will talk to? What insights and knowledge will they share with us?

These are just a few of the questions circulating in my mind as I wait at the gate of the Houston International Airport. I'm hoping to post this blog daily, but may have limited access to the internet as we are traveling to some remote towns and villages.

Just called our plane to board.....off we g ...Read more

The site has now been up for a month and we greatly appreciate all the feedback we have received from you! We have received many suggestions of people to interview and are so glad that your sharing your ideas with us, and hope that you will continue to do so as the project progresses. In the past couple of weeks we have been adding new video clips and complete interviews from the people we interviewed here in California in October and out trip to Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia in November. If you haven't yet seen any of this new material please check it out!

By the end of the month we will be adding some new features to the site including the option to download all the interviews, clips and shorts as iPod and Quicktime ready video files. These videos will all be licensed under the Creative Commons license allowing users to share the material and post anywhere! We will also be switching the streaming videos to a streaming Flash format which we hope will make it easier for everyone to view the videos.

On January 31st we will be heading to Ecuador for two weeks where we will be interviewing shamans in the Andes and Amazon, politicians, and individuals who work with gangs in the barrios among others. We will be posting blogs and photos as often as we can during our trip so please sign up for the RSS or atom feed to keep updated on our travels.

If you like what you’re seeing on this site please tell your friends and spread the word. Word of mouth is the best advertising and marketing there is. We’ll soon have a “share with a friend” feature to make this easier. Another one of the features we will be adding is a 'Oneness Resources' section with links to stories, videos, articles, sites, etc that are related to oneness, community and interconnectedness. If you have any resources you would like to share with us please email them to us as we would love to make this section grow with your contributions.

Last but not least, we still welcome your feedback at this early stage of the project and encourage you to email your questions and suggestions to us.

Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
Project ...Read more