A Simple Kind of Life
As you turn the corner onto a block of multicolored row houses on Seymour Street in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, a group of kids are playing ball on either side of the street. Some of the neighbors mill around in front of the central house on the block. The backyards of Zendra Shareef and Zacques Trudeau, Adam Hadeed and Dineeka Moore, and David Milson and Maleka Fruean are all connected, creating ample space for a community garden and a neighborhood composting bin. At least once a month, the Shareef/Trudeau home plays host to one of the community's organized bazaars, with homemade screenprinted clothing, jewelry and vegetarian food, and neighborhood DJs playing music. All of the goods are for barter or sale - the bazzar is one of the main ways these families make their living. Over the years-as the properties became available-these friends moved in as neighbors and transitioned into a sustainable way of living, quietly leading by example. "We can't wait for someone else to implement the changes in the White House or whatever", says Shareef. "If we want to see it in our everyday lives, we just do it."
Shareef and Trudeau, both from Germantown, met in high school and started a family in their early twenties. They have since raised five children together, moving from Philadelphia to St. Croix and back. After having their first three children in Philadelphia hospitals, they had their first home birth and began home schooling in St Croix, largely due to a general distrust of both hospitals and the school system. St. Croix gave Shareef and Trudeau a crash course in Sustainable Living 101, and upon their return to Germantown, they felt comfortable rejecting "normal" living. The community grew: friends moved to the block looking to become apart of the extended family.
Education is a particularly self-defined notion for this community: Shareef "un-schools" her children, which she explains as a way of teaching the kids their lessons while they perform daily activities. Math lessons, for example, are taught during meal preparation, when the children are shown how to measure ingredients and how the metric system works. Several days of the week, Yismael (11), Shiloh (10), Lotus (7), Nile (4), and Ibis (17 months) study with the other children in the community and are taught foreign languages, DJing, screenprinting and composting-Trudeau has even started to integrate permaculture into their curriculum. "Permaculture is a system of design for human habitation, whether you're building a community or you're trying to retrofit to one that exists," he explains. "It addresses the breakdown of community as a problem of design". The community teaches the neighborhood children how to utilize nature, the garden-even landscaping tools-to maximize the use of their land.
Shareef and Trudeau appear to run a normal household, and really they're a pretty normal family. What sets them apart from the majority of America is their very conscious decision to make the most of the space they have, and to better connect to their neighbors. The idea is to create a sustainable lifestyle that helps them manage their contribution to, and impact on, the community and the environment. "We can go out and be on a farm," says Trudeau, "but if we aren't making the kinds of changes in the city for social and environmental reasons, then all of that is going to suffer. Sooner or later we're going to be outweighed by the detriments". - Lindsey Caldwell
Look me up, if you want to see the photos of the family, the hood, and the huge-ass compost bin. They are only available in the Magazine.
We don't need government, but rather eggplant. Neither do we need modern salvation, but a prayer garden, surrounded by life sprouting amidst poverty, cultured by soil that has been baptized by the compost.
do it
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