Reflection Camp Story 4. Part

We built our first structure with the help of Turan and a couple of villagers from the top. It was just a small platform with plastic on top to keep out the rain. Alas, within two months we had our first taste of raw nature and after fighting to save the platform throughout the night it finally collapsed the next day. And along with the storm, Ece went too! Needless to say, the first year wasn’t going to be easy.

After the completion of a 38 ton water cistern I began designing and constructing the kitchen myself. I was visited by the Jandarme, the governers office, and basically every official body of government about what I was doing. So I kept going.

By April I had more or less completed the kitchen, started two bungalows, and the basic structure of the toilet. Because of finances I couldn’t get the camp up and running for that first summer, so instead I spent most nights sleeping on the beach in my Mexican hammock and exploring the surrounding trails and mountains. I spent lots of hours watching the sea, the mountains, the stars and the moon. Every aspect of my surrounding environment moved me to ‘reflect’ on my life and everything both within me and without. The name for the camp was obvious to me.