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A place which can heal Mohammad Saleh in conversation with Bogna Świątkowska How did it happen that you decided to focus on gardening? The short answer is that it all started from passion. I never thought that this passion would turn into a profession, the thing that I do full-time, but it did. What triggered this passion was my realisation that going hand in hand with nature can contribute positively to two of my main interconnected concerns, one global and the other local to Palestine. Globally, by coun teracting the disruption of nature, and locally, that self-sufficiency can empower the vulnerable Palestinian society, one person at a time. Garden ing happened to be just one part of the holistic permaculture approach to a regenerative human life. What did you do before? I studied psychology and musicology. It took me a long time to finish. After I finished, I was looking for jobs and, mostly by chance, started working as a coordinator in an art organisation. Sometime later, my partner received a scholarship in Turkey. We went there together and, while she was busy with her studies, I lived off the grid, in touch with nature on a farm. I was a volunteer there, provided with food and accommodation in exchange for work. And there, suddenly, I found meaning, and I loved it! I can now look back and say that my holistic health, psychological and bodily wellbeing was really good there. I would take care of chickens, cultivate a garden, drink from the river, make a fire, etc. There was no bright light after sunset.
Celebrating all the beautiful things of nature changed my life perspective. After three months of being a volun teer, I became the manager there for the next three years. It was actually less a farm and more of an ecological education centre. People from all over the world came there for two reasons: either to volunteer, or to participate in the courses of The Life School. There were courses ranging from simple things like making compost, all the way up to quantum physics and everything in between, such as homeopathy, nature photography, bird watching, alternative education, etc. A whole spectrum of things that, for a city person like me, were simply mind-blowing. It opened up all the windows and doors for me to empowering tools I had never heard of or thought of to search for. My partner joined and moved in with me, my son was born there and his education was Montessori-inspired. Now my partner is a consultant of that, because we really believe in this bottom-up approach rather than top-down education. I took this passion with me from Turkey to Palestine in 2015. I wasn‘t sure whether there would be any chance for me to keep on practicing as I had been. The first thing I did was search for like-minded people. I searched on the internet: who was caring about nature, and what were they doing? I found a lot of projects, so I started visiting them. Meanwhile, I made a garden for myself, which people saw in photos and started asking me to make gardens. In the beginning the pay was low and there was a lot of doubt. I wasn‘t sure if I was able to do it right, despite years of practice and a Permaculture design certificate. And now, 4 or 5 years later, I practice this full time. I call my initiative Mostadam, which means sustainable. I run a one-person social enterprise. Through that enterprise, people ask me to carry out all kinds of eco projects. Lately, I started feeling
