DAY 16 - When Sarah nearly pushed a child into a fire

Somehow I got roped into doing MORE washing-up today which seemed to have accumulated to an insane amount since the day before yesterday when I cleaned, y’know, EVERYTHING. Jai Dev was lurking around again and after I was done washing up, Sarah and I got another quite intense and long spiritual lesson while sitting in a circle with him on the kitchen floor. I also finished (or should I say phinished?) this picture for Kyle:

It's a band. They play music. He likes them or something.

The plan for the evening was to go to a place called ‘Cinderland’ where David and Henry work now, a big commune of work traders who held so-called ‘Taco Tuesday’s every week. Kyle didn’t want to come (despite much begging from our side), so Sarah and I headed out to hitchhike even though it was after nightfall already. We were quite ready to give up when someone finally pulled over, a middle-aged real-estate agent called Glenn who praised the effects of ‘cocoa leaves’ to us (after we told him about the Kava) and actually drove far out of his way to drop us at Cinderland. We couldn’t see much of the place first in the darkness except for loads of people ranging from 5 to 85 years old, half of them with dreadlocks, and a big campfire with drummers all around it. We had to go to the toilet first of all, where we miraculously ran straight into David. Shortly after we went back with him to the kitchen area near the fire, suddenly everybody was holding hands in a huge circle, jumping up and down and chanting something like ‘Everything is love, everything is peaceful, everything is sacred’ immediately followed with a long and intense communal ‘ommmmmmmmmm’. We didn’t know what hit us. Luckily it was over soon and we sat down near the campfire, where we were soon brought some amazing food. The drums had started up again so we soon felt compelled to join the few people dancing around the campfire, which is what we did for what felt like the next three hours or so, interrupted only by occasional breaks for drinking some water to prevent us from passing out from the heat and falling into the fire.

After the drumming was over, an elderly white woman in a weird loincloth-dress started doing Hawaiian chants and dancing with a strange instrument consisting of two sticks she would rhythmically beat against each other. Afterwards she started passing out sheets with the lyrics so I transcribed one here:

Turns out the meaning is a lot more romantic that what it sounded like.

We’d run into a girl called Natasha who we’d already met at Uncle Roberts who said she’d give us a ride home, which she did without any further incidences.