Traveling from home

If my job consists in travelling, How will I work from home now? How will I travel from home? This was a question I asked myself just over a year ago, after experiencing my first cancellation. The cancellation of a trip that I had worked on and waited throughout the year to make happen; a trip that had been planned since the last day that  group was in Mexico, a year before 2020;  and now, it had been cancelled. 

I certainly felt it in my heart, but it was not the work that weighed, but the failed longing to see old friends, the denied excitement of meeting new faces and the forced cancellation with the group of each day of the itinerary that had been carefully planned for them. 

This, was the beginning of a new time, of social distancing, of a world break, of the work-from-home era. 

Working from home has been and continues to be a blessing in times of pandemic, however, it has also been a challenge to visualize new projects, new desires and landscapes through screens and surrounded by 4 or more walls, missing the daily social contact. 

It was the Short experiences that rescued us from losing faith, from visualizing that there is more than one way to connect with people.  Through workshops on Urban Gardens and Mexican Herbalism we had the perfect opportunity to share in small groups, a quiet and pleasant time to learn and live together. 

From the projects where AMEXTRA works in Lomas de San Isidro and Tultitlan, State of Mexico, we transmit, now virtually, 2 and a half hours of ancestral connection, where we learn from the passionate voices of the coordinators, promoters and artisans who teach the workshops. 

I baptized these experiences as the fruit of the 2020’s uncertainty, because thanks to these experiences, other people and I have opened our eyes to two new worlds that seemed familiar, but actually I had no knowledge of them. We did not know many things that now we can glimpse, understand and feel curious about. 

These workshops have been held on a monthly basis since July 2020 and we have connected with wonderful people, although I sincerely consider myself the main beneficiary of these experiences, because in each one of them, I have learned not only from the remarkable knowledge of the girls, but also, from their worldview, their passion for their work, the transformation process they have had and the strength they represent as women and as leaders in their communities. 

So if you have not lived any of these experiences, and would like to, I cordially invite you to participate in them, because not only will you gain knowledge and spend a nice morning, but you will also connect from another perspective with your body, with the environment and with your community, but above all, you will live the experience of travelling from home.

Ingrid Villagrán,
AMEXTRA Semillas´s manager