CWC
The day after we returned to Gem River Edge, Muna came up to my terrace for a chat. At some point, he picked up a few fallen leaves and began arranging them on the floor.
It looked almost like play. He worked with his usual ease, but nothing was careless. Within minutes, the idea had taken shape.
CWC.
Chilling Wild Child was, in many ways, Muna himself.
He had lived abroad and in cities, but nature remained part of his everyday life. Freedom, community, and service were part of CWC too — ideas he spoke about, but mostly lived.
When it was finished, he lay down beside his creation.
The Chilling Wild Child was chilling.
Cooking Together
The next afternoon, Muna ran a cooking class for a Portuguese couple staying at Gem River Edge, and I joined them. We gathered in the large open breakfast area next to the kitchen.
Muna started by collecting wood for the fire. Under his guidance, we prepared the ingredients and laid everything out on the long wooden table. Once the ingredients were ready, our part was mostly over. After that, he turned to the wood-fired stove and started cooking.
For the next couple of hours, the table slowly filled with dishes. By around seven, we were sitting around it, eating what we had prepared together.
Into the Village
After dinner, we all moved towards the open shed where Muna kept his collection of rather improbable vehicles. Among them was an old jeep that looked like something between a tractor and a tank.
We climbed in and set off towards the village. The sky was turning grey, and the jeep bounced over every hole and bump in the country road.
We were entering Muna’s kingdom.
Wet rice fields stretched between the palms. Animals appeared along the way, and with them came stories. One was about an iguana, almost a meter and a half long, that Muna had once found injured on the road. He cared for the iguana until it recovered, then released it. But the iguana kept coming back to visit its savior.
By then the light was fading. We stopped at a farmer’s small house, where they offered us tea. Inside, the room glowed red from the wood stove.
I thought of the leaves on my terrace the day before. What had started as an image was simply part of the way Muna lived.