GENSEN - Home

What have we left behind?

How can we reclaim it?

If you are reading this, you probably are not still living in a home like the one in Senegal, in the lower right picture. But you may be curious about the modern dwelling at the upper left.

The lower right shows one of the ways we all lived once. The boy in the picture heading home in his school uniform is destined to join the global consumer class in Dakar or Spain, if his grandmothers have their say. Only one generation is needed leave "prehistory" forever, except for that part that lives inside us.

A pre-modern inheritance, belonging to us all, still is alive and relatively well in rural Africa. In the industrialized countries, most of this heritage has disappeared beneath modern factory farms and urban landscapes. And in most of Asia and Latin America, the poor lost their cultures of origin long ago, following repeted conquests.

By contrast, the majority of rural Africa's villages have never been discovered or exploited, and many clues to who we are - really -may still reside there.


Text for pictures-top left: modern ecological; top right: prehistoric Irish;bottom left: prehistoric English; bottom right: modern Senegal

Visitors to GENSEN's ecovillages discover the everyday grace and social solidarity of an ancient sharing culture. We reflect together on its role in our safe passage to a sustainable future. We look within for its contribution to our understanding of ourselves and our origins..

With globalization, we know that less technological peoples are not "primitive." We even recognize that certain cultural solutions developed by our ancestors may be as priceless and irreplaceable as a human kidney is today, compared to a dialysis machine.