Find what you need! Anti-(modern)slavery Techniques – Freegan life – CyclOrbit: Bike – Travel

I needed socks, I have found them, new, in the street.
I didn’t have a mop, I have found one in the garbage, nearly new.
New sunglasses in the to buy list. I find it in a free-shop, still with label on it.

TIMING

Timing is all, timing is our life, or death. Often I find what I need just because I am not pretending to choose when I want something, but I know that I can wish anything, I just have to wait the right time.

Diving? Dumpster diving!

Surfing? Couch surfing!

I used to organize workshops about a quite freegan topic–“This meeting has the aim of being a PEER-TO-PEER teaching/learning to share all the knowledge we have about how to live in a city without being slave or work.”–was the title of my events.

The main point was to Teach each other Basic Urban Survival techniques,which are:

TRAVELING:
Couchsurfing
Hitchhiking
Bicycling (find, buy and use bicycles)
Woofing

GETTING ITEMS:
Second hands shop
Flea markets
Dumpster diving
Second hands local websites
Free shops

ONLINE RESOURCES:

Trashwiki.org – Infromations about dumpsterdiving
FallingFruit.org – Peer-to-peer community for urban(and non) foraging
Nomadwiki.org – All the knowladge about nomadic travelr
Hitchwiki.org – Hitchiking eplained in detais
Visawiki.org – Beurocratic wiki, with practical informations about documents
Velo.Wiki.yt – Wiki to find public bicycles. Still not complete, but you can contribute!
Couchwiki.org – CouchSurfing is not the only ospitality platform, here you find more.
Cashwiki.org – Busking, earning on the road and freeganism.

MONEY MANAGEMENT:
Don’t waste money for drinks, smoke, drugs or unhealthy food cause those things you pay three times, first when you buy it, then with your health, finally with hospital costs.
You will be surprised of how much money you are just throwing away in bars and cafe’s.

Small earnings (for ex: Bringing back empty cans, busking etc)

If you need Internet find an inexpensive snack bar, fast food, think to go to the library or train station.

My 2017 “Financial” Resolution is:

– No money for drinks;
– No money for unhealthy food;
– Max 300 euro/month for accommodation (10eur/day);
– Less presents for friends;
– Traveling solely by bicycle, exceptionally by airplane (max 50eur)

Here the story about a day when I really thought that Jesus exists:

AN UNATTENDED PIZZA in Santo Domingo

Because of my limited budget and to fight waste, I went to ‘table-dive’–getting some ‘clean’ leftover from tables–in a shopping mall in Santo Domingo.

After two unsuccessful tables walks, I was about to leave as surrender when I see an unattended pizza box left on a table, without anyone sitting next to it. I look around, I sit close to the just found treasure and wait to see if someone is coming to take it.

I try to behave as I am waiting for someone…

After about ten minutes still nobody claimed the box, I start to think it is empty and I get closer to look into the box’s holes: there is pizza inside! I wait some more minutes, nobody comes and no one is even looking at me, there is a family sitting a table away, but they are with their back to me, talking busily.

I decide to open the box, I do it and I discover that it’s full of pizza slices! Just two slides were eaten and the rest of the pizza is still there, really clean, cutted in proportional parts.

I take one slide and eat it, I start to think that there is a supernatural power helping me day after day, because this is one of the many times I get what I need, right when I need it.

I could not be happier, this was the best present anyone could give me. I was thinking about those persons who left the pizza there, they would have eaten just a small piece and knowing it was a pity to trash it, they left it there for someone who wanted it, which was me! Such kind and warmhearted people in this planet!

At each bite of my adopted pizza I bless the giver, I think that I can live without money and even in Santo Domingo, a place where is impossible to dumpster dive, I can still be a freegan.

33 bottles of expensive soy yogurt, not yet expired, saved from the trash!

When I am about finishing to eat the pizza slice, I notice that the family sitting one table away, noticed me, they turned their head a couple of times, but I don’t really care, I don’t feel ashamed, because I still think is a pity to trash food, better to eat it!

The looks between us become more intense, until one of them is leaning his left arm towards the pizza box and moves the pizza closer to the group.

I am a bit confused, because they don’t say anything, but I realize of course, that it was their pizza.

I am feeling quite out of place, also, I am sad because of the lost pizza.

I ask them if it was their pizza, they answer affirmatively by moving their head.

I deeply apologize and I tell them that I really didn’t imagine the pizza would be from them.

They say : “it’s not a problem” but at the same time they put the pizza away from me and someone sits between me and the so much beloved pizza box.

It’s time to leave for me, but I wait ten minutes just to not look like a ‘runaway freegan’, I apologize again and I depart.

My happiness was quite decreased even though now I had one pizza slice in my stomach, but I was actually thinking that if I was in their shoes, I would have offered that pizza to an unknown person that was hungry.

20160322_085418 — *I risked my life for those fruits…*

THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT

A big mango tree is in front of me, full of ripe mangoes that just need to be picked off. I can reach them easily with my hands, but I don’t have a bag, I also have to go to the city center and I don’t want to carry the fruits while I am in the city.
I decide to pass in the night with a small backpack, in order to get a full load of the fruit that represent this country.

It’s dark, I take my bag and nothing more, walking to the tree; I am already imagining having an overdosis of mangoes for days!
I see two guardians playing domino at fifty meters from the tree, but from the moment the mangoes are in public domain I don’t even bother asking them anything. I lean to get the biggest one, the most flashy tropical colored of course, I touch them and they seem to be soft enough to get eaten in one or two days. After I take a second mango someone is shouting at me, it’s the guard, asking me, angrily, what I am doing. I reply saying that I am just taking few mangoes, while I get closer to the guard showing the fruits. They are two agents, saying that I have to pay 500 pesos for each mango I take, I reply joking: “I have no money, that’s why I am taking mangoes, to get something to eat with no money”, they continue to tell me that I am supposed to pay, but they go further in their national table game (domino).
I go back to the tree and try to get the best mangoes I can, at that point the two security agents walk fast in my direction holding guns, showing me the weapons and screaming. I put my hands up and I say: “ok ok, I will go, sorry, I didn’t understand..”, but it seems to not be enough for them, they start to shout some imprecations and continue to hold the guns in their hands. I run fast, away from them,

hoping they are not following, but I keep the mangoes. They come in my direction; but just to go back sitting on the chairs and continue their patriotic, boring, game.