Follow Ben '09

Tuesday 12th May.

I arrive at Innisfree entirely unannounced and with little knowledge of its mission or its workings. The day is warm and still. I walk into a cabin with the word 'Office' over the door and there is silence inside. I put my notebook down on the table beyond the french windows and wash my hands in the sink. I walk through to the next room and knock on a door. A lady gets up from her desk and leads me to the next room where a smallish woman gets up and shakes my hand. This is Carolyne, the Executive Director. She asks what she can do for me. I tell her I am hoping to have a look, to perhaps find out a bit about what Innisfree does. I appologise for not having called ahead and arranged a meeting, but she seems unconcerned. We talk for perhaps twenty minutes. Then Carolyne takes me on a tour of the site. Carolyne is very friendly, very open. There isn't the least hint of suspicion, of umbrage at my taking up her time. We stroll around the buildings and fields that make up the village and she explains that the emptiness is scheduled - that everyone spends Tuesdays running household errands and chores. The residents are all at their houses, further up the hill, or in town getting groceries. She shows me the workshops where the villagers weave and bake and do carpentry. I buy some soap. I hover over the chopping boards, which appear to be made out of eight or ten different beautiful woods, checkered and complex, almost like Escher drawings, as Carolyne points out. They are attractive objects. But I think of my backpack. They look heavy. She shows me the polytunnel where beet root are growing. I meet Trish, the head gardener, and her tiny blonde daughter, sitting in the red mud. I see the chicken houses on wheels. Carolyne explains that they are on a kind of rotation, moving down that stretch of field, fertilising the soil as they go. 'In the summer,' she says, 'almost everything we eat comes from our own gardens'. I see the herb garden and the drying house where tea bags are made. We walk through the community centre and giant sports hall. Carolyne takes me to some of the houses where I meet some Co-workers (people who are funded, usually by their parents, to live at Innisfree). Elisabeth is wearing a green jacket. She has rosy cheeks and small hands and pale eyes. I meet Jacky, a volunteer who lives with Elisabeth and the other Co-workers in the house, supporting them in their work and at home. Carolyne explains that the volunteers often come from abroad and stay for up to a year. Some stay longer becoming more permanent fixtures, like Trish and herself (20 years ago she started as a volunteer, running the weavery). The back windows of the house look right into the trees. There is a deck outside with a hammock. It's an idyllic setting. The village sits in a basin in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It's surrounded on all sides by woods. It's cooler up here than down in Charlottesville.

In another house we meet Paul. He is small but has a big voice. He's very welcoming. He is filling a bucket with water from the tap. He explains he is going to wash Wes' car. Does Carolyne know where he can find a hosepipe? He seems like a lot of fun. I help him wash the car, slopping water onto the bonnet with a cloth. The sun is hot and the water dries quickly. I'm not sure how good a job we're doing, but it doesn't seem to matter too much. Paul tells me about his family, about how he grew up in California. He tells me a story about his friends, the O'Neils, who live in a place called 'Spoltovania'. He smiles as he recounts, never looking up from his polishing: 'Once, when I was on the swing set there, my friend, Josephine, she bumped her head...' he pauses. I have no idea what has made him think of this story, why he's telling it. I'm still distracted by the name of the town. Spoltovania? But Paul hasn't finished. 'She bumped her head... On the chicken house!' There is something about it that cracks me up. It's nonsense, but his comic timing is perfect. 'I had to run in the house and get ice.' He laughs uproariously, 'There was blood all over!'

Innisfree is privately funded through 'tuition'. The challenge, Carolyne explains, is when a co-worker runs out of money, when they can no longer afford the tuition. They have a small endowment, but this doesn't cover even a single placement. They do their best to make it possible for people to live out their lives here if they want to, even if they cannot afford it.

I can see that, for everyone involved, Innisfree is a haven, a kind of Eden. I can see why volunteers stay on, why it is difficult when money runs out. There are clear bonds between the people here - volunteers, staff, co-workers. Carolyne's dedication and enthusiasm alone are enough to communicate how much people love it here. I used to work with people with learning disabilities (or intellectual disabilities as they are called here). The majority of Innisfree's forty-odd co-workers have something like this - Downs or autism or other unidentified things that set them apart. Carolyne asks me if I have it in mind to spend a year in the states, perhaps? The sun is very warm. The irises outside the herb house twitch in the breeze. They are vast, beautiful. I say no, but thanks.