Zoé Keleti

Hey Roberto,
thank you, we also think it is a good project. Soon there will be a permanent exhibition of the paintings of the kids in our gallery on Blueberry Beach.
We wish you  a beautiful day,
Zoé and Joshua

One day Zoé was telling Joshua about Nóra Ritók and the Real Pearl Foundation, that gives art education to disadvantaged children, and showed him paintings of the kids. In this time we lived in Portugal and the Real Pearl Foundation seemed far away, but it was always in our mind. We talked often about it and thought about ways and projects to work together with them.
We liked a lot the idea of making the illustrations for our kidbook "Lola and the Ice Cream Conspiracy" with the children together. But still it seemed, specially for the distance, more like a dream. Then our life made an unexpected turn and surprisingly we came back to Hungary.

Last week we finally met Nóra, the leader of the Real Pearl Foundation.
It was a very interesting day, with unexpected happenings. First we were talking with Nóra about her life, about the activities of the foundation when she surprisingly invited us to come with her to the village Told, where the foundation have a unique project to help the people.

But first let us tell you a little bit about Nóra. When she was in highschool she wanted to be clown in a circus.
In the end she became a drawing and geography teacher. After the university she stayed at home to take care of her two kids.
When they were old enough, she started to work in her profession. Her first workplace was a public school. Here she faced the first time with the situation of disadvantaged children and was shocked about the level of segregation. She started to develop her own method to help these children through art education. "My model has three pillars: One is to develop skills, the second is to decrease disadvantages and the third is to improve social competence."

She reached big successes with the children, but the collegues were jealous and hostile. When the church finally took back the school, they did not want disadvantaged children in the institute anymore and wanted to stop with Nóra's method.
Nóra left and decided to make an own foundation. This was 15 years ago. Now the Real Pearl Foundation is giving afternoon art education for over 500 children.

But beside they do much more. "You cannot help the disadvantaged children without reaching their families", says Nóra. So the foundation also helps the families to get out of their desperate situation with collecting donations (food, furniture, firewood, medications ...), giving scholarships to the children, organizing trainings and information events, improving their self-sustaining skills (cooking, making garden, keeping animals, repairing the buildings ...) and creating workplaces.

Now back to Told. Eight years ago the Real Pearl Foundation started a unique program in this segregated little village. From the 350 habitants 70% are gipsy. When Nóra first time came here, the level of poverty and criminality was extremely high and most of the adults could not read and write. Now Nóra and her foundation are trying to help in many levels. They are creating workplaces with the Suno handcraft program ("Suno" means "dream" in gipsy language). In the frame of this program the women in the village are embroidering the paintings of the children on bags and vallets, they are creating painted bags and making glass paintings. The foundation is selling these products in their webshop.

Beside they started the Amari marmalade cooking program. The women of the village are making marmalade out of out of beetroot, carrot and berries that they collect in the area.

They have a carpenter workshop where the men of the village are repairing furniture and making boxes. The women are later decorating these boxes with painting the pictures of the kids on them.

This year the foundation and the people of Told started to grow safran. They have 30 000 plants, that are right now blossoming.

With the help of a found, they built a greenhouse for tomatoes and other vegetables.

They have a biobrikett factory, where they manufacture heating material from agriculture end products, so that the people in the village do not need to steal firewood in the forest anymore.

The foundation also started and afternoon school. Here they help the children in preparing for the classes, they play boardgames and have a discussion club to improve communication skills.

They organize a baby-mother club and information evenings to decrease teenage pregnancy, family violence and criminality.

Despite their success, the Real Pearl Foundation is in a permanent fight for survival. They do not get any government support for their activities. So they keep up themselves only from international founds and the donations of private people and companies.
"But for this work you need patience. A lot of patience.", says Nóra "We plan our strategy for 20 years and right now we are in the 7th. The experiences that we get are the most important. What we can, we measure. Because we still believe that once the govenment will be also interested."

For reading the whole article with much more pictures, visit us on our homepage: Blueberry Beach

Have a beautiful day,
Zoé and Joshua

...to dream for a while. Dream it loud and dream it wild.

The world needs you, be the LoveRevolution.
Wake up, show your potential and dream the life you ever wanted.

You can create your reality. But sometimes it seems a little bit difficult to make your dreams come true. These six ideas will help you. They make your life directly better and you can start right now:

Find your peace - Meditate, make yoga or whatever you like. Go running, swimming or start with gardening.

Be focused - Be clear with what you want to do and do it.

Finish things - Do not get lost in good ideas. Make them happen.

Be patient - It is like in poker. If you have good cards on your hand, you can be calm. Do not stress yourself. If you go with the flow, everything will happen at the right moment. If you love life, life loves you.

Stay healthy - A healthy diet and sport is essencial. An unhealthy body will restrict you in so many ways, because body and mind are one. Never forget, your body is your temple where you worship the god in you.

Think positiv, stop doubts - It is all about attitude. With positiv thinking you can turn shit to gold, change a disadvance to an advance. It is the same effort to make yourself happy as to make yourself miserable. It is you who decide and this decision you can make in every moment of your life.

Stay with people who support you and want you to be successful – Everything is possible and it is more beautiful when we do it together.

Visit us on our webpage http://blueberrybeach.com
Lot of love,
Zoé and Joshua

Thank you, Julia. Sounds cool, we will try to get them.
Have a beautiful day,
Zoé and Joshua

Hello Chrissy, thank you for your post.
We already yesterday checked the link you shared. Right now we live in an old ground house that is very good isolated and our internet is pretty slow. So we coul not check the video. But we checked the webpages of Michael.
Well, we have to admit, that in the beginning we were a little bit sceptic. It seemed much about business and on our travel around the world we met many gurus that were actually full of themselves.
But today we took a little bit more time and checked Micheals page again. And we like it much. Thank you for sharing. It was an inspiring read and gave us good energy for the rest of the day.
We like what he says and we like the way he says it.

We also think that nobody but ourself can cut the strings and free ourself. And we can do it every day. Life is nothing but a dream, dream it how you ever wanted to dream it.

A lot of love
Zoé and Joshua

Thank you Phoenix, Emily and Tobias,
we like very much the information you share. We just bought land in Hungary and now we would be curious about the quality of our soil. Does anyone have an idea how to test it?
We also like the idea with the magnesium bath. What exactly is epson salt?
Have a beautiful day
Zoé and Joshua

When Zoé got to known that she was pregnant, from beginning on she wanted to give birth at home.  She imagined it beautiful to be on a place where she feels comfortable, in harmony and can trust the people around her. Another idea she liked very much was to give birth in water. We started to inform ourselves how Zoé's dream could become possible and in which way.

We have been talking with plenty of experts, reading a lot of  articles, had fights with the family and were confronted with contradictionary oppinions. Actually we found out that homebirth might be one of the topics that is the most emotional discussed. Although it seems to be for many people so important, most of them are in a shocking way misinformed.

Back in Hungary we were confronted with a difficult situation. From law it is allowed to give homebirth, but only under certain conditions:
You have to have the help of two professional midwifes.
You have to be over 18 and under 40 years old.
You have to have a low risk pregnancy and a predicted uncomplicated birth.
Your place has to be close enough to a hospital, that in an emergency situation the mother and the baby can be brought to hospital within 20 minutes.

In our case the problem was, that our new home is too far away from the next hospital. In an emergency case it would be impossible, that an ambulance car could come and bring Zoé to the hospital within 20 minutes.

That means homebirth was not possible. Facing this reality, we started to inform ourselves more about hospital birth. Even though the leading gynecologist and obstetrician in the local hospital was very supporting, super nice and tried to inform and help us in the best way, very fast we realized that hospital would be not an option for Zoé.

First of all, waterbirth is only in some hospitals possible, but if you are unlucky and the birthpool is occupied when your baby is coming, you have to give birth in a classical surgery room.
In other hospitals only the labour is possible in water, but the actual birth you have to give on a bed.
And in most of the hospitals it is only possible to give birth in lying position, because they do not have the equipment to support the baby in other positions.

Zoé likes the idea of waterbirth very much for many reasons. For the natural relaxing effect you have much less pain during the labour and the birth. In water it is much more easy to change positions and there is much less load on the joints and muscles, because you are more light. Also it is a more soft transition for the baby to arrive in water.
Beside the waterbirth, the possibility to change positions and move freely during the labour is very important for Zoé, because first of all she does not like to be forced to stay on a bed. Changing positions during the birth is helping the baby to come by it's own rythm, helps to find a way that is most comfortable and less painful for the mother and makes it possible to use the help of gravitation.

Another reason against hospital is, that in very less hospital you can find alternative birthrooms and for that normally you have to give birth in a surgery room. Well, surgery rooms are very practible for surgeries, but for seeing this beautiful world the first time they might not give the best impression. You have very bright light, are surrounded by people in uniforms wearing masks and all around you it smells like fertilizers.

Beside all of these, in most of the hospitals they do rutine medical interventions. It starts with injecting oxytocin hormon in the mother to fasten the process of birth. This is the first step on a long way down. It results in that the mother and the baby have much more pain. For that they need a lot of pain killer. That can lead to the point that the mother cannot control anymore the pushing movements or the baby's heart rate is falling. And like this many times it comes to a C-section.
Next to it in many hospitals episiotomy, the cut of the perineum, is a standard procedure to prevent the rupture of it. Although in most of the cases it is unnecessary and even leads to longer recovery time and further complications.

With this we come to another argument against hospital. The stay in the hospital. Already by the labour and normally at least 3 days after the birth, the mother and the baby have to stay in hospital. In this time you have to deal with the issue of the hospital food, sick people and a lot of stress around you and more medical examinations.

Apart from this in hospital you are in the hands of the doctors and many decisions are made without your consent, like washing the baby, giving antibiotic eyedrops and whatever they might find out.
We have to say that in our life and specially in this research we encountered some nice but also many doctors, that were on a horrible consciousness level. They were specifistic, narcistic, misinformed, narrow minded and by themselves absolutly unhealthy. To be in the hands of these people seemed for us not a good idea.
Another point is that in Hungary the majority of obstetricians are male and for that have no own experience about birth.

For that we started to look for other options. We already considered to move to another place more close to a hospital to fullfil the conditions for homebirth, when the story made an unexpected turn. Zoé was calling a midwife to inform herself more and she was recommending the birth home of one of her collegues.
What is a birth home? A birth home is a place of a professional midwife, where you have the possibility to give birth outside of the hospital in a safe surrounding. Without hesitating Zoé was calling this midwife. Already on the phone she liked her, and we decided to visit her birth home to have a look. A few days later we drove 120 kms to the south of Hungary.
Even though the place was not exactly how we imagined, the midwife convinced us with her character, with her knowledge and competence and with the possibilities that her birth home gives.
You can give birth in any position, even in water.
The birth is happening in its natural course without fastening it or any other unnecessary interventions.
The midwife is supporting and helping the mother, but not leading the birth. Our midwife has seven children by herself and with this a lot first hand experience about birth.
All together the impact on the mother seems much more little and normally you can go home 3 hours after the birth.

For us it was always important that by birth the mother feels good and it is the best for the baby. We think it is a wonderful happening and  there is no need of unnecessary medicalization of it. Many arguments that we heard against homebirth were based on fear, but we think you always should decide with love.

We wish you a beautiful day,
If you want to read more, visit us on our homepage: http://blueberrybeach.com
Zoé and Joshua

Thank you very much for your post. We are happy that you like this thread and we are hoping it can help other people to improve their diet in a natural way. We are also very big fans of growing your own food. We see here one of the most important key element for a change in society to more sustainability, a higher environmental consciousness and a happier life. We think food should be grown with love, cooked with love and eaten with love. The revolution starts in the kitchen.

Hello Burra, thank you very much for sharing. We do not lnow your specific case, but we are convinced that a healthy body with a healthy diet and lifestyle can stand life without any supplements. The same for a healthy baby with a healthy mother. With this oppinion we are not alone. We decided for homebirth and for that for two month the pregnancy is also followed by a professional midwife. She thinks the same, together with the leading gynecologist and obstetrician of the local hospital.
We also do not think that a lifelong dependence on tablets is a perspective or solution.
To the reserve of the magnesium in the bones. What we read is that our bodies store in general not much magnesium in the bones. It is connected to our past. Compared to our ancestors our diet has changed a lot but our bodies not so much. In older times the diet was much more rich on magnesium and much less on calcium. For that our body is storing calcium in a high amount, but is used to get a daily amount of magnesium from the food.
To the relation of magnesium and calcium absorption. We already wrote about this in the above article.  

But it is not only about to eat food that contains a high amount of magnesium, but to take care, that your body also can absorb and use it. Not good are alcohol and refined sugar. They increase the magnesium excretion through the urine. You should avoid greasy food and preservatives, too. They inhibit the absorption of magnesium.
Also not a good source to get magnesium from are milk and milk products. Even though they contain magnesium, they are also rich in calcium. And calcium and magnesium have a difficult relation. Calcium is a magnesium antagonist. That means they have overlapping transport systems in the body. So when you take them together, they compete for absorption.
But on the other hand, magnesium increases the bioavailability of calcium. It helps our body to put calcium into the bones. When you take too much calcium without enough magnesium, the calcium can be collected in the soft tissues and cause arthritis. So in some cases of a calcium lack it is even better to consume more magnesium instead of calcium.

If you want to read more about healthy lifestyle, food and recipes, you are welcome to visit us on our homepage: blueberrybeach.com

Have a beautiful day
Zoé and Joshua

Hey Burra, thanks for your post. We do not really understand what has happen to you. You said you were already eating a pretty high magnesium diet, but still you had syndroms of  magnesium lack. How could this happen? Is it connected to a specific sickness or to lifestyle? Did you ever found out?
And now, you still have to take the tablets?
Thanks for sharing,
have a beautiful day
Zoé and Joshua