Contents:

• ENRIQUE EXECUTED
  
• Anne invited to spy for the Paramilitaries…
• The President’s Cousin’s Mountain Dog
• Anne and Lou on Colombian Radio
• Speaking Irish in the Jungle
• What Not To Do if you come to Caqueta

It matters how we die. If Enrique had been killed in combat - well, he was fighting on one side of a long-winded guerrilla war. But Enrique was executed. By his own side.

I have tried to rationalise, tell myself that Enrique had killed people; that he knew the rules; that he as asking for it. But it doesn't work; I still mind that Enrique is dead and the way he died. His girlfriend begged him to leave the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), to go and live with her in the towns. He had a large sum of FARC money in his possession, entrusted to him for the purchase of provisions. He made his illusory bid for comfort and safety. They caught him of course. He was made to kneel down and Manolo, once my next-door neighbour and husband of a friend of mine, now Enrique's 'apprentice', was given the order to shoot him.

Enrique had once tried to tell me, sitting here on my bed in this room, that Eduardo Rincon, our Green councillor, also recently 'executed' for goodness-knows-what supposed crime, was a 'paramilitary'. I told Enrique as nicely as I could that that was nonsense. Enrique had insisted; so I said, OK, if Eduardo is a paramilitary, how come you don't kill him? Which is precisely what the FARC would do if they really believed it. All this was two years ago. Enrique had answered, 'But Jenny, we are all human, we all make mistakes, and we can change. Eduardo is doing good now.' So I pushed and said, 'Is Eduardo's life in danger from the FARC?' No, no, no, I was assured.

We still don't know who killed Eduardo; but now we know who killed Enrique. Sometimes living in Colombia feels like walking into a psychotic novel. Two fine men, formerly my best friends in this area, both working in their own dedicated ways for the good of Colombia and both passionately against the destruction of the forests; and both - possibly - killed by the very movement that has most chance of saving those forests and the peasants who live near them. And one is supposed to stay sane in these circumstances.

It so happened that when I got the news, there was no-one on the farm to talk to. My garden saved me. I sat with the earth running through my hands, my heart breaking inside. I remembered Enrique admiring that very garden - bringing young guerrillas to see it; and I felt the earth, made of millions of bodies of dead creatures, and saw the fresh green life springing up from it, and thought of my dead friends. So many people who still have enthusiasm for life, ripped away; and when people like myself would gladly sink into the earth and say, 'No more', this option is not given to us.

A little girl called Amy Pepper of Scaynes Hill Primary School in Sussex has sent this poem:

Man comes through
Trees fall down
Roads built
Then a town.
Dangerous fumes
From factories nearby
A horrid gas
Covers the sky.
Man comes
Trees fall
Killing the trees
And killing us all.

Thank you Amy. You are one of the many reasons why I will continue tending my garden.

Anne and the Paramilitaries -
Being an astrologer in Bogota leads you into strange waters.

Anne was told that the head of a 'security company' who just happened to be Irish was interested in supporting CRAC and would she please phone him? His assistant answered, with a Southern Irish accent. He was friendly and shamelessly offered Anne money in exchange for 'information'. Anne, shocked, said she had no intention of taking up spying for a living. “No, no”, it wasn't spying, it was just to let them know who was in the region...

Anne refused and was about to hang up when the Irishman insisted she should meet him and his boss for lunch the next day. Out of curiosity, Anne went, where she met one Bill Nixon, a big blonde Northern Irish Protestant, and his assistant from the South, Eddie O'Brien. She gave them a set of the Green Letters and talked about our work. The boss then offered her ten thousand dollars “to gather information”. Anne was outraged. “If I was going to spy, it would be for the other side,” she said, that is for the revolutionary peasants' movement. Again the men insisted that it wasn't spying and that they just wanted to prove to big oil investors like Shell and BP who are their main employers that investing in oil exploitation in the 'red zones' of Colombia is possible. He was also trying to convince Anne that he was deeply 'green' himself as his aeroplanes also detect oil spills!

He freely talked about his work: his men, he said, about 300 well-armed Colombians, protect 'important visitors' and important machinery for the oil companies. Anne asked him what he did in Ireland. He was in the British Army. “I used to throw stones on the Bogside at people like you,” Anne said. The Southern Irish lackey laughed behind his hand.

Then, after unsuccessfully attempting to get Anne tipsy with 'Irish coffee', they asked her whether she would be willing to give conferences to the top brass of the big oil companies on the 'psychology' of living peacefully in a Red Zone and that they'd pay her well. Anne answered, 'Yes, of course, as long as I can say absolutely anything I like'. Her cheeky grin made them rescind the offer!

This green campaign gets weirder by the day.

The President's cousin's mountain 'dog' -

Remember the wild animal I once found chained in Ricardo's shower and purchased to set free? A 'mountain dog' (perro de monte) that had something of small Bear, something of Cat, of Weasel, of Bushbaby - and little of Dog.

Recently, as night fell, I jumped out of my bed with a scream as something warm, furry and definitely carnivorous snuffled around for bare flesh. It was a 'mountain dog', but not Ricardo's. This one Louise had brought home at the request of a client of Anne's who had had it in captivity for years and wanted it freed. The client's name was Mady Samper, a cousin of the Colombian President.

Lou travelled a hot, unpleasant journey to a far-distant place, took the overfed, tied, frightened creature on horrible bus-rides where, after dark - it is nocturnal - it bit deeply into the hands of an English visitor accompanying Louise. Arriving in Neiva, the police, quite correctly, confiscated the animal under the law forbidding trafficking in wildlife. Louise, in tears, in vain tried to explain the creature was being taken home to the wilds and that their manhandling of it was making it more vicious and terrified.

It was 3.00 am when Anne in Bogota received Louise's tearful phone-call from Neiva and many hours and phone-calls later that a mysteriously transformed Neiva policewoman silently handed over the animal to Louise. She had just received orders from the Chief of Police in Colombia, Sr. Serrano, who just happened to be a friend of Mrs. Samper.

We are now officially, thanks to Anne's wading through red-tape and pulling a few strings, an 'Hogar de Transito' - a ‘halfway house' for wild animals being returned to their natural homes. However, the 'perro de monte' had other ideas, and that's why he ended up in my bed on that, and many another, night. We took him across the stream. He came home. We took him to the forest. He came home. We resorted to locking him up at night. It took him all of five minutes to get out (each time). He liked my lemon tea, which he drank carefully, holding the cup in his hands. And he liked the cuddles. And he particularly liked my bed.

I was desperate. Without my customary 10 hours' sleep (you need it in this kind of life-style), I am useless. He had to go. The kids took him on a long, long, walk, far into the forest, in very rainy weather along a knee-deep muddy path. For many nights, I slept tensely, expecting the usual hiss and plonk! as he landed on my roof and in through my window, to demand I get up and play.

Can you imagine how odd it feels to feel horribly guilty for having successfully returned a wild animal to its natural habitat where there is no lemon tea?

Anne and Louise on Colombian radio -

Twice recently, CRAC - or rather Anne and Louise - were on Colombian radio. For four hours each time! In night-time phone-in programmes. Anne reports that during the night, there is no censorship, and they were able to say absolutely anything and that the more outrageous the things she said, the more delighted the presenter became! Louise sang her 'green' songs from our theatre and recited her green poems. Then came a surprise for her - the presenter said, 'Hey, I've heard that poem before' - it was the one called 'To Samper' and complained about the government's treatment of peasant strikers in Caquetá last year. Evidently, 'El Tiempo', Colombia's ultra-conservative daily, had published Louise's poem through yet another contact of Anne's - this is some complicated country!

Martyn and the Mud -

Meanwhile, back in Caqueta... here is an account from 16-year-old Martyn of a 'bus' journey in the rainy season.

“I went to Guayabal. There were a lot of landslides, which is quite normal round here. I was sitting on top of the bus. On one side of us, deep mud, on the other a muddy river at the bottom of a ravine; below us, no road, just deep mud. When we arrived, everybody asked us where we had been: they couldn't see the colour of our clothes which were completely brown from the deep mud along the pathways.

“When I returned, there were three more landslides. We had to wait for a bulldozer to make the road again. A lorry had to pull the bus out of the mud; then it got stuck again. So everyone had to get off, boys and girls, old men and women, everyone. And start pushing. Then on again. And stuck again, in the middle of a landslide. So we all had to get down and start to remove the mud and clay with our hands. It took us all half an hour to remove enough so that the bus could get past. But it couldn't move, so down we all got again and tied a rope to the bus and we all had to pull.

“I was a bit tired when I got home.”

(And this is a much-shortened version of his story!)

One of the more eccentric things I get up to out here in the Colombian jungle is to learn Irish. Given my age and geographical location, this is not rationally justifiable. Or it wasn't - until a few days ago, when two enthusiastic young Irishmen from all-Irish-language TV turned up to make a short film of us and our green campaign. Ruan and Manchan Magan - thank you for your brief and delightful visit and for the chance (sweating and trembling) to indulge my odd habit of learning unusual languages in the Colombian jungle! Here is a translation of what I said when asked (in Gaelic) if I'd like to give a message to the Irish people: “Yes. I would like to invite anyone who uses drugs to come out here and see the damage your habit is doing to the forests. It is not only yourself you are hurting.” ('Is that all?' you say! Huh! - you try saying that in Irish!)

Cynthia and the Four Pages -

Our good friend and supporter Cynthia Dickinson has told me my Green Letters are too long and would I keep them to four pages and perhaps break up the text a little (hence the side-headings). I tend to agree with her - do you? But complying is another thing, there is so much to tell! For instance:

A book published this year called 'Youth Action and the Environment' by Alan Dearling has several pages devoted to CRAC. It has a radical, refreshing approach and gives young people hundreds of ideas on how to become actively involved in projects all over the world.

Camilo's message
My 4 pages are running out, so I will end with a message from Camilo, village school-teacher of Chorreras who has received books, pencils and many other gifts through this campaign: “To you Jenny, and Anne and everyone in CRAC, thanks, many many thanks and we will continue struggling to educate the future generations of this area in every sense, but chiefly in ecological matters. With all my love, Camilo.”

And now I have to cheat by adding just one more page - you don't have to read it, Cynthia! - for anyone considering coming out here, to avoid future misunderstandings and disasters.

And thankyou everyone for all the magnificent seeds, letters, printed matter (especially Marcey in the USA for the lovely organic gardening books) and other gifts.

Bless you all.
Love, Jenny.

WHAT-NOT-TOs in Caquetá, Colombia
(Taken from Real-Life Happenings, Believe it or Not)

1. Look, folks, I know this is a Green campaign, but turning up with Green Hair?
2. And earrings (multiple) and bows in the hair (what's left of it after the top's been shaved off), when you're a Man?
3. Or walking barefoot around Neiva covered in thick mud up to the thighs because 'Earth is Clean and Neiva is Dirty': well, yes, we understand the message - but do the Neivans?
4. And no, we don't grow marijuana.
5. Nor do we have a washing-machine - if you've never washed by hand before, please learn before you get here (especially if you're female - we most unpolitically incorrectly let men off as they carry heavier weights).
6. You need BOOTS. Sandals don't work in mud and we don't dig being told you can't because they don't.
7. “Wanting to see the Rainforest” is not a good reason for coming. There won't be any of it left it we don't do some work.
8. One Colombian man who heard Anne's radio programme wanted to join our community permanently. He was offering 'chess and polemics'. As he wrote first and so kindly warned me of this, I was able to put him off. These particular skills are not useful here: please only come if you're used to using your body, fully.
9. Please learn some Spanish first and please do not leave your luggage on bus-roofs. the bus-attendant will steal from them.
10. It is not intelligent to try and find this farm in the dark. STOP at any house and ask to stay the night if evening is falling.
11. PLEASE go and stay with Becky in Ireland before coming here and PLEASE go and stay on our farm in Tolima first if you are a city person or unfit.
12. You do not need to laden yourself down with sleeping gear or books - we have plenty of these. Bring instead helpful additional concentrated food-stuffs or practical gifts, or medicines that you need (we use very few).
13. You need rain-gear, sun-hat, a warm jumper. And WELLY BOOTS.
14. Please be honest with yourself about your reasons for coming: Atlantis used to be a free-therapy commune, but is no longer. London for this please.
15. Please take seriously what I write in the Green Letters - I don't do it for fun. It makes no sense to complain about how far it is, how steep it is, how much it rains, how deep the mud is, how hard we work, the fact we can't supply ' an English breakfast' or how primitively we live.
16. AND PLEASE DON'T TELL US WHAT NEEDS DOING - WE KNOW! (Scream)
17. We are very sorry if The Rainforest doesn't live up to your fantasies. We are doing our best.

Sample quotes:

• “I thought you were just Saving the Rainforest. I didn't know you were trying to be self-sufficient.”
• “Oh, I thought the food fell off the trees.”
• “But why don't you use machinery?”
• “I can't stay here, you use machines.” (One strimmer.)

In spite of which, we have had some brilliant help, fascinating encounters and good friendship. When there has been suffering, we guarantee it is on both sides.

For a successful visit, you need:

• a gutsy in-touchness with your body;
• a intense de-bourgeoisification programme before you get here;
• a willingness to use all of yourself all of the time (we do);
• a sense of humour! the flexibility to handle your own culture-shock without getting into a foul mood with those who love most that which you most hate.

Good luck!
Jenny.

PS An old friend Rob, now known as John Moon, of Box Cottage, 5 Tinhead Road, Edington, Westbury, Wiltshire BA13 4PH England, has reproduced all the 'Green Letters' in an attractive bound booklet, with a jungle-drawing of Louise's on the front and is selling them, for £5 I think, in aid of CRAC. Please write to him if you'd like to buy or sell some. Thank you.

Contents GL 22:

• Investigating Eduardo Rincon’s death
• Chorreras Headwaters Secured
• FARC reiterate Green demands
• Gossip says we ‘direct the US spray planes’
• Guerrilla orders FUNERALS for slaughtered monkeys
• Green Guerrilla versus Tree-Slaying Government
• Letter from Jenny to the British Government

Greetings to all our readers and correspondents.

I have not ceased to enquire about the why? and who? of Eduardo Rincon's death. Most people are scared to speak, though there is complete unanimity about Eduardo's tremendous worth and unceasing work for the people and environment of the region. I asked a guerrilla commander who visited our farm directly who killed Eduardo, and he said it definitely wasn't the guerrilla movement. There is no reason to doubt him, as they always stand up for their executions, however unpalatable to the European mind; they give their reasons and the event is usually public.

A few days later, I asked a friend of Eduardo's the same question: "It was the paramilitaries,” he said without hesitation. "They knew Eduardo was on good terms with the guerrilla.” That spells the death sentence in Colombia where the civil war is heating up daily. There is some tragic proof that this man is right. Eduardo's throat was slit after he was shot. The paramilitaries' trademark is to mutilate their victims. Also, Eduardo was stripped of money, watch, ring and other valuables, an activity absolutely forbidden to guerrilla soldiers. Plus, a police car was observed returning from the area where Eduardo was murdered shortly after his death; another indicator that the 'authorities' were behind his death.

San Vicente, the regional capital where Eduardo was Chairman of the local council, is reported to be so full of paramilitaries that our local priest, who collaborates with the left-wing movement, dare not go there. The last thing that any right-winger would want is the socially-minded, environmentally-concerned Eduardo in the Mayor's seat, which was where he was headed. He was hugely popular in the whole area, an extremely energetic, charismatic person who would sometimes have me cringing in embarrassment at the outspoken way he would tell peasants off for stripping or burning their land and lecture them about planting more trees; but such was his manner and character that he was completely respected and loved for speaking out his concern. I still cannot believe that he is gone. I remember him agonising over political murders in Colombia: he was totally opposed to violence for whatever cause and thoroughly parted company with the guerrilla movement on this issue, whilst sharing their social concerns.

Eduardo had to face terrible fear and agony in his last moments; for those of us who are left to mourn him, the agony of his last moments repeats over and over again. And there are dozens of such murders daily in Colombia.

CHORRERAS HEADWATERS SAFEGUARDED.

With money gathered from small private donations in Europe, we enabled the Chorreras Green Group to complete purchase of an important area of the forest containing the headwaters which supply their settlement. We handed over - to their absolute amazement - a further 500 U$ (500,000 pesos) - which, added to the 1,000 U$ previously donated to them, made this invaluable acquisition possible. They held a meeting with their community to explain what they had done and understanding is slowly awakening in peasants who formerly thought buying land communally was some form of First World madness. The land purchased (extremely cheaply - it is a large area) would inevitably have been slashed and used for opium-poppy growing.

FARC once again insist on a Green policy

Camilo, the teacher of Chorreras school, has reported on a meeting called by the guerrilla in Guayabal, the market centre, in which once again they emphasised their prohibition of tree-cutting, alerted people to the need for a return to growing their own food and of the importance of ceasing to cultivate opium-poppies. They also announced an environmental campaign for Guayabal itself to clean up the settlement (which is fairly hideous) and to sort out the problem of 'black waters' - waste water from the houses and shops running uncontained.

Camilo also reports that he has sent a request to San Vicente (our municipal capital, though inaccessible by direct road) to finance the planting of 1,000 trees in Chorreras by his pupils. If he is refused (very likely now that Eduardo is dead), I would like to help him with the next donations from Europe if you all agree. I am also going to suggest that they be planted in memory of Eduardo.

FUMING OVER FUMIGATIONS.

Our impotent fury at the low-flying planes and helicopters repeatedly fumigating this valley with glyphosate met with further irony: a young neighbour came to warn us that people in the area (presumably those who do not know us personally) are saying that we are causing the fumigations! - that 'all the visitors' we keep getting are American spies come to see who is growing opium-poppy to help direct the planes, and that a complaint was put in to the guerrilla about us being here at all.

We duly received our visit from the latest guerrilla commander who was obviously disappointed with us: 'I thought you would have a big house,' he said, 'And why don't you have an electric generator and a fridge? And have you no film camera?' He found it extremely hard to believe that we weren't 'running' from some trouble in our own countries (we are! - "development”), else why would educated people live in such 'poverty'? I tried to explain that our surroundings are richness beyond belief to our way of seeing things, but I could feel I had lost my audience. I got Fin to sing his Forest song which cries out against tree-cutting and blames 'American junkies', the commander and his companions shared a vegetarian lunch with us and we parted amicably.

Meanwhile there are reports from further down in Caquetá that the helicopters have been shooting at Indian settlements and 'test-spraying' with fumigations far more lethal than glyphosate.

HUNTERS IN THE FOREST

One peaceful afternoon, we were alarmed to see two men with rifles standing high above us on the edge of the forest. And more alarmed when they did not visit, but instead disappeared when one of the children went to see who they were. In our Tolima settlement, we had endless trouble with local people hunting in our forest as it was the only preserved woodland in the area. This was the first time we knew of hunters in our part of the forest here. We have passed word around that we are an animal sanctuary and used the incident to stress our position; the reception has been excellent. Roberto of Chorreras told us the following extraordinary tale: that the guerrilla have ordained that anyone caught killing a monkey will be forced to give the creature a proper funeral and wake, coffin, candles, prayers and all, to remind the culprit that to kill a monkey is as bad as to kill a person! I expect you have noticed by now that Colombia is a country of paradox and surprises!

GOVERNMENT VERSUS GREEN GUERRILLA

Recently, a worried Roberto and Cliomedes came up from Chorreras to visit us. They told me of a Government 'Environment Ministry' plan to authorise the cutting of vast quantities of wood in this area in a 'sustainable way' and selling the wood to the Japanese. Huge sums of money were involved, under the auspices of 'world environmental concern', none of which of course would reach the local peasants. There was to be an all-region meeting in Los Andes, a tiny settlement, further down from Chorreras.

The meeting was packed; there were representatives of all the Action Committees of El Pato, our area; there were the leaders of the 'democratic environmental survey' group that work for the government; and, next to the doorway, there was the guerrilla commander and his companions. It was a long hot day, and I did not stay the course, but waited outside to hear the outcome from my friends.

After long (patronising) explanations of how old and how wide a tree had to be before it could be cut and how to fell ‘sustainably’, the government representatives presented their project, which was picked to pieces by the peasants and trashed with the help of an excellent exposé by the guerrilla commander who pointed out what everybody knew: that no funds, help, or local industry would be available to the men who would run all the risks and do all the work. Tree-felling ‘selectively’ is extremely hazardous: for one thing other trees inevitably crash when one giant is felled; for another, the canopy of creepers in any forest catch and hold precariously and dangerously many trees that are cut through. Many men are killed or permanently crippled whilst cutting trees.

So the meeting ended with a simple sentence from the guerrilla command: Not one more tree will be felled in El Pato. Astonishing.

A SURPRISE VISIT from Govt. Reps.

In Colombia, however, one is never allowed to rest in one's comfy prejudices. A few days after the guerrilla commander visited us here, who should puff up the path but the very group from the meeting who had represented the government. And a nicer bunch of people it would be hard to find. They ate with us, watched theatre, played football, promised a further visit, invited me to a follow-up meeting (offer declined - it's too hot down there!), expressed extreme genuine appreciation of all that we are doing and absolutely in no way could be classified as 'baddies.' I look forward to their return - haven't yet dared to question them about the policies, but will do so! - and am pushed back once again into the position of realising that there is a tremendous variety of people all trying to do good in their own way.

A CENTRE IN ROVIRA

Teodoro, the extremely environmentally-conscious president of our local 'Junta' (Action committee) came to ask us to set up a house and model garden down in Rovira - an understandable request given the gruelling 3-hour trek up to us, undertaken by increasing numbers of people. He said the community would donate the land if we were willing. I was very touched but said we would have to consult with the next generation as my days of living anywhere near a road were over for ever.

KNITTING FOR THE FORESTS

And a group of women came up from Chorreras to beg us to spend time in their village teaching them to knit and sew: Louise spent a week with them to their delight - we supplied the needles and wool; 'sfunny where a forest campaign leads you....

GREEN QUEEN

And then another group of people, including the female teacher of the school and several pupils, came up from La Abeja ('the Bee'), our nearest settlement as the crow flies, to see the farm - and to beg Louise to represent them in the regional beauty contest. (Louise's comment: 'but my legs are far too white' - this in a country where 'ugly' white skin is treasured!).

WATER FESTIVAL

Meanwhile, we have been asked to represent Colombia, along with an Indian tribe called the UWA and others, at an international festival in Bogota in February in defence of the world's water. Groups from all over South America will be there. We are busy working on an ambitious theatre dance and music piece entitled "The Four Elements” essentially showing how things worked rather well until Man intervened.

WHAT NEXT?

In view of the guerrilla movement's stand on forest-cutting, you might be wondering, 'Why don't we pack up, the job seems to be done.” However, it doesn't feel like that here! Neighbours still cut furiously for 'legitimate' farm expansion; the government is destroying hectares of forest by aerial bombing of 'guerrillas'' (actually peasants); a British minister was pictured congratulating the Colombian government recently on its aerial fumigation policy; and our valley fills with smoke now the hot, dry season is upon us - the only way the farmers know of preparing their fields for the next crop. It feels like we are only just beginning - so please keep up the support, with letters, seeds, small donations, practical gifts: old gardening tools - especially hoe-heads, much needed; material for schools - and visits from the hardy! Every contact is hugely appreciated. Thank you!

BOOKS

I have just begun reading 'GREEN BACKLASH' by Andrew Rowell, published by Routledge, subtitled 'Global Subversion of the Environment Movement', an important, worrying book: we need to know what we're up against.

I would also like to mention Marlo Morgan's 'Mutant Message Down Under', though it is so badly written it annoys me. It is an American woman's account of a 'walkabout' with Australian aborigines and worth reading for its basic moving environmental message. Harper Perennial, 1995.

PRESS ATTACK?

Rumours keep reaching us of an 'extremely derogatory' article in the Sunday Mirror about us. Well, if it was favourable, we'd know we were on the wrong track! As unfortunately I haven't been involved in any jungle sex scandals and I can't imagine the Mirror being interested in 'Organic Gardening in the Andes', I am curious and await 'enlightenment'. Ah! I've got it! "Ex-Dartford Grammar School Girl Cavorts in Colombian Jungle with Red Guerrilla.' As the kind of friends I have don't read this newspaper, my wait for news may be long.

AN ARMY REFERENCE

A contact of Anne's in Bogota was working in San Vicente and out of curiosity enquired at the Army base there what they thought of us. "Highly suspicious,” came the answer, "Nothing is known about them, and they are living in guerrilla territory.”

Well, if you run a green campaign in the middle of a civil war, you'd hardly expect a picnic, would you?

With love to all our helpers,
Jenny

LETTER
To: Mr. Tony Lloyd and Mr. Tony Blair
House of Commons, London.
16th October 1997
Re: CAQUETA RAINFOREST CAMPAIGN

Dear Sirs,

Fumigation of Drug Crops in Colombia

A supporter of the above Rainforest Campaign has sent me a newspaper cutting from The Daily Post entitled 'Minister sees war on drug barons.' Another supporter in Bogota reports Mr. Tony Lloyd has congratulated the Colombia government on its crop-fumigation policy.

I am ashamed at this moment to be English. The concept of a 'battle against drug barons' being waged by fumigating peasants' farms, the forests and the waters of this ecologically delicate area of South East Colombia would be laughable if it were not so tragic. No drug baron was ever affected or hurt - the idea is ridiculous. But by your support of this dangerous, hypocritical way of dealing with the Northern World's drugs problem, you are certainly hurting all life-forms at the bottom of the vicious world-economic system.

No-one could be more opposed to all forms of drug-taking than I - I include cigarettes, alcohol and nearly all medical drugs. I have worked for years in England and Ireland as a therapist and seen the hideous results of addiction. Out here, I work daily to persuade by good example the local peasants to grow their own food and become self-sufficient, to break from their ugly dependency on coca and poppy cash-crops which leads to violence from the beginning to the end of the nightmare chain.

Morning after morning, we watch helicopters and fumigation planes spray the forest and fields of this beautiful valley. Sometimes we hear shooting, when some desperate peasant makes the fatal error of trying to retaliate. And the Colombian government and the governments of Europe preach protection of the environment! Sometimes the planes swoop down low over our heads as we work in our organic vegetable gardens - how long before they make a mistake?

Please, instead of standing beside the Colombian Army and its planes, come and meet with the peasants, understand their situation, help to provide workable alternatives to drug-crop production, educate yourselves as to who you are helping to attack. Everyone in Colombia knows that the money Western governments give to the Army here 'for drug control' is diverted to shoot peasants in areas of guerrilla influence. And why is there a guerrilla movement? Because absolutely no-one else gives a damn about the fate of millions of impoverished peasants.

I am profoundly shocked that a Labour government would support such a vicious regime as the Colombian one and take such an ignorant stand on the drugs issue.

Yours sincerely,
Jenny James (English, aged 55)

Contents:

• Our Green Theatre goes to Bogota
• Air Attack
• Strange donations from strange quarters..
• Becky back after 3 years describes our farm
• And much more.

Caquetá Rainforest Campaign

Greetings after a two-month gap, a longer time-lapse than usual: not because we have packed up the Campaign, but quite the opposite - we have been busier than ever.

Just after the last Green Letter went out, we received news from Anne in Bogotá that we had been invited to perform our 'Green Theatre' in a month-long Festival in Bogotá, beginning 22nd November. And that 'as we'd be in Bogotá anyway, she'd arranged a few other performances as well'...

Action stations: move 10 people and several mule-loads of theatre gear down the mountain and on to buses for Bogotá. Find someone to make sure the farm didn't turn back to jungle in our absence. Freshen up and practice our country theatre for a city audience. Cope with the kids' objections to the move - 'But everyone in Bogotá will be so much better than us'... Send someone to our Tolima settlement (a 2-day journey) to care for the farm - keep the farm-work going at full pelt in the mornings, work all afternoon at theatre practice - yes, it was a busy time!

Bugged by Bog. Smog

Bogotá has to be breathed to be believed. Pollution takes on a whole new scale of meaning. London would seem like the Lake District in comparison. I held my breath for 3 weeks there. The children were shocked, physically and mentally. Each one in turn developed fevers, swollen throats, chronic dry skin, spots on previously exquisite complexions and colds. At one point, with two days before our first performance, my best actors and singers were voiceless.

But we did it, and the children will never be scared of their 'standard' again: the reception was tremendous. Invitations poured in to perform elsewhere but we had to let a lot of people down and escape back to the real world, which is definitely not the city. No fame or bright lights could seduce these youngsters - they've known something better: grass, trees, real water and air. The harassed director (me!) had a big enough job suppressing the rebellion long enough to do even the three shows initially promised.

AIR ATTACK -

On 12th December, I was back on my farm. The jungle had started to take over, and so had the drought. But at least there was peace... until the next morning that is, when all hell set loose above us. Our friends the helicopters and fumigation planes were back in strength, but this time all their attention was on our side of the valley, and specifically the farm next door where the city-dwelling Evangelist landlord has his present workers tending a large opium-poppy crop. For hours the aircraft swooped low, passing and re-passing our gardens. Then the shooting began, 'indiscriminate' shooting into the trees to warn any lurking guerrillas - a Spanish girl staying with us and a near neighbour happened to be passing along our leafy pathways and the shots landed uncomfortably close: they hugged trees, and not for the trees' protection.

After my initial shock and anger at the shooting, I decided valour was the better part of discretion and placed myself in full view, out in the open, and furiously tended my garden for the duration of the performance, breathing deeply and trusting their satanic technology included distinguishing marigolds from poppies from the air. After 3 hours of these antics, which included dropping off soldiers in the neighbouring farm to burn crops, one breathless and scared farm-worker who had previously displayed only cynicism about our work, came scampering round to us for protection: he had been shot at as he ran into the forest and had hidden inside a hollow tree-trunk. Like a repentant sinner, he kept making promises to us that he would never again get involved in working on poppy-crops, as if somehow we had the power to 'save' him from the gringos in the air.

If anyone over there is on speaking terms with Mr. Tony Blair, would they please mention to him that this is not the most intelligent way to deal with the drug problem? The only life forms punished are the wildlife and vegetation - our 'repentant sinner' was of course working in the only way he knows as soon as the crisis was past.

"Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world; indeed it's the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead.

Criminal Corporation donates to CRAC…

We have had some odd contributors to the Campaign recently: Carton Colombia, run by Mr. Smurfit of Ireland, one of the greatest criminals in terms of destroying old forests, planting sterile eucalyptus, uprooting indigenous peoples - and using lethal force to do so - has donated us 30 large files and mountains of typing paper. As will be seen from these comments, they chose a really rotten PR woman if they hoped to get good press for this ‘generous’ act...

Who Wants Porcelain Loos in the Jungle?!

And Corona Toilet Company has donated 3 toilets, washbasins and sets of tiles! We will pass these on to the local schools as we used earth closets, stream water from a black hosepipe - and where would we put the tiles?

In Ireland, a long-term opponent of our atheistic community (I mean, 20 years long!) made friends with Becky and purchased a small strip of land at the side of our house for £5,000 (Irish punts) - it was worth all of £1,000 - with which Becky financed her return here, left money for Mary Kelly who has taken over office work there to run things, and began to pay back an old debt to a loyal supporter, Rob (now known as John Moon). If anyone wonders why John has not answered letters or continued with his excellent production of the children's jungle paintings and the green letters, he has suffered a personal tragedy in the birth of a brain-damaged child and has been tied up with coping with this for many months. Rob-John - our thoughts are with you.

Retribution from a Thief – Unique in Colombia!

But perhaps the oddest contributor is Leonel. He is a young Colombian thief who staged an armed robbery on our Tolima farm in 1991 in which I had to hand over all we owned to save the life of a young Englishman living with us who had a gun to his head. Subsequently, we disobeyed every Colombian rule about 'keeping quiet' - a disease rampant here even when the criminals are known - and the result, all these years later is that the sum of money stolen is being paid back with interest, unheard of in Colombia - it has simply never happened before. Leonel called to make his latest payment during the theatre in Bogotá- and offered all the children jeans from his brother's factory in addition. He claims the robbery was 'the worst thing that "ever happened to him"'. I seem to remember it was us it happened to!

"The world is now too dangerous for anything less than Utopia."
Buckminster Fuller (quote nicked from Kathleen Jannaway of the Vegan Movement - thank you Kathleen, I'm sure you won't mind!)

What Becky Saw on Returning Home

I asked Becky to write her first impressions on returning to Colombia. Here is her account, from 9th November:

"For the past three years, I have been helping to run our Irish base. The time came to return home to my family roots on the edge of the cloud forest near Rovira, Caquetá. Many people in Europe ask me, ' But what is it like to really live there?' So here is a day in the life of our Caquetá farm: The bus from Neiva - which is an extremely hot town - has open sides, no glass; I wanted to see where I was coming to, so I sat up on the roof of the bus with all the peasants' luggage. The journey takes about 4 hours, stopping all along the way to let people off. The road gets steeper and more winding, the landscape is stripped of every tree and men are out burning the last tiny shrubs and dry grass. Nevertheless, there are still (much reduced) rivers and the shapes of the mountains are a million times more interesting than the flat lands between Bogotá and Neiva.

Because of our project, the people on the bus were friendly and were asking how many hours it is to walk to our place once you get off the bus - 3 hours at least. We passed many road workers with huge machines constantly clearing away the earth that had slid down the mountain: without trees, there is simply nothing to hold the earth in place. I kept seeing the land like a human body which had had all its hair pulled out and whose skin was being scraped away to see only bones left.

Arriving in Rovira, there are just a few wooden shacks, some are bars with open spaces for the weekend discos. We left our luggage with a trusted friend (Aminta of the 'Blue Restaurant') and began the long trek to the farm. Jenny often stresses how steep it is in her Green Letters, but not till you start to climb and feel your heart beating do you truly realise how steep! We stopped and rested every time we found a flattish area (there aren't many!) The first bridge you cross is a fallen tree-trunk...

Past the halfway mark, you are high enough to feel a welcome mountain breeze; higher still, a few trees and the air feels cooler; approaching our farm, you walk under tall trees and life starts to feel magical again. Entering the farm, there are plants, bushes, flowers and vegetable gardens everywhere, a place to hang hammocks, four living cabins, banana palms, guinea-pigs, chickens, creeping plants. I was here three years ago and the biggest change is that the forest feels closer. Jenny and the others have let all the trees close by grow - before it looked much more stripped. Give Nature a chance and she really does heal herself.

Masses of work has been done here; the life-style is very intense. To be here, you would have to love using your body. The day starts with one of the men getting up at 5 a.m. to light the wood stove that stays alight all day to cook, heat water, make bread and feed everyone three times a day. The cows get milked and one by one everyone gets up. By 7 a.m., the whole place is swinging along; every detail is essential to the upkeep of the place and to our survival. Before breakfast at 8 a.m., clothes have been washed, vegetables picked and cleaned, animals fed, bedrooms cleaned. After breakfast, everyone does heavy work in the gardens, permanent crop-fields, wood fetching and cutting, animal care, building and mending and fixing, cooking and kitchen work. Some work is dependent on the weather - panic stations for drought or flood! In one day you may get mist, rain, hot sun, gusts of wind, nippy nights.

When I arrived, everyone was preparing for the theatre show in Bogotá. The kids put on some of their plays to practice and show me what they have been doing - that is, in the afternoon, after work. Immediately after dinner at midday, there is time to play, talk, do music, rest, write - and the kids have a football pitch for those that still have energy left after the long morning's work. Then at 3 p.m., practice time, with Jenny teaching the girls ballet, yoga, lots of body movement, everyone coming up with ideas for the new theatre and ways of freshening up previous shows. This goes on till the older ones of us have had enough (I'm in my 30s!), but the kids often go off to practice more.

There is food available until the kitchen closes about 7 p.m. Normally, by 8.0 p.m., everyone is in bed. I must say I'm not usually a non-physical person, but after a few days here I got fully stretched and can feel muscles I'd forgotten I have. A mixture of earthy physical work and creativity makes for a very full and satisfying life-style."

Becky.

One quiet day before all this, two men came up the path. One, a neighbour who had been felling forest and nicking land belonging to us high up where he thought we'd never notice. We didn't, but neighbours did, and told us. The second man, in city clothes, was from INCORA, the government land-title agency. I felt calm, no adrenaline - odd, as on the face of it, it could have been a hostile visit.

It was embarrassing. Not only did the Incora man praise our work and come down heavily against our poor neighbour, but urged me to claim all the un-owned (government) forest in our area 'to protect it'. So offensive were his 'green' lectures over dinner to poor Merardo, our transgressing neighbour, that I jumped to his defence (I'm a wonderful hypocrite at times) and said that it was all very well to lecture the peasants when one had a well-paid government job, but without help and guidance, all they knew was to cut forest and cultivate heroin poppies. I think Merardo went away a little confused. The Incora man, who was from the Gnostic movement, loved our vegetarian food, fell in love with Louise who sang him her latest, very beautiful environmental song called 'Yesterday, there was a tree.....' and begged us all to visit him in Belen, his far-distant hot Caquetá home and set up a 'branch of our community' there. Some hopes, we can hardly handle the branches we already have!

This extraordinary event was followed up with one even more bizarre: in Bogotá we had just finished practising our loveliest piece called 'The battle for the Forests' when Anne calmly told us that she hadn't liked to interrupt, but a government man had been on the phone. He wanted to speak to me with the news that, in a big community meeting in El Pato (our region), it had been agreed by the guerrilla, the government, the local people - including several notable former enemies of our work - and their mothers that we should be appointed 'Guardians of the Forest' to take care of all the remaining virgin forest in the area.

I'm sorry, this is too much for me to swallow and I need time to recover. I have no idea what this means in practical terms and await instructions from the cosmos.

But all we do is grow lettuces...... what happened?

"If we don't do the impossible, we will be faced with the unthinkable."
(Sorry, forgot to make a note of the author.)

"CRAC: Big enough to make a difference. Small enough to keep contact personal."
(This slogan is mine!)

More news after your Christmas, our hottest, driest season.

Good luck with all your own work, and bless you all for making this strange Campaign possible.

Jenny.

Contents GL 24:

• FARC GIVE US 5 DAYS TO LEAVE CAQUETA
• Friends Rodrigo and Marlene ‘executed’ by the FARC
• An Avalanche of love and help as we move out
• Back to the Tolima Farm
• A wonderful letter from Camilo the teacher

"Jenny, the FARC have said we have to leave the region. We have one week to pack."

In 10 minutes I was in a taxi headed for the bus terminal, feeling strangely calm, planning, organizing in silence, my brain full of questions. The Revolutionary Army had given no reason for their order.

During the long night time bus journey to Neiva, the bus company throw videos at you; this time it was "George of the Jungle". I don't expect the makers of that comedy meant to make anyone cry, nor I imagine did they intend any deep message of someone being ripped from their jungle home to be thrown into the horrors of the modern world: my own reception of the film that night wouldn't have made a very intelligent review.

Ned was waiting for me at Neiva bus station. We raced on strange energy through the empty, hot streets to be put up in the very simple shack of a school teacher friend. All Ned knew was that a local guerrilla girl had transmitted the order to him, that it came from the High Command of the FARC without explanation, that it was absolute, that I had been invited to speak to the local community in Rovira the next morning, that local friends were trying to find out more and that the order was to leave Colombia. I still felt completely calm, said we'd go and work in Bolivia and wasn't the heat ghastly in Neiva?

‘Execution’ of two more beloved Friends

But then Ned delivered another blow. When the Green Party started in Guyabal in 1994 there was a good strong group of people, some of whom have never been mentioned in these Green Letters. One particular friend of mine was called Rodrigo Sanchez and his wife Marlene. They had been exiled from El Pato several years ago through what I consider an absurd accusation that they had been implicated in an incident in early 1995 when the Colombian Army came in dressed as women and killed the local guerrilla commander; the guerrilla's medic killed himself rather than be captured. Rodrigo had recently set up a radio telephone for Guayabal and was accused by the FARC of alerting the Army and thus of causing these deaths. Rodrigo was a life-long left-wing militant and I find this unlikely in the extreme.

A few days before the news of our enforced abandonment of the area hit, Rodrigo and Marlene were shot dead, presumably by the FARC, in their home in another part of Caqueta. This news overshadowed for me our relatively small problem – mere exile and loss of 4 years’ work.

We slept about three hours; my brain was too active for more. Then we took our last bus-ride to El Pato. My greatest fear on the way from Bogota had been that Fear, that endemic Colombian disease, would make everyone cut off from us, not speak, not dare to communicate. I was hugely, overwhelmingly, heart-warmingly wrong.

A Long Loving Goodbye

Our week-long leaving of El Pato was one of the most extraordinary waves of energy I have ever experienced. For five days our track was one long mule-train, our farm awash with people, helping hands and shocked, hushed conversations everywhere. In Rovira I spoke to our local community saying that as a life-long participant in radical politics, I understood that the mere fact of being labelled 'gringos' ('Yankees' - no distinction made for European) would be enough to raise hackles of suspicion in the revolutionary army and that we would of course comply with their order to leave; but that we went with good memories and a clean conscience, knowing that we stood firmly on the side of the people's movement in their fight for social justice. I said that we wanted all the forest we had saved to remain in the hands of the local action committee and that we prayed and trusted that the people would preserve it for their own benefit and that of future generations.

The leaders of the local junta were in bits about our leaving. So were the people of Chorreras. Everyone was rushing around, trying to get interviews with the local guerrilla commander to get more information, to get us more time, to change the outcome. Heriberto begged me to try and see the Commandante myself. I made my excuses and sent Ned. I knew it was a waste of time and wanted only to go home for a long, last farewell to the farm and all our years of labour, to salvage what we could and organize what to do with all the animals and transplants.

Halfway up our track lives Alicia, my hugely plump neighbour; we always call in there, hot, thirsty and exhausted, for juice or an orange or coffee. We have always borrowed her mules and given her mounds of clothing in exchange; she started a beautiful flower garden and vegetable patch after being impressed with what we were doing. She greeted me with a smile as usual, I splashed my face with water and said, "I expect you have heard the news".

Alicia collapsed and crumpled in my arms, helpless with grief, sobbing on and on, unable to talk. I felt almost guilty, I was accepting our fate without any trouble, thinking only of where we would work next. But these people I had lived amongst were devastated. And what had we actually done? A few gifts, a few seeds, some chats and laughs and even some quarrels. I felt like an independent mother guiltily leaving my heartbroken children.

The next few days were a whirl of packing, political conversations, mules and more mules, distributing chickens and guineas-pigs, selling cows, giving away sewing machines and the sugar-cane press, a typewriter and a bath (a wonderful big bath we'd never had time to install, carried all the way up that punishing mountain track by Ned months ago), flower plants and clothes - but not the cat, the children insisted NOT THE CAT.

Roberto from Chorreras, Heriberto of the Rovira junta and Teodoro its president all ran up and down that track - all middle aged men and a little wide round the waist, up and down, organizing the whole community to send mules - no small task during a bean-harvest when every animal was needed for crop-carrying. "No, no. That can wait, these people have to be helped first" they argued.

We met many people for the first time - we didn't even know there were so many mules in the region. They organized for a huge school hall to be put at our disposal. Our children went down early to 'sit on' and guard the luggage, which quickly grew into an enormous mound. Becky, my grown-up daughter from Ireland, who had come to see the place and people we'd been working for for three years, never got to visit Chorreras or Guayabal and many key names she never met, like Camilo and Cliomedes. But she certainly saw the results of those 3 years! - 20 people in the kitchen just the first packing day.

On the final day of the notice we'd been given, 1st February, I travelled down the track alone, carrying nothing, saying goodbye to those beautiful gardens, the thick black compost, the endless beds of seedlings representing years of aching muscles and bones, the new cabins, Marc's unfinished hexagonal house, the flowering bushes and trees grown tall, the forest, the silent monkeys, the streams - and out to the burning sun. I had trodden on a nail during the days of packing so my progress down the mountain was very slow and I was beetroot red with heat and effort as I hobbled up the last slope from the river to the ugliness of Rovira.

A surprise awaited me: a huge group of Chorreras women, all waiting for me, smartly dressed, as I turned up sweaty and scruffy from the trek. They had hired a mini-bus and come to say their last goodbye.

We stayed three days in that Rovira school-house, the same place we had put on our first 'Green Theatre' in 1995. The visits didn't stop. Ned and Becky ran a communal kitchen, villagers brought firewood and more food; we already had a mountain of onions and other vegetables salvaged from our garden. We arranged with a local bus-driver, a friend who goes by the wonderful nick-name of 'Siete Mujeres' (Seven Women) to take us all the way to Pueblo Nuevo, the hamlet nearest to our farm settlement in Tolima, begun in 1988. We had had no alarmed messages from them and so assumed (rightly) that the FARC order to leave did not pertain to our Tolima base, which was a whole hot day's ride away and 'Siete Mujeres' couldn't do the trip for several days. We had obeyed the FARC order to leave our farm and were now (somewhat affluent) 'roadside refugees' and felt no danger – rather, we had an embarrassing zone of protection with the whole community protecting us. I wish they treated their own people in danger as well.

The old leader of Vista Hermosa and another member of the 'Junta' of that hamlet with whom I 'd stayed after my brush with the cable bridge months ago, came for a long talk about what to do next - we had recently acquired for them detailed engineering plans worth 2 million pesos (approximately $2,000) donated free by a sympathetic engineer. Our own Rovira junta were constantly in attendance, looking a little more jubilant - I think they'd been giving the local Commandante a bad time.

"Jenny" said Teodoro, taking me aside, "If we get this decision reversed in the future, will you come back?" I thought of all the work we would have done elsewhere, knew we wouldn’t, and avoided a direct promise.

Wednesday morning and the bus arrived. The last sacks of clothes had been given away. More seeds had arrived from Neiva - results of a letter I wrote to an American organic gardening magazine which brought a very moving response from home gardeners all over North America - and these were passed on. A new leaflet I'd written, explaining our work in El Pato just before the blow fell, was gobbled up - people squabbling over who would get it photocopied and distributed. We held an evening of music and entertainment for a very sombre audience - our clowning around elicited no laughter that night.

A letter came from Anne in Bogotá saying that her top-level inquiries had yielded the information that the FARC were indeed ridding all Caquetá, Putumayo and Guaviare provinces of outsiders, Colombian and foreign. So we were able to confirm that our fate was nothing personal, though all local people kept mumbling that it was 'jealousy' on the part of the armed movement that made them remove us.

I had at last space for a few tears as waving hands bade us farewell from each shack we passed on our last journey from El Pato. In the open-sided bus, apart from ourselves, the children and one friend from Chorreras who insisted on coming with us, were a hen and nine chicks who protested loudly for the next 12 hours, two guinea fowl given to us at the last moment by Heriberto's wife, a large open box of guinea pigs who continued munching and mating throughout and noticed not a thing, and one completely hysterical cat, the subject of a piece of maternal authoritarianism; I gave it away at the first sizable settlement as it was suffering horribly. The children only sulked for a few hours.

A few days before I received the news in Bogotá I had a long session with a brilliant astrologer. I had asked, "What about our work in Colombia?"

"Very successful", he answered, and then looked at me strangely: "But you won't be there to see it." Oh, I thought, so it will be after my death. When he saw that I was taking this quite calmly he added, "In fact it will be your going that will bring about the triumph." I pictured a moving funeral of an old English lady … What I didn't know then was that it would all happen rather quickly and that I'd be at my own 'funeral'.

Aftermath

So what now? Well, what did we lose? - certainly not the forest, the most important of all, as there is absolutely no doubt about the fierceness of the Rovira junta in that regard: Heriberto in particular is passionately 'green'.

Our own farm? Yes, certainly - all that compost! And the building work and the loving care. I asked the Junta to put landless families there to continue using the gardens but they said the FARC had refused permission for anyone to go there. I trust that this piece of cussidness will soon be reversed.

Our green work? Well, I leave Camilo to answer this one: here is a translation of his letter to me as we were unable to meet before we went:

"All that remains is to thank you with all our heart for the help and teaching and friendship which will unite us forever. My own gratitude is enormous as you people taught me to love Nature, to live with Her and to show the children I teach that it is possible to save the Planet and that there are no national boundaries to developing these great ideals. "A seed has been sown, it is very small but rest assured that it will not die: quite the contrary, it is going to grow and bear fruit, it will not be easy but we will do it. Our friendship will prove that nothing can get in the way of continuing to communicate with one another, of discussing environmental topics and other pressing matters with no fear in talking about them. (he is referring to pressing for information from the FARC as to why we were banished) "There is a bitter taste left in this community (Chorreras) through not knowing the reasons for this situation that has arisen and all we know is that the greatest losers, apart from yourselves, are the communities you have been working with and the little schools. "I promise you, Jenny, to keep going forward with all the plans we have made, like tree-planting in Chorreras, the 'Green Queen' competition in the schools and so on, to show that your Campaign has not left - it has germinated!"

ATLANTIS ICONONZO TOLIMA COLOMBIA S. AMERICA

Visitors will have an easier time: less than an hour's pleasant walk through woodland, field and stream, no great inclines.

The Tolima Farm

The Tolima settlement, when we arrived after 3½ years' absence, was in a state of Grand Decay. In the fortnight we've been here since our Exile, there has been a flurry of activity: rebuilding, extending and improving the gardens and always wondering - what next? This is no grand virgin forest; here our 175 hectare settlement of streams, rocks and waterfalls, several shacks and a great deal of secondary forest is an 'island' in the surrounding agricultural scenery. But what an island! I walked just a few yards - precious minutes stolen from feverish activity to get the place on its 'feet' - to sample what Nature had achieved in 3 years. I was astonished. Trees now soaring above my head, jungle taken over. Baby trees I planted 10 years ago now stand 30 feet tall. I saw once again that to destroy Nature, Man has to hack and rape and burn and wreck over and over again: for the minute you leave her to herself, she springs back powerfully in all her Beauty.

My first move has been to contact the environmental groups in Icononzo and former friends of 'green' consciousness. There is nowhere in the world that Nature does not need help. We will work here for a while and, if we feel ourselves limited, will move on to the forests of Bolivia.

I trust all our friends who have stayed with us over these three eventful years will follow us there, via these Green Letters?

My love and thanks to you all
Jenny James

Contents GL 25:

• A busy start to our new Tolima campaign
• Local priest holds Mass to ‘pray for rain’
• Life-endangering Press reports
• “The Forest Cries for you”
• Offers flood in of Places to Settle Next

Greetings from Tolima

Exactly two months have passed since I reported our enforced exit from Caquetá at the command of the revolutionary guerrilla army. Since then anyone who has followed news of Colombia in the press will have noticed why we were told to leave: there has been a tremendous intensification of the civil war there and presumably the FARC guerrilla command could not risk having somewhat unknown quantities (us) in their region.

As soon as we returned to our Tolima base (begun 10 years ago) we made contact with local peasant leaders and ascertained immediately that there is no corresponding order to remove us from this region so our gardening, building, seed-distribution and 'preaching by example' can continue in peace for now.

Just before being thrown out of Caquetá, I had written a short letter to an American organic gardening magazine hardly expecting them even to print it. This sealed our fate, as far as any notions of 'retiring' were concerned, as the extraordinary generosity of Canadian and American home gardeners has kept us drowning in seeds ever since - what we term in our community a 'message from the Cosmos' to carry on.

I contacted the head of the local banana producers union, told him of our work in Caquetá and of the 'problem' of the seeds and he came up from the hot country to our farm immediately, overwhelmed with gratitude:

"You have come just at the right moment," he said. "The 'Niño' phenomenon has caused terrible droughts, the banana crop is ruined, a new disease has destroyed the coffee crop and the people are just in the right frame of mind to see how reliance on mono-cultivation doesn't work. They know they must grow their own food at home - come and tell them how to grow vegetables and how to form organic compost."

Another nail in the coffin of my youthful dreams of becoming a ballet dancer or a President. I bowed to the forces of Destiny; I must teach Colombian peasants how to turn cow-poo into cabbages. I sighed bravely and Louise and I made our way down to the hotter lands where the people's reception at the 'banana crisis' meeting was warm and open.

Later I was visited by the Man from Umata. This is a government organisation that sends men around to the farms to teach people how to grow useful crops. He had the task of setting up 45 farms in our area in a few months and, of course, the government seed had not arrived. He gratefully took away a large quantity of 'cold country' (you'd be green with envy if you knew what 'cold' meant here!) seed, but carefully refused any cabbage seed as that had arrived. The ignorance of the man about how to grow the simplest vegetables was as great as his desire to learn. I think we have our work cut out.

Then I put a notice in Don Pedro's shop - our local store which sells nothing we would ever dream of buying. My notice invited local people to bring any of their surplus crops - fruit, plantains, yuca, things we don't grow - and receive vegetable seed in return. Such people always look around our already extensive gardens and view our rapid compost systems. We had always thought we were somehow 'cheating' - through our perfect temperature and humidity - producing compost within a fortnight when all the books say it takes months but now 'Organic Gardening', the American magazine mentioned above, has printed a brilliant booklet confirming such turnover is possible in colder climes - the secret is turning the heap every three days to 'cook' and oxygenate it.

A NEWCOMER'S ACCOUNT -

John is a young Englishman who has recently joined us and has decided to stay. Here is what he says:

"After living in a European city for 3 years I am only just getting used to living here after a few months. There are no distractions here. No TV, cinema, electricity, pubs, night-clubs. No passive diversions to take a person out of him/herself.

What there is, is Nature and human beings, and what we can create together to nourish ourselves. Music, dance, play, communication, food.

It takes a lot of work to live like this, not to make money - but to live. To grow food, to build shelters, to repair clothes, to gather firewood, to keep oneself and one's relationships healthy.

Through this work we are tapping into the true economy. Nature's economy. Here, deals are struck directly with the Earth with less need of that dubious concept - money. Vegetable waste to the chickens and guinea pigs to make compost. Compost to the soil to improve it and grow food to eat. The surplus back to the Earth for her own use. In this economy EVERYONE benefits.

Anyone can do this anywhere. It's not easy, it's so different from the way things are normally done. It takes Will, Spirit, Determination, Imagination and Co-operation. And it really badly needs to be done. Everywhere."

One day our neighbour Antonino came round and invited us all to an open-air mass up near his farm. The local people had clubbed together to pay a priest to come and pray for rain. Having ascertained that the man was serious, we offered a Rain Dance instead and suggested a better idea might be to plant trees. Antonino thought we were ridiculous and, laughing good-humouredly, left confirmed in his suspicion that the gringos were indeed 'locos'.

DIRTY AND DANGEROUS PRESS -

Just before receiving news of our eviction from Caqueta in Bogotá in January, we received some other news: that we were 'gun-running for the guerrilla'. This kind of fabricated rumour is an invitation for a death sentence, given the situation in Colombia. It came from a journalist called Tim Ross. I phoned him up immediately and invited him round to meet the people whose lives he was putting in danger - mainly children and a couple of women. He said. "Well, that was what I heard."

I happen to know his source: a right wing American journalist called Tom Quinn who used to write for 'Time' magazine and who managed to kill himself and his wife in a drunken driving accident in Bogotá and who had done his level best years ago to get us a similar death sentence (he also had not met us). So I was immediately able to quote Mr Ross his source and repeat the invitation to meet us. Surprise...... He did not turn up.

‘The Forest Cries for You’

Our friends in Caquetá have continued to grieve: my neighbour Alicia wrote a movingly poetic letter in which she insisted the forest was "crying for us", it felt so lonely and abandoned without us. Roberto of Chorreras, who cannot write, sent a letter dictated to his step-daughter which said over and over again for two pages "we miss you, please don't forget us." And Heriberto, perhaps the most dedicated environmentalist in our little hamlet of Rovira, has religiously, conscientiously and regularly forwarded our mountains of post and seeds from America - a very expensive business indeed. One young man from Chorreras, Cristóbal, decided not to mourn, he came with us to Tolima, bringing his two very small sons and a young brother. Recently we sent him back into El Pato with a big parcel of suitable seed for our former neighbours, letters and money for Heriberto to keep sending our post and a request for NEWS.

Such friendships cannot be severed by a mere civil war.

THE FUTURE -

Even while we dash around improving our food production, fighting against impoverished soils, making contact with neighbours, building wooden cabins, collapsing exhausted at the end of the day, we are always holding conversations with one another on the topic of what - or rather where - next?

There is no shortage of answers falling from Heaven.

Anne recently spent a month in Ecuador extracting my 14 year old daughter, Alice, from Colombian red-tape by sending her via Quito to Ireland (she was 3 when we left Ireland and wants to know her roots.)

While she was there Anne naturally informed our network of contacts of our new status as 'war refugees' and she was greeted with a shower of requests: at one point she was staying in a beautiful cloud-forest reserve in a hexagonal dome swarming with humming birds. The owner invited us to come and stay in his' research station' and establish an organic garden.

Another friend who runs some thermal baths high in the mountains had the same idea. Fernando, whose family owns the biggest farm in Ecuador, wants us to go there and work in organic farming; Martha of the Centre for Research into Tropical Forests invited us to their reserve. It seems that after the huge damage wreaked by El Niño, which has closed coastal Ecuador off from the mountain settlements, people have become more aware of the need for self-sufficiency.

Then Anne found herself in the offices of the Mayor of Quito, doing his astrology chart which, as well as the opinion polls, confirms that he will be the next President of Ecuador. She gave him a copy of John Moon's excellent reprint of the "Green Letters" and he invited us to come and work in Ecuador when he takes office next May! But none of this is quite our style, is it?

Colombia reclaimed us: it is after all with her that we have our love, life and death affair. There is an Italian priest in Bogotá (it seems the church won't leave us atheists alone!) famous for his charitable work all over Colombia. He is in his 70's and has just had 175 peasant housing units built in the sparsely inhabited jungle province of Vichada in the north-east of Colombia (bordering Venezuela and Brazil). This settlement is destined for the 'desplazados' - the war refugees - of Bogotá, of which there are many thousands in every large town and more arriving daily in an attempt to flee the hideous massacres perpetrated by the paramilitary forces on the peasants living in guerrilla zones (it could happen to our own friends in Caquetá).

The priest has no-one to organise this settlement which he would like to set up as a model community. A mutual friend mentioned a group of Europeans he knows who have a lot of experience in this kind of thing and who have just lost their 'jobs' in Caquetá ..... I am writing this in Bogotá where I am soon to meet him.

'Bye for now,
Jenny James

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