Contents GL 26:

• Securing our saved forests legally
• Govt. agencies attempt to ‘beatify’ us..
• A mule load of Organic Gardening magazines..
• A nasty brush with Glue Sniffers
• Rumours of hostility and further exile by the FARC
• Seed Spreading…

Anne has just returned from Bogota where she spoke with several government agencies regarding preservation of the forests we purchased and were forced to abandon in Caqueta by the guerrilla army. Reactions were very positive.

INCORA is the agency which gives title to land: evidently the man at their office found it very hard to believe what he was hearing: that we wanted to give the land for protection, not sell it. He kept asking how much we were asking for it. Finally the word 'donation' got through and he almost started a party in jubilation. He rang up his co-workers to tell them about these "wonderful people who want to give their forest". Reports Anne: "He kept repeating how glad he was that people like us live in Colombia and wanted to take me to see the boss of the whole agency." It remains to be seen how these agencies and the guerrilla sort out their differences but there is hope on the horizon as a new President of Colombia has just been elected. He is actually a right-winger but such is the people's desire for peace that he was forced to make real moves towards talks with the guerrilla in order to win the election.

Having ascertained that INCORA would definitely facilitate proper title to all the lands we purchased, Anne then went to the government department of National Parks. She explained our situation - that we are not allowed to return to Caqueta, but that we do not want our preservation work there wasted and want them to make 'our' forests part of the National Parque de los Picachos, which was right near the borders of our land.

Anne reports "They flurried around getting more and more people in to listen to my story and shaking my hand and saying 'Thank you for living in Colombia' and how heroic we are! I tried to explain that actually all we were doing was living the way we want to and there wasn't a hint of sacrifice involved, but the man was in love with his idea of these saintly foreigners out saving the Colombian countryside, so I gave up."

The people from the Parks Department have, so far, no trouble with the guerrilla so our hopes are fairly high that our work in Caqueta will not be wasted. If any of our readers are getting a headache trying to work out the relationship between the guerrilla forces and the Colombian government - please let us know if you come up with a solution!

A MULE LOAD OF MAGAZINES -

So many generous North Americans had sent me back copies of the excellent magazine "Organic Gardening" that I was finding my bed-space severely restricted. So when Anne left for Bogota we sent a mule load of them ahead of her to the village to see if she could find English speaking organic gardeners in Bogota - an unlikely-sounding task for anyone but Anne. She went to the Ministry of Agriculture's 'Sustainable Agriculture' department and met the Director, a lady called Maria Teresa, who enthusiastically accepted Anne's offer of the magazines. "Are you sure they're not going to sit in a cellar like so much of the Ministry's literature?" said Anne, displaying pure Irish diplomacy. "Of course not!" said the lady, "we will go through them, pick out and translate the bits most relevant to Colombian farmers and make a booklet of it." The Director also promised us Colombian literature on organic farming in exchange, to give away to peasants with our seed donations.

Another donation of magazines went to the owner of the best health food shop in Bogota who is beginning his own organic garden in the hills outside Bogota. In exchange, he has offered to keep us in organic vegetables whenever we are in Bogota and to keep for us all his products which have passed their sell-by date. The third outlet for the magazines - and more seeds - is the high security political prisoners' jail in Medellin where the spokesman for the ELN - one of Colombia's guerrilla movements (it stands for National Liberation Army) - have an organic garden. This contact comes to us from Anne's new flatmate in Bogota, a Canadian woman who dedicates her life to working for human rights in Colombia. What is more, Joan, the Canadian woman, has asked us "could we take ex-prisoners on our farm?" She is attempting to start ecologically-sound small industries inside the prisons as Colombian prisoners have no work or study opportunities and the hideous overcrowding, riots and killings grow yearly. As part of her project she is trying to help ex-prisoners find work when they leave prison, outside their usual criminal environment.

Joan has also asked us would we shelter trade unionists whose lives are threatened by the right-wing paramilitaries who see them as fair game along with any other left-wing activists or human rights workers. Anne agreed immediately and met with Joan's partners in her organisation (the rest are Colombian) one of whom said to her: "The most incredible thing in all this is that you people exist."

GLUE SNIFFERS COME TO ATLANTIS

At the end of Green Letter 25, I mentioned the possibility of us transferring to the NE Colombian province of Vichada. After talking to people in the know and seeing a comprehensive selection of photographs of the project, we knew immediately that this was a Very Bad idea: the place is a desert, temperatures are beyond a European's boiling-point and some polite but uncharitable information was given us regarding the project manager, a priest. At the same time, it became obvious that voluntarily throwing away 10 years' excellent work on the Tolima farm to begin elsewhere brought our sanity into doubt. And so we accepted the plea of "Medicins du Monde", (Doctors of the World) a French charity, to take in some of the street girls they work with, and their babies. Within days, two tiny girls - who turned out to be in their twenties - and the 8 month old baby of one of them came to live with us. Anne gave them her pretty room in the garden.

The arrangement seemed idyllic. One of the Colombian doctors who heads the charity accompanied them down here and spent magical hours being shown around our gardens, buildings and woodland. He was enchanted and begged to be allowed to come back again with his wife and children. The girls settled in immediately, helping well with the work, enjoying our food, watching our theatre, chatting to everyone.

Then, after three days they suddenly wanted to leave and gave no reason. We gave them their fare back to their street life. Then we discovered the damage: unmentionable deposits in my vegetable garden ( though the toilet was only yards away) and a hideous smell in Anne's room that she couldn't identify. It was driving her crazy, then she found it: two squashed bags of glue, one under the mattress, the other under the floorboards. The girls had asked our children for it 'to mend their shoes'. Our kids knew no other use for glue and had innocently handed over the glue bottle. Thus endeth our first foray into the world of the 'poor' street people of Bogota. Another visitor's expensive jacket disappeared with them.

At 6.00 a.m. the morning these girls were leaving, the full moon was setting brightly in the sky. Anne overheard the girls in an animated discussion as to whether it was the sun or the moon. The advocate of the sun theory won.

This poem was sent to me by an American supporter who is an organic gardener.

Arboreal

If I could choose a being to be
It would be a tree I'd choose to be
For to sway for years alongside your mate
And watch your family grow to be great
Would be the grandest feeling of love
Always dancing together, no push or shove
For hundreds of years with outstretched arms
To love and nurture all Nature's charms
And to watch as your granddaddy grew older yet strong
And billow beneath him, feeling proud to belong -
Oh the wondrous life a tree can live
And one thing back to it I shall give
I resolve to respect the beautiful tree
For some day a part of it I will be.

By Angie Hawkinson, Minnesota, USA

Reading Recommendations

I am reading Vice President Al Gore's book "Earth in the Balance". The pathetic environmental record of his government notwithstanding, it really is an excellent book: I don't take at all well to scientific facts and figures, but this man has such a clear and compelling style that I am forced onward to understand intellectually all that I know instinctually. Not recommended for the environmentally depressed.

Not strictly environmental, but a brilliant, cutting expose of US policy abroad, "What Uncle Sam Really Wants" by Noam Chomsky, published by the Odonian Press, is a short clear path through US double-speak.

Magazines I admire: "Green Line" reports on ecological action: available from PO Box 5, Lostwitheil, Kernow PL22 0YT; "Corporate Watch" does just that: Box E, 111 Magdalen Road, Oxford OX4 1RQ; and "Skyeviews" by a Quaker ecologist, Josephine Fox of 11 Ullinish by Struan, Isle of Skye IV56 8FD Scotland. Simply uplifting. Great work, Jo.

GREEN THEATRE REVIVAL

After our enforced exit from Caqueta, the Commune grandmother (me) hadn't felt a lot of enthusiasm for theatre work - especially in the 5 months since our return to Tolima, all my energy has gone on extending our gardens to 5 or 6 times their original size (and this will have to be doubled to feed us all properly). But the teen and pre-teen department took matters into their own hands, putting together a beautiful Colombian folk-dance, traditional for this time of year, which they presented at a local fiesta. The response was thunderous and overwhelmed the children. People said to them: "Even our own children don't know how to perform these dances and here you are, a bunch of gringos doing it!." They were immediately invited to other local schools to perform, which for me means a 'green light' to go ahead and offer our environmental message in artistic form as we did in Caqueta.

Then in Bogota, Anne met up with a friend of ours, Hector, who has written one of the most moving, intelligent and impassioned critiques of the impact of our use of the motor vehicle on human life that I have ever seen. Later this year Hector is organising a multi-national anti-motor-car theatre season, so it looks like I'd better start letting my imagination fly while I'm weeding the carrots.

Incidentally, while 17 year old Louise was organising her dancing troupe at the local fiesta, a rather drunk man told her "the guerrilla were going to throw you out of this area too, but we told them what good people you are." We are checking this information with a sober source.

SPREADING THE SEED

Hardly a day passes now without local people turning up with produce to exchange for seeds, or without horseback journeys by our youngest members down to hotter climes to give away seed down there - and come back with bananas, papayas, lemons, avocados. Two local women are combining together to begin a vegetable garden - unusual initiative in this very 'nuclear' culture: we gave them a bumper bundle of seeds for this. The wife of a local community leader runs a pre-school group and has asked for visual materials from us; we have passed to her husband sackloads of useful environmental and organic farming literature for distribution to his communities. The area and quantities of seed we deal with here are much larger than in Caqueta, mainly thanks to the generosity of our new American supporters - I am beginning to appreciate what a huge and diverse country that is. I do worry about the lack of a direct forest/organic gardening connection in this area - there is no virgin forest left - but as (rather privileged) war refugees, we just work where we find ourselves. One seed at a time.

Our own nearly 400 acre woodland reserve is, of course, one swaying area of trees - many only ten years old, but high above our heads. As Andreas Graf of Germany who visited here said "Atlantis farm in Tolima is the most beautiful place I've ever seen." As drought strikes and local people visit, I think they get the message.

A quote from the Ditchling Quaker Meeting's magazine 'Inspirations':

"To impoverish the Earth now to support outward greatness appears to be an injury to the succeeding age"
John Woolman 1772

I end with warm thanks to all my correspondents and with this ditty, composed in my head as I struggled up the hot, treeless incline in Caqueta one day:

Birds Lament (translated from Spanish)

In the time of the flood
I still managed to find
A tree to rest
As I flew.

But what will I do
As the clock ticks round
To the 2000th year
And the last tree hits the ground?

Contents GL 27:

• Our Green Theatre takes flight in Tolima
• 30 local women on fertile visit to our farm
• Green messages from the Red FARC
• Inside not-so-green Government Depts.
• The Campaign spreads…

Our rather unsalubrious experience with the street girls from Bogotá reported in the last Green Letter, has been well healed by the addition to our community of Pedro, a Bogotá taxi-driver in his 30s. Pedro was killing himself and ruining his family life by taking 'basuco' a cocaine-based drug, and was brought here over a month ago by his wife who begged us to cure him. We were cynical, "Three days at most,” we said to each other.

I am always mistrustful of miracle stories but no-one finds it possible to believe this hardworking, deeply caring man, who involves himself in all our activities, ever led a dissolute life-style. Not long after joining us, he had a birthday and I said "Let's use this to give ourselves a real push on the theatre front.” I leave Anne to tell the story:

Leo is the sign of the theatre, drama, showing off, and this last month we haven't stopped giving theatre shows, making up new plays, costumes, dances, songs and even building a huge lovely outdoor theatre whose natural backdrop is the forest. The younger lads levelled out an enormous semi-circle on the side of a hill, we made seats, curtains, dressing rooms and even a shaded area for the 'orchestra'. With all our 'green' and purely entertainment acts, our programme is now long enough for three afternoon performances.

On Day 1, as we began testing out a new dance-drama called 'Man and the Four elements', four secondary schoolgirls arrived from Icononzo. The new (hideous) park in the central square of Icononzo, our nearest market town, was to be inaugurated a few days later and, on seeing our performance, they begged us to come down and show our green message at the celebrations. Lots of music and dance groups were coming from other parts of the province of Tolima.

We had just a few days to get ready, running a self-sufficient organic farm and theatre company at the same time. As usual Jenny began her tricks of creating impossible projects on top of an already impossibly full time-table: like the morning before we presented our first public show in our home theatre to a local audience and still had to hang curtains and hadn't yet managed to do a full dress rehearsal, she persuaded me to go completely through the huge children's library we've collected over the past ten years to give books away. Then two days before going down to Icononzo she bullied me into making a huge ecological banner on fishing net (impossible to work with) in lettering made of donated gold braid (also impossible to work with). Then the evening before we went to Icononzo, just as I was sewing pink velvet roses on the banner instead of practising the new piece I was going to present, she got the rest of the group (who should have been practising their pieces) into a frenzy of cutting out letters while she made a 20 foot long banner that explained in Spanish poetry how each of the four elements was in harmony until abused by Man.

She continued this particular insanity until five minutes before we went to the square in Icononzo to put on our show. The result of this strange quirk of our theatre director is that we never do final dress rehearsals until we're actually on stage. However, in her defence it must be said that the projects usually work and one is glad afterwards: and even at the time of doing them one is so busy cursing oneself for being hauled into yet another crazy project and cursing one's director for being a nutcase that there's not a moment left for feeling stagefright ......

On the way down to Icononzo in Don Hernando's little open-sided country bus, he began to put on awful Colombian pop-music as is the custom here, but Jenny quickly offered him a deal: that we'd sing for him if he turned it off. So we practised our songs for him and Andy even managed to play his accordion, perched on the top of lumpy luggage on a bumpy road.

In Icononzo, I went off exhausted to find out what arrangements had been made to build a stage. None, of course. The 'stage' was a round of unshaded concrete, exposed on all sides. I returned to our camp in the school to report that all was chaos. Jenny had of course predicted this and greeted me with the news that we'd go that evening and put on some clowning and music in the square to get over the fright at performing to such unknown, large crowds: we got out the instruments and off we went. Instantly a big appreciative crowd gathered and we played music while Andy showed off his juggling skills and the girls did acrobatics.

Of all our props and costumes, I think only the sewing thread is purchased. The rest is made of things donated, bits of old clothing, things found on the street in Bogotá, plus a lot of work and imagination. None of us are professional except Fin, our guitarist (he played in pubs in Ireland). But Jenny is an expert at sewing us all together into a presentable, and sometimes quite beautiful, patchwork by dredging up all the bits of talent we do have. This method reflects our basic philosophy which is that anything you need is nearly always to be found close at hand.

The great day began by being woken before dawn by the hideous sounds of school brass bands practising. When we went to the town centre we were bowled over by the deafening noise of the sound system being shouted into by self-congratulating politicians, proud of constructing the barren new concrete 'park' that replaces a lovely old stone peasant market place. Then the folkloric dance groups began, very professional and played for by professional musicians. This made us all nervous. Our theatre is the opposite of slick professionalism. It is quite delicate, fragile, subtle, full of meaning and message.

When our time came, Jenny introduced us quietly over the microphone, saying we are a group who work with the earth and that our theatre had begun as our own entertainment as we have no electricity on our farm. Her quietness contrasted with all the raucousness that had gone before and the audience went totally silent, entranced as Louise, 17, danced on as Fire, Katie, 13, as Air, Laura ,12, as Earth and Julie, 8, as Water. Then Tristan, 16, as the 'baddie' - Man.

Then I put on all the rags and leaves and wigs and fringes I needed to hide behind to become the Madre Monte - the Old woman of the Woods, a Colombian mythical figure. We mixed this with the Irish legend of the Cailleach Bearach, the Old Woman of Beara who used to protect Nature in all her forms, including the baser instincts, and who threw herself into the Western Ocean when the oppression of Christianity took over. With that undying life-force that myths have, this cross-breed re-wrote itself into a comic green lecture on forest-felling via story-telling, movement and music.

The children also presented 'The Battle of the Forest', an exquisite tragedy with no words, just action, dance and music, well tested in Caquetá. And next day as I went shopping I was grabbed by the hand several times by complete strangers, local men and women who'd seen the show and who couldn't express their thanks enough for the beautiful 'message'. One old lady, sitting on the steps of her humble house, stopped me to say she hoped that the young people especially would listen to our message and then 'the world would be a different place'.

Back at our school camp, Jenny was visited by a teacher from Cunday, a busy market town in the neighbouring province, Cundinamarca, to ask us to perform in the schools there, and the lady owner of a private college in Melgar, a big holiday town in hot country, invited us to present our theatre at several events in a Cultural week in September. So Jenny's worries that the theatre would no longer be relevant outside of Caquetá had to be buried.

Back home, after a few hours' rest, we threw ourselves into spring-cleaning the garden and houses in preparation for the visit of 15 local women who wanted to learn about organic gardening and compost-making, and to see the 'green' part of our theatre work. On the appointed day, 30 ladies and their children arrived in the middle of a downpour. We persuaded them to accept dry clothes, gave them drinks, vegetarian food, leaflets on organic agriculture and compost making, books for their children, vast quantities of seeds, a tour of the gardens and composting systems, then squeezed them all indoors to view the theatre as our new open-air stage was too muddy.

Listening through the attentive, appreciative ears of these serious campesino women, each of us could 'hear' all our acts, poems, songs and messages anew, laden with even more meaning than they had been in Caquetá. We were astonished.

While all this was going on, our team of men worked in the kitchen - something local people have come to expect from our strange culture (their own men never cook). Ned and his helpers served up a three course vegetarian dinner. The local women were especially impressed with the soup and asked for the recipe. Ned explained that not one ingredient was bought, and that the main ingredient was boré, a huge local starchy tuber that grows wild here and which nowadays is looked down on as 'pigfood'. This information was received with amazement as he explained exactly when to pick it and how to cook it - an Englishman teaching campesino women how to cook indigenous food!

The ladies themselves had each brought gifts of oranges, plantains and coffee beans. They couldn't get enough of our brown bread and home-made guava jam, so we gave them three big jars of it to divide up amongst them.

We have set an unstoppable ball rolling, Since then, we have been asked to take our theatre down to the village an hour from here, and for two more delegations of gardening women to come up to visit.

A recent Revolutionary Armed Forces bulletin of four pages, devotes two of them to an 'Ecological Message', complete with a very sweet drawing of trees, river and wildlife. Here is a translation:

To all people of the east of Tolima we bring our message of preoccupation regarding the ecological imbalance which is threatening serious consequences for the future of humanity and our interest in helping to conserve the natural resources which still remain in this region.

It is imperative that the communities, headed by their chosen leaders, link themselves to this task so that they may play a decisive role in the control, vigilance and application of the norms established to this end. Equally, it is of great importance to educate our youth and our children regarding respect for and conservation of the natural environment, for the sake of a future which belongs to us all.

Gradually, positive results are being felt as the local populace complies with the directions we have previously established as regards the felling of trees and hunting: here the progress is significant, but lacking still is the concern regarding the protection of vegetation along waterways, contamination of water, burning, and the control of diseases and plagues.

We remain firm with regard to not allowing fishing with trawl nets, enclosures, poisons, explosives or other contaminating materials .... We reject, as any other crime, the attitudes of those who kill one species of fish in order to monopolise the lake with fish-nurseries of another species. We insist that fishing committees should be set up to establish norms regarding quantity and quality of catches as well as to ensure the cleanliness and maintenance of the lake. We will continue to sanction with fines those who ignore what we have established, until such times as the committees are set up.

ANNE'S MESSAGE TO THE NOT-SO-GREEN GOVERNMENT

Anne reports: Recently in Bogotá, I began to get annoyed at the ivory tower attitude of many governmental institutions that are supposedly concerned with the countryside and country people. The Ministry of Agriculture had no relevant booklets of interest and legibility for campesinos, only expensive, useless super-technical studies that involved lots of machines, money and chemicals; and the Ministry for the Environment had only a few good booklets. After a few days of trying to extract the impossible from them, first requesting nicely, then complaining and guilt-tripping and finally openly criticising their lack of organisation, I went off steaming to stay with some friends, Tomas and Adela, in the countryside near Bogotá.

These people have both worked closely with government projects, designing the tourist information centres and trails of the national parks. In one park, in Putumayo, they designed the trail so that it follows the story of special Tarot cards, each stopping place being shown by a wood carving, with one of the cards reflecting it, and an interpretation based on local Indian legends.

In the evening, by the fire (it's very high and cold where they live) I let off a bit of steam about the government departments, though I wasn't really sure of my reception as my hosts have built their beautiful ecological house on money earned from the organisations I was moaning about. So I was amazed and amused when Tomas began to expound his viewpoints: "Imagine,” said he, "how awful it would be if all these govt. people were actually effective!” I was lost. "Look,” he explained: "if they implemented their plans for bigger, better farms and more machines and chemicals! ....I sigh with relief at how inefficient they are.”

Then he went on to share another 'secret' thought of dubious political correctness: "Although everyone moans about the campesinos going to the city and leaving the country, I think it's part of Gaia's plan to protect herself. I see the cities like cancer and boils, where all the poison is concentrated so as to protect the rest of the body.....”

He went on the say that after being at top level with huge projects with enormous budgets, he now knew that the only way to be effective was to do as we're doing - choose a small area, live there, and concentrate on it. Change happens in small groups, not in big ones.

But in fairness to Colombian institutions, I came home with a few boxes of lovely books and a good semi-state organisation of coffee growers enthusiastically received some 'Organic Gardening' magazines and in return gave me a pile of booklets on how to make compost, which we give to local people when they receive seeds from us. I told this 'Federation of Coffee Growers' about our seed programme and they immediately began insisting that they wanted some to give to small-time growers who need to diversify now that the coffee disease 'broca' has hit the crops. "What!” I exclaimed, "but you've a huge organisation with funds. Why don't you have your own seeds?” They looked a bit embarrassed and said sometimes they did but the supply was a bit disorganised .... so I said OK, as long as they gave us lots of useful literature and posters.

"The speed with which we overcome what we have achieved is the precise measure of progress.”
(Taken from 'Ventana Indiscreta' alternative Bogotá magazine)

ANNE & THE PRESIDENT OF ECUADOR

Yes, she got it right: while in Ecuador, Anne did the astrological chart of Jamil Mahaud, now President of Ecuador. She had said at the time, "I won't even discuss whether or not you will be elected as it is so obvious from your chart that you will be. Instead we will talk of the dangers surrounding you afterwards.” He obviously had enemies and the military could present a problem. Since then he won the election and there have been two attempts to instigate a military coup ....

BEATEN TO THE BEET

Back in Ireland, Mary Kelly went to Dublin with my daughter Alice to go on a Monsanto beetroot-pulling expedition with a group of eco-warriors, only to find that local farmers had got there first and had pulled up the lot themselves to counteract the Frankensteinian genetic-interference experiments.

PARKS DEPT. CIRCUMVENT OUR GUERRILLA BAN

So many were the seeds sent by our loyal supporter, Steve Thompson of Sheffield (and donated by Unwin's and Johnson's) and by American helpers, that we made up a huge parcel for our friends back in Caqueta. But how to get them there, now we are banned from the area? Simple (as it turned out) - the Government in the form of the National Parks Division took them for us and have happily agreed to be our postmen any time in the future.

QUESTION CORNER

Who will solve our problem of Beetle and Blight on Beans? We feel a bit silly showing ladies around and having to rush round just beforehand, guiltily ripping up all the pathetically lace-worked bean plants in order not to blemish the organic message.

JUNGLE CHILDREN

Report from our commune children when they went up to a local school to play football: the Colombian kids said, "Yes, let's play with the jungle children.”

ARGOS ......

is a Colombian organisation which encourages farmers to value their own ethnic agricultural methods without chemicals; they operate in the Magdalena Medio region in the north of Colombia. Here is a letter we received from their director after donating them seeds:

"We want to thank you for the vegetable seeds and the Organic Gardening magazines. These materials will be sent to the rural zones of the Yarigui Indians which cover San Vicente de Chucuri, El Carmen de Chucuri, Zapatoca, Betulia, Simacota, Santa Helena del Opón and Landazuri in Santander.” Our turn to need a map.

BITTER IRONY

There had to be some bad news. Our friend Heriberto of Caqueta reports sadly that the rich black composted soil of the farm we were forced to abandon there is now being used to grow opium poppy.

We dare to end on this bad note since everything else feels so good.

With love to you all
Jenny James

Contents:

• Impressive day by day account of one month of our campaigning lives
• Two Helicopter attacks - shooting overhead
• The ‘Sleeping Beauty’ awakes to a Horror Age
• Bad news of wild animal slaughter in our lost Caqueta farm
• Theatre shows in nightmare conditions
• A sadistic zoo and a public cattle killing…
• Very serious rumours of the FARC exiling us again

- I will call this one
'A Month in the Life of a Tropical Green Campaign':-

1st September 1998

25 Secondary School students from a large country village several hours away came with 2 teachers to spend the day as part of their course. Tour of gardens and compost systems, waterfalls and fields and finally a fun theatre show in our new open-air theatre pitch. Then serious and beautiful 'green' songs written mainly by Louise and some violin pieces from our nervous new learners. A lovely day.

2nd September 1998

Helicopters circling overhead all day. Shooting and bombing nearby into the jungle. Some of our people so worried we went to see what state our cave is in - it's a huge natural structure just one minute from the house where local people told me families used to sleep during the worst years of the 'Violencia' in the '40s and '50s to save their lives. Recently only the home of hundreds of vampire bats (these are sweet little creatures, unlike their name). The commune matriarch, Yours Truly, whose attitudes towards life and death have mellowed over the years, had a brainwave that the cave, if the rocks on the floor could be dealt with, would make a brilliant indoor theatre with candle lighting and natural acoustics. As helicopters passed very low overhead viewing us, strains of Louise's song 'Yesterday, there was a tree' wafted down from the outdoor theatre - afternoon practice was in progress. Louise herself was away in a tiny hamlet called El Rodeo, attending a parent-teacher meeting to talk about the theatre we are to do there. We couldn't tell how near to her the bombing was taking place....

3rd September

17 women from Hoya Grande, a village near to us in hotter country down the mountain came on a pre-arranged 'gardening course'. During our afternoon theatre show for them which took place indoors in pouring rain, all of them crowded in to our sewing room, helicopters once again started flying overhead. As the attacks were happening near the homes of these people, their attention was naturally very bad; many women had not turned up through fear. We all agreed that the most dangerous thing to do was run in to the jungle (they might be mistaken for guerrilla soldiers) and the best thing was to be visible in our own farms. During our exhausted dinner break a new 'green' play came to me as I was washing my hands. Called 'The Sleeping Beauty', it will entail a beautiful old fashioned maiden being rudely awakened into this brute age by a leather-and-metal dressed lout with loud music. Then will ensue a comic (and very serious) dialogue in Spanish verse and song regarding the pros and cons of this 'wonderful' age, at the end of which the Sleeping Beauty will go back to sleep for another 200 years in disgust ...

4th September

Surprise visit from the Mayor of Cunday and posse. Cunday is a municipal capital in very hot country many hours away, but the River Cunday evidently runs through our land. He came to ask us to work with his council on reforesting the headwaters of all the streams that serve this area as we've made a fairly good start already! He begged us to help purchase the headwaters of the River Cunday which runs ever shallower. He told us there are over 300 river-sources in this area, more than in any other municipality. He and his men stayed to listen to our eco-songs and were riveted and enormously attentive. He asked us to take our Green Theatre to his town next month and to go and teach people all over his area how to run organic gardens.

5th September

Going mad working in the garden as we're off to yet another theatre performance tomorrow. I tread on a nail on the unfinished floor-in-progress. ..

6th September

With the 'director' hopping around on one foot, we pack for the theatre; usual last-minute costume madness. Louise picks out a card at random from an Indian fortune-telling pack and asks 'what will rule this theatre?' She gets a card with a fish on it called 'sembradora de bosques' - sower of forests. It is a fish that evidently eats vegetation, swims down river and through its waste products, spreads tree seeds. The Full Moon today is in Pisces, the Fish ...

All our gear is transported on mules to Pueblo Nuevo, our nearest hamlet in 'cool' country. Two tiny jeeps turn up from La Aurora and I am absolutely sure that we cannot get everything and everyone in. I am wrong. I forget that I have to close my middle-class neurotic-mother eyes as our children travel happily hanging off the backs of vehicles, a perfectly normal activity round here ...

We arrive in hot Aurora. It is Sunday, which means everyone with a music machine has it turned up to full volume, everyone with a few pesos gets drunk, all the dogs go barmy, and all the cowboys from surrounding farms turn up and ride their horses madly round the square, competing with all the young louts on motorcycles. Our children, as soon as I release them, join in happily - on unicycles (one-wheeled circus bikes!).

I have my regulation fit at the accommodation they expect us to perform in - a wide open shadeless football pitch in the middle of the traffic. I refuse point blank, lose a couple of friends and gain some respect. The only alternative is the hall we are given to stay in, right slap bang in the middle of the village green with windows on every side for the populace to peer in, suffocating heat and the by now almost expected sacks of spilled cement, pile of corrugated iron and general road mending hardware.

I stay artificially calm and get our troops moving in my usual unfeminine fashion. They move. We clean, alter, evict rubbish, lay down mattresses, put up curtains, Ned sets up kitchen, we make dressing rooms out of building site rubbish tips and lie down for a night of raucous music, mad dogs and stampeding horses.

7th September

We set up a beautiful theatre. A team of polite but insistent locals say we have to do the theatre in the football pitch as the hall won't be big enough for everyone who wants to come. A totally intractable director says NO several dozen times and offers to repeat the theatre in the hall as often as they may want it.

8th September

9.00 a.m., our first performance is scheduled for. At 8.30 am there is one final attempt by local teachers to say we have to do it in the football pitch. Our beautiful curtains, banners, song-words, wings and dressing rooms which took all yesterday to organise are in place, our makeup is on, the music stand and the instruments are ready ... I find a reasonably diplomatic way of telling them to go to hell.

We perform indoors to a crowded room of under fives. They do not listen. The whole theatre company gnashes its teeth. The compere-director gives two minute crash courses in child control; the audience heeds her not.

At 8.00 pm we repeat the performance for all the people of the village who 'could not fit in to the hall'. The audience is tiny. The church bells outside ring aggressively. The Evangelists (all 7 of them) up the way blast their out of tune singing through loudspeakers into the streets; the buses rev up and keep their engines running outside the hall door (which is open). After a third of the show, the compere says, thank you very much, this is a waste of time, and anyone who wants to see the rest of the show can come tomorrow morning for the older children's school performance. A strong voiced man, who became a good friend, said 'please go on, we will help to keep order'. We continued. So did the noise.

9th September

As 9.00 a.m. we repeated the theatre to an absolutely perfect audience of secondary school students and reversed all our 'never again' resolutions. It was a dream like performance and made everything worthwhile. That night we arrived home to a magic place - our farm.

10th September

Hours and hours of blissful gardening. In the afternoon a surprise visit from our near neighbour in Caqueta, Alicia. We performed a shortened version of the theatre; she was transfixed and said we should show it 'everywhere'. All news from Caqueta is bad, the most poignant being that the wild animals coming trustingly out of the forest near our farm are being slaughtered by the new owners.

11th - 13th September

Gardening furiously, also collapsing for a day in bed with exhaustion.

14th - 15th September

The whole crew (14 people) takes off once again, this time for one of the Worst Places in the World. It is called Melgar. It is hot. It is a Big Town and it is the play-place of rich Bogotanos. We have been invited to perform for a private school. We are lodged in a holiday camp. The children are in 7th heaven and spend their time getting burnt to smithereens and poisoned by chlorine in the many swimming pools.

I give in to Electricity (we have lived decades without it) and spend the whole time under an inadequate, dangerously wobbling, old-fashioned air-fan, ill. The European grown-ups are in Hell, but give in gracefully to the ecstasy of the children. Ned feeds us 12 hours a day, for two days.

16th September

In the punishing morning sun, we prepare our theatre curtains dutifully on the open-air sports pitch of the little private school. Ominous machines are brought in: a massive sound system. We have been asked to perform for half an hour, our best ecological plays. When the time comes, our lady hostess alters this without warning to 15 minutes and intersperses our acts with mind-numbingly awful maximum volume noise, song and dance numbers from school children from Iconozo and elsewhere. We wonder strongly why we have come.

In the evening our hostess has arranged for us to perform the whole theatre in Melgar central park. We view the site. It is a 10 foot high bandstand in the middle of a park, no seating for the audience, two thick bars in front of the stage to prevent the actors committing suicide in despair and a massive metal neon-lighted sign occupying the top half of the audience's view announcing the brilliance of the mayor who constructed this monstrosity.

We set up theatre. At least it is cool at night. But there is a sound system and our plays were not made for this and we are are not used to working with electricity. I have to shorten the programme to make sense of the new circumstances. The small audience is very attentive and under these most awful of circumstances we perform our utmost best. But our hostess sulks: 'You didn't put on the clowns'. I explain the conjuring tricks would not be visible given the colossal distance between us and the audience. Our hostess continues to sulk. She is a spoilt rich ignoramus.

17th September

In the morning I dare to venture out to see the Zoo in the holiday camp we are staying in. Our hearts break seeing the stressed, depressed, utterly hopeless caged wild animals. But I was not prepared for the final piece of insanity I witnessed. First, a deafening machine noise; then, the foul choking fumes of an engine exhaust swirling around us and the animals. Then we saw it, a man with a machine on his back and a reverse vacuum cleaner in his hands. He was BLOWING AWAY THE LEAVES FROM THE PATHS where they would immediately blow back again on to the paths. He was doing it for hours and hours. I staggered home with no brain left.

At 8.00 pm magic was once again restored. In a huge hall with no sound system and appalling acoustics, to a huge attentive audience of mature students in a night college, we performed our whole theatre. The teachers who invited us could not do enough for us and were in tears of gratitude for our message. Once again the banished thought: 'perhaps it is worth it after all...’

18th September

As the bus wound its way up, up towards cool Icononzo and further on towards our farm, my illness fell way from me. I arrived home a bundle of energy. This is a wonderful place we live in!

19th-22nd September

Four days of blissful gardening.

23rd September

We were supposed to have local transport from hot Hoya Grande to the hamlet of El Rodeo for an arranged performance. We sent someone to check arrangements. The bus driver had never heard of it. It rained. We stayed at home. 6 foot Andy went leaping off on an overnight trek to find out what the...

Morning: Andy comes panting home saying the bus will be waiting for us in half an hour. Everyone runs, fast. I leave first and get lost. The paths have changed in the 4 years I've been away in Caqueta. The bus does not arrive. Anne and I walk for hours in the heat to find out what has happened.

Hours later, a banana lorry - not a bus – full of boxes, our people and theatre gear, delivers us to the exquisite hamlet of El Rodeo where you can see for miles around, including down into very hot country where lies the town of Cunday.

"We are not going there,” we immediately pronounced, realising how hot it would be, and referring to an earlier invitation to do so.

In an old, ramshackle, half-rotting coffee-drying house - huge, airy and made of wood - we set up our theatre. Outside, tied panic-stricken to a post is a fully-grown young bull of the 'Zebu' variety (humpbacked, like you would expect to see in India). Enquiries reveal it will agonise there one day and night till it becomes exhausted enough to be slaughtered, then the meat will be sold. Trying to reason with ourselves that this is happening every day, everywhere, does not help: we agonise hour-long over the bull. Next day only its skin is hanging there.

25th September

We are aliens from space to the country people of this tiny settlement. Their children sit on and run across the stage. The theatre is a social occasion. They have all come for a chat. The theatre organiser never quite manages to lose her British Indignation, no matter how many times this happens. It is quite the most hateful performance we have ever had to do, but we always maintain our own high standards, and spit and rage backstage afterwards. However, fate never allows us to get away with total negativity. Always there are one or two exceptional people who corner us at the theatre's end and pour out their praise, admiration and gratitude. This time an earnest 50 year-old begged to be allowed to send his 19 year-old daughter to live with us to 'learn our culture'. (Writing Oct. 11th - she and he are now living here.)

26th September

So much did we hate our experience, performing at the edge of the street with the one and only bus noisily running its engine during part of the theatre, that we removed all our curtains and finally agreed, as the teacher who invited us had insisted, to put on our second performance in the football pitch next to the school we were staying in. With extreme ingenuity, and very pleased with ourselves, we constructed our stage. Then it rained. We felt very relaxed - we were beginning to find this kind of mishap quite interesting and were such smooth professionals by now, we felt we could take anything in our stride.

It was probably one of the most enjoyable performances ever. Very few people came, but those that did were as respectful as a church audience (rumours of the fierce child-eating director-woman had probably circulated). We were blissful, especially as it was definitely the Last Theatre we were ever going to do.

And then came October:

SERIOUS RUMOURS OF FURTHER EXILE

A local woman came to ask, were we giving our animals away as we were leaving? Next day a large family group came up from Hoya Grande to say 'goodbye'. Being very psychic, we sensed something was afoot and amiss. Two of our exiting visitors were stopped by the guerrilla who accused us of working for the CIA….

Anne arrived suddenly home from Bogotá - one of these visitors had contacted her urgently. Anne had gone straight to the Communist Party HQ and a friend there offered to get letters, leaflets and articles from us straight to Marulanda, the head of the FARC guerrilla force. 'It would take two weeks each way,” they said. I wrote the letter. A local communist leader came to the farm immediately on my request and told us: there had been a meeting of the guerrilla and the people of Hoya Grande at which 'suspicions' about us had been launched. 'Why were we here when we had been thrown out of Caqueta?'

At home we looked at maps - maybe we'll go to Chile, back to a land of four seasons? Today, 11th October, a Sunday, Anne returns from an investigative mission to Pueblo Nuevo: the two exiting visitors, both Colombian, had spoken so well on our behalf when confronted by the aggressive guerrilla unit, that a local woman was able to tell Anne guerrilleros had later said to her: "Just shows how you can be wrong about people, doesn't it?”

Meanwhile, we keep looking at those maps of Chile, just in case.

Anyone feel exhausted? I think I'll tell you the rest of the news next Green Letter.

With love to you all,
Jenny James

Colombian Rainforest Campaign

Contents GL 29:

• The Army camps on our farmland..
..and we camp in the local school
• Imprisoned FARC friend saves us from exile
• A colourful anti-car week in Bogota
• Dancing circles round a police-woman
• FARC commander in Caqueta who exiles us in jail
• What Atlantis is Really about, by John Baker
• Don’t Let’s Despair, by John Seymour

“Good morning” said the heavily armed soldier in jungle camouflage uniform. I stumbled out of my cabin at first light. I live at the back of our communal rabbit-warren of a house, surrounded on three sides by trees. He wanted a drink of water.

We have become accustomed to reacting to such events as if they happen every day so as not to arouse alarm or suspicions. As the rest of his uncountable troop (between 50 and 100) milled around the place, appearing in the bushes as we went to the loo, and “guarding” us as we were weeding the garden, we simply adjusted to their presence as if nothing was happening. Actually nothing was. They were bored and we were quite a find in what was, for them, hostile territory.

On the second day they summoned me up to their camp in our new theatre-place. One of them began to interview me with almost forced hostility. I was embarrassed to note how quickly I had him eating out of my hand, though he held out longer than the younger soldiers who all gathered round, fascinated. Their commander joined in and, from then on, it was no more gardening. They kept us engaged all day showing them our photo albums and the children’s paintings and discovering that they too had been thrown out of El Pato, Caquetá: these were the days of government talks with the guerrilla and a massive area had been cleared of all army presence.

A very old neighbour came rushing round to warn us ‘there were Army everywhere’. He swallowed his words quickly as he saw the company we were keeping that day and talked about vegetables instead. After we had answered their thousand and one questions, I was very bored: a visit from the guerrilla is always fascinating, I love talking politics, but even a mild question such as “Do you think the peace talks will succeed?” met with an exaggerated “No comment” from these army men as if I’d trodden on an official secret.

The young commander invited Anne to their base in Melgar to do all their astrology charts, an offer that will not be taken up: people in the countryside have been killed by the guerrilla for being seen at such places, with good reason. Then he asked me if he could come back and stay in our community. I said it would be a little difficult as this was a red zone. “Ah” he said “Delicado?” - ‘delicate’? I nodded and we both knew without mentioning it what the real balance of power is in the countryside in Colombia.

Anne comments: “These are the crack anti-guerrilla force of the Colombian Army, well equipped and paid, yet so low in morale and with no beliefs to fight for, that it is obvious why the FARC is winning.” They admitted to us that they knew nothing of our presence in the region and that finding us was a complete surprise to them. I said “Strange. In 1994 fifty of you were here questioning us.” “But that’s ages ago,” said the young commander, unwittingly revealing that Army intelligence doesn’t function very well.

Towards the end of their stay with us, we had to get very firm with them indeed. They kept insisting that we sell them chickens or guinea pigs to eat. A dozen times they sent representations to us. I closed the issue by offering my throat to them to cut rather than one of our chickens. Entirely perplexed, they gave up.

A poem from Jeremy Ward -

Colombia, poor Colombia

Locked in a two-step with the world’s junkies,
Dancing in the pain
Of cocaine
Colombia,

The only place where the military
Faced with a hostage siege
Take away the escaped hostages
And shoot them
Colombia,
Where the mountainside, bared of trees
Destroys the roads.
Colombia,
Where the only law
Is provided by outlaws.
Colombia

Fuelled by white powder
And consumed by corruption
Colombia,
Where the Army
After a long day’s murder
Puts up posters saying
“Colombia, we love you.”

Colombia the crazy
Colombia the sad
Colombia the psychopathic
Colombia the mad
Colombia the cruel
Colombia,
Full of love.

LOCAL SCHOOL INVADES OUR FARM..

On the last day of October, as the rainy season broke, the local school turned up to visit us without warning. We donated enough pencils for the whole school, seeds and organic compost booklets for their parents and put on an impromptu juggling show (thank you Andy). The teachers and local leaders who were with them asked us to perform our theatre for school closing on 6th November. We had just lost two important members of our troupe: Louise, who had left to go to Ireland ‘to see where she came from’ (she was 5 when we moved to the jungle) and to join the Trident Ploughshares demonstrations in Scotland; and Fin, our one-man orchestra, who periodically prefers the bars and streets of Bogota ... a perennial problem. We gulped and said “Yes.” A frantic week of transferring Louise’s acting and singing roles ‘down the line’ mainly to 13-year-old Katie, my youngest daughter. And the music to Anne and me, not the world’s most competent musicians, to put it mildly.

AND WE GO TO LIVE IN THEIR SCHOOL FOR A WHILE..

The school of Pueblo Nuevo is several hundred feet higher than where we live, and sleeping on the concrete floor in the schoolroom with the broken windows, we shivered. The men of our commune many years ago had helped to lay the foundations of this little school, shifting rocks and earth and helping to lay this cold concrete. Now we danced and sang and acted and spoke to quite the most attentive, appreciative audience yet and discovered: no matter who leaves, our theatre lives.

Anne and I curled up afterwards in an agony of embarrassment at all the hideous mistakes we’d made in the music, but we were the only ones who noticed. The audience was entranced. After our second performance, the whole Junta (local action committee) came to ask us for further communal participation in the future: would we help raise funds for a village hall? We enthusiastically agreed - as long as we could help design the stage, being experts by now in how they should not be built.

“We are the destroyers,” said the Junta leader, “but we thank you for your message.” We went home warmed, forgetting the cold of that high, exposed place.

Another local man who had come to Anne for marriage counselling via her Tarot readings, told her that people round here support us and want us to stay because they ‘have learned from us about caring for the environment’. He also said that, many years before our arrival, he had been paid to cut down some huge old trees on what is now our land. He cut one giant down and it splintered as it fell and was useless for blocks or planks. Since that day, he said, he had never cut another tree. “It took 15 minutes to destroy what had taken 300 years to grow.”

A letter of recommendation from a FARC commander

At the end of Green Letter 28 I mentioned strange rumours of our having to leave here. We dealt with them rather simply - as simply as is possible in Colombia, that is. Anne made contact with a previous guerrilla commander of this region who had known us rather well. He is in prison in Bogota. He wrote a letter of recommendation which he and we caused to reach the necessary hands. “Anything we can do in exchange?” we asked. “Yes, well I don’t like to ask, but I am cold here. Have you any blankets or a jumper?”

They were sent. His name has appeared on lists published in the national press of guerrilla soldiers whose release is demanded in exchange for Army men held by the FARC. Perhaps he will be home soon.

Nine-year-old Julie handed me this little poem one day. My translation does not convey the sweetness of her Spanish. She is Mary Kelly’s child - Mary runs our centre in Ireland.

The forest is my Mother, my Life.
Without the forest, we could not live.
Water is purity and cleanliness;
The sky is as transparent as glass.
The sounds of Nature
Are like music to me ...

A year ago we promised an excellent political activist friend in Bogotá, Hector Arenas, that we would support him in a National Pro-Bicycle Week he was planning for the capital city, between 20th and 30th November. During the week previous to this, I painted four huge canvas banners full of anti-car, pro-bike slogans and pictures, made up 4 new city oriented songs and wrote a ‘speech’ for the conference. The ‘speech’ was called “Eco-Colombia” and was written as if after the Third World War for the Earth’s resources about a Green Revolution that took place in a country in Latin America. For five pages I took my audience on a gentle, shocking trip to a new, green Colombia. The previously bad-tempered, very dry academic chairman from the National University grabbed me afterwards and said I’d made him cry. It was one of those moments that almost made breathing the poison fumes of Bogota worth while. Another was meeting and listening to a gentleman called Oliver Hatch from England, telling the exciting story of the victory of the National Cycling Policy in Britain: a brilliant revolutionary man, neatly disguised in suit and tie.

On Sundays in Bogotá, thanks to the rather eccentric ex-mayor of the city, Antanas Mockus, the central avenue becomes a bicycle, skate, pram and walking route for 15km. Along this route for two Sundays running, there appeared a crew on uni-cycles and feet, dressed as clowns and other strange creatures, drumming, displaying banners, setting up pro-bicycle chants, playing violin, singing songs and putting on juggling displays, the first Sunday in rain, the second in bright sunlight, the reception always heart-warming. Walking for many hours and needing to lift our spirits in the damp echoing streets in this strange new car-free freedom, Anne and I began chanting Red Indian chants in English at the top of our voices whilst drumming as we marched along. The strange magic of that incongruous moment – jungle chants amidst the concrete - sent shivers up our spines as we called out “We are the New People, We are the Old People, We are the Same people, Wiser than Before!”

A Colourful Brush with the ‘Law’

On the second Sunday, we camped on a grassy verge outside the Ministry of Transport on the outskirts of Bogota, strung banners from trees and set up a roadside theatre lasting several hours. A large crowd of passing cyclists gathered round, there was a party atmosphere ..... until, very quickly, there arrived on the scene a teenage girl in a helmet, a uniform and some badges, who decided she’d been put on Planet Earth to tell us we Couldn’t and we Mustn’t. Poor lass. She was faced with 50 years’ worth of political direct action. I explained to her, somewhat firmly, that I was having difficulty in believing what my ears were telling me, I invited her to call the police and the Army (she accepted the invitation) and I began theatrically to unbutton her blouse, declaring she had the wrong uniform on and needed to change her ‘bicycle traffic’gear for army togs. The crowd loved it. The Jungle Lady, struggling to convert her violent instincts into acceptable theatre, thoroughly upstaged her, turning into a strangely dressed Hitler, goose-stepping up and down through the audience, ordering them all home and how dare they enjoy themselves?

The officious teenager called on her walkie-talkie for reinforcements and then the fun really began. A load more of our people turned up, mainly children, and I gave a running commentary at the top of my voice about troop movements in this new war; the crowd increased, 100 on our side and loudly showing it, the juggling and music continued, I suggested to the young lass she go home and make love as she seemed a little out of sorts; the Army and Police arrived and loved the show, our friend Hector liaised with them in his quiet way mentioning that the Image of these authorities was already dreadfully bad and how would it look in front of an international audience (the press had arrived) if they got heavy with a few peaceful cyclists and clowns on a Sunday afternoon; Jungle Woman continued her pseudo-police role warning the crowd against the 9 and 13-year-olds who were singing “Hello Sulphur Dioxide, Good Morning Carbon Monoxide” (adapted from a great anti-city song from the 60s musical ‘Hair’) and soon some of the bicycle people added their extremely civilised and heartfelt pleas on our behalf to the thoroughly amused Men in Uniform who stopped to watch the show.

On the long exhilarating walk home, Hector and Anne and I espied once again the teenage helmeted lass who had done so much to make a success of our demonstration. I walked up to her and thanked her profusely and invited her to come next time and even offered to pay for her services. “You were the perfect representation of what we are up against,” I said to her. We waltzed away leaving one very confused Representative of Law and Order.

Anne reports that one lady who stayed throughout these events said goodbye to her with tears in her eyes saying few people would dare to do what we did, as Colombians are too fearful of the extreme injustice and violence of their own police.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, a visiting friend from Icononzo told us that while the Army were camping in our land the guerrilla moved into the town, called everyone for a meeting and talked of the need to combat the wave of robberies and armed attacks being committed. Any criminals who didn’t leave the area were to be killed: rough justice, but the townspeople heaved a sigh of relief.

FARC commander who exiled us is in prison

Regular readers may remember the account of the ‘Bridge’ of Vista Hermosa in El Pato - a ‘bridge’ that was a terrifying cable across a rushing river. The very old Head of the Junta of that community, with whom I keep in touch, has written us a beautiful letter, including these words:

“Our greatest hope is to be able to see you all again amongst us here in our communities. It could be that the peace talks will enable you to return and live amongst us. Every day we think of you and remember you with love ... Regarding your exile from the region, we asked a friend from another area to approach the guerrilla commander who gave you orders to leave, but it turns out he has been captured and is in prison....” (We are making a brave attempt not to gloat over this news)

In my reply to the Junta I sent photos of the children of Crofton Junior School, Yorkshire, in their classroom being shown photos of El Pato by Mary Kelly and my daughter Alice (15) who visited them; also photos of the Ditchling Quakers’ CRAC exhibition in Sussex!

Other news from Caquetá is that Heriberto of Rovira reports that the National Park of Los Picacachos has now been extended to include the high virgin forest that Anne managed to work for and purchase when we were there. Phew! He also says he is trying to get support to stop the indiscriminate hunting of wildlife which has been taking place in other parts of the land we were forced to abandon. Some people continue to care.

What We’re Really About – by John

A young man called John Baker of Reading, previously resident in Ireland, has lived and worked with us for a year. He is now returning to help Mary Kelly at the Irish end of CRAC. Here is his goodbye letter!

“Let me warn you now if you’re coming here looking for a nice right-on green campaign to join, forget it! I did, and did I get a shock!

This is not an easy place to live, these people really mean it. They are green fanatics. If you come from Europe, like me, you probably believe in democracy, tolerance and you probably think you’re broad-minded. None of that works out here. This community is aggressive, hard-working and terrifyingly direct. Expect to have all your comfortable prejudices exposed and left for dead. I did.

I’ve learnt to work hard and well here. I’ve discovered just how much goes into those nice organic carrots I used to buy from the health food shop with my dole money. I’ve been related to here on a much deeper level than I knew before. I couldn’t get away with mumbled platitudes to avoid conflict. I’ve been questioned and pushed until I have to admit that when I say ‘I don’t want any trouble’ I actually mean ‘I want to punch your face in.’

This community is dealing with the root cause of pollution and environmental destruction, the selfishness, violence and hatred that lies within most of the human race, it seems. Here we don’t run from or smooth over conflict, we seek to deal with it. We don’t try to pretend we’re full of love, peace and harmony; we aim to get to grips with our feelings of hate, violence and discord instead of blindly letting them out to pollute our environment and hurt our companions.

After a year here I’ve learned how difficult it is to really live, work and sleep with the same group of people and how I used to avoid this by flitting from one casual social contact to another whenever things became difficult, thus avoiding having to show or feel myself too much.

I’ve had to see that far from being the eco-conscious, amiable young man I used to portray myself as, I revel in destruction and violence, I couldn’t care less about the planet or other people, especially women. Despite this , I can’t help feeling a certain amount of pride that somehow or other I’ve managed to stay here and play a part in the amazing things that go on. Out of anger and sometimes barely functional human relationships, I’ve seen beautiful theatre and music produced, I’ve seen a garden grow to produce healthy, tasty food and I’ve seen a living environment created by and for the people and animals living in it. I’ve also seen kids growing up who are healthy, happy and alive. They live without education as I knew it but are capable of things I never was.

I’m frankly gob-smacked. I don’t think this could work without some kind of willingness from the men and women here to face their inner pollution and deal with it. At times this feels horribly painful, at times it feels good. I can see the results and that’s why I’m not going back to my old life , but to carry on working for this campaign in Europe.”

John Baker

And from John Seymour, famous organic guru, resident in Ireland, we reprint, with loving thanks both to him and Earthwatch, Ireland’s ‘Green’ newspaper, a small extract from his poem which appeared under the heading of “DON’T LET’S DESPAIR” ...

I walked along the seashore at the lowest tide
The beach to one side of me lonely and wide
The sea in retreat and retreating still
Then I saw a small wavelet surge into a rill
Come just an inch further than the wavelet before
And the next wave came further - another inch more.
The tide had turned - and this tide too will turn .....
Our Changing Campaign..

Meanwhile we nervously and joyously await the next wave that hits us!

With love and enduring gratitude to you all,
Jenny James

PS Please everyone read “Hidden Agendas” by John Pilger, Vintage Press - a huge important paperback costing £9.

COLOMBIAN RAINFOREST CAMPAIGN

Contents GL 30:

• A brave action by Chorreras Action Committee
• Visits from Camilo of Caqueta, Hector of Bogota and Alice of the National University of Colombia
• Religion? – a poem by Louise
• First year review of progress since our Exile from Caqueta..
• .. and Worries about FARC reactions to so many visitors

Dear Friends and Helpers in Europe and America:

Ten days before Christmas, we received the unexpected visit of Camilo, the teacher from Chorreras in El Pato, with whom I'd worked so closely in Caqueta. He came with his wife and two children, saw new plays we'd invented, helped to make up and act in several more, visited our waterfalls and caves and spent many hours exchanging political news with us. I gave him all our remaining seed for the people of El Pato, paper and pencils and Nature pictures for his school, plus many other little gifts. We also donated him 100 U$ dollars to help with a school tree-planting project and other work. He agreed to write regular dispatches from El Pato for these letters. Here is his first report :

"...'CorpoAmazonia' (the Government 'Environmental' organisation) is supposed to invigilate the preservation of Nature in the Amazon Basin. It is therefore shocking to note that after many months without seeing lorries laden with wood, suddenly we had a return to the noise of chainsaws, mules dragging blocks of wood and lorries loading it once more.

"The Action Committee of Chorreras summoned the young female official for CorpoAmazonia and asked for an explanation. She said that the wood that had been 'cut a long time ago' and was lying wasting was the only wood that was allowed out for commerce. So the Action Committee confiscated the wood and that started Big Trouble. The owners were livid. A meeting was called and it was claimed that the Guerrilla had given permission. The Action Committee investigated and the commander said no such permission had been given and Committee was in any case autonomous and could make its own that the Action decisions. Therefore the Junta of Chorreras prohibited completely the felling of trees in its jurisdiction, imposing a fine of confiscation of the wood and the chainsaw, plus a monetary payment.

"We then pursued our questioning of CorpoAmazonia as to why wood was still coming out of other districts; no satisfactory answers were forthcoming. However, we were extremely shocked to observe that on the farm belonging to said official of CorpoAmazonia, specifically around the water-sources of this property, forest had been cut down, thus endangering the water-supply of her neighbours."

This was a very brave action on the part of the Action Committee, very difficult socially in a tiny, close-knit community. People get killed for less, much less, in this turbulent country. I added my ha'porth by writing to CorpoAmazonia to enquire whether their name had been changed to 'Corporation for the Destruction of the Amazon' as we observed for years in El Pato that their only function, apart from spending a lot of money on 'studies and surveys', was to hand out licences for tree felling.

Camilo also told me that Roberto, another close 'green' friend in Chorreras whose lifetime work had once been tree-felling, had stuck his neck out by refusing to burn his land before planting beans - the normal practice - as a demonstration that this is absolutely not necessary. This is an extremely touching gesture, as social ridicule is such a strong factor in these tiny hamlets. Meanwhile, Camilo kept to an agreement he and I had made many moons ago to call his tree project by the name of Eduardo Rincon, our murdered Green Party councillor friend who began this campaign in 1994.

"Your life lies out before you, like a field of unbroken snow; be careful how you tread it, for every track will show."
(Taken from "Country", a Canadian magazine)

A visit from Hector Arenas

No sooner had Camilo gone off happily after his long visit, complete with all the recently composed 'green' songs recorded here for the first time on solar­ powered equipment (thank you Andy and Marc) to teach his children in Chorreras school, than we received another fascinating visit : this time from Hector Arenas, our radical lawyer friend who conceived the 'Pro-bicycle rally' we attended in Bogota. This man is so full of nation-wide and even international plans for our future work with him, including a grandiose scheme for an exchange programme of environmental projects with Cuba, that I was quite glad to take temporary refuge in cabbage-planting after his whirlwind two-day visit. Many of you may know that Cuba has been forced to 'go green' by the effects of the long-term American embargo on trade with them. The challenge now is to convert what the Cubans would see as a necessity into a positive philosophy and to get other countries to implement and appreciate the benefits of 'enforced greenness' (for example extensive bicycle-use and truly admirable city-gardening projects as in Cuba).

Hector is a brilliant and inspiring writer and since knowing us, sees the need in his own life for a 'place of retreat' and intends to build himself a cabin in our woods for periods of recuperation. This fits in with a long-term dream of my own, to gather together all manner of Eco-warriors who would have a base here to return to for revitalisation in between campaigns far afield.

Here is what Hector wrote to us after our Bogota-campaigning week:

"These have been short, hectic days, but in the middle of ever-changing circumstances, one thing has been constant : Atlantis, with its gusts of energy, creativity, art and joy and its quiet, efficient support in difficult moments to ensure things went well.

"This city of lonely crowds, of fear and aggression, has trembled with the fresh energy of mischievous spirits who understand that what is deep is simple. What remains is a profound sense of active gratitude and an iron decision to concentrate on this Green Revolution which has been initiated in such a subtle, firm way.

"The affection and gestures of friendship of each one of you arouse beautiful, sacred feelings.

With love, Hector Arenas" For those of you interested in Astrology, Anne confirms that Hector's chart is deeply linked with ours on a long-term basis (conjunction of North Nodes is just one aspect). For me what this means is that the ever-widening circles of ripples emanating from the 'small stone' dropped in the forest-pool of Caqueta are now a fact of our lives, a destiny to which I now submit instead of worrying that we are not simply concentrating on saving (in Tolima non-existent) forest. Our title remains a problem - perhaps we should add an 'E' and it becomes 'CRACE - Campaign of Radical Action for the Colombian Environment'?!

Echoes of a Murdered Friend

Meanwhile, perusing the national press, a small news item leapt out at me: the name of the new Mayor of Milan, Caqueta. Long term readers of these Letters will remember Luis Arenas, the first of several murdered 'green' friends; and will also remember how the author of his assassination ended up in prison for another murder. But from information received from his widow and close family, I knew that several people were involved in his killing. Now another of those men - who in turn had made himself mayor - has been held by the FARC guerrilla force for many months pending investigation of mal-management of public funds. The night before Luis was killed, he had been elected by the local population as overseer of public spending, in recognition of his honesty, and this was obviously why he was slaughtered: the corrupt ruling clique did NOT want ‘overseeing’. The wheel of Fate turns once more. Still heartbroken, I salute you, Luis.

My daughter Louise, now 17, has finally, using a Top Secret pair of trick scissors, managed to cut her way out of the red tape surrounding her immigration/exit from these parts in time to spend Xmas with our people in Ireland. This means she will delightedly visit all CRAC people who request it. Before going, she wrote one last poem, this time in English.

RELIGION?

If you asked me, do I have a religion?
My answer would be 'No';
But I must say
That I do pray
To lots of things, you know.

To the flowers that I grow,
To the river I hear flow,
To the seeds we gardeners sow,
And when I'm feeling right,
I even say 'goodnight'
To each star and to the moon glow.

Visit from an English Lady

Hector left, and immediately a lady called Alice Doldissen arrived, who in spite of her German surname (acquired through marriage) is as English as I am. She was the lady who really ran the Bogota bicycle conference, as Hector is a beautiful dreamer, but not always awake to the mere practical details life demands. He was terrified of me and Alice meeting - Alice the lady from the National University, and Jenny the strange barefoot woman from the woods. When he had to witness myself and Alice chattering intensively together for hours on end in Bogota, he had a mini-nervous breakdown, not being able to understand English at that speed. I am hugely amused by my relationship with Alice, the sort of lady I'd never normally meet, in spite of our similar ages and both Londoners; the ease of our contact is summed up in one of my first ironic sentences to her here: “What on earth is an English-woman doing living in the wilds of Colombia…!?”

Alice's vivacity, brightness of mind and delightful cheek were a joy to have on our farm. As Anne said, another couple of days, and we'd have to retire and hand over the running of Atlantis to her. Here is an extract from the official letter of thanks from her and her colleagues at the National University of Colombia to us for our help at the Congress (which included, at her request, lovely vegetarian meals for all attending):

"Let us hope that one day in the not too distant future, thanks to the help you have all given us today and to our own organisational efforts, Colombia will be a country of cities one can travel through by bicycle... and in which one can live peacefully and ecologically. We hope to remain in contact with you and to be able to count on your support in the future."

Reviewing the year since our Exile

To review now, on this quiet wet morning the whirlwind that has been this first year since the guerrilla army demanded our removal from Caqueta: the most obvious change is the population explosion. In Caqueta, I rarely had more than 2 or 3 people helping on the farm. Now our poor gardens have been ravished by a locust-storm of between 25 and 40 people constantly, many of whom now live here permanently and the vast majority of whom are Colombian. There is no such thing as a day without visitors, and more than 6 at a time is nothing new. When 15 of us take off for a 'theatre season', there are as many at home, mainly Colombians, to ensure the good running of the farm. The guinea-pigs have responded likewise, increasing from a mere dozen to countless bundles of amusing fluff supplying us with mountains of much needed compost. The soils here are hideously infertile compared with Caqueta, and many an internal fit have I had to repress remembering what I could grow there and what refuses to grow here. But I could never complain of loneliness, isolation or lack of help: now I have to take refuge in my own private little part of our large rabbit-warren of a settlement from too much contact, while Anne, on a long blessed leave from work in Bogota, takes on the onslaught of the front line.

Correspondence with America has been another outstanding feature of my life since my 'innocent' little letter in the magnificent magazine 'Organic Gardening' which has brought me wave after wave of fascinating friendships-by-post with a variety of people from that vast continent which would simply not possible from our own little islands of England and Ireland: people from the extreme radical right to those engaged in radical living at the other end of the spectrum, yet all united by the knowledge that something is desperately wrong and the determination not to take it all lying down. I think I love those I am furthest from politically most, for the lessons in humanity they have taught me.

At which point I would like to include a 'private poem' sent to me by Angie Hawkinson, a young American mother with 6 children whose poem 'Arboreal' we printed in an earlier Green Letter.

Bare Feet and Fields

A Child once ran
Into a field full of flowers
She ran barefoot and free
And whiled away the hours.
She went running in circles
Or with wings like a plane
She marched with an umbrella
To keep out pretend rain
She leaped and she skipped
And pretended to skate
And raced with a grasshopper
She named ‘Happy Kate';
She wiggled and giggled
And shivered and shook
Then stood for a while
Just to feel and to look
At how wonderful this was
In all that it yields -
These, together, forever -
Bare feet and fields.

Worries About Guerrilla Reactions to so many visitors…

Recently, my main contact in the local farmworkers union told me he had attended a meeting in our nearest market-town, Icononzo, at which a general plan was aired to foment 'eco-tourism' in the whole area, with a view both to encouraging care for the countryside and to bringing in funds. In his polite way, he was asking 'could our farm be on the list of places to visit?' I think it already is! We did try to comply with a guerrilla ban on 'suspicious strangers' entering the region - Anne managed to stop several carloads of 'collar-and-tie' visitors and a TV team while she was still in Bogota, but who could stop the Christmas tide? So far, no repercussions, but I took the precaution of telling Rodrigo, a local friend, that if ever we are forced to leave the area, we want our land to stay as a Nature reserve forever. I was impressed by the extreme seriousness of his response. He reminds me of the quiet, dedicated attitude of our friend Heriberto in El Pato, who still faithfully, after a year, writes us the news from Rovira, sends on our post and fights the forest's battles.

SEED NEEDS & OTHERS

For the first time in a year, we have actually managed to run out of give-away seeds and even out of seed for our own very large gardens. Many helpers have found it quite unnecessary to spend any money (except postage) on seeds as so many get wasted by shops and companies at the end of each selling season. Most of all we need beetroot, cabbage and rhubarb, all of which we are forced to share with every ant-variety on the planet. One of the reasons I have time to write this today is that our garden is definitely dangerous for the barefoot worker: a heaving busy mass of red-ant activity. I snarl at the word 'biodiversity' on such days as I could name a species or two I'd happily live without .... (no, today, it doesn't include humans).

Other needs? Please dear friends from metal-producing countries - some sewing-machine needles and hand-sewing needles that don't break in two at first contact with cloth? That would be nice!

Our love and best wishes to you all,
till next letter,
Jenny James

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