• Anne’s friend, Ernesto, murdered by Paramilitaries
• Paramilitary Scare in Tolima
• Hunters on our land
• Roberto visits from Caqueta
• A Jungle Child reports from Ireland (Louise)

A Friend of Anne’s murdered by Paramilitaries

In front of me I have one of Amnesty International's calls for 'Urgent Action' requesting letters of protest to various Colombian officials about the murder of human rights worker, Julio Ernesto Gonzalez and his friend Everardo Puertas.

Recently when there were rumours circulating that the FARC might exile us from Tolima as they had done from Caqueta, and Anne busied herself making contact with the ex-commander of this region, now in prison, it was this same Ernesto who had helped us. His particular branch of human rights was to befriend political prisoners, so he was able to take messages, letters and gifts in and out of prison.

The night of his assassination by paramilitaries on a bus from Medellin to Bogota, Anne was preparig a room in her flat for him to stay, as he had on previous occasions. As she tucked in the sheets, the thought would not leave her, 'Ernesto will never arrive.'

Ernesto's 9 year-old son Pablo phoned Anne in a panic saying, 'Where's my dad, hasn't he arrived?' several hours before he was killed. Then at 11.30 that night, the boy woke up screaming to his mother: 'They've killed my father.' Ernesto died at 11.30 p.m. Next morning, Pablo got up crying and when his mother asked what was the matter, he said, 'How do you expect me to feel? I haven't got a father.' When the police phoned later with the news, Pablo simply said, 'See?' The day after the funeral, Pablo insisted on returning to school to confront any possible stigma that might come his way through having a left-wing father. He stood in front of his class mates and asked them not to feel sorry for him as he was very proud of his father and intended to carry on with his work when he grew up.

Ernesto was brought to Ibague, the capital of Tolima, to be buried. His parents wanted a religious funeral, but his wife refused, saying he would have hated it; so she had him buried to the music of a live 'serenata' band. Many FARC and ELN people (the two main Colombian guerrilla movements) attended. So did the police. Ernesto's wife walked up to the police and told them to go or she would not be responsible for their fate. They left.

The first night after Anne knew of Ernesto's death, she lay in bed unable to sleep, thinking of him and how he must feel about the violent end to his life. Suddenly, inexplicabaly, from within her small, airless room, a gust of wind blew open the heavy metal-framed window sending a mirror that was hung there crashing into the street below. 'Oh, that's how he feels,' she thought.

'The life given us by Nature is short; but the memory of a wellspent life is eternal.'

Paramilitary Scare in our area

Towards the end of January, the paramilitary scare reached our part of Tolima. They had killed over 130 peasants in a few days just after the New Year in the North of Colombia and suddenly there were rumours they were coming to the villages near here and that a 'hit-list' with over 40 names was circulating. In Pueblo Nuevo, our nearest village, the people began sleeping out in the jungle. Paticuindi, a settlement two hours' walk from here, emptied entirely, the whole population simply fled. One of our young lads, Billy, began to attend local meetings in another near village and to join night-watch teams on the pathways. At home on the farm, we checked out a huge cave-system recently discovered, to see what parts would be suitable as hiding-places if local people needed refuge. I also wrote an angry letter to one of the national newspapers, an 'open letter to the paramilitaries', saying that if their object in killing peasants indiscriminately was to turn the whole population of rural Colombia into revolutionaries, they were doing very well. The letter was published.

Hunters on our Land

In the middle of all this, while my grandson Tristan (16) was out one afternoon exploring the newly found cave system, he suddenly heard the heavy trampling of men in the jungle woodland very near him, shouting 'there he goes', followed by shots. Tristan flew home in a panic to tell us. But listening to his story, I knew immediately that the men were killers of a different kind - hunters. A perennial problem on our land. I painted some 'no hunting' notices for what it was worth and wrote to a local leader about the problem. He was completely supportive, said that the guerrilla had long ago banned hunting and that he would bring the subject up at local meetings.

'People are coming closer together, not only jammed into buses and subways, but also crowded in a psycological sense, almost to the point of constituting a single organism. The mark of the times is the network, a declaration of interdependence like a spiderweb: disturb it anywhere and it vibrates all over.'
John Pfeiffer (quoted in Organic Gardening Magazine)

A VISIT FROM CHORRERAS, CAQUETA

Suddenly, there he was: our beloved friend Roberto, the President of the Junta of Chorreras, on our balcony, wet with sweat from the journey and from tears at being here at last. All he could say was, 'It is beautiful here, Jenny, more beautiful than Caqueta.' Well, I couldn't agree with him (Colombian peasants see as 'beautiful' flatter, more cleared land), but what a joy to have him. He stayed and worked with us for a week, watched our theatre shows and talked deeply in his quiet way: of his pessimism about the present peace talks between Government and guerrilla army, of local fears in Caqueta of the paramilitaries entering and massacring peasants when the truce is over (a very well-founded fear) and of local events in El Pato. He toyed with the idea of coming to live here with his family. We paid him for his work and journey as he has no resources whatever and he promised to return soon. The bonds between us are very deep.

... AND OF ALTERNATIVE DOCTORS FROM BOGOTA

The season of visits was certainly upon us and Alberto, a friend who works in Bogota as a healer (shiatsu, urinotherapy and many allied arts) came with a friend. After a week with us, he said he wanted to come and live here for a long time 'to learn how to live' as he had 'never seen such a happy group of people.' Little does he know (yet) how much fighting we have to do in our therapy groups behind the scenes to maintain such a good energetic atmosphere! He is due back in a few days' time with half a dozen doctor friends and a patient as he has hopes of persuading a group of them to set up a health centre here for alternative medicine.

'Revolutions don't always start with a bang. A seed is planted, an idea begins to take shape, and gradually people see that their life is being remoulded by irresistible revolutionary forces.'
J. Russell Smith

THE EARTHQUAKE

You will all have read about the Colombian earthquake in Armenia and surrounding district and many people have contacted us worrying that it might be in our area. We certainly felt it. I jumped out of my seat as the subterranean Boom happened and my flimsy wooden wall shook. Other people came out of their rooms. 'God,' I said, 'I hope the epicentre of that wasn't near a populated area.' But it was. Later we heard that over 1,000 were dead and 4,000 injured.

A JUNGLE CHILD'S IMPRESSIONS OF EUROPE

Not strictly 'news from Colombia', but I cannot resist the temptation to give space to Louise's first reports from 'the outside world' after being brought up on islands, beaches, in caves (on our travels) and in the jungle, and of course in a close-knit tribe.

The first hint of what was in store for her came when she was in Quito, the capital of Ecuador:

'I was here in the flat and I looked out of the window and I saw a woman doing her washing with a very bored look on her face. I looked higher up to the next window and there was another woman in exactly the same position, and with the same expression. I looked up higher and there was another and another. I thought of how unhappy they looked and how much better they would feel if they were all working together like we do in the commune, instead of inside these square boxes, so close, but yet so isolated from each other. And then to my horror, I realized that I was in the same position, doing the washing, feeling alone. I stopped doing the washing and I promised myself that I would not take part, would not be part of the horrible way people live.'

On arrival in Ireland, she was shocked to the core physically by the cold, but also by a different kind of coldness.

On Christmas Day, she wrote:

'Nobody laughs or has fun; nobody smiles at you; and if you say 'hello' to someone on the street, they look shocked. In South America, you could make a close friend in 10 minutes. Here, it must take years. Here, people walk stiffly in straight lines to wherever they are going. Well, it is a relief not to be looked at as if I was descended from a UFO (like in Colombian villages!) but I do like to be acknowledged sometimes. Here people hardly see each aother. And it is really wierd to see a 'gringo' (general word for northern foreigner) tramp - it just doesn't look right!' No sooner had Lou arrived in Ireland than she was talking on local radio about Colombia; and then when the US bombed Iraq, with Britain's cosy agreement, she and her sister Alice (15), Mary Kelly and John Baker who had recently returned from Colombia, set up a demonstration in the tiny town of Dungloe near our house in Donegal; they also collected hundreds of signatures on a protest petition. Here is Louise's report of activities she participated in: 26th Jan. 1999. Mary, John and I went to Dublin, to a drug centre, where we did a slide show and I talked to them about Colombia. I used your phrase, Jenny: The junkies are not only destroying themselves, but the rainforest too, and all its inhabitants. Then we did the Sleeping Beauty play (in which she awakens in shock to a horrible New World). We have added a lot to it, about genetically modified food and a big section about drugs. I think all the young people in the drug centre are a load of spoilt brats. They give them injections of something to replace heroin, and it goes on for years. I don't believe it gets them off it. They look drugged all the time. They are all on the dole and they have the drug centre to go to without paying a penny. I'm sorry, I don't feel very sympathetic. I'd rather help people who really need it. After that, me and John went to Glen of the Downs (scene of a woodland anti-road protest). There was a meeting in a pub. Most of the people had hundreds of earrings in every possible and impossible place. It was not very nice to look at. Every single person in the meeting was smoking. I thought this was a meeting about the environment?? There were over 60 people there. There was one man on the stage, completely drunk, telling silly jokes. At one point, he asked for people from foreign countries. John said to me: Go and say you're from Colombia and talk about everything you want. I felt nervous, but I went up and said I'd been brought up in Colombia. He wasn't very nice, tried to hug me and make me part of his jokes and said ******** (obscene sexual 'joke' deleted). I pushed him away and said, Goodbye and thank you very much. John got pretty annoyed at this point and stood up and said, 'Do you want to hear about Colombia, or do you want to listen to this geezer?' Everyone shouted: 'Colombia! Colombia!' The next thing, there on the stage was a heavy rock band and suddenly nobody could talk to each other. I had to put my hands on my ears. We left the room after the first song. After some time, a man came to us and said they wanted me to come and talk about Colombia. So I did. I said, 'Hello everybody, my name is Louise, I'm 17 years old. I was born in Ireland but brought up in the rainforest in Colombia where we spend our lives campaigning for the forest. And coming out in the world is a very big change for me. Just now when that band was playing, I'm sorry, but I had to leave the room, I'm not used to so much noise.' At which point everyone clapped! I was amazed. I continued, 'I believe most of the people here are the ones who campaigned at Glen of the Downs. And I want to say that I am very grateful to you all, because I've been in one of the places where there is a reasonable amount of forest left and the rate at which it is being felled is scary, very scary. It is very important that we all get together and do things like what all of you have just done. I shall be in Ireland for almost a year and then I'll go back to my home in Colombia. And while I'm here, I'll help any campaigns like your one and also I'll be campaigning against nuclear weapons.' At which point they all clapped loud, and I said, 'Thank you.' From then on, the meeting was nice, lots of people got up and did speeches and they placed soft music. It was about midnight and I was very tired, people kept coming up to me asking about our campaign. A very young girl got up to do a speech, she was crying while she said it, 'Here we are telling each other 'we've got to save trees', but we should be out there telling the working class people, the majority of the world.' That's about all she said, and as she came down, she was still crying. I went over to talk to her. She had already heard of us and had written to us. I invited her to come and stay with us whenever she wanted. I was a bit put off by the ring through her lip though. At the end of this crazy meeting, we had to sleep up a tree. It was not much fun.

We arrive here, stay a while, then leave
Our lives are short, our impact lasting
Our steps are small, our footprints immense
Our knowledge is great, our wisdom lacking.

From the back of a card sent by a supporter, Davey Mulhern of Belfast

CLEAR CUT

I would like to recommend as excellent 'forest propaganda' a marvellous book by Bill Hunger called 'Clear Cut'. It is a fast-moving novel, but feels oh so very real. Published 1996 by Hampton Roads Publishing Co. USA.

THANKS

In ending, I would like to thank Jo Fox for printing so much of our material in her ever-lovely island magazine 'Skyeviews', and, as always, Steve Thompson of Sheffield for his constant seed-sendings. We are in the middle of a very long, very extreme rainy season and all your letters and contact are very much appreciated.

With love to you all,
Jenny James

Hello Dear Friends,
Easter time eleven years ago. I lay in the fine margin between life and death in some prickly scrub on a hill in Venezuela just minutes from the Colombian frontier, whilst the Forces-that-be battled over whether Hepatitis or Colombia would claim my body. Church bells rang and choirs sang in a town beneath us and I felt strangely happy - an amusing end for an atheist, I thought. But Colombia won, and as Easter approaches and I complete the reading of decades worth of 'Organic Gardening' magazines sent by hundreds of North American well-wishers, I find this beautiful poem written by Mary Makofske, who l'm sure will forgive me quoting her:

Eleven Years

The neighbours think us mad. Foul-smelling
bottles line up in their sheds like grim
gestapo plotting to strong-arm the soil
and torment seeds into confessing harvests.
Light slides across our margin of the planet,
a day never long enough - our hands still
full of seeds, the new-made beds half empty.
Not superstition, but ambition roots us
here, where shadows rub our ankles
and the sky turns violet. We rake in
compost and wood ashes, plant and smooth
partly by feel, and come to know the garden
in a different light as one who's blind
can know the loved one’s face by touch.
So routine graduates to ritual
even before the moon floods us in silver.
l can sink my arm up past the wrist
into a soil that once was cracked and baked.
Nightcrawlers now move through this earth.
and earth through them, and weeds and peas
and beans surface and grow and dive again
becoming a source from which they came.

Eleven years we've lived here. and built nothing
new except the dark soil sliding through
our hands. Except ourselves, who took this land
as something wounded we could heal, and be healed by.

The 'execution' by the FARC guerrillas of three young environmentalists visiting the threatened UWA tribe in North Colombia - two of them from indigenous nations themselves, although all labelled 'North American', was a hideous shock to us. Days spent imagining the last terrible moments of their young lives, then the usual sickening hypocrisy of the Colombian press devoting pages and pages to this crime, whilst consigning the murder by paramilitaries of dozens of Colombian peasants weekly to a few lines; but worse still, the blow to our hope that even in the midst of a cruel war, the FARC might have some sense and decency and not equal all foreigners with the CIA. Although the FARC leadership immediately repudiated their own commander responsible for the deaths, this was not much use to those young idealists or the people who loved them.

The response of the mother of one of the dead Americans was extraordinary: she said she 'didn't want her personal tragedy to become the tragedy of a whole nation' - that is, she didn't want the peace talks between guerrilla and government to end because of her son's death.

THE FARC’S DEMANDS

It seems fitting at this point to say why, in spite of the FARC's shoddy treatment of ourselves, we continue in general to favour them over other Colombian options, whilst deploring actions such as executing peasants for being 'on the other side'. They are very much a peasant army and whilst they do have an urban programme, it is the countryside that concerns us.

Here are some of-their demands:

? Preservation of what is left of Colombian forests and woodlands.

? Redistribution of land ownership which entails break-up of the massive environmentally destructive cattle-ranches and drug plantations (hence the birth of the 'paramilitaries' in defence of vested interests).

? Government-assisted substitution of food crops for drug crops.

? Opposition to US-financed aerial fumigation of-cocoa and poppy crops.

? State guarantees for the physical survival of a legal left-wing opposition. The last left-wing party that set up - the UP (Union Patriotica) has suffered the assassination of over 3,000 of its members. Imagine that happening to a European Green Party and you'll feel the gulf between what you think of as 'democracy' and what the Colombian government says is 'democracy' ..

? An end to the Colombian Government's acceptance of dictation from the US as to its every breath and move. (political slogans of 'US interventionism' become very real when one reads the daily 'liberal press'. It makes one cringe to note the Government's unapologetic subservience to every word that issues out of the mouth of the Northern Lord) .

? And treatment of the peasant population as if they were part of Colombia and not 'The Enemy' - i.e. social justice. Colombian urban middle-class snobbery towards the countryside has to be smelt to be believed!

Of course none of this justifies killing three people supporting the UWA Indians, but it does show why, politically, we lean towards the FARC. Meanwhile, we have our own points of difficulty: we are evidently due for a visit from them to enquire 'Where do we get our money from?' (what money?!) and 'in exchange for what?' (i.e. the age-old 'spying' fears). It may be a little difficult to explain that our money comes from the Stars, but if Anne is around at the time, maybe a couple of Guerrilla horoscopes will convince them ... I also owe them an answer to the deeply hurtful comment that we 'produce nothing' - they mean for commercial purposes. I will proudly show them that we produce lots - but we eat it !

SEED NEEDS

In spite of a disheartening rainy season, we have kept extending and extending again our area under cultivation. As most seed packets are destined for suburban gardens of a few square yards, we have once again run out of seeds. These are some of the varieties we'd love, though all will be used: Arugula (rocket salad), huckleberry, strawberry and cape gooseberry, rhubarb, comfrey, lavender, lupins and other flowers, thyme, rosemary, basil, celery and celeriac, onions (all sorts) and leeks, carrot, cabbage and parsnip.

Gardening is an active participation in the deepest mysteries of the universe. By gardening, our children learn that they constitute with all growing things a single community of life. They learn to nurture and be nurtured in a universe that is always precarious but ultimately benign.
Thomas Berry

GOOD NEWS

We have just heard that UMATA, a Government agricultural agency is going to purchase an area of land adjacent to ours to allow it to return to forest! We've come a long way in 10 years from the day when neighbours complained 'we were buying to waste it by letting it return to jungle and that the bears would come back'. Now our wonderful waving sea of woodland is to be added to by the Government!

In wildness is the preservation of the world. Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest.
Henry David Thoreau

HUNTING THE HUNTERS

The local leader who supports us entirely in our opposition to hunting (and who reminds us that it is totally banned by the FARC) came the other day to say 'could we please catch the hunters to identify them'...

MEDELLIN CONNECTIONS

I have an excellent penfriend of many years' standing who is the president of Medellin Ornithology Society and who prints our material from time to time. I sent him a copy of one of the excellent organic farming leaflets we distribute, which is produced by a Government agency. He wrote back and said, 'Fine. But please send me pictures of your gardens, and your methods and experiences and I'll publish them - then the people will really believe it'. So I did.

A small 14-year-old boy arrived here the other day, having walked from Melgar (about 6-7 hours uphill on shadeless roads). He had come from Medellin. He said that someone had told him there were some farming gringos here who would let you stay with them .... He' d been told in Manizales, which is the other side of the Central Sierra (we are on the Eastern Sierra)!

NEWS OF OUR PEOPLE IN SCOTLAND

Our own children meanwhile, have all disappeared for over a fortnight now, to explore and work on another ecological project near the hotter town of Fusagasuga, run by a long-term Colombian friend of ours. Their work, company and music are sorely missed.

The European branch of our brood have their news too: Alice is studying art (or rather, teaching it) and receiving other basic education in a school for gypsies in Cork. Well, she's certainly a ‘traveller’! Louise and Martyn, both 17, have recently been arrested with Mary Kelly at Faslane nuclear weapons base in Scotland.

Mary has some fascinating titbits to tell: she reports that during the demonstration, the female leader was in touch by mobile phone with the head of the police and that he asked how many Vegan dinners he should be ordering for the holding cells even before anyone was arrested! They also kept in touch to report how many new arrests had been made, the officer making comments like, '9 more arrested - brilliant - the numbers are up to 40 now'. Jane, the demonstration leader, invited the man to join in. He replied, 'Half the force would have joined the blockade if they were allowed'.

Irish Mary noted one of the policemen was Irish too - and that he was very good-looking. She told him he was wasted in the force and should be in films. He couldn't help grinning and later when Louise was upset and crying after being arrested, he gave her an organic oat crunchy bar to comfort her. An ex-nun (in the Order for 30 years) and her 60+ activist partner were arrested wearing Tony Blair and Clinton masks - Clinton had Blair on a huge dog-collar lead.

In prison, Mary reports: 'We where given apples, dried fruit and nuts, baked potatoes and beans, and the duty sergeant came around several times to see if we were alright. 'Hey, what's happened'? I asked one of the surly wardresses, uncomfortable in her new role of giving concessions. ‘Why are we getting 5-star treatment?’ 'Because you lot are always complaining,' says she grudgingly'. Other prisoners take note!

For no generation of living men can bind a generation that is yet unborn or can sell or squander the rights of man. Each generation of man has but a life interest in the world. Finton Lalor (lrish Republican)

“Move Your Garden Up the Hill”

Meanwhile back on the farm ... the Presidents of two local Juntas came visiting to see what we do and to receive gifts of writing paper for their local schools, the remains of our giveaway seeds, organic farming literature, composting systems, plus the regulation tour of our gardens and park – yes, we have begun a flower, shrub and fruit-tree 'park', where there used to be only compacted red clay and soggy bog. One of them was accompanied by the man who sold us this farm and who had not looked at it for several years. One noted a certain sourness about him. Eleven years ago he sold an ‘obviously’ useless extension of infertile mountain sand and scrub to a pleasant but obviously ridiculous European female (who was doing her evil best to hide the glint of glee in her eye as she thought, 'You wait and see what we'll do with this, mate') ... Now, viewing the hundreds of fertile terraced vegetable beds, he had the cheek to say to me, 'Jenny you should move this garden up the hill. It's more fertile up there.' I gave him what I hoped was a withering look.

STRANGE POST

A Green Campaign leads one into strange waters. From the American Religious Right, I receive an unsolicited publication warning of the evils of environmentalism. In it is an advert for a new book called 'The Sustainable Prince' with a picture of poor Prince Charles on the cover (and I am no royalist). The blurb boasts. 'Documents the Prince's sordid connections with the environmental elite'!?

CLAUDIO (pronounced 'cloud-ee-o')

Who is Claudio? He is one of Anne's closest friends, clients and helpers in Bogota. He is also an architect, the son of an ex Minister of Justice. He went to school with Pastrana (the new Colombian President), is a friend of the 'First Lady' and his father was a friend of Pastrana's father, who was also a President of Colombia ... if you see what I mean.

I know Claudio. He is a huge-hearted visionary; he weeps when I read him 'Eco-Colombia' the green future fantasy I wrote about Colombia as a possible 'green nation'. He helps us non-stop. It is he who lends us his lorry and his driver, to bring a wealth of school books, clothes, furniture, even a dismantleable wooden house, donated to us by a musical group, to this area. He paid Mary's fare to Ireland just because he loves what we are doing. He is also bankrupt! But his gifts flow: he has now donated us a computer and printer. 'What on earth am I going to do with that?' I naturally enquired as it doesn't run off a solar panel. 'Set it up in Icononzo at a friend's house', was Anne's reply. I still haven't found out what it does, but I’m keeping an open mind.

Well, Claudio has just become one of the official signatories of our 'Fundacion Atlantis' and in his debonair way (which I appreciate) has, without asking us, presented a massive and impressive document to the President of Colombia, concerning the setting up all over Colombia of new self-sufficient settlements to solve the 'desplazado' (displaced persons) problem - that is, the millions of internal refugees clinging to the edges of Colombia's towns, having fled from rural violence and war. He announced that we will be in charge of the agricultural side of these projects! When Anne and I said something like 'EEK! Help! How many people do you think we are?' he calmed us by assuring us that new community leaders would come here to be trained in our lifestyle and ecological methods.

We don't believe him, but it was a nice diplomatic try. Last news from Anne was that as she was busy looking at Claudio's astro-chart and declaiming: 'It looks like the Government is going to accept your project', the phone rang. You guessed: Claudio is to go and meet with the President who is very interested. Eeek, Help!

Love to Everyone,
Jenny James.

”The climate sure has changed. Imagine, 30 years of clobbering and now I have become respectable.” Quote from J.I.Rodale of America's Organic Gardening pioneer organisation.

COLOMBIAN RAINFOREST CAMPAIGN

Contents:

• Grand Cross in the heavens
• A brief guerrilla kidnap
• ‘Guardian’ newspaper says we are in danger
• Revolutionary Therapy
• Explosion of ‘green’ interest all round
• Wise words from young Louise in Europe

Dear Friends Abroad....Greetings!

We have often mentioned in these Letters our main source of income for living and for our all Green projects: our colleague Anne of Donegal, Ireland, does astrology charts for all and sundry in the Bog as we call Colombia’s capital cesspit, Bogotá. Any of you who are interested in Astrology will probably know that this is a very special year with a very menacing Grand Cross appearing in the heavens in mid summer. I want to open this Letter with Anne's introductory comments to a study she (like all astrologers, I'm sure) has been making of this phenomenon.

"Looking at the dramatic Grand Cross of August 1999 from the point of view of Colombia, the overall picture is one of huge opportunity through conflict. I think we need to look at this window of opportunity in the sky in a very personal fashion, not as something out there or as forces beyond our control such as destiny, planets or multinationals. In its highest form of expression, this time gives us the power to improve the desperate state of the present management of our planet by each person finding their own individual, colourful, creative, joyful, self expressive, theatrical, autonomous way of joining up with other people who're working for the planet and for a human society. Leo energy (there is a New Moon eclipse in Leo) at its best is as unarguable with as the Sun and this time is a challenge for each of us to be so true to our inner Suns that the planet becomes peopled by millions of points of light that the powers of destruction can’t argue with!"

"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.”
E.B.White

A BRIEF GUERRILLA KIDNAP

Last year, after a Green Theatre show near here, a man begged us to take his teenage daughter to live with us to share our 'culture' and she has been with us ever since, and so, for a lot of the time, has he. But recently he went down to the lower reaches of Caquetá and was kidnapped by the FARC guerrilla army, as he was unknown in that area.

He was taken off a bus by guerrilla soldiers making sure no paramilitaries entered the area. They took him to a farm not far from a village and held him there for 8 days, interrogating him to make sure his story held water. He reports he never felt fear as he had a clear conscience. He suggested they check out his identity with the people he was about to visit. They did this and eventually released him. We asked him about their treatment of him, and what he did during his time with them. 'They were never aggressive', he said. He worked with a team of them getting firewood and going on mule trips for provisions. They fed him well. There were about 20 of them, from teenage boys and girls to University students who'd left their studies to join the struggle; they lived in a permanent camp of wooden houses. Their social organisation is strict: they kill spies and they take criminals away to work, sending money to the wife. (People taken away by, the paramilitaries never return, though their bodies sometimes do.)

In the Tolima region, the guerrilla force produces a small handout called ‘Resistencia’ regularly for the peasants, suggesting ways to keep the area safe and laying down ‘bye laws’ of conduct, including the environmental laws I have listed in previous Green letters. In the latest bulletin, these items appear:

“The distribution and sale of marihuana, bazuco and other narcotic substances is prohibited in all establishments. It is also prohibited to sell to minors alcoholic drinks and cigarettes.”

We wish to apologise to any of our friends and supporters who got alarmed by the heading on April 1st in The Guardian: 'Colombian Death Squads Threaten the New Atlantis' by Jeremy Lennard (nice pictures though!). This is well meaning nonsense. We have kept Jeremy Lennard regularly informed of all goings on here and of course mentioned that the peasants in this area, as anywhere else in a 'red zone' (guerrilla territory), are always scared for their lives as the 'paras' consider them a military objective. But the danger we face in this sense is meaningless compared to that of a Colombian peasant. It seems even the best of newspapers churn out mangled news.

A GREEN BUS?

Last Letter we introduced you to our friend Claudio. He has now said that if he lands the enormous architectural contract he is seeking, he will buy us a bus! That means a ‘chiva’ one of the open sided country buses that have never seen a paved road and have flat tops to carry people and huge quantities of luggage. This generosity comes about as he has long had plans for us to become mobile and go all over Colombia on ‘Green’ and associated projects. For several years, he has been planning and preparing an enormous self sufficient, ecological housing project. He also went bankrupt attempting a one man reform of the inhumane prison system in Colombia by designing open prisons.

The Colombian President, Pastrana, has said he likes Claudio's settlement project for internal refugees and has passed it on to the Government department concerned.

STRANGE CIRCLES

Meanwhile, Life continues to play its little games with us. For 25 years we were chiefly known as a therapeutic Community. Then we came to Colombia, and I put all that behind me so I thought to concentrate on the more pressing Green issues. So imagine the state of my lower jaw when Anne came home to tell me that a lady called Constanza Ardile who gives therapy in large groups to refugees, paramilitaries and police wants us to work with her. She trains peasant therapists and 'community mothers' to give therapy in their districts. She has trained around 600 of these. She also carried out an initial programme with 30 police and has been given a contract to work with several hundred of them. She recounts that the Police Chief didn’t even look at the programme she was offering and just waved 'Yes, yes, of course good for public relations' without realising he had just given permission for a Revolution in the police force. Constanza wants us to work giving therapy and doing theatre in Apartadó a paramilitary stronghold in the North and Bogotá (on second thoughts, perhaps the 'Guardian! is psychic...). Her last therapists used to be overcome with nausea and vomiting on leaving sessions, having heard the confessions of police who had tortured and murdered.

A further piece of information from this amazing lady has us incensed and we intend to act on it and report further later: that an English woman representing a Fund that was helping this work turned up at a therapy session, got entirely freaked out by the crying and screaming and convinced her organization to withdraw all funding. What precisely would she expect people living through the Colombian nightmare to be doing in a therapy group?

Here I think a brilliant quote sent by Meredith, a friend in Ecuador, is apt:

"We are confronted by insurmountable opportunities!"

A FRIENDLY INVASION

Some weeks ago, Anne came panting up the pathway saying, 'I've come to warn you I've brought 14 people with me from Bogotá.' I spent a few minutes swearing, then rose to the occasion. It was a magnificent visit. They were all professional people civil engineers, doctors of alternative medicine, a dentist, a yoga teacher, a biologist, dancers and artists and all belonged to one group headed by an old friend of ours, Alberto, a healer, who now lives here and wants to set up an alternative healing centre. Hence his successful canvassing of a visit from 14 friends! It was an explosion of culture, days of theatre and exchange of skills. And if the war situation allows us to stay here, the Centre will become a reality.

Only one small problem my poor little brain. Alberto and all his friends are urine therapy fanatics (you will have read about it elsewhere, I refuse to explain this to you!) and every unsuspecting peasant who comes up the pathway is donated a long explanatory lecture on the subject. Ye gods! And just when I'm managing to close my strait jacketed mind to the matter, plop! through the post comes a posh looking book in German (which I read) from the mother of one of our men extolling the virtues of the same. OK, I give in, I'll read it.

COLOMBIAN COFFEE GOES GREEN

A visit much more within my scope came from the Head of the Ecology Dept. of the Colombian Coffee Growers Association in Ibagué, capital of Tolima. This is also an excellent connection: of all the organizations in Colombia, this group produces the most sensible, readable, accessible and readily-­donated literature on ecological topics such as compost formation for the peasant population. We have been distributing their excellent literature since the Campaign began, both in Caquetá and here. The man in question was transfixed as I answered his questions and showed him round the farm; 'How can we use you, what can you do for us?’ was his straight forward question. I told him about the Theatre and our other activities. 'Give me videos, pictures, information, literature I need it to show secondary-­school students', he said. Videos, no, I answered the rest, I'll see what I can do.

After he left, I spent one whole week of valuable gardening time compiling a thick pictorial folder of the whole history of our Green activities in Colombia. It contains photos, children’s paintings, their songs and poems, full colour organic gardening pictures from magazines, plus a simple running commentary in Spanish, all beautifully laid out (I had to get several massages a day from Alberto during its making working 8 or 9 hours a day at my desk is not my favourite position). Anne of course has refused me permission to give the folder away, and I didn’t take much persuading. We will lend it, show it, use it as a permanent exhibition wherever we go Anne has already made grand use of it in Bogotá. The file contains every aspect of our lives, from our vegetarianism to our theatre, to our political work, our way of living communally, our care for Nature, everything. And on 10th May, we are booked by the Coffee Federation to spend a week in the Ibagué area showing the Green part of our theatre to school teachers to help them pass on the subject to their children.

…AND SO DO THE SCHOOLS

A very fertile visit from local school teachers: as a result of our performances last year at ‘La Aurora’, a local village, their teachers wrote asking me to help with a large ecological project they are engaged in. I invited them round and was mildly horrified to hear they wanted me to train their children in ‘ecological mime’. Now I am not a mime artist! though we have produced some beautiful pieces without words, all working together. They also wanted permission to use all our Green songs (mainly Louise's) a big YES of course from us. And they wanted further ideas for their project they got them. Now they are bringing half the school here at the end of the month for further training...

And so are the teachers of La Pepina, a hamlet adjacent to them. These are the activities I like best to work at home and still ‘spread the word’. I have collected piles of ecological literature (with Anne's help) to give to these people. These schools now have home made tapes of all the Green songs... and my 13 year old Katie has suddenly flowered into an astonishing song writer. Few messages hit home so strongly as those flowing from such a young and tender source, even our hardened old musician Fin was in tears.

Creativity is Catching: on my birthday, April 11th, the whole commune put on a home theatre for me, full of new acts and dances, including the participation of many Colombians living here who had not performed before. An explosion of culture, and very moving.

"After nearly 50 years of almost total opposition from the Government, academia and business, the push for change has suddenly burst free from the crushing burden of uninformed disapproval that kept most people from taking alternative agriculture seriously. Agriculture, after all, is not just an industry. It is a way of life. A link between people and the earth. A foundation for the social and political stability of many countries. What is now seen as the alternative in agriculture will become conventional..”
Bob Rodale of the US Organic Gardening Movement

THE JUNGLE CHILD IN EUROPE SECTION

Louise's education into the world's horrors continues. Just turned 18, she is up to the neck in political campaigns in Ireland, Scotland and Europe, along with Alice, her sister, and all the others at our Headquarters in Donegal. Here are some of Louise's recent comments on her rude awakening:

“It is hard to concentrate on a certain amount of things and get them done, when there are terrible things going on everywhere and every day I hear about more terrible wars and injustice and cruelty to animals and to people, and deaths, and that in Glen of the Downs they are going to build the road no matter about all the protesters, and the bombing of Yugoslavia, and that Ireland is going to join Nuclear Europe.. and I could fill the page. Anyway what I'm saying is that sometimes it is very difficult to keep one's spirits high and be determined, but I'm doing my best. Sometimes one does not know what is the most urgent thing and who needs the most help.

“Jenny, you ask what I think about the way you brought me up, not really letting me know how bad the world really is, and then suddenly letting me rush off into the world all excited to find disaster (well it wasn't exactly like that, you always let us know a certain amount). Well, I want to say I'M VERY GRATEFUL, because kids that watch TV every day and see so much violence both on the news and in films, or hear it on the radio, or in the newspapers, must in the end somehow feel that these things are normal and acceptable and part of every day life. It gets to the point where wars are not only accepted, but become popular: kids play war games on their computers and game machines where they have the most violent, murderous, bloody war games and that is what kids, especially boys, grow up with. It is totally insane. It is like they are trained from a very early age to like war and accept violence.

“Even though Colombia is a very violent country, I think people there have a more loving point of view towards life than the people here; for example, I have found that there are so many people here that actually agree with NATO bombing Yugoslavia. I would not like to have grown up like that, with no feeling. I'm insensitive enough just as I am: imagine if I had been brought up like most people, I'd probably be campaigning for war! I read once that Man who is so proud of his amazing intelligence and everything he creates, forgets that he owes his entire existence to eight inches of top soil and the fact that it rains!

With love to everyone,
Jenny James.

Supplementary Green Letters Website:
www.afan.org.uk

Contents:

• Three days’ theatre in coffee country..and a deluge of further requests
• The War comes to Icononzo: 7 Policemen shot dead
• Green work continues apace
• Our youngsters in Europe protest against NATO bombing
• Goodbye to a Squirrel with Cancer…

Well, we did what we could to pass on this message during our eventful three days of Green Theatre in Libano, a coffee-growing area a very long hot day's drive from here. Our hosts were the coffee-growers association of Colombia and our venue was a delightful hideaway in gardens and woodland set up specially for such training courses - but accessible only by driving through thick squelching reeking mud at the edge of Libano's open rubbish-dumping tip. During our stay there, the coffee association got so embarrassed by this foul-smelling anomaly that tractors were ordered to improve access, if not reduce the smell.

We were lodged in one room, where 10 of us lay down happily on mats on the cool stone floor - the climate was warmer than we're used to. The room was part of a boarding school for street-children and very well run indeed, except for the leaking handbasins, showers and toilets which our handyman Fin did his best to fix while we were there. The ex-street children were a lively, helpful bunch and it was uplifting to see what was being done for them, with a bit of empathy and quite a lot of good-natured discipline. We put on a special show for them after their school hours.

The response to our theatre was overwhelming. Anne bravely coped with all the requests and enquiries after it as I was exhausted from running the show. There are two main outcomes: one, that we have now made a 60 minute tape of Green Songs and poems and messages in Spanish which we constantly copy and hand out to all visiting teachers and other relevant leaders. Produced on recycled tapes, recorded with one microphone and with batteries run on solar power, the tape has its share of hiccups, but I think the message comes across. If anyone speaks enough Spanish to understand it, or would like to hear it anyway, please apply to Mary Kelly at Atlantis, Burtonport, Co. Donegal for one; we ask only a spare tape (it can be a used one) and postage in exchange.

The second result is a deluge of further theatre requests, the first on 23rd June near Icononzo for another group of teachers on a course called 'Sembradores de Vida' ("Sowers of Life") run by the coffee association; the next, a few days after that, is a week-long tour of many villages in the Planadas region, which is so far to the south of Tolima that we will need to drive two days and camp overnight. Also, the area is run by a different guerrilla group, the ELN (National Liberation Army), generally considered more mad-cap than the FARC, and the people inviting us have to get permission from them to let a load of foreigners in to the area, else we'll find ourselves on the long list of ELN captives.

THE GREEN BUS IS REAL

Claudio didn't wait to buy us a bus for these activities, he has lent us his own lorry for whenever and wherever we want it. And Anne has legalised her driving licence so she can drive it. All we now pay for is petrol - and the institutionalised bribes to motorway police who threaten you with legalised theft of the vehicle for the slightest infringement like not happening to know which vehicle documents one is supposed to carry, as happened to us. Local bus-drivers assure us that this is 'standard practice'. Death of another few monolinear European brain cells..

THE WAR COMES TO ICONONZO:

In Icononzo we have a wonderful friend, Carmen, who was one of the first country-women who helped me in 1988 when I first arrived in this area, before we bought the farm. Then too, the local FARC, having never seen a foreigner in their area, ordered us to leave. At that time, I thought the notion of a 'spy' with three very small blonde children and a horse a rather rare idea and decided to withstand the order. I asked the local contact for the communist party, who was also the police secretary (told you it's a strange country!) if I would be shot if I didn't leave. He had a fit and said, "Of course not." "Then I won't leave," I answered. He had another heart attack. Carmen, wife of the local schoolteacher, bravely put us up on the floor of her tiny one-room living accommodation and later found us an empty wooden farmhouse to stay in while I looked for a farm to buy. Our friendship dates from then (and as you may notice, the FARC did nothing - today I would never risk such naive disobedience).

So on our way home from the theatre days in Libano, all our girls stayed for a 'TV break' at Carmen's, and Anne drove the rest of us home through the mire of our unpaved road from Icononzo to Pueblo Nuevo. We got stuck.. But the gods were with us: an enormous bulldozer happened to be working on the road a few hundred yards away, and to Anne's extreme alarm pushed our suddenly tiny-seeming furniture van through the hideous gravel and mud. Anne, normally cool in the most stressful of circumstances, this time did have a nervous breakdown, being in charge of a borrowed vehicle.

Next day we heard the news: 7 Icononzo policemen shot dead. Then the children came home, white and shaken. It had happened right outside Carmen's house where they were staying, at 9.00 at night. Fifty bullets in each body and the streets awash with blood. The war is polarizing all over Colombia, and this was the FARC's announcement that the area is theirs. They had imposed a curfew, the police had broken it and were ambushed.

Anne had to be back in Bogota the next day, but the area was sealed off; with helicopters flying over and the Army called in. When she finally got to Bogota, she wrote this to us:

"Apparently Serrano, the chief of police, has come out on TV and in 'El Tiempo' (the right-wing daily) saying the massacre of the police could only have happened with the connivance of the local people - which is tantamount to an invitation to the paramilitaries to come in and wreak vengeance on the innocent. On the news it said the guerrilla are threatening to take over Icononzo. They have given out leaflets saying the Mayor's office, the banks and the police station are military targets."

Readers will remember the report of the killing of two human rights workers recently, one, Ernesto, a friend of Anne's. The case has been taken up by Amnesty International and it is common knowledge that Carlos Castano, the bloodthirsty head of the paramilitary force, was responsible. However, Ernesto's wife reports that the Public Prosecutor telephoned her lawyer to sound out whether she would accept 10 million pesos (about £5,000) as 'compensation' for the death and to stop the investigation. Her lawyer tried to convince her that there was little point in carrying on as the two chief witnesses, the driver and a passenger of the bus where Ernesto had been shot, had obviously succumbed to bribes or threats and had now changed their stories and were saying the attack on the bus was just a 'common robbery' and that 'Ernesto was drunk and refused to co-operate with the criminals and so they shot him.' Ernesto's wife stood her ground, saying she'd pay the money if they gave her husband back alive.

ATLANTIS ECO-TOURS?

In spite of all of which, our Green work continues unabated. The changing weather-phenomena which are causing havoc in some parts of the world are - for now - bringing about paradise conditions in our own weather, giving us light showers and sun instead of catastrophic downpours - though it is scary to see once thundering mountain streams turn into little trickles. However, the effect on the gardens and on us is magnificent; the size of our organic gardens has doubled over and over again, the quality of the soil, through much male toil, rises daily, and our guinea-pigs as ever oblige us by reproducing at an astonishing rate (in spite of sad visits from a local weasel), providing us with mountains of compost.

And our fame spreads. On 6th May, we were visited by 50 (yes, we counted them!) local schoolchildren and their teachers "to see how we live and to teach them ecology." On May 28th 20 older children from the ecology group of La Aurora, another local school, turned up with their teachers who have now become friends - these are the ones who have appointed me as their 'drama teacher.' I have now recovered from my initial embarrassment and am taking up the challenge. We are to spend several days in La Aurora passing on elements of our Green Theatre to a specially chosen group of teenagers so they can become “eco-mime campaigners” - their teachers' idea!

On 29th May, an even older group of students arrived - from the University of Cundinamarca Biology Dept. (Cundinamarca is the next province to Tolima and we are right on the edge of it.) They were brought here by a long-term friend of ours, Govinda, who runs an eco-tour area (a serious one, not money-making) near a town called Fusagasuga on the way to Bogota. The level of questions in a meeting with these students after they had toured the farm, caves, waterfalls and gardens was very high and before they left they inevitably invited us to their University to perform our theatre - not the most pleasant invitation as their town, Girardot, lies on the River Magdalena and is brain-fryingly hot.

"The future of mankind is dependent on every human being intimately associated with a half acre of ground."
Frank Lloyd Wright, taken from 'Organic Gardening Magazine USA'

EUROPEAN SECTION:

Well, knock me down with a feather! The Irish Green Party have asked our Mary Kelly to be Green Party candidate for the Donegal area - this is the result of Mary's tireless campaigning on Green issues over there. Mary says she hasn't the foggiest how to go about complying, but she's certainly accepting the challenge. She wrote “I don't expect anyone will vote for a strange woman who collects seaweed and firewood in a wheelbarrow and rides a bike,” yet she has already met with local encouragement. Irish country people appreciate sincerity.

Meanwhile, the children - well, Louise at 18 is hardly that, nor is Mary's son Martyn, also 18, recently returned to Ireland from years of living in the jungle with us, and even Alice, still 15, is fast becoming a professional artist, having been 'adopted' by a famous Irish artist, Pauline Bewick. So I had better rephrase that: the jungle-bred teenage department are regularly appearing in the Press. Ireland has an all-Irish-language newspaper 'Foinse' ('Fountain' I believe it means) and there they were in full colour on the front page with a banner protesting at NATO's insane 'humanitarian' bombing of Yugoslavia. They have also appeared in the 'Irish Independent' on the same issue, and Patricia McKenna, militant Green Party campaigner and MEP, saw them off in a public event in Dublin when they left for a European Peace March to NATO HQ. Mary continues to write environmental and political articles for 'Saoirse' (“Freedom”), a Republican Irish newspaper; John who lived here a year has been in a Scottish prison following anti-nuclear weapons activity at Faslane submarine base, now released to continue with his organic-gardening project in Cork; and all our group there are constantly involved in environmental and peace activities.

Louise keeps us informed of her still-fresh, shocked impressions of Europe:

"This world scares me: so much noise, so many police around, fast cars in confusing cross-roads, weird-looking people, drunks, cameras watching you in every shop or bank, or even in the street, and just a general vibe 'NOT TO' do anything out of the ordinary: everyone has to behave themselves in a horribly strict way. It is hard to explain, but basically what I feel is that in South America, everyone is more relaxed than here."

"To dig in the mellow soil.. is a great thing. One gets strength out of the ground as often as one touches it with a hoe.. There is life in the ground; it goes into the seeds; and it also, when it is stirred, it goes into the person who stirs it."
Charles Dudley Warner (from 'Organic Gardening Magazine')

AFAN - 'HURRY' in Spanish , and AFAN is the new name Mary has chosen for the Irish section of our Campaign. It stands for: Atlantis Foundation Action Network and has a wonderfully all-encompassing list of objectives, the first of which is: "To raise awareness of human degradation and environmental destruction of all kinds all over the globe, to establish the causes of such and to look for and develop sustainable, ethical alternatives to the same.”

EUROPE TO BAN HERBAL MEDICINE !

One thing everyone is going to need to campaign about in Europe is the unbelievable attempt by the European Union to ban herbal medicines unless they have a 'licence'. Mary has details of this latest horror-story for those who have not heard about it.

VALIANT PUBLICATIONS

My own education continues apace with the huge number of excellent magazines that are sent my way. I list here some particularly excellent ones (some I've mentioned before, but no apologies).

CORPORATE WATCH

Contains cheeky and well-researched information on the machinations of the multi-nationals. A must for anyone concerned with the global anti-environment conspiracies taking place under our noses. Available from: Box E, Ill Magdalen Road, Oxford 0X4 1RQ.

The May issue of 'New Internationalist' concerns itself with Third World Debt and, amongst other things, its devastating effect on the environment as impoverished people are forced to wreck their surroundings in order to survive. Contains details of the 'Jubilee 2000' campaign, a marvellous 'millennium initiative' with broad-based support to simply CANCEL Third World debt. Address: 55 Rectory Road, Oxford, 0X4 lBW.

GREEN EVENTS A heartening little newsheet showing 'Green' activities 'in and around London'. Actually 'around' seems to include a lot of England! £8 for 12 issues from: 93 Fortress Road, London NW5 14G. Well worth it if you want to keep in touch.

"GROWING ORGANICALLY" Magazine of the Henry Doubleday Research Association. Specifically for organic gardeners. From: Ryton Organic Gardens, Coventry CV8 3LG

COLOMBIA FORUM Excellent news organisation for those who find Colombia's political situation mind-boggling. Concise, accurate, concerned. From: Mike Simpson, Las Casas Office, 16 Wellington Road, Nantwich, Cheshire CW5 7BH.

OUR NEEDS IN COLOMBIA:

In general, we are very happy with a constant supply of gift seed coming in, mainly from America, but we would like: celery, rocket and rhubarb seed. Also, postage costs have suddenly doubled in Colombia and our correspondence is now voluminous, so any small help with postage costs would be much appreciated (Please send to Mary in Ireland - less complicated.). To ward off air-borne infections, we are always hugely grateful to receive grapefruit seed extract, a brilliant immune-system booster (try it yourself if you haven't already). For our theatre work, we need violin strings; green cloth for costumes and backdrops; light, easy classical music scores for violin; 'dog-ends' of makeup; and any pictures you may come across of dance choreography or booklets on drama or mime teaching!

SQUIRRELS GET CANCER: Outside the little wooden room which I write to you from, I have a constant gentle jungle parade of wildlife, especially birds. Our fruit bushes and trees attract many unafraid visitors, including a former constant companion: a Colombian squirrel, a tiny variety I've never seen in Europe. I had become used to her daily aerial acrobatics through the branches and right down to near my head, daring all for our 'raspberries' (the nearest name for some kind of wild jungle berries).

Then one day she arrived with a hateful lump on her back, a tumour. I stared in disbelief, saw her deteriorated condition, and knew I'd never see her again, and I didn’t. All around this area, heavy crop-spraying is the norm. Goodbye little squirrel.

And goodbye and thank you all. Your continual encouragement is our lifeblood. With best wishes,
Jenny James

Contents:

• The Axe Falls: Exile once again

"The wind, the rain, the mountains and rivers, the woodlands and meadows and all their inhabitants; we need these perhaps even more for our psyche than for our physical survival"

Thomas Berry, author of "Dreams of the Earth" (from Resurgence Magazine)

On Friday 13th August, two days after the Grand Cross in the heavens, and already three weeks away from home on an exhausting Green Theatre tour of the stripped mountain settlements of Planadas in south Tolima, we received an urgent message: Phone home. Of course our farm has no phone, but our friend Carmen lives opposite Telecom in Icononzo and is ever-alert to calls.

It was our first afternoon off. Anne and I had spent it under the giant Ceiba tree in the middle of noisy, dirty, brash Planadas inventing a magical series of new plays and acts for our theatre. When the call came, I felt irrationally angry to be disturbed; we quickly hypothesized various disasters that could warrant such an intrusion. 'Oh, perhaps the guerrilla have thrown us out again', I offered.

As Anne climbed the stairs to our theatre home, where we slept on the floor tormented by heat and noise, on her return from the phone, she said, 'You were right'. I stared at her sharply; waiting for her face to break to reveal the joke. It didn't.

We had two more weeks of promised engagements – including a date with ourselves to get a rest, as all of us were exhausted. Our enthusiastic audiences watch two hours of energetic theatre and our 'employers' - the Mayor and Education Secretary of Planadas - ask for more and more shows, never understanding that for each minute of entertainment on stage, there are hours, days, weeks, months, even years of work and discipline and preparation. In the end, I'd had to say, only half-joking, 'Listen, do you realize that in Europe we'd be in prison for exploiting child labour?' That got us the one afternoon's rest before The News fell upon us.

The kids were at a well-earned disco. We four adults sat around quietly absorbing the freshly arrived information. We had one month to leave. This time the reason was clear, unlike in Caqueta: our constant stream of visitors constituted a security risk to our region in an intensifying war situation. We were three days' travelling from home.

We sent for the kids. They came galloping home to our one room above the theatre hall, heard the news, then lay around in little piles quietly sobbing. Two of the Colombians, a boy and a young woman who normally cannot stick each other were crying in each others arms. All 3 Colombians who perform with us opted immediately for going with us, wherever we would go. The large old bus outside the window that through many a breakdown had brought us this far was only one-ninth paid for - one of the nine million pesos it would cost. It would for a while be our only home. In the same phone call came the news that the Irish branch of our community was suffering its 'Grand Cross' too - our house-sale had fallen through. So we were penniless and homeless.

That last sentence was just a bit of drama – I actually love these situations. I rise to them like a carnivore at the smell of meat. The weeping children were horrified at my cool hard-heartedness as I enthusiastically gabbled on with Anne about where we would go and what we would do, how we would organize, and how the Green Campaign would now spread all over Colombia and other countries of South America, just as so many well-placed friends of Anne's in Bogota and Ecuador had for long insisted, as in 'But you must go out and spread your knowledge and your message'. Ever a recluse and Hermit Crab if I get the chance, I'd always found this extremely uninviting. Now there was no choice.

We cancelled the next two weeks' of theatre, including the rather important engagement we had the next day in a guerrilla stronghold, invited and protected by the same Army who were throwing us out back home in the East of ToIima. Colombia is ever paradoxical. The bus wouldn't start next morning of course - starter motor, battery, air-brakes, suspension, all in trouble - just those little details that tend to go on hair-raising mountain tracks where one inch between the outer wheels and the Abyss is just enough and two is a luxury.

It was late afternoon before we were on our way, having been bidden a dozen tearful and shocked farewells from all our new friends.

That night was an idyllic foretaste of what a gypsy life might bring (or, as I cynically put it, a Cosmic Carrot to trick us on to the next Awful Bit): a deserted river-beach, natural firewood all around, a star-filled sky, no noise, sweet soft warm insect-free air, soft luxurious bedding we'd carried with us and an efficient vegetarian meal round the campfire; a few songs for a nearby farmer's family, and long long hours of much needed sleep.

During the long hot drive home, I worked out every last detail of our move. The bus was a constant conference chamber. We have till September 15th.

ACTION STATIONS for The Move

Three weeks away, leaving a small caretaking team, and months of hard labour before leaving, has left us with a magnificent vegetable garden overflowing with food. It is strange picking it and not sowing the next crops. There is drought everywhere, but our well-organised sprinklers fed by the mountain stream nearby kept everything damp and green. It is strange not spending our days making compost and digging new beds though. Instead, 3 pack animals a day every day to Pueblo Nuevo taking sackloads of books and clothes for giving away, plus mountains of our gear for bussing to Icononzo. Thank goodness for Carmen, she will store our possessions till we know where we're going. Oh, - and we have a theatre show in Icononzo this Sunday for a radical peasants' organisation.

Approximately three minutes after arriving home at Carmen's house, which is also the Post Office in Icononzo, we were visited by the chief guerrilla contact for the area, who was horrified at the news we had to go and immediately lectured us about not accepting the decision. He guaranteed to get me a meeting with the regional Commander and claimed he'd 'sorted out much worse cases than this'. He didn't know quite what to make of my attitude though. 'You know, if I were a guerrilla commander and a load of gringos appeared in my area, I'd do the same - chuck them out', I said. The thing is, the stipulation of 'no visitors' is one we simply cannot comply with even if we wanted to, as people turn up from all over the world with no notice and what kind of life-style would it be to live with closed doors, even if it could he achieved? So while the local people complain at the guerrilla decision, we busily get on with moving. Yes, once again we lose our forests and streams and fields and gardens and houses and 11 years' of compost; in one month there will he no time to sell our land even in the unlikely event that any Colombian peasant could afford it. But we take with us our teamwork, our knowledge, our experience, our theatre, our determination, our energy, our marvellous band of teenagers - and our two Siamese cats.

Our address is safe for now as Carmen will forward everything to us. You will understand that this is a very short Green Letter. I have a lot of packing to do. We will write soon from our next Green Spot.

With love - and a little surprise - to all of you.
Jenny James.

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