• Dismantling the farm
• A Solidarity visit from Heriberto of Chorreras
• A very Heavy Visit from a FARC commander
• We move to a temporary home at our friend Gilberto’s
• The theatre shows continue unabated
• Offers flood in of Where To Go Next

I think it would be difficult to find a happier, luckier bunch of refugees.

September was a bit of a nightmare alright: first, we shipped out all the young people to the refuge of a friend’s farm near Icononzo where they began hacking up the rigid dry clay to make a new vegetable garden - I like to go in style, so I decided to transplant every possible and impossible vegetable when we finally left.

Back on our own farm, life took on a hectic pace: up well before dawn, at 4.0 a.m. every day, The Dismantling began. Everything. Roof, floors, fencing, chicken run, the bath, water pipes, the lot. I wasn’t going to spend the next months agonising over what we'd left behind us as in the Caqueta eviction. This time, we had one luxurious month, and we were going to use it well.

We sent the word out immediately that practically everything was for sale, and the farm soon turned into a barter centre. We swapped a cow for a roof-rack and other alterations on our bus. Its a good thing we had Andy. Andy is from Reading, he’s 6 foot one inch tall, hairy and strong. As a bath with legs – Andy’s - arrived at Pueblo Nuevo, someone would buy it. Every few days, when our beloved old friend Don Hernando's barn got filled to ceiling height with gear, our bus would trundle off, getting stuck the regulation number of times in mud patches, to our halfway house in El Alto de Icononzo, along with its latest batch of transplants, chickens, guinea pigs or cats to be received by the caring and diligent teenage department looking after our new temporary home. No more afternoons off for anyone, no music, no culture, just Work.

A VERY HATEFUL VISIT FROM A FARC COMMANDER

Colombia continued to provide its paradoxes. One day a young guerrilla commander of exceptionally aggressive mien decided to visit for the first time ever and throw his weight - or rather the weight of the FARC behind him - around. He was behaving so insolently that I thought for one panic-stricken moment the Colombian Army and not the Revolutionary Army had arrived. After acting like he’d come across some dangerous hideout of Yankee soldiers, he informed me that we were not allowed to sell one centimetre of our land where there were any trees growing as local people would only cut them all down. “Oh, that’s wonderful,” I replied, “we agree 100%.” He stared at me with steely eyes, not having had the menacing effect he’d intended and not knowing what to make of this Englishwoman phenomenon. 'And you must make me out a document handing all your land over to the FARC', he said. 'Certainly', said I and went off to bring my portable typewriter, the one that had written 35 Green Letters. I asked him for the wording he wanted, but he was stumped, so I wrote: “This is to certify that we, the Atlantis Ecological Community, leave all our land in the care of the FARC so that they might protect the flora, fauna and waters therein.” He was delighted with it, if a little confused at the way his attempted aggression had fallen so flat.

A VISIT OF SOLIDARITY FROM CAQUETA Heriberto arrived. He was the loyal Action Committee man from El Pato in Caqueta, who had helped us with our previous eviction and has fought to preserve our forest lands there ever since. Much of his news from Caqueta was very good indeed: the area we lived in is now part of the almost independent republic of the FARC - a massive area handed over by the Government to them so that peace talks can take place (and which the right-wing military and US government are extremely displeased about, as may be imagined). Heriberto reports that the timber business which had resumed (under the auspices of the Government Forest Protection Agency!) has now been completely stopped; and that hunting has been banned completely so that wild animals not seen for a long while are now returning even as far as the roadside where Heriberto lives.

OUR NEW TEMPORARY HOME And now we are living at Gilberto’s: he is a dear friend of my own age, an artist, dancer and ecologist, a healer and a carer in every sense. He is the person who convinced me to stay in Colombia way back in 1988 instead of continuing my trek to Bolivia. The new garden we have made on his farm is already enormous, the chickens are laying, the two cows we brought with us give us milk daily, and the chives and sorrel can already be cut. Tristan my grandson (17) goes once a week back to our old farm to bring the latest crop of blackberries, raspberries, greens and cabbages - and a bit more barbed wire or a few pieces of corrugated iron to sell for the food we now need to buy. The horses have joined us too, after a well-needed week’s rest. They had a pretty terrible September too.

AND OUR THEATRE CONTINUES

We are ecstatically happy. We are working on three new acts for the Green Theatre: the next performance (the second since our eviction) is at Icononzo College on 14th October. Many peasants and local community organizations are getting themselves into action to try and reverse our Go order so that we can stay here. The climate is slightly warmer, we are just one hour’s walk from Icononzo, but we have had to close our doors to all outside visitors so as not to run a-foul of wartime spy fears again - and our Green Dream continues to come true as the marvel of our compost-making systems and rapid gardens unfolds for everyone to see. Here we are far nearer to neighbours and the guerilla order has served to spark interest far and wide in what we do. Support for us and our work so far seems to be absolute, and there is a remarkable lack of fear in local people of criticizing the guerrilla force - which actually speaks very well for the FARC. In a paramilitary area, criticism would spell instant death.

Gilberto has preserved his own land beautifully, so that we are truly forest gardening, and up there in Pueblo Nuevo, where we used to live, 35 hectares of forest sway undisturbed in the breeze. We have lost nothing.

A SHOWER OF OFFERS OF WHERE TO GO NEXT

Anne meanwhile works full-time in Bogota to pay off our bus - now half paid for. I hate having a bus, with all its attendant smells and noise and pollution, but never for a moment do I allow the illusion of security to creep over me: at any moment, if only for reasons of pride, the FARC could turn up and insist on completion of the original order: OUT of Tolima.

But so far, the future continues to look extraordinarily rosy - that is, Green. Every time the post arrives, there are more offers of places to go – nay, requests to set up elsewhere. An old friend in Ecuador - an Englishwoman herself whom I met on a different exile many years ago when my girls were tiny and I was homeless and penniless - has offered us a hotel in the mountains to run. Contacts in Bogota have offered us guardianship of a National Park in Southern Colombia, and to be paid to do theatre for indigenous people and campesinos (peasants). Another friend has offered us a choice of a farm near cloud forest – very cold! - or one down in much hotter country. One thing for certain, wherever we go, we will never buy land again, but only work on it for other people, care for it, and get others to do likewise; that way, we will always be more mobile, less attached, and more able to spread our work far and wide.

Buying forest to save it is a nice notion, and it did actually work, though not quite in the way we expected - but in a country with a potent Green guerrilla army, the need is no longer very obvious. I regret not one day of our back-breaking work (what else would I want to do with my life?) nor a peso of the hard-earned cash, and I do hope that those who helped us will feel likewise, even though a heavily-armed guard for the purchased forest might not be what any of us had in mind! It certainly is safe - until the Americans start bombing it or spraying it with Monsanto products of course. But that will be another story.

I will keep in touch with you all! Blessings and many thanks.

Love,
Jenny James.

Contents of GL 37:

• Our children leave for Bogota after FARC militia aggression
• Jenny invited to join ANUC, the agricultural workers’ union
• More hostility from FARC militia
• Moving reactions to our leaving
• Corruption of Government Eco-Agencies
• In praise of ‘Keeping Small and Direct’!

It is so simple to me, I cannot see why people of today do not understand that the soil is like a bank account. Who has a bank account anywhere where you can only withdraw and never deposit? The rainforest is a depository of our future our planetary bank account. "

Native Healer, Belize, Central America

The children have all gone now, and a few of the oldies too. Only myself and two men to keep the gardens and animals going in our temporary home, and Gilberto, our friend and host, of course remains with us.

After a second aggression, in which 3 very young guerrilleros accosted our lads when they were removing transplants from our evacuated farm (as permitted by the first, friendly, commander when he told us of the order to go), I didn't think this a very healthy environment for our young ones, in spite of the seeming tranquillity and beauty of this farm.

Through contacts of Anne's in Bogotá, we have been given half a building (that is, half constructed) and a hectare of steep black soil at the edge of cloud forest an hour's drive north of Bogotá. There the young ones are organising the next phase of their lives, while I pick up the political pieces of our second exile in two years.

Jenny Invited to Join Agricultural Union

There are benefits involved in being an 'ecological refugee'. I have been invited to join ANUC, the national peasants' union, a radical and down to earth organization. I am probably the first 'gringa’ member ever. Yesterday I attended my first meeting and was delighted to find the speaker, who was the head of the Tolima area, humorous, sensible and practical. In Caqueta, my blood had boiled so many times listening to arrogant 'environmental agency’ speakers talk down to seasoned campesinos as if to a load of first year school kids, and in danger of causing an unseemly rumpus I never returned. I had also in my years in Colombia attended local meetings of well meaning but oh so dreary Communist cells. Now, technically 'homeless', I felt I had come home. After the meeting, I somewhat awkwardly presented myself to the speaker, finding it quite hard not to cry as I described our situation and offered him a loan of a pictorial history of our 11 years in the area, made up of photos, kids' paintings, shots of the Green Theatre, poems, songs, leaflets and letters. He was tremendously receptive and took it away for a fortnight to read it properly. The local leaders of ANUC, several of them lifelong communists, are all entirely opposed to what the guerrilla has done and totally supportive of us, as well as absolutely determined to 'get it sorted out'.

Further Hostility from the Guerrilla

A further aggression from a younger, gun swinging commander had occurred the day before the meeting: a worried campesino from Pueblo Nuevo (the village we had to abandon) sought me out on our new farm to tell me that the hectare of land he had purchased from us for a couple of hundred pounds and on which he had already planted crops, had been taken from him by the guerrilla, and that this would be happening to anyone who had purchased from us. And could we pay him back the 500,000 pesos?

At that precise moment, some of our new neighbours were purchasing an old hen from us so that we could buy carrots and onions in the week to come, that is: we had not one peso. My mind went into a flat spin of rage that the 'people's army’ would treat the peasants in this way, and extreme worry as to how I could help this man. I guaranteed to take responsibility one way or another for the situation and flew down the grass, mud and stone track to Icononzo, arriving beetroot red from the run, to let my most significant contacts know the latest.

I arrived in time to say a second goodbye to my youngest daughter Katie (14) who was with the last busload of our departing 'refugees', held up because of the need to get police permission to transport our own furniture (it is generally assumed in Colombia that everything is stolen goods).

"Katie," I said, “I just want you to know, and to tell the others, that if you hear I have been killed, it is not sad and I went into it with my eyes wide open. I’m very sorry, but I have to do this." I was in such a rage with the guerrilla for their treatment of the campesinos that I was prepared to do anything. Our man in Icononzo (sorry, too delicate to give names) put his fatherly arm round Katie and stage whispered, "Don't worry, we won't let anything happen to your mum," and she gave me a long, silent searching look that contained a Universe of questions and acceptance, as if she were looking at her mum for the first time as a young woman, no longer a skittish child.

Later that day, I got my comeuppance for my bravado as our bus driver turned into a side­turning in Icononzo and I turned into a jelly of instinctual fear, grabbing an amused Gilberto, as I saw the 'road' was only a few yards long and led to a sheer drop. The driver had turned into it to reverse small comfort as he stalled and mishandled the reverse hill start to my continuing panic. 'What I meant," said I to Gilberto, "was that I am prepared to die if it is useful and necessary in the cause of justice, not that I want some idiot to drive me over a cliff."

“The majority is not silent. The Government is deaf.”

(Canadian 'Smallholders' Magazine)

I want to record here just a few of the reactions that came our way as a result of our enforced leaving:

In Planadas where we heard the news during our August theatre tour, a young teacher who had seen our performance handed us a letter with tears in his eyes. Here is an extract:

"On occasions like this, one's heart is vulnerable ... the energy that you all transmitted and the message you left us were marvellous ... I shared a few moments only with you, but I saw you, I felt you, and now my heart is heavy, because people who really want to live and to save the planet are very few . . "

A man I have never met but have been writing to for years since he saw an article about us in a (Conservative) national newspaper in 1994, wrote:

“I don't know whether you will ever receive this; I can't imagine where you might be now. I don't understand war. A war begins by seeking justice because it is believed there is no alternative and look how it ends up. And at how difficult it is to get back to peace and serenity and balance. In the end, worse outrages are committed than those it was planned to correct. I mourn for my country and for the extremes to which we have come. . . . I once heard you mention that you might go to Bolivia. It would be a great loss for our country if we weren't able to continue receiving the teachings you are communicating. If other people were to say the same things as you, it wouldn't have the same value, because your philosophy comes from history: it is the consequence of the crisis of the developed world. I trust that these blows, provoked by a lack of understanding of your philosophy, will not change your course, in fact I know they won't. If a movement like yours were to disappear, it would be a great loss for the planet."
Julio Jimenez, Medellin. (Ornithologist)

And Anne recorded for those who can't write, the following incidents involving local peasant friends in Pueblo Nuevo:

"Two very rough looking local men came visiting soon after the news broke, looking more like they'd come to rob us, as Fin jokingly said. But no, they came to tell us how sad they were that the only people who protected the forest and the wild animals were being forced to leave. One was nearly crying.

"Don Hernando, owner of the local open sided bus and in his 70s, made a special visit on horseback, his only one ever, along the muddy, difficult track. He couldn't get over how beautiful the farm had become in our time here he had known it before our arrival and kept repeating that it had to be protected.

"After our last Icononzo theatre performance, a man got up and made an impromptu speech about the message of our theatre being beautiful and important and if some of it was critical of how they, the Colombian peasants, abuse their land, then so it should be and all the more reason to listen even more!

"Don Pedro, our loyal luggage guarding shopman throughout the years, in his 70s, said that ever since he heard the news he's had a ‘guayabo' the word usually used for a hangover.

"Our friend Gilberto, walking home to his farm with some neighbours after our theatre show reported that they talked of nothing else but the 'message'. He scolded them for valuing us too late!

"This same feeling has now been repeated so many times that I can't remember all the faces as we've constantly been receiving 20 30 visitors a day since the word got out."
(that was in August 1999)

I want to remind our Green Letter readers that the reactions you are hearing about are the far­-ranging results of the work of a very small group of people: I say this to give heart to anyone who ever thinks: 'but what can I do I am only one, what difference can I make?' or to any group who thinks, ‘What can we possibly achieve, there are only four or five of us, and no money?'

The reflections I hope I have given you over the four years of our campaign in Colombia show the depth and strength attainable by a few people uniting in absolute simplicity and direct contact with a problem: it is the power of water on a stone for a thousand years as opposed to the split second power of a hydrogen bomb. I am as prone as anyone to absolute depression when I have had the misfortune of reading that crass representative of American capitalism, ‘Time' magazine, for example but I just want you all to know that never have I felt the warmth and worth of our work so strongly as in these days and weeks when we 'should’ be feeling defeated, destroyed and homeless. I certainly often feel like crying but it is always when yet another dose of kindness, solidarity, support, outrage, honesty and trust comes our way from local people "local" that is, to yet another temporary home on our long green journey. The green message is definitely going home wherever we travel, and I don't get the feeling it would stand the same chance through some government pamphlet backed only by hypocrisy.

Corruption of Govt. ‘Eco-Agencies’

Apropos of which, here is something Anne wrote some time back from Bogotá:

“I’m fed up! In these past few days, I have been to several government institutions which deal with matters ecological. At least, that’s the claim. I ask for leaflets for the peasant people. I get 10, or 20, or 30. I tell them I’m working in down to earth ecology where there's still some Nature left to worry about i.e. the countryside. I talk to very nice caring people, usually young and politically correct who earn in a month what a well off campesino earns in a year. I look around the tastefully done up offices replete with all varieties of mod-cons, computers, photocopiers, lovely glossy photos, posters and posh paintings and I know how much grant money, what large percentages of the millions of dollars that Colombia receives from the rich northern countries to protect its 'biodiversity' and its oxygen producing rainforests go into all this. I know some of the talented people who do the art work and the excellent texts of the many excellent posters and booklets, which mostly end up in the store rooms and basements gathering dust; and when I say I’d like a few hundred please for the schools we work with and for the hundreds of peasants we deal with directly, nearly everyone gets uptight.

"And this is only the tip of the iceberg. The real injustice is how many of those 'eco dollars' ever get used for anything beyond Bogotá eco business, which means computers, posh studies by posh people for a very posh price, posh jeeps to go and do the posh studies and all the paraphernalia of rubbish-producing city life.

“In spite of all the self justifying arguments of these city slickers, we've proved that it's all unnecessary. You don't need computers, cars, secretaries or vast quantities of money to be effective. You need committed people who practise what they preach, who show that all the theories in all the prettily­ produced pamphlets are practicable and FUN and that peasant does not equal second class citizen.

"The Chinese got it right: send all the students and bureaucrats to the country. The country comes first! What does a city produce that is useful? Nothing! It only produces the need to consume."

Contents of GL 38:

• Living in the Clouds of Tabio
• Climate shock and Altitude Fatigue
• Two more Gardens…
• Hobnobbing with the Bogota Bourgeoisie
• Bus with its Wheels in the Air
• Two Cranes from the Mayor
• Commune Bard Katie

Hello everyone from a very different angle on Colombia!

We are now living at 9,262 feet on a steep mountainside above the little 'colonial' country town of Tabio in the province of Cundinamarca, north of Bogotá. Our new address is: AA 241858 Bogotá for writing, and for visiting: the house of Tomas Estevevez, Salitre Alto, Tabio, Cundinamarca reachable by bus from the centre of Bogotá. The reports are that there is no guerrilla presence in this area.

And the reports from Icononzo are that the more aggressive of the two commanders who told us to leave has been hauled up by his superiors for many infringements of the FARC's internal code of law. What this will mean to us in the future, if anything, is not yet known.

Since we were forced out, many little towns in Tolima were taken by the guerrilla, and there were several deaths executions of policemen and accidental civilian deaths. For now our eyes are set only on the present and the future and we do not entertain the possibility of returning, though we maintain constant contact with reliable friends down there.

Meanwhile our lives have taken off on a whoosh of energy characteristic it seems of this stage of world evolution encompassing both disaster and great hope.

CLIMATE SHOCK AND ALTITUDE SICKNESS

First, we had to cope with the shock of a new climate. Now I know I am English and England isn't noted for its tropical climate ... but after 11 years in the mild warm air of Tolima and Caquetá it is a shock to have to wear several jumpers in the morning and to have to thaw one's hands out after using a typewriter! Also finding oneself out of breath after a pathetic little run up and down the garden ... this is it, old age has overtaken me, thought I, . until I checked with the young ones and found everyone was feeling it. The altitude! of course! After all those years on Inishfree Island where the highest rock was just 65 foot above the waves . .

TWO MORE GARDENS

We have wreaked miracles: a massive area of this steep mountainside is already dug, terraced, composted and planted though the slowness of growth takes us back to our Northern origins and now a second married couple have handed over their mountain farm to us, half an hour away by car and so we have a second huge garden to dig and plant. The families who have taken us under their wing are long term acquaintances of Anne's through her astrology charts and they work directly for the Ministry of the Environment on educational and artistic projects. They already have plans for us stretching over the next year doing Green Theatre for all the schools in about 3 departments.

But for now it is digging and building cabins for the boys, a kitchen and wood stove for us all, an art room for Alice who is being asked to do 'environmental' murals wherever she goes; all very rustic and simple and all requiring terracing the steep mountainsides we live on.

LIVING WITH THE BOGOTA BOURGEOISIE

Meanwhile, after what feels like a lifetime of living with and amongst peasant people, it is somewhat of a shock to find ourselves mixing with the professional classes who love to send us their under stimulated youngsters to 'learn to work' and who delightedly cut wood and shift compost and dig impossible thick turf to form gardens. Suddenly vegetarians and vegans and health food enthusiasts and all manner of environmentalists and eco theorists are seeing what it means to live in a truly ecological way and the effect on them is quite amusing: they bring whole parties of their friends to regard us working in the gardens covered in mud and scantily dressed for when that overhead sun shines through the thin air, it is very hot indeed for a few hours before 'winter' sets in again. Here we have all four seasons each 24 hours.

At first, I agonised over the turn our lives had accidentally taken: I had vowed to spend my life amongst peasants and in the jungle, so what was I doing bringing my Tribe to an exclusive middle class mountainside? The pure humanity, depth, concern and ultimately, the simplicity, of all our new friends has answered me: we are living amongst and relating intensively to the very class of people who have the chance of bringing about change in Colombia: the informed, already converted, very green thinking intellectuals who are willing to open their mouths, put their foot in it and stick their necks out to bring about change in favour of the Colombian forests and wild places, its water, earth, animals and farmlands. As an unexpected, un­sought after but karmically fairly logical step in this strange Green journey I bow down and offer our services! However, when I view unaccustomed electric lights at night, or hear cars, for goodness' sake, or flinch under the attack of loud weekend music, or torture myself about our participation in it all... I do think that as soon as the Cosmos allows, we will be scurrying back to the jungle.

BUS WITH ITS WHEELS IN THE AIR

And then there's the Bus. Not yet paid for, the much needed agent of our many removes in the last months how else would our chickens, guinea pigs, roofing materials, pots and pans still be with us? met with its share of misfortune. 22-year old Billy, son of Mary Kelly who cares for our Irish section, was taking it down the steep hill in preparation to begin the move to our second new farm, when the air brakes went. A driver with only a few weeks' experience Billy yelled to the only passenger, Tristan, my 17 year old grandson, who promptly jumped from the bus, the back wheels missing him by inches. Billy meanwhile, at ever increasing velocity, somehow managed to steer the bus away from the vulnerable small houses at the sides of the narrow one track mountain road. But in doing so, he had to take a sharp bend at a ridiculous speed. The bus turned over twice, travelled on its roof and came to rest in someone's field. A lady, whose house it had narrowly missed, viewed the bus passing her window with its wheels in the air. She ran out horrified calling 'Where is the driver?' thinking to find him mangled. However, Billy one of our theatre acrobats and jugglers had parted company from the bus feet first through the non existent windscreen after the bus's first turn, and taken off running fast down the hill in case the bus had a notion to follow him. He turned up beside the astonished lady and introduced himself. He had one minuscule scratch on his arm, and a very sorry-looking bus. Tristan, looking like a ghost, came running down the hill thinking to find his best friend was dead.

HELP FROM THE MAYOR OF TABIO

Why the accident and why the miracle of no fatalities and what if there had been vehicles or people coming UP the hill….none of it bears thinking about. The Mayor of Tabio offered the council crane... “We must help these people, they are war refugees"… A second crane was needed to pull the first one out as it had got stuck. I have not been to see the bus; it was bad enough hearing the accident from my garden and thinking about what could have happened to the boys or pedestrians. Evidently it has sustained no internal injuries (she's an old style tank) but is a general wreck externally. Billy has been offered local work to help pay for her and the boys have become religious devotees of motor mechanics ... I think it was a good 10 days after this news arrived before I breathed out again.

SONG-WRITER KATE

14 year old Katie writes new songs every few days, about Life, Love, the Environment, War & Peace. I said to her one day, 'Why don't you become our commune Bard and write the story of our recent evictions?' Usually writing in Spanish, she came up with a gem the melody will certainly be on a future Green Tape for our supporters. For now, some of the words:

We've been living on this farm for many peaceful years
But now my eyes are full of tears
The guerrilla say we have to go
Why? I don't know.

Chorus: So we pack up our bags
And we put them in the bus
A few bumps, a few jumps
And a little bit of fuss
But in the end we always do it,
We always get through it.

And now here we are with all our gear
We've made a new home here
But the Guerrilla have come once again,
Oh dear, what a pain…..

So we pack up our bags and put them in the bus etc.
(Chorus)

In this place we're going to start a garden again
Bring all the girls and all the men
But soon we hear we have to leave it.
Oh dear, I can't believe it.
So we .... etc.

We have a garden here and a garden there
Soon we'll have a garden everywhere
I wonder where the next one will be?
Maybe here right under me.

If not, we’ll pack up our bags and put them in the bus etc. Oh, the bus had a crash and it's upside down
We have no cash, we've spent the last pound
I don't know what we'll do,
Oh dear, what about you?
Now we can't go anywhere because of the bus
And I don't know what's going to happen to us
But in the end we always do it,
We always get through it!

Excuse me, could anyone show me the way to the Jungle?

I wish you all a very peaceful Xmas and New Age (what's the decibel level in your area?).

More in a month .. with love, Jenny

Contents of GL 39:

• The kids clown for food
• A friend escapes ‘execution’ by the FARC
• Katie’s song ‘Colombia Hermosa’ gets famous
• A psychic encounter of a very strange kind
• Environmental Minister destroys Bogota’s old trees
• A visit to the Embera Indians
• Food shortage and Permanent Drought

"You should live as though you might die tomorrow; but you should farm as though you expect to live forever "

(Country quote sent by Jon Holford, boat surveyor, Cork)

The rain more like mountain mist that has come to these parched parts enables me to write to you today, as for the past month I have had to spend my days watering to save our nascent food supply. Our economic basis has been the teenagers of the community, who every weekend go out juggling and clowning in the town squares, meeting with tremendous response, generous donations and occasionally a special engagement to perform. They love it but have had to find out the hard way what food costs when you don't dig it up from your garden.

Close Brush with Death at Hands of FARC

One day, an ecologist friend, Govinda, one of the people who offered us refuge when we were evicted by the guerrilla, turned up with rucksack, wife and child. Very calmly he told me that ten armed guerrilla soldiers had arrived at his house on the edge of a nature park he guards, had accused him of being a paramilitary, tied his hands behind his back and taken him out to the road to shoot him. He kept talking to them. He didn't stop. His name is not Colombian, but an assumed Indian name and I believe he has studied some Eastern doctrine. Maybe that kept him calm. He convinced them that their information was nonsense. And they let him go. That was when I realised just how lucky we'd been.

In another part of Colombia, there is a rural community called ‘La Nueva Atlantis’ –‘The New Atlantis’ – (nothing to do with us). They are now refugees kicked out by paramilitaries.

Offer of a Future Settlement

The lady Director of a park in the south of Colombia has offered us a farm and work teaching peasants re-settled on land given by the Government to keep them out of the National Park; she wants us to spread the organic and ecological message amongst them. Only one problem: we'd have to get the OK from the local FARC unit, that is, from the guerrilla army who have twice taken our land from us. We have declined for now.

“Colombia Hermosa”

Meanwhile 14 year old Katie has written her 26th song. This one praises Colombia in a very sensitive manner and is becoming a real ‘hit’: it has been sung on radio and television, on buses and in parks. It has people, wet eyed, sitting up and listening: "Colombians, behind all the violence, lie hidden happiness, tenderness, love, simplicity and freedom: don't give up on your country," are some of the words. Well, we haven't, not yet.

Surreal Encounter

Something strange happened to Anne the other day. She was wandering round a rather seedy part of Bogotá she'd never been to before looking for a birthday present for her son, when a notice above a tiny shop caught her eye: ‘Books on parapsychology’. She stopped to peruse, when a little old man with blue eyes called her in: “Come in, you work with other planets," he said. She grinned and said, '”You mean I'm an extra terrestrial?” "No, no, an astrologer, you have an astrologer’s face." Anne, although very psychic herself, was somewhat amazed at his accuracy. He then did a reading for her, refusing payment, and telling her many perfectly correct details about her life. Then he said, “Ask me something.” She said, “Will our community stay in Colombia?” “You will stay for one year and then you will go to a place called B B B Bolivia!” Well, we'll see.

‘Eco-Colombia’ lives on

Over a year ago, I wrote a ‘Green Fantasy’ for Colombia's future, called it ‘Eco-­Colombia’ and read it in front of various officials and international intellectuals at a pro bicycle conference. It still circulates today. Anne showed it to some of the female leaders of the Solidarity Network, a Government organisation for refugees and the very poor. She reports they got very excited, saying, “We want this to come true, we're going to make this come true!”

And two days ago, I was visited by a Nature film maker who to my astonishment began quoting me word for word an article I'd written in 1994, 'Message from a European Woman' which warns Colombians not to follow the false path of Western 'development'. Colombia is nothing if not receptive!

‘Environment Ministry’ destroys Bogota’s old trees

Other small points of light amidst the darkness of the war here: the citizenry of Bogotá rebelled against the truly Satanic policy of the 'Environmental Ministry' who decided to cut all the trees in Bogotá down 'to replace with native species'. ‘Ecology’ gone mad someone's theory, foreign funding and national insanity. Many beautiful massive old trees had to fall before the citizens' rebellion finally put an end to it.

The present Minister of the Environment, Juan Mayr, is a serious environmental disaster: he pours contempt upon the Embera Indians who walked for weeks from their homelands to Bogotá relying on people's generosity to protest the flooding of their territory for dam­-building; he told them they were wasting their time and refused to see them; and he gives licences without blinking a 'green' eye for petrol exploration. One good thing he is doing however, in conjunction with the otherwise awful Mayor of Bogotá, is fomenting more and more cycle-ways and now, in February, a ‘car free day’.

However, it is noticeable that the ‘Green Education’ which the law now requires is definitely having effect and there are very few people, young or old, urban or rural, who do not know something of environmental protection and this gets thrown back in the face of the very ‘ungreen’ Ministers who come to power.

Anne reports on a visit to the Indians

On 25th January, 14 year old Laura, myself and a Colombian friend, Hector, went to meet the Embera Katio Indians who are camping outside the Ministry of the Environment. There are almost 200 of them camping in most organised fashion in a small space and the huge ugly ex American Embassy that houses the Ministry looks a lot more "environmental" for their wood fires, happy children and their colourful, homely presence. I asked them what do they most need in their camp and they said:

1. Company, as they get bored with nothing to do in the city. So we sang for them and they loved Katie’s Colombia song and when I sang a silly song I'd made up about preferring to be buried in the garden than in a graveyard so that I could be recycled as compost, they all nodded very seriously at each other in agreement. I've also organised friends to go and meet them and give their children art workshops.

2. But most importantly they need international support in the form of letters to the Colombian government protesting against the illegal flooding of their land in Urrá. The government, supported by the paramilitaries, began flooding their tribal lands without relocating the Indians. Anyone who would like to write should mention in their letter that:

a. The government should suspend the illegal filling of the Urrá reservoir.

b. That the govt. should begin to negotiate with the Embera Katio Indians who have walked 800 kms. in order to talk to the ministers involved and are being ignored.

c. That the govt. should urgently resolve the ecological problems caused by the damming of the Sinu river, i.e. the drought that is causing famine downstream of the dam, an area of marshes that used to be periodically flooded in the rainy season.

d. That the rights of the Embera Katio Indians be respected as guaranteed by national and international laws.

I've had personal experience of this in the case of the murder of my friend Ernesto Gonzalez, who was shot by the paramilitaries on his way to Bogotá in October 1998 because he fought for prisoners’ rights. The state refused to investigate his death until Amnesty International publicised his case and many people wrote letters demanding justice. Then they began the investigation.

Food Shortage and Two Dry Settlements

Only myself and two men remain on our first settlement in Tabio: we look after the very large gardens we have formed in order to feed the rest of our people, mainly youngsters, who are busy building, organising and digging on the farm of other new friends of ours who begged us to make them a garden. I went to visit the young ones yesterday for the first time and found them very happy in spite of what seemed to me exceedingly difficult conditions: no water supply (they have to climb down an incredibly steep track to a tiny trickle of a stream), overcrowding (but kids seem to like living in a heap!), very little money just what they can earn juggling at weekends, plus occasional gifts of food from kind visitors who help out, and a scarily dry garden where they recycle even their washing up water.

Peripatetic Plants!

However there's one really nice thing about not being absolutely sure where your next food is coming from it makes you very grateful when it does appear and it tastes all the better! For instance, the lady who has lent us her house and land brought 'mushroom compost' from a commercial establishment, and I found it to be full of bits and pieces of unused mushroom so I sent several bags of it to the kids for their dinner; wild sorrel and watercress grow everywhere, and after just two months, I am able to supply a bag of greens and salad daily. Some of these foodstuffs come from the best travelled plants in Colombia: transplants taken from Caquetá to Tolima, then to an interim farm near Icononzo, then up here to Tabio Farm No.1 and then to the kids' farm. Our care ensures they are still thriving.

Occasionally our American supporters send gifts of strange and unaccustomed foods, not always as organic or truly vegetarian as I would wish, but we are in no position to be fussy. Also, on arriving at this new height, one of the first seed parcels to arrive was for very very hot country and a very large quantity it was too. I despaired only for a moment, then phoned Anne and she got it donated to a project for peasant people living in a truly hot climate. Plenty of very cold country seeds have arrived for us too... so we are surviving to see and foment yet another Green day.

Herewith my news for now, with love to you all, and more next month.

Jenny James.

Contents of GL 40:

• Murder by FARC of our dear friend Pedro Garzon
• Our young ones risk going to his funeral in Icononzo
• Billy visits our abandoned farm – so do the FARC
• ‘Desplazados’ take over Red Cross HQ in Bogota
• Police heaviness against them
• Colombia’s Astro-Chart, by Anne
• Green Theatre at Bogota’s Car-free Day
• Repeated Request to settle in Southern Colombia

Don Pedro (‘don' in Spanish is a sign of respect not a forename) was like a granddad to us, supporting us throughout all our trials, critical of the guerrilla, yet forced to receive them regularly as his was the only 'centre' in tiny Pueblo Nuevo: there they played ‘pool’ and drank their drinks. He welcomed and helped all our visitors and kept all our luggage safe till it could be collected by mule. He was everyone's dad.

On February 11th, the 31st anniversary of my own father's death, I felt strangely depressed and could find no reason. Till later, when a loyal contact in Icononzo phoned us with the news: Don Pedro had been taken from the local open sided bus, which was driven by another friend of ours, and shot with 18 bullets by three armed men. The funeral would be next morning at 9:00 a.m.

We are 6 hours by road from Icononzo and had no money. How could I get a group of us to the funeral? I phoned Anne and she went scurrying around friends to borrow the fare. Mary's son Billy was in tears, we sent him with our last pennies to represent us. Then Andy ran off in the middle of the night to our other farm to encourage my own girls to go, and later I heard that 14 year old Katie and 16 year old Alice left immediately to get to Bogotá as best they could a kind English visitor lent them the fare.

They reported that the funeral was the biggest Icononzo had ever seen and that although we are ‘banned’ from being there by the guerrilla, everyone fell into their arms, amazed and delighted that we had achieved to be with them on this day. The inevitable shrugs and downcast eyes when the question was asked: Who killed Don Pedro? And WHY? ‘The paramilitaries,’ said some, ‘the guerrilla,’ said others; but most said 'Quien sabe?' 'who knows?' the official reply in fear drenched Colombia.

The guerrillas would hate Don Pedro for his outspoken criticism of them, including his disgust at them sending us away. Another beloved friend, Don Hernando, like Don Pedro a man in his '70s, was driving the bus when it was held up: "Quick, move on!" said the armed men, “or we will kill you all." Don Pedro, white and terrified, said, "Please don't leave me alone!" Seconds later the shots rang out. Don Hernando was paralysed with fear and grief to leave his friend.

All over Colombia, every day, this scene is repeating itself. Don Pedro, large, friendly and outspoken, in a country where it is safer to be small, closed off and silent. As familiar to us as your own dad or uncle or next door neighbour. No ecologist he, but supportive of us for 11 long years. The relief of crying has not come to me, this death is too outrageous, too big. And he bore an uncanny facial resemblance to Eduardo Rincon, with his shock of thick grey hair and his penetrating eyes. Don Pedro, I dreamt of you and my other dead friends last night. If there is such a thing as energy after death, I hope in some form you saw those hundreds of people helpless with grief in each other's arms at your being ripped from them.

When I first experienced death in Colombia, that of my ecologist friend Luis Arenas, and was scurrying round Florencia, capital of Caqueta, trying to get some support from the green movement there to investigate his murder, I failed, as another man living in the mountains of the Macarena in S.E. Colombia had also been killed for his environmental activities and the movement was busy with this death. His name was Melco, and I never knew him. But a short while back, in the house where we are taking refuge in Tabio, I was introduced to a sunburnt and work worn woman in her ‘40s. His wife. With a large brood of children, she has stayed on their farm, refusing to be budged by fear, has confronted the neighbour who killed her husband, and determinedly carries on her green work.

Billy visits our forcibly abandoned farm

And so do we. Billy, somewhat riskily, went up to see our abandoned farm in Pueblo Nuevo. He said it is very beautiful, covered with vines and flowers, a veritable wilderness. It is also evidently known as the local guerrilla camp. ‘El Mono Jojoy’, one of the FARC's top military leaders, evidently comes from the Alto de Icononzo the interim hamlet we sheltered in for a few weeks after our 'exile' and spent Christmas in Icononzo. The area is now openly run by the guerrilla in an increasingly territorial civil war.

Anne, who also went to Don Pedro’s funeral, went to stay on the Icononzo farm of Gilberto, our long­standing friend who gave us his land to cultivate while we were deciding where to go next, and she was able to cook a lovely 'green' meal from all the vegetables I had planted whilst there. Gilberto, like many friends left behind, is in bits about our going and longing to follow us. We also heard of many other people who had to abandon the region, forced by one side or the other in a war in which, like so many other civil wars, causes people in their paranoia to turn on their own political allies in fear and frustration.

The Displaced of Bogota take over Red Cross HQ

Here in Bogotá, Anne has made friends with the female leaders of an excellently organized group of displaced families who have fled violence from all over Colombia, many after the murder of their men-folk by either paramilitaries or guerrilla. There are 400 families, sleeping like sardines in the Red Cross building in Bogotá, unhelped by the Government who do not want the ‘desplazados’ internal refugees to organize as a force there are 2 million in all Colombia, a quarter of whom are in Bogotá.

Here is Anne's report:

"On 22nd Jan. I went to see a young black woman I’d met, one of the leaders of the ‘desplazados’ who have taken over the Red Cross building situated in one of the poshest parts of Bogotá. A lot of international aid has been sent to Colombia for these people but of course none of it ever reaches them.

Police Get Heavy with ‘Desplazados’

"When I arrived, the police guarding the place were unusually unfriendly and wouldn't let me in. My friend had come out to talk to me we were arranging her visit to our farm as a first step to setting up gardening programmes for refugees. After our talk, I walked her back to the gate of the compound and they wouldn't let her in. Soon a dozen more police on horses and with dogs arrived and tried to bully us and the several more refugees who’d arrived, to go away. A lot of machine guns were in evidence and plainclothes police and more and more police arriving by car, including some very high up looking brass. The feeling of the police was ugly, but my new friends didn't seem in the least bit afraid. I suppose they've seen worse.

"I stayed and tried to talk to some of the young policemen, asking them didn't they feel odd obeying orders that made no sense and why were they treating their own countrymen so badly? The atmosphere was such that I was frightened what would happen that night when there would be fewer witnesses around. So I went and made some phone calls to human rights groups. I rang two female friends, both left wing and very high up in Government departments (one of the many paradoxes of Colombia!). They knew immediately who to phone within other Government departments and ministries and NGO’s, so that 10 minutes later, when I phoned yet another friend, a Human Rights worker, she’d already been contacted by friends in two other Government departments!

"So I could go to bed relaxed. Next day my refugee friend phoned to say Human Rights workers from several ministries and NGO’s had arrived and the police had to let the shut out refugees in again to their families.

"Then on 3rd Feb., I joined a protest march of the refugees and was immediately taken under the wing of several very capable energetic country women from different parts of Colombia who, once they heard that we are refugees too, only wanted to help us take advantage of the few meagre Government programmes that are organized. When I mentioned our gardening projects, they were delighted. Their warmth and strength and enthusiasm made me realize that the huge refugee problem here could be turned to advantage if people could eventually go back to the countryside with a new more ecological attitude. The shake up of losing all certainty makes people more open and willing to co operate with one another."

Ireland, 19th Dec. 1999.
Dear Mary,

When you spoke of sending me some literature, I expected a few 'green' pamphlets, not a surrealist novel!

Michael North

England, 14th Jan. 2000
Dearest Jenny,

My heart, tears and love go out to you all keep it up and thanks for all you do. We are all connected, issues all interlink, we are one.

Love and hugs,
Angie Zelter (Trident Ploughshares Disarmament Campaigner)

“ Ideas are the keystone. They leave their mark on the landscape just as surely as chainsaws and bulldozers. Machines, after all, are only the agents of a set of ethical precepts sanctioned by the members of a particular society. The most serious form of pollution is mind pollution. Environmental reform ultimately depends on changing values."

Canadian 'Smallholder` magazine

At the end of January, a massive carton of seed for both hot and cold climes arrived here. It had been paid for and collected by schoolchildren in the United States. We sent the hot country seed to a project for indigenous women, widows of war violence in the Department of Putumayo. The cool country seed we are using in this area. And as always, our loyal friend Steve Thompson of Sheffield, continues to send shoe boxes of seed donated by various seed companies he has contacted. Our needs for seed at the moment are therefore nil.

But we are very short of gardening tools: the trouble is that in Colombia, it is not possible to buy what we need: simple good quality metal hand forks for the women and girls to weed with (those on sale here are obviously destined for Bogotá window­-boxes and turn to chewing gum at first contact with real earth). This is a heavy item and postage may be prohibitive, but Louise will be returning to Colombia around July please contact Mary Kelly at Atlantis, Burtonport Co. Donegal, Ireland if you can donate old or new gardening tools of any kind: we are happy to mend or put on handles! As there are several projects in the pipeline for working with other refugees in organic gardening, this problem is going to multiply.

"Boulevard became infatuated with fertilizer. Into his compost pits he piled boughs, blood, entrails, feathers anything he could find. He used Belgian liquor (cesspool matter), liquid manure, lye, smoked herring, seaweed and old rags. In the midst of this stench, Boulevard smiled. To those who seemed disgusted, he cried, "But it's gold! But it's gold!"
Gustave Flaubert, 1881
(taken from 'Organic Gardening’ magazine, USA)

Colombia’s Astrology Chart

Here are some excerpts from an Astrology chart for Colombia which Anne was asked to write by one of the major Colombian newspapers:

"The year 2000 is a year of make or break. It is a time of ‘people power’ when each person can influence our collective destiny by making their opinion felt. This will be a year when Art and Culture will truly become vehicles for peace and forums for the discussion of how we are going to run this country in a more just and equal fashion. If we don't take this 'window of opportunity’ in the sky seriously, then the force that is gathering in the people over the last few difficult years will explode in a destructive way. The year opens on a scene of worsening poverty and losses, not just here but all over the planet. This is a challenge to us all, as it means that finally we must learn to live within our means on this little planet.

We call this time a 'recession', which implies that things will get back to ‘normal' sometime. Yet the stars say that things are changing radically and forever. Now Mother Earth herself is beginning to control the purse strings and we will have to learn to live on her allowance. We have already borrowed too much that we can't pay back. It is time to learn to live simply. The good news about this difficult year is that it is a time of incredible fertility and abundance as if the earth will be saying to us: "Look how easy it is to live well."

"The Big Question this year in political astrology is whether Colombia will remain one country or whether it will be divided up. My opinion is that it will be partitioned. It contains too many divergent forces that pull in too many different directions. This is a year when the frequently tragic and sometimes hilarious human social experiment that is Colombia can begin to become a country that cares for and listens to all of its people, not just to a selected few. But to be heard, first we must speak up.”

We have news from Caqueta, now under the control of the guerrilla army while peace talks with the government take place, that the guerrilla are telling people that anyone who stays there must become part of their army as the peace talks are nonsense ... And near Icononzo, Tolima, a French biologist, a friend of the people we now live with, was also thrown out like us. The country is polarizing. Both our friend Heriberto in El Pato, Caqueta, who steadfastly continues to send us our post, and an excellent friend in Tolima who regularly phones me up, keep us in touch with news ‘back home'; I also continue to keep contact with both groups of people frequently by post.

Car-free day in Bogota

Here in Tabio, Cundinamarca, I have just returned to our now lush gardens after a nightmarish, but very fruitful, two weeks in Bogotá where our whole group participated in the Mayor's ‘Day Without Cars’ on 24th February. We had to solve the problem of how to transport ourselves and lots of theatre gear from venue to venue; I looked out of the window and saw a 'rag and bone' man on his horse-drawn cart and the light shone! 22 year old Billy spent a day in the poorest part of Bogotá chasing someone he'd known in Tolima who earned his living recycling cardboard which we needed for placards and into the middle of posh Bogotá drove our colourful crew in a hastily decorated horse and cart. It and we were filmed, our girls sang their songs on TV, Anne and I were interviewed and the 15 or so huge anti car, pro-bicycle banners I’d painted over a year ago were displayed with Mayoral approval along one of the central highways of Bogotá. Our young ones acted and sung and juggled and us older ones accompanied them on guitar, violin and drum. It was a beautiful day in spite of the ancient Bogotá buses still spewing out their choking poison (they weren’t banned). As a result of this event, our most moving 'green' play was booked to be shown at one of the poshest universities in Bogotá and as a result of that show, we are requested to perform at many other venues and to take part in the Mayor's 'civic behaviour’ campaign in Bogotá. A Kogi Indian was seen to be nodding and quietly smiling wisely to himself as he watched the play, dressed in full native costume (no, I don't think we hallucinated him, he really was there).

Meanwhile, the lady Director of Purace National Park in the South of Colombia still keeps pushing very hard for us to move there and become guardians of the park .. this is a very busy time. On March 18th there is to be performance of our Green Theatre in the Cultural Centre of Tabio . . . I think I’d better say goodbye and do some gardening quick before the next request comes through.

With love to you all,
Jenny James.

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