...Kakariki Footprints...

The greatest adventure yet… returning home.

2008-09-18T19:12:00.000-07:00

How easy it is to return – just step on that plane, plug in the earphones, chew the plastic tasting food shapes provided for your mid air nourishment and pass the hours over the Pacific Ocean… then the plane lands, you smile at the immigration official, collect your bags and walk through the gates – your family stands there, bleary eyed at 4am but with their arms open and takeaway coffees at hand. You step into the car and the machine moves over the smooth roads leading to a house that contains all those familiar smells and tastes and sounds… this is the place you call home. The air is clean and you can breathe it deep into your lungs, the water is clear from the taps and you can drink it without regard for cost or plastic waste. It takes awhile to be absorbed and then you realise that the past two and a half years of foreign environments are over. It’s strangely liberating.

I’m overwhelmed at the amount of “things” around me, overwhelmed at the thought of all these belongings of mine inside boxes stacked in the garage. After the enforced utilitarianism of backpacking having more than two choices of clothing in the morning leaves me manic and uncertain. Suddenly the value of the multi-purpose is no longer greater than the value of the aesthetic or the comfortable.

Talking contains similarities. After extended periods spent without real conversation on the abandoned roads through southern Chile, to suddenly speak is intoxicating. I watch this huge outpouring of words, each falling on the top of the other, and wonder if I actually convey what I am intending to. Seeing people I used to know invokes an unexplained fear and listening to old music brings a rushing of buried emotions and memories: I am indeed this same person who left here those years ago and I am also not. I think that returning somewhere is a process as complex as leaving and I will walk this new road slowly and see what brings fluidity.

What I have learnt beyond any doubt is that this country is where I belong. I return with the clear knowledge that I will not make a great fortune in my life here; I will not have access to European intellectualism or cheap electronic equipment. I may not even have the opportunity of international travel again. And I choose that. I choose it because this country offers a quality of life that is incomparable with the rest of the world. These mountains, this blue sea, these towering kauri trees and wild black sand beaches are an intrinsic part of my being. I could never leave them. And these people who we call New Zealanders, with their loud over-familiarity and strong accents, the beautiful ethnic mixtures that form our communities: Maori, Chinese, Polynesian, Indian, “Pakeha”, Malaysian… these are my people. Together we share a nation that could lead the world. I am proud to be a New Zealander… and I am home.

September the 11th...

2008-09-11T13:57:00.000-07:00

Here in Latin America this heavy date, etched permanently in the mind of the world, is mourned for a tragedy other than the attacks on the world trade centre. This date signifies the day that Chile's socialist democracy was brought crashing down under the weight of a military coup funded by the CIA in the height of the Cold War, 1973. For me, this day in Santiago feels loaded with a sadness that I cannot quite identify - the loss of a great politician, the loss of a country's democratic rights for western commercial interests, the loss of thousands of socialists, students, journalists and intellectuals who were subsequently arrested, tortured or executed under the 20 year military regime that followed the coup and the realisation of a truth that makes me shudder: that the right to life holds less value than the access to cheap minerals mined in nations whose military institutions are easily bought with blood money from the pockets of the wealthy.

Marking the history of this day I walked through the named avenues of Santiago's Cementerio General, a cemetery that is more like a city of the dead with immense streets of old and crumbling concrete tombs of wealthy Chilean families and politicians - a haunted sort of place that makes me wish never to be laid in a grave with a concrete stone to be left to crack and grow moss with the passing of the years. In the midst of this still and silent place lies Salvador Allende - moved from his previously unmarked grave after the fall of the military regime in 1990 to a place of memorial and honour, red roses strewn over the white marble monument and the word's of his final speech carved onto a granite slab sitting above the tomb where he and his family lie. At the front of the cemetery is another memorial - this one to the thousands of "desaparecidos", the disappeared, people who were arrested in secret by the military regime, whose bodies have never been discovered and whose families have never been able to fully mourn their losses. It is something that winds you to see it - thousands of names, and dates of births, in long lists across a granite slab that reaches for metres - each one representing somebody's son or daughter, mother or father, somebody's lover or best friend, somebody's brother, somebody's sister. Each one a person who had dreams, who had fears, who believed in a better world and used their life to speak out for it - and with their life, paid for it . Some families had placed photographs of their lost ones underneath the stone - young bright faces looking out, their last days filled with such fear and uncertainty. What an immense injustice.

Isabel Allende, the famous Chilean writer and Salvador Allende's cousin, has recorded her memories of this period and I think that she so eloquently captures the emotion of it that I shouldn't even attempt to define it for myself and rather will copy her words here in memorial to all that was lost that fateful September morning. May we never forget.

"On September 11, 1973, at dawn, the navy rebelled, followed almost immediately by the army, the air corps, and finally the corps of carabineros, the Chilean police. Salvador Allende was instantly notified; he hurriedly dressed, said goodbye to his wife, and went to his office, prepared to live out his oath: "They will not take me alive from La Moneda". His daughters Isabel and a pregnant Tati rushed along with their father. The bad news spread like lightning, and ministers, secretaries, staff, trusted doctors, some newspapermen, and friends all came to the Palacio de la Moneda, a small multitude wandering through the rooms without knowing what to do, shaping battle plans and barricading doors with furniture according to confusing instructions from the president's bodyguards. Urgent voices suggested that the hour had come to call out the people in a huge manifestation in support of the government, but Allende realised that such a summons would result in thousands of deaths. In the meantime, he tried to dissuade the rebels through messengers and telephone calls, because none of their generals dared confront him in person. Then Allende's bodyguards received orders from their superiors to withdraw, because the police had joined in the coup; the president let them go but demanded they surrender their weapons. Now the Palacio was unguarded and the great wood doors with wrought iron studs were closed from the inside. Shortly after 9am, Allende became aware that all his political skill would not be sufficient to change the tragic course of the day; the fact was that the band of loyalists locked inside the venerable colonial building were alone: no one would come to their rescue, the people were unarmed and without leaders. Allende ordered the women to leave, and his guards distributed weapons among the men, but very few knew how to use them. The news had reached Tio Ramon in the embassy in Buenos Aires and he managed to speak by telephone with the president. Allende bid his old friend farewell: "I shall not resign, I shall leave La Moneda only when my term is ended, as president, or when the people demand it - or dead". As they spoke, military units throughout the nation were falling one by one into the hands of the instigators of the coup, and in those same barracks the purge was begun against any who remained faithful to the constitution: the first people shot that day were wearing uniforms. El Palacio was surrounded by soldiers and tanks; isolated shots were heard, and then a heavy shelling that penetrated the thick, centuries old walls and set fire to furniture and drapes on the first floor. A helmeted Allende went out onto the balcony with a gun and fired off a couple of shots, but someone convinced him that exposing himself in that way was madness and forced him to come back inside. A brief truce was arranged to remove the women, and at that time the president asked everyone to leave him and surrender, but few did so; the majority dug in on the second floor, as he embraced the six women still by his side and told them goodbye. His daughters did not want to leave him, but by then the outcome was clear and by their father's orders were forcibly taken from the building. In all the confusion, they walked down the street without being stopped until an automobile picked them up and drove them to a safe haven. Tati never recovered from the pain of that separation and the death of her father, the man she loved most in life, and three years later, in exile in Cuba, she left her children in a friend's care and, without telling anyone goodbye, shot herself. The generals, who had not foreseen any resistance, did not know what to do; they did not want to make Allende a hero, so they offered him a plane and safe transport for him and his family. "You have misjudged me, traitors", was his reply. They then announced an aerial bombardment. Time was short. For the last time, the president spoke to the people by the means of the one radio station not in the hands of the mutinous military. His voice was deliberate and firm, his words so determined that his farewell did not resemble the last breath of a man about to die, but the dignified salute of a man taking his permanent place in history:

"...Our opponents have the power, they can crush us, but social progress will not be stopped with crime or with force. History is ours, it is made by the people... Workers of my nation, I have faith in Chile and in its destiny. Other men will surmount this grey and bitter moment in which treachery attempts to rule. You must never forget that - much sooner than later - the great avenues will open for a liberated people to pass through as they move toward constructing a better society. Viva Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!"

Bomber planes flew like fanatic birds over the Palacio de la Moneda, dropping their bombs with such precision that they exploded through windows and in less than ten minutes set ablaze an entire wing of the building, while tanks lobbed tear gas canisters from the street. At the same time, other airplanes and tanks were attacking the official presidential home in an exclusive residential neighbourhood. Smoke and fire engulfed the first floor of the palace and began to invade the salons of the second floor where Salvador Allende and a few of his followers were still entrenched. There were bodies everywhere, many rapidly bleeding to death. The survivors, choked by smoke and tear gas, could not make themselves heard above the noise of the shelling, planes and bombs. The army's assault troops stormed La Moneda through gaps burned by fire and shell, occupied the still blazing first floor, and with loudspeakers ordered the people to exit the building by an external stone stairway. Allende realised that further resistance would end in a bloodbath and ordered his men to surrender, because they could better serve the people alive than dead. He said his final goodbyes with a firm handclasp, looking each man squarely in the eye. Then they emerged Indian file, with their arms above their heads. As they came out, the soldiers kicked them and beat them with the butts of their weapons, and once they were on the ground, continued to beat them until they were senseless, then dragged them into the street where they lay on the pavement while the voice of a crazed officer threatened to roll over them with the tanks. The president was left standing beside the torn and bloody Chilean flag in the ruined Red Salon, rifle in hand. Soldiers burst in with drawn weapons. The official version is that Allende placed the barrel of the rifle beneath his chin, pulled the trigger, and blew off his head." (Isabel Allende, "Paula", 1994)

Viva Allende. And let all of us, who take our freedoms so much for granted, never forget how precious they are, or those who have lost them.

A musing on the loss of the market...

2008-08-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

At the heart of every self-respecting town or city in Latin America there lies a market of fresh produce, a place for transactions, somewhere to meet and to gossip, the centre for the dissemination of news and a place where revolutions are born... I have eagerly visited many in this southward journey of the Andes, but one of the most impressive has been that of the Mapuche trading town, Temuco, in the Lake District of Chile.

On a cold, misty, grey winter's day walking into the market was sensory bliss; what an extraordinary collection of colour, shape, smell and sound! Rows and rows of fruit and vegetables in their splendor... from huge round blue shelled pumpkins to small green avocados, the peculiar shaped artichoke and the inviting shine of aubergine... perfectly round oranges and leafy green silverbeet, stacks of marrows and sacks of lentils; mounds of spices with the most wonderful colour and smell; bunches of aromatic herbs from mint to chamomile and cilantro; huge, round cheeses reminiscent of Holland and small golden jars of wild honey; fish, fresh and smoked, hanging from wooden stands with their pungent seaside smell; small piles of oval eggs in the most beautiful grey and blue shaded shells... and everywhere the classic market vendor, in cap and scarf against the cold, calling his wares loudly as you pass by, inviting you to sample...

I watched two elderly men in their thick woolen coats and hats carefully selecting carrots from a large orange pile and wondered why we, in the "west", have so avidly chosen the sterility of supermarkets with their artificial lighting and excessively controlled temperatures over this... this most wonderful of social institutions and haven of sensory delights, the traditional market...

...Valpairaso...

2008-08-23T13:38:00.000-07:00

I think that graffiti says a lot about a place... when all you see around you is "tag" (that awful hieroglyphic scrawl marking public walls in a macho branding reminiscent of dogs marking their territory) it is intimidating, ugly and defacing of the public spaces we share. But, when graffiti is combined with creativity, with wit, it becomes street art in the most inspiring, politically charged, humorous and anarchistic fashion. And here, in Valpairaso, a port city just north of Santiago in Chile, this sort of graffiti is abound... every wall is marked with the most talented murals, stencils, poetry, political slogans - they are a joy to see and I have spent many hours walking the streets in the search for the most creative, interesting and challenging of them.

Valpairso is a charming place - it consists of many hills which wind upwards from the central port, evoking memories of Wellington with its winding narrow streets and colourful tumbledown houses which cover the hills in a wild confusion of old and new, small and large, thin and wide. Artists, students, bohemians, poets and musicians flock here and the local craft shops are as numerous as the cosy welcoming cafes with stained glass windows and wooden chairs... it is a city that invites you to stay awhile and teases your conceptions of order, of art, of fashion, of politics. Viva Valpairaso!

Oh wild Pacific, how you smell like home...

2008-08-18T07:49:00.000-07:00

I no longer care for cameloids; enough alpacas, llamas and vicunas! No more condors, foxes or barren landscapes of the altiplano; give me the sea!!! I want wild salty waves that crash against black rocks, whipping winds and white sea spray, I want sea animals with their round soft bodies and leathery skin, give me pelicans and albatrosses, crying sea gulls and hardened sands that crunch under foot. Give me trees, wild and green, their trunks warped by wild ocean winds, give me green mountains and skies peppered with clouds... arouse in me emotions of home as I walk this final road...

And on a dark winter's day in the Punta de Choros this is just what I found...

In a persistent but gentle rain our small dinghy pounded through Pacific surf, heading into the ocean toward Islas Damas and Choros - the waves crashing over the bow of the boat, dousing me with cold salty water. I huddled under a sheet of plastic tarpaulin to keep dry, the barrage of water from above, and from below, seeping in at every opportunity and running down the sleeves of my jacket as I held the tarpaulin above my head... as the boat heaved and crashed into the sea and my jeans clung against the skin of my legs in a cold wet embrace I felt my spirits drop... what am I doing out here in the ocean, in a tiny boat, in the middle of winter?! After a rough 40 minute journey our boat pulled into a calm bay in the Isla de Choros and, as if by some arrangement with God, the rain ceased and three seals surfaced by our boat, swimming out to sea, their bodies cresting and descending into the waves, and to the left, three swimming penguins, so small, only their heads visible above the water, but what a magical sight!

As we pulled into the cove, we looked up and laying all over the rocks were sea lions, their bodies huge with leathery wet skin, the adult males bearing huge whiskers and emitting loud calls that seemed to come from the very depths of the earth and reverberate through the cold air. Pups and mothers lounged together on the rocks, not interested at the boat of visitors, their strong and swift bodies more than capable of defence or escape. Seals joined them, smaller and lighter, with sweet, gentle faces. To see these beautiful creatures, at home in this wild clime, made all the discomfort of the journey worthwhile and how my spirits soared! Our boat continued around the bays, greeted by families of Humboldt penguins, small and rotund, nesting in the rocks to protect their eggs and chicks, small and grey and fluffy. Their little bodies waddle as they walk around, heads bobbing as if in continual greetings, but in the water what grace they possess, what speed! Rubbing on rocks in the middle of the ocean we found sea otters, cats of the sea, with beautiful long whiskers, and bodies sleek and quick. They have faces with such expressions and groom themselves, rubbing against the rough rock, like cats on carpet in the sunshine - darting into the water and catching small fish with such agility! They are nervous of humans and allow us only a few minutes to observe them before retreating to the sea where they camouflage in the brown floating sea weeds.

Pelicans grace the skies - what amazing creatures! Their beaks huge and long, capable of carrying big fish from the sea. Albatrosses with their immense white bodies and smaller sea birds with red marking who nest in the cliffs, their droppings creating coloured patterns on the dark rocks. The smell of the salt air, the animals and the wind refreshed me, blowing all the sandy dust of the desert clean away and, after a hot shower, wearing pyjamas and big wooley socks, I felt renewed and prepared for the southwards journey down Chile's narrow coast... the final piece of this journey and the first piece of my journey home...

To the extremes of the earth...

2008-08-14T14:25:00.000-07:00

Leaving the warmth and greenery of eastern Bolivia, my trail to Chile led back to the extremes of Bolivian altitude and the mining city of Potosi, breathlessly sitting at 4,060 metres, surrounded by a dry, barren landscape dotted with bare mountains rich in minerals... the city of Potosi was historically the main centre for silver mining in Bolivia, its earth producing tonnes of the precious metal for European markets under the Spanish colonisation and consuming many millions of human lives with its arduous extraction.

The mines of Potosi are still producing hundreds of years later, albeit at a much slower rate, with 15,000 Bolivian workers entering deep underground six days a week in the search for tin, iron, silver and zinc in conditions not much improved since the 1500s. The city of Potosi exists solely for the mining industry, but its historic importance was beautifully apparent with narrow cobbled streets, Spanish tiled architecture and imposing stone churches, unfortunately much of which is now solely a facade, the city seems to be crumbling from within. The first morning I awoke in my freezing cold concrete hostel room and peeped out of the window to see sheets of snow falling from the sky and gently blanketing the courtyard... the sight was beautiful, but in a city with no heating or insulation and precarious amounts of hot water it made for painfully numb feet and I rushed out to buy a big alpaca scarf for extra warmth! Heading underground to experience the town's major mine, Cerro Rico, seemed a better idea than staying in the cold city, but as we equipped ourselves in protective clothing, boots, helmets and lamps with scarves wrapped over our mouth and nose, I began to feel pangs of fear at the conditions we were to be entering.

The entrance to the mine is a squared tunnel in the side of a mountain, stretching as far as you can see into blackness with puddles of muddy water on the ground, evoking a very medieval feeling as we hunched over and headed into the enveloping blackness... the mines are now operated by "co-operatives" which sound very equitable, but in reality the co-operative members are very few and most of the miners work as "assistants" with no legal protection, or social security, in conditions that are truly horrific. The mines are full of extremely dangerous substances, the roof of the hollowed out tunnels coated with white crystallised arsenic and cyanide and the miners wear no protective clothing or masks - the average life span of a miner is a horrifyingly short 40 years: the main cause of death? Respiratory disease caused from the toxic substances they are breathing into the delicate tissue of their lungs for eight hours every day.

Children are also working in these mines, some as young as 10 years old, they are paid 25 Bolivianos for an eight hour day (about $4) working six day weeks with no access to fresh air or sunlight. The psychological impact of this underground life must be immense; as we descended further into the mine through tiny tunnels the psychological effects greeted me; the lack of oxygen, the dust, the darkness and the tiny spaces bring an immense claustrophobia and I began to panic, feeling that I couldn't get enough oxygen into my lungs. "Calm down, breathe slowly and deeply" I told myself, trying not to let the panic overcome my logic, the fumes from the mining chemicals rising upwards toward us and the process of breathing through the cloth over my nose and mouth became even more difficult. How can these people work in these conditions, all day, every day of their artificially short lives?

The adult miners are paid 350 Bolivianos per week, apparently a very good salary for Bolivia, and above the national average. Combined with a lack of alternatives, the miners are forced to accept horrific conditions and an early death for immediate financial assistance for their families. The mine has no expert geologists or technicians, the tunnels are created by using dynamite and the same method is used in the search for mineral veins in the rock - no maps for the mine exist, and the miners use their experience to judge where is safe to create a new tunnel. Obviously this is extraordinarily dangerous and cave-ins are not uncommon; we had to sign a disclaimer before entering acknowledging our knowledge of this, and acknowledging that in the case of a cave-in we would be in as much danger as the miners... (this knowledge was not comforting as we crawled through tiny dark tunnels struggling with the heat, dust and fumes). Nearly 30 metres inside the mine my claustrophobic limit was at capacity and the panic rose in my chest as I thought of how far from the surface I was and how my lungs were struggling for oxygen. In a tunnel about 30cm high I turned to our assistant and said "por favor, quiero salir!!" - I was guided out, stumbling urgently toward the entrance in the immediacy of my brain's struggle for open spaces and air. I was not alone, nearly half our group met their mental capacity and had to be brought out and as we sat back in our bus, shaking with cold and watching the snow, I felt dumbstruck at the conditions of this place, akin to hell for me, and the knowledge that thousands of people, and children, every day enter these conditions to work for what would barely buy two cups of coffee at a tourist restaurant.

The minerals collected from the mines are transported to "refining" stations on the outskirts of the city where, through a process using numerous heavy chemicals, the minerals are separated from rock in ancient machines, rivers of waste chemicals running below in a strange orange tinted fluid, which are then dumped into the local river dubbed "Rio Negro" (black river) which then flows into larger rivers in Bolivia, and onto Brazil and Argentina. Environmental protection laws, and the enforcement of these laws, simply lack in Bolivia to prevent this abhorrent practice which will cause massive environmental contamination for hundreds of years to come. The perpetrators of these heinous environmental crimes? International companies like Rio Tinto who practice much higher standards of protection in other countries whose legislation controls their behaviour. Contemplating this makes me realise with even more clarity the necessity for international environmental legislation relating to the extraction of natural resources and the associated chemical use as this clearly shows how the impacts of contamination are an international issue and the companies involved in resource extraction simply will not regulate themselves if it will increase their profit line.

I was glad to leave the cold of Potosi, and the disturbing experience of the mines and left in high spirits bouncing over a rough dirt road for the seven hour journey to Uyuni, a tiny railway town that sits on the edge of the Salar de Uyuni, the great salt flats of Bolivia. The salt flats stretch a blindingly white 12,000 sq km distance, the salt lying seven metres deep in this millenia old lake high in the mountains linking Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. Uyuni is a dry, cold and barren town, the temperatures plummeting below 0 every night, leaving us with water pipes frozen shut in the morning and hovering over the gas stove in the hostel kitchen as our only source of warmth making bowls of porridge and cups of hot coca tea. We left Uyuni with a guide and 4WD to take us over the salt flats and through the desert to Chile, a three day journey through extreme climes and extreme landscapes - beautiful, but inhospitable, and very tough on the body as the mercury soared to 30 degrees in the day time and plunged to -20 at night with howling winds that have shape the desert rock into strange formations. We passed lagoons of beautiful colours and flocks of pink flamingos, framed with huge Dali-esqe mountains whose shadows make dark and warped patterns across the yellow sand. After three days in this environment reaching Chile felt wonderful and shortly past the border the broken, bumpy dirt path turned into a beautiful smooth tarseiled road winding its way 2,500 metres down into the Northern-Chilean desert and to hot showers, real coffee, muesli and yoghurt! I am now headed south towards Chile's famous lakes, forests, wild Pacific seas and the home of those most wonderful Chilean thinkers, Pablo Neruda and Salvador Allende...

Goodbye Bolivia, I won't forget your shocking contrasts, your wild diversity or your heartbreaking disparities.

A note on coca

2008-08-06T08:16:00.001-07:00

"La sagrada hoja", the sacred leaf, this small green plant, the source of such controversy. The official nemeses of the United States and now even under attack from the United Nations... what enemies to have... but, the defence of this supplement is strong here in Bolivia, and increasingly in Peru, where it has been used as a health product and medicine for time immemorial. The leaf is used here mainly as a "mate" (like a herbal tea) or it is directly chewed in the mouth, comical to see men working with huge bulges of coca leaf in their cheeks, and is a wonderful medicine for the prevention of altitude sickness, for hunger and fatigue and as a nutritional supplement - coca, in its natural leaf form, has two to three times more calcium than milk, has more protein than walnuts, has large amounts of vitamin A and E, is rich in iron and potassium, helps to regulate glucose levels in the blood and can be made into a poultice for the alleviation of rheumatism and bone dislocation! A perfect product for the health supplement markets in the west, and wonderful for vegetarians, vegans, travellers and mountaineers. If only it could be viewed with a dose of perspective, and its attack from the United States could be reassessed.

The difference between coca, and cocaine, is as huge as the difference between sugar cane and vodka. The coca leaf is pressed to make a paste which is then processed using an enormous number of chemicals (including white gasoline) to produce the drug cocaine - the largest consumers of which reside in the United Kingdom and the United States and coincidentally, not in Latin America. Coca was mainly cultivated for its domestic use in the Andes for decades, the centre for cocaine production being in the equatorial climes of Colombia, until, ironically, in the 1980s young Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada began the application of US economist, Jeffrey Sachs' neoliberal shock treatments to the struggling Bolivian economy which included the privatisation of the nation's mines and the dismissal of some 45,000 mine workers and 35,000 factory workers who were forced to work through the "informal economy" to survive, mainly on coca farms, to supply the rising demand in Colombia for coca paste (which responded to the rising demand in the US for cocaine) - coca paste became the country's most profitable export in the 1980s (exceeding the total legal exports) and actually cushioned the falling economy which crashed following the application of the neoliberal economic policies.

The United States of America first declared its "war on drugs" under George H Bush, now being continued by George W Bush, with a horrifyingly myopic vision - the destruction of all coca in Latin America. This war has been fought with a very similar mentality to America's other international war, that on "terror" - with disproportionate use of violence and military might and very little analysis of the long term effects. Coca farms were systematically destroyed by US funded military attacks, including the murder of farmers defending their livelihoods, and the "alternative development" they have been offered is enough to make one laugh. The farmers are instructed to plant fruit in place of their coca crop, usually bananas, which then have no market, as the US refuses to buy them, and when the protesting farmers dump their rotting produce onto the roads to highlight the ineffectiveness of this "alternative" the military attacks them - leaving one Bolivian farmer legless after being shot for his protest.

Perhaps a better "war on drugs" is fought by firstly examining the ever escalating demand for cocaine in our societies? The $30 billion spent so far in this "war on peasant farmers" could have funded some genuine analytical research into the rising demand for hard drugs, and into drug prevention and rehabilitation programmes, in the USA and UK. For, as anyone with a basic understanding of the law of markets is aware, whenever a demand exists, a supply will always follow, especially when that demand is for a very high value product. What are we lacking in our societies that drives us to need to consume drugs in such a relentless manner? Perhaps a little meaning anyone?

Coca, the sacred leaf, is not the enemy. Coca could be a wonderful export commodity for its health properties, it could act as a high value export product for Bolivia, the poorest nation in Latin America, and at the same time benefit western consumers. If only our governments and international institutions could take a good dose of perspective. Meanwhile, I will continue to enjoy my daily cup of coca tea until I reach the border!

The sound of a purring puma...

2008-08-05T11:34:00.000-07:00

The dry heights of the Bolivian altiplano slowly morph into an increasingly dense shade of green, the bus winds its way down a mountainside and the first sight of trees bring an indescribable joy to my heart as we enter rolling cloud forest and after a few hours more, descend into the lowlands - the mercury rising, humidity hitting your face like a warm soup, and palm trees beginning to dot the landscape... the Eastern-Bolivian jungle region... reminiscent of equatorial Africa, and home to a mind-boggling diversity of animal species, from jaguars to anacondas to sloths - an incredible wealth of biodiversity increasingly threatened by the encroachment of humanity from soy and sugar cane plantations, farm settlements, and hunting.

I find it very hard to fathom the arrogance of a person who desires a jaguar for a household pet, but they exist, and in huge numbers in Latin America. Pumas, ocelots and jaguars are hunted for the black market sale as fur, as pets, or to circuses and zoos, as are various species of monkeys and small animals who are also sold to medical laboratories for use as test animals - these small beings are sacrificed in the cruelest ways, not for the development of ground-breaking cancer or HIV treatments, but rather to test the potency of our household cleaners, cosmetics and toiletries.

I had arrived in the small village of Villa Tunari to visit the animal refuge of Inti Wara Yassi, sitting at the border of the jungle zones, and home to 1,200 animals brought here by owners who could no longer manage their jungle pet, rescued from cruel zoos, circuses or laboratories, or found abandoned. The refuge acts to rehabilitate as many animals as possible and release them back into the wild - usually a long and detailed process requiring a lot of time and resources - and acts completely without governmental support, run entirely from international donations and international volunteers, with a skeleton staff of four paid Bolivian vets and one manager. The conditions are basic and the work is carried out with a lot of creativity and compromise on a relatively small piece of land, largely owned by the local council. The local council's permission of land use comes with heavy strings attached - the refuge must be partially open to tourism, with the entrance fee charged being payable back to the local council. Very little support for the concept of wilderness exists here, and no enforced legislation for the protection of animals who are seen as another commodity with a surprisingly low monetary value (less than $20 for an ocelot?).

A care programme is designed for each animal that arrives at the refuge - some are very psychologically damaged from years of abuse and cruelty, others are malnutritioned from poor diets, or physically damaged from beatings given by human owners. On arrival, each animal is held under the supervision of the vets for 10 days to observe the behaviour, identify any psychological or physical problems and develop a plan for care, rehabilitation or enrichment. The monkeys are held in a quarantine area for a 60 day period to ensure that they carry no parasites that would infect the other animals and the refuge has very strict regulations for the prevention of spreading disease. As I walked around with onsite vet, Luis, taxi to a small spider monkey who had clambered onto my shoulders for a ride, he explained to me the slow and careful process of animal rehabilitation - beginning from rescue or delivery and, hopefully, ending with the careful release into wilderness (one of the country's national parks, or jungle area controlled by the organisation).

Three species of monkey live at the refuge - the small, shy and colourful Squirrel Monkey; the large, curious, and very "human" Spider Monkey and the rambunctious little Capuchin. Most of the monkeys were taken young from their mother and kept solitary for their confined lives (very unnatural for these social group-orientated beings), fed "human" food and, often, subject to horrible abuses. The rehabilitation process is begun from their period in quarantine where they are introduced to natural foods, to the jungle on daily walks and to contact with other monkeys. For some, this is a very frightening process and they cling to their human carers in terror - they are kept on leashes and the contact with the monkey groups is slowly increased until the monkey is accepted into, and accepts, the monkey group. The monkeys live together and are monitored until a natural group forms, with an alpha male and female, and the group is then weaned from human contact through a series of increasingly remote jungle areas, the last being restricted of all human sound and very minimal human exposure, until the correct governmental permissions are obtained for their release into the wild. Some monkeys have such severe psychological damage from human abuses that their behaviour is a danger to the other monkeys and these are kept in the quarantine area under a programme of enrichment where they are fed, walked and cared for by the volunteers and they can never be released, or even live free in the refuge's forests. This realisation, the severity of human induced harm to these small beings whose mannerisms and expressions are so wonderfully similar to our own was particularly painful for me - it is akin to abusing a child.

Sadly, the refuge's jaguars, ocelots and pumas are permanent residents - the method used for hunting them is to kill the parent and take the cubs - they therefore learn no hunting skills and would die in the wild. The cats are on a programme of "enrichment" where their lives are made as comfortable and "wild" as possible - they are walked for eight hours a day by two volunteers through the jungle on paths that are diversified as much as the small land space allows, they are kept solitary and on solitary paths and are fed fresh and raw meat, similar to their natural diet. The volunteers who work with the cats are generally long term volunteers, the human contact with the cats is kept to a minimum, and their night time cages are filled with bamboo, tree branches and items from the jungle for the cats to live in an environment as suitable to their nature as possible. With the assistance of a large donation from the English organisation, Quest, a second plot of land has been purchased in a more remote area of jungle near to Santa Cruz and Inti Wara Yassi plans to move all 27 cats to this new home in the next few years.

Birds and small animals have a much better chance of rehabilitation and release; unlike cats and monkeys they do not build as dependant relationships on humans and the rehabilitation time is only limited to their physicality, most of whom arrive at the refuge very malnutritioned. Bolivian jungles are home to the world's most beautiful species of birds - huge red, green and blue parrots and paraquets, toucans and macaws, and many others - they are usually hunted for sale as house pets, their wings are clipped, sometimes the bone is also cut, and they require nourishment and time to regrow, sometimes also requiring to be taught how to fly again. Birds caught from jungles are treated like cargo, transported in boxes without air, water or food - usually 80-100 birds per box, and 80 - 90% die during transport. This represents 20 birds killed for every bird bought on the market. Some birds have psychological problems meaning that they can't form groups and are cared for at the refuge, others cannot regrow their broken bones and are also cared for permanently here, under the enrichment programme. I was introduced to a pair of two beautiful red parrots, a couple, who remain at the refuge permanently because while the male partner can fly and, technically, is able to be released, his female partner is unable to fly and therefore he stays at the refuge with her - calling her loudly every time they are separated, even as they are just being brought out of their aviary for their daily walk along the tree branches. Perhaps the most beautiful love story?

The refuge was a heartwarming example of dedication to wilderness and to the rights of animals. It was also an example of the limitations of a country like Bolivia which lacks the resources, will, and interest in preserving wilderness. The rehabilitation process could be much improved if only the refuge had increased resources and its own plot of land where it could carry out its programmes without the impositions of the local council's desire for tourist dollars. Perhaps we need to reevaluate our own economic value system? It is only when we recognise the inherent value of wilderness, for wildernesses sake, and the value of biodiversity, that the monetary worth of an animal is higher in its natural jungle home than as decoration for the homes of the wealthy, or as entertainment in our zoos and circuses. The largest goal of Inti Wara Yassi is to no longer need to exist - through the education of Bolivians about the necessity of preserving wilderness and the place of animals in that. A goal that the world should also aspire to.

Brightly Bolivia and the Quaker Link

2008-07-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

The brightly coloured "wiphala" flag of indigenous unity flutters high over the crowds of protesters as they march down the El Alto street, chanting slogans supporting Evo Morales: "Yes! The revolution continues!!"... my bus inches its way down the twisting roads towards La Paz, a city nestled in a canyon, surrounded by snow-capped mountains and the barren wind-swept altiplano.

Bolivia, Bolivia, brimming with political passions as the country gears up toward the presidential recall referendum due to be held in early August - every day I have seen protest marches, street blockages and the most creative political graffiti marks every wall - for me, it's wonderful to see a country so actively involved in their political system, so interested in their governance and their future. If only the public of New Zealand shared some of the same political interest... (perhaps we need decades of exclusion and oppression to realise how lucky we are to have such a democratic system?) The protesters are largely the indigenous impoverished majority, the women dressed in huge hoop skirts and ponchos, their children tied onto their backs with brightly coloured cloth, the trademark bowler hat perched on top of their heads, their hair tied in two long dark plaits down their back, evoking a strange combination of "sweet girl" and "resilient woman". The poverty in Bolivia is immediately apparent, and much starker than in neighbouring countries - the climate here is harsh, a mountainous country with a dry season of nearly eight months, decades of cruel neoliberal rule leaving the country drained of resources and impoverished; there are many beggars, wild street children with bottles of glue, many young children's teeth have brown stains of rot. But, at the same time, there is a huge sense of positivity here - perhaps a result of the 2005 "revolution", completely led by grass roots peasant organisations, who now realise their unified power, and their rights.

With its hardships and poverty Bolivia is ripe ground for "development" and, reminiscent of Africa, there are plenty of well meaning big name western NGOs here, their logos branding many water tanks, schools and health clinics as you drive the rugged dusty roads around the altiplano, their big white SUVs sit proudly in the cities, "we're here saving you!"... the same mistakes being made the world over. Travelling these same broken roads in a local transport van, crammed in between two elderly Bolivian women and an agricultural engineer working for QBL, I felt that there was really something different about the way that Quaker Bolivia Link operates here. QBL was set up by a group of Quakers who visited Bolivia on a study tour, as a response to the abject poverty that they witnessed in Bolivia's rural areas. The organisation employs mainly local Bolivian technicians to work with rural community groups for solutions to the root causes of their poverty - lack of accessible clean water, lack of fertile land for growing nutritious food, lack of education, lack of inclusion. The technicians visit the completed projects every few months to ensure their efficiency and I accompanied three technicians over an exhausting three days to visit some of the projects and to experience the reality of Bolivian life.

What struck me immediately while waiting for the local bus to leave for the remote altiplano community of Iruma Pomani was the beautiful positive energy of the local people - I was embraced repeatedly by community members, their rough frost burnt hands holding mine so tenderly, arms around me in a loose hug, "Buen Dia Senorita Ingeniera!" - the welcome was warm and genuine and beautiful - squashed in the bus like sardines we bounced over dirt roads to their community, centered in the middle of a wind-swept, barren, dry, yellow landscape that stretches as far as the eye can see - gusts of wind rousing up dust storms that burn the eyes, little houses made from mud brick with straw roofs dotting the earth about 500 metres apart. This land is scorched with freezing temperatures every night and the heat of the sun every day - the people's cheeks are red and cracked from the climate, giving everyone a rosy appearance, but masking a life that is harsh and unforgiving.

Historically, this community of 72 families had accessed its fresh water from small dirty rivers, giving rise to disease and dehydration (the rivers are dry for a large part of each year) and, of course, lack of nutritious food as the barren, dry land struggles to produce only a meagre crop of potatoes and quinoa. QBL technicians worked with the community to develop a water system which accesses fresh water from ground water sources in the hills and using a system of underground pipelines based on gravity to direct the water current, pipes the water to a tap situated outside each families house. The beautiful part of the project is that it is based on community involvement - the community supplied all the manual labour for the installation of the pipes and QBL provided the technicians and the financing. A community committee is also created, changing on a monthly rotational basis, to administer the project and ensure its effective running, and the current president of the committee showed me around the houses, eagerly turning on every family's tap to show the beautiful stream of clear, clean water. He busily explained to me the system of pipelines under the ground, his pride in being involved in the construction evidently apparent on his kind, weathered face - "I worked with these hands!" he exclaimed, explaining to me that as the system uses gravity for propulsion, there is no running cost for the system, and therefore no cost to the community for their daily water. We walked the dusty ground between each house, each family rushing out to greet us "Gracias, gracias Senorita Ingeniera!" (no matter how many times I explained that I was not an engineer!).

What really impressed me about the project was the lack of its obviousness - the taps beared no logos, no branding, there was no sense of dependency from the community members, only a huge sense of pride and local ownership of the project. When we arrived at the last home in the community, exhausted from the whipping winds and hot sun, an elderly man rushed out "Bienvenido Senorita Ingeniera!", his lined face was so bright, his eyes sparkled, and a huge (toothless) smile erupted as he ushered me to a chair in his one room adobe hut, explaining how grateful the community was for the water supply, and quickly brought out a meal of hot red potatoes and fresh salty cheese for us - it was the most touching example of generosity I have ever experienced. Here, in the harshest of landscapes, these people, who have nothing, will give so unhesitatingly, so warmly. He brought us bottles of local coca cola (quina cola) to drink and was so pleased to watch us enjoy this humble, delicious meal. I was truly touched by this gesture of such genuine kindness.

In addition to the water systems, QBL has helped communities construct greenhouses (carpas solares) to allow them to grow nutritious vegetables during the long dry months when food production is so hard. The hot midday sun is perfect for the greenhouses, which then retain their heat and humidity, allowing for the growth of many species of vegetables all year round. The greenhouses (constructed from adobe) have adjoining chicken and guinea pig huts with a vent to allow the warmth to heat the enclosure - most chickens and guinea pigs (the main source of protein) die during the freezing winter nights at this altitude. The greenhouse projects are mainly administered by the women of the community, who are generally in charge of the nutrition of the children, and stepping inside these small rooms was like stepping into another world - the heat and humidity hit you in the face like warm soup in contrast to the climate outside, and the greenhouses were a riot of colour as lettuces, cauliflowers, broccoli, spinach, celery and radishes bloomed on the fertile soil floor and magnificent tomato plants stretched high to the roof, their fruit heavy and round on their branches, in some of the greenhouses the women had planted flowers - such a beautiful salve to the vision when outside the land is colourless and devoid of obvious beauty.

Visiting these communities with the QBL technicians was a hugely empowering and positive experience for me; finally, development without dependency, assistance without ideology, finance without strings, without branding, without publicity. The projects were humble, were community driven, were "owned" by the families involved, and were needed. To think that a small sum of money, like $500, can install a greenhouse to provide an entire family of eight or nine nutritious food, and a small surplus that can be sold or traded at the local market. Simple solutions that really make a difference to the lives of these warm and gracious people.

Political Peru & the Incan Journey...

2008-07-13T13:31:00.000-07:00

So here I am in the Highlands of Peru, in Cusco, a world away from the experiences of Ecuador! I took the bus from Loja to Piura on the 02nd of July and as the bus wound its way through the southern mountains of Ecuador to reach Peru my world began to change dramatically. The landscape became increasingly drier, hotter, as it turned into the deserts of Northern Peru and with the change of geography also came a change of economy - the poverty of Peruvians became increasingly apparent as I watched slum towns of makeshift housing appear dotted through the desert, mounds of plastic rubbish littering the sands, and the apathetic faces of tired peasants as they sat in any shade available and watched the buses of the comparatively wealthy speed past their worlds of struggle. It was a strange journey, and a discomforting one for me.

The north of Peru has been described as the Egypt of South America, and that is certainly what it felt like. Huge pyramids and ancient cities of mud and sand hidden in the desert - most of the discoveries have been made around the area of Trujillo; the largest mud citadel in the world, Chan Chan, built by the Chimu people around the year 850, before they were colonised by the Incan Empire. The entire area is full of archaeological ruins and slowly discoveries are being made as pyramids are uncovered in the deserts and these ancient civilisations are studied. It was strangely disjointing to visit these ruins though, driving past communities of impoverished mestizos, the literacy rate in these areas a mere 13%. The cities felt somehow strained - and everywhere is political graffiti supporting the current president, saying "Thank you for our town". With the feelings of disjointedness in the North of Peru, I left quickly for the Incan Heartland, Cusco, an epic 30 hour bus journey into the mountains, from sea level to 3,300 metres.

Cusco has the same dry feeling as the rest of Peru - the surrounding hills are bare and browned from the days of hot sunshine and the freezing nights. Ancient Incan stones are visible in every street, giving hints of the amazing structures that lie beneath the Spanish built city that is now Cusco, with many huge cathedrals and churches built in European style over top of the Incan temples (typical "conquistador" style and ironically the same technique that the Incas used when colonising other tribes in their Empire). The city attracts tourists like a magnet, the centre is filled with people from all over the world, Internet cafes, restaurants, hotels, gift shops... it feels about as far from authentic Peruvian culture as one can get. At times a glimpse of the real Peru is seen, with the indigenous peasants from the surrounding rural communities coming into the city for trading - giving at least a slight salve to the jadedness that could be felt here!

I came here for the famous Inca Trail, the 48 kilometre trek to Machu Picchu, the Incan city undiscovered by the Spanish conquerors, and what an incredible experience it turned out to be. During my compulsory 48 hour acclimatization in Cusco a huge protest of farmers was held in the city - threatening to strike with the government employees unless more attention was paid to their hardships - what a beautiful and colourful protest, flags and cheering, music, and the beautiful bright clothing of the indigenous and mestizo farmers. As the protest march passed through Cusco's main square lines of police in combat uniforms with batons, guns and shields marched in, blocking all the main churches and buildings. What a contrast to see - the dark, hardened look of the police against the colour and life of the protesters. The trekking company decided we should leave for the trek a day early, to avoid the road blocks being set up for the national strike, so after grouping at the office and meeting the fellow trekkers we set off in a van towards the Sacred Valley and the town of Ollyantaytambo where we would camp for the night at the base of the trek. As the van wound its way down the mountains and through various rural communities we began to encounter the first of the road blocks - big rocks dragged across the road blocking traffic, guarded by peasants and children. The porters for our trek, 18 wonderful indigenous Peruvian men from the surrounding mountain communities, rushed off the bus to clear the roads letting our van pass. The journey was slow with this process, and the local campesinos watched us in interest as we slowly made our way through. With high spirits and much laughter we entered the town of Urubamba, the last large town before Ollyantaytambo, which suddenly dissipated as we met with a huge road block, guarded by hundreds of farmers, who were by now drunk and aggressive, and refused to allow the van to pass. The hours ticked by as we "stood off" with these protesters, the porters and guides negotiating for our pass, to no avail. Darkness set in and the aggression of the protesters increased - rocks were thrown at our van and a boulder pushed from a high mountain which landed a metre in front of the windscreen. The driver, fearing for his van, insisted on returning to Cusco, meaning we would miss our trek - the Inca Trail has been heavily regulated to 400 people per day (including all support staff) and unless the trek is began on the day it has been booked for, it cannot be made. We began to try alternative, more remote, roads to make it past the blocks but by now the night was well upon us and every road had been blocked, with many strikers guarding their constructions, and much alcohol fuelling the sentiments. Our group of 14 in the van became increasingly quiet and dispirited - we would have to return to Cusco. The van turned around and drove back out of the Urubamba Valley, meeting another road block constructed during our wait, the porters rushed to clear the path and a very angry indigenous woman screamed at them, threatening to throw a rock through our windscreen - as soon as we had passed this block, we saw hundreds of people running down the road toward the van, we immediately thought it was a huge group of drunken strikers, coming to enforce the block, and a surge of fear swept through the van. After a few seconds we could see that it was not strikers at all, it was the police and the army, in combat uniforms marching down the valley busting the road blocks and allowing the traffic to pass. Hundreds of these men swarmed past the van as they surged down the road - we turned around and followed them down as they broke each road block until the large fortified construction in Urubamba. We waited at the front of the queue as the police rushed into the area, we sat pensive listening for the confrontation, terrified that it would be violent, and afraid for the protesters, who we felt in solidarity with, even with our desperation to get to the start of the trek. After about five minutes gun shots sounded and tear gas canisters were let off, "quick, shut the windows!" our guide shouted as soldiers in military uniform rushed past our van toward the strikers. We sat in silence for awhile, with the sick feeling that comes with the witness of violence, and hoped that nobody would be killed in the confrontation. Thankfully, nobody was, and after some hours the van could pass through - slowly we approached Ollyantaytambo, arriving in the town at nearly 1am, again on our own, with the police having returned after breaking the Urubamba block. As we arrived at the final road toward the campsite we found another block - this time a fire block - with some local farmers who refused to let us pass. Having come so far, we were now desperate, and picked up our backpacks, holding our torches and walked the rest of the way to the campsite, the night dark and spooky, but feeling very much a team after the events of the night. We finally arrived at our campsite at 3am and fell to a restless few hours sleep before waking early the next morning to begin the trek!

Many groups of trekkers who had booked for the trail never made it, the next day the official strike was held and not even a taxi could be taken. We felt privileged to have made it and began the walk in high spirits, the sun shining down strongly on us, and our walking sticks in a meditative rhythm as we marched the first six hours past the beautiful Urubamba river, glaciers in the mountains behind us, and beautiful green mountains in front. Our group was 14, many Canadians and English, and a Dutch couple, together with 18 porters to carry the camping equipment, a cook, and our two encouraging guides - walking was wonderful for me, a meditation in movement, and our main guide, Freddy, explained to us the ancient religion of the worship of Pachamama (Mother Earth), and how this pilgrimage to the holy city of Machu Picchu was necessary for the mental cleansing of the pilgrims - to have open chakras and clean minds - which made it even more special, and empowering. We reached the first camp around 4pm and all fell asleep early, exhausted from the previous night, rising the next morning at 6am to continue the trek - the hardest day - climbing the Dead Woman's Pass to 4,200 metres - I had feared this for many months, thinking that the challenge was too great for me, physically, and I set out slowly, keeping my steps small and slow, conserving energy for the 1,200 climb. The vegetation on the way was beautiful, akin to the native bush of New Zealand, dense and damp and green, with the beautiful rich earthen smell of soil and gushing white rivers over rocks next to the path. With the increasing altitude we began to chew coca leaves, which help with altitude sickness, fatigue and hunger. These small green leaves have created such controversy with the production of cocaine, but in reality coca is as similar to cocaine as sugar cane is to vodka. The process of cocaine production requires massive amounts of chemicals, including white gasoline, and coca in its integral leaf form is about as stimulating as a cup of coffee. In addition to the benefits for energy and altitude, coca also contains very high levels of iron, calcium, vitamins A, C & E - the perfect supplement for vegetarians! Coca can be chewed in its leaf form (which has a strong taste, a bit like green tea), or soaked in boiling water and drank as tea, or ground into flour and used to make food, sweets, tea bags etc. We drank coca tea each morning and lunch time and chewed it in our mouths during the high mountain passes; it really made such a difference and I didn't struggle with the altitude anywhere near as much as I thought I would have. The UN has now classified coca as a banned substance, and it is only legal in Peru and Bolivia, but imagine how wonderful this product would be if it could be used for its health properties in western countries!

Climbing Dead Woman's Pass was incredible for me - with the slow pace, I made it to 4,000 metres without too much physical pain, and the last 200 metres (the most difficult) were an amazing experience. I climbed in solitude, my mind became completely calm and clear, and the pain in my legs could barely be felt. I took each step slowly, being guided by a small dark blue bird who flitted slowly in front of me, hopping up each step, as if leading me to the pass. I felt a strong sense of the spirits of my grandmothers with me, encouraging me onwards. It was such a meditative, beautiful, tranquil journey up; I felt so empowered. Reaching the top of the pass was incredible - the temperature dropped so quickly and freezing winds whipped around us, the view down the valley incredible, showing how far we had come. We cheered each other as the top, and performed a small ceremony to thank Pachamama. After we made it to our camp that night and sat around the camp table eating dinner, Freddy explained that the pass is named "Dead Woman's Pass" because of the deaths every year of people who climb it - about three or four, usually from altitude, or heart attacks.

The third and fourth days of the trek were at lower altitudes, as we crossed down through cloud forest into the jungle and passed ancient Incan ruins, used as bases for farmers and as temples for pilgrims on the trail. The ancient stone structures held such power, the stones formed with perfect engineering ability, requiring no mortar to hold them together, and temple stones smoothed to feel almost like glass. Our last morning we rose very early, at 4am, to make it to the Sun Gate of Machu Picchu as the sun rose... unfortunately the morning was wet, raining, and very misty - we struggled in the darkness with our headlights over the uneven paths, not stopping during the six kilometre stretch, pressing on urgently through dense forest and up flights of Incan stone stairs, to reach the Sun Gate, completely covered in mist, not able to even make out the mountains surrounding us! But, for me, this was not important. The journey to Machu Picchu, was so powerful, so enriching, that it was far more important than the destination could ever be. I felt my chakras cleansed, my mind clear and open, my heart so refreshed. We reached Machu Picchu by 7am and after a few hours the cloud and mist lifted, revealing the Incan city in all its glory - and the surrounding mountains dark and beautiful contrasting the intricate stone structures of the city. Every stone perfectly formed, perfectly placed, the architecture designed to withstand earthquakes, El Nino and La Nina storms, and the mountains terraced to provide space for varied agriculture even at this altitude, each terrace provided a different microclimate and the Incas had developed over 3,000 varieties of potatoes, jungle fruits like avocado and passionfruit and many varieties of maize. The Incas had an amazing sense of organisation and development - creating an incredible empire and controlling an area almost the size of Europe. Every year, in July, unused agricultural land was redistributed to poor people for their use (not just an idea of socialists or communists!) and their lives were ceremonious, with each month bringing a separate ritual - including the sacrifices of animals and people for Pachamama.

Arriving back in Cusco late last night my body was exhausted, and filthy, but my mind felt so refreshed, inspired, and my chakras, my personal spiritual power felt so clean, so sensitised. Being back in Cusco with the tourists and the busyness feels paradoxical, so I will head south shortly, towards Lake Titicaca (the birthplace of the Incas) and across to Bolivia... the land of coca, of revolution, and of hope for the indigenous tribes of South America.

Coming home to Rumi Wilco

2008-07-01T13:47:00.000-07:00

From environmental destruction to environmental preservation... what a contrasting experience, and such a salve for my soul after the Northern Oriente. I have spent the past two weeks working at Rumi Wilco, a nature reserve created by two Argentinian biologists to protect the sacred huilco tree in Vilcabamba, the south of Ecuador. Arriving here felt like coming home - the reserve is nestled between a range of mountains, dense and green and full of life, the mountain's energy seems to humm almost audibly and an amazing sense of "God" is felt in everything, such a quiet peace. Working with my hands, with the soil, has been such a powerful experience - there is such integrity in this humble work - we rise early every day, with real coffee, drank while watching the mountains, observing the changes in the weather and the air, walking through the reserve, the rich smell of the earth and the sound of the river, the meditative process of tree planting, the small seedlings pressed tight into the soil, or weeding, planting herbs, picking coffee, the beans bright red and sticky in this season... life at a different pace. I have learnt so much here, the realisation that another possibility for life exists - and another possiblity for environmentalism, that is active rather than intellectual or political. To purchase land, and protect, conserve - directly, humbly. It is a life with such integrity and perhaps this direct action is what is needed most now, on a grand scale, to preserve what is left of wilderness the world over. And this ecological philanthropy is being seen on an increasing scale in South America, the prime example being Doug Tompkin's amazing development of Parque Pumalin in Chile... but that comes later... for now, the southwards journey of the Andes continues and I head onwards to Peru...

Ecuador intensity and the horrifying oil adventure

2008-06-12T15:00:00.000-07:00

"One of the problems with modern society is that it places more importance on things that have a price than on things that have a value. Breathing clean air, for instance, or having clean water in the rivers, or having legal rights - these are things that don't have a price but have a huge value. Oil does have a price, but its value is much less. And sometimes we make the mistake". - Pablo Fajardo

I write from Quito; a city that winds itself through several valleys high in the mountains of Ecuador - green peaks rise majestically on all sides; mists frequently seep over, blanketing parts of the city in a fine grey mesh... it is the beginning of the dry season here, but the rainy season clings to us with its long thin fingers, drowning the city about every two days in downpours that rival those of Equatorial Africa. The streets turn to rivers and water gushes through everything, making the world seem very damp - a bit like living inside a wet sock periodically thrown through a tumble dryer with intense days of hot sunshine. Like all South American cities, there is a stark North / South divide: the wealthy and powerful live in the North, wearing European designer clothes and driving expensive vehicles; the impoverished and powerless gravitate to the South, working in menial jobs for subsistence wages, or through the "black economy" which seems a very strong force here.

But my mind is focused on one thing at the moment: Oil. And contamination. I have just returned from a journey to the Northern Oriente, near the border with Colombia, an area previously virgin rainforest in one of the most biodiverse parts of the Amazon, inhabited solely by indigenous tribes who lived sustainably governed by one God: the Jungle. Unfortunately however, this God harboured a dark secret deep within his folds - oil. And a lot of it. Beneath the Amazon lies vast fields of crude - and this piece of previously undisturbed earth was violently disrupted in the mid-1950s, firstly with American Christian missionaries - sent in in helicopters to pacify the indigenous tribes, and shortly thereafter, in 1964, with helicopters bearing huge machinery for the exploration of oil sources in the jungle. Leading this exploration was the Texan oil giant, Texaco (now Chevron), who signed an agreement with Ecuador's then "government" (an incompetent and corrupt military regime) for the exploration and extraction of crude. It didn't take long for Texaco to find the black gold, in 1967 it struck oil near Lago Agrio and soon discovered vast oil fields throughout the far north and north-east of Ecuador. Massive infrastructure was then developed, with roading systems and oil pipelines constructed in record speeds, assisting the colonisation of the area with peasants from the coast of Ecuador who were encouraged to move to this remote area under an incentivised system of land ownership where for every one hectare of rainforest clear-felled, the settler would receive 50 more, largely in an effort to legitimise the Ecuadorean government's mandate over the area during a time of regional instability and land wars... naturally, the impoverished and disenfranchised flocked to the jungle and set up small farms near the roadways that had been built by Texaco - which, of course, were right next to the development of oil wells.

Ecuadorean environmental law in the 1960s was particularly ambiguous; its reference to the exploitation of oil was simply to protect the area's "flora, fauna and other natural resources" and to "prevent pollution of the water, atmosphere and the land". There was no specific instruction as to levels of acceptable contamination, nor references to the methods required for environmental protection - in effect, the laws required self-regulation and a standard of integrity on the part of the contractor. Unfortunately for the area's peasant settlers, the indigenous communities, and the Jungle God itself, Texaco possessed neither of these qualities. Today this region of rare biodiversity is a toxic waste dump.

In this area of the Amazon, the earth is made up of the following components - a layer of topsoil which is formed from clays and organic matter, typically about one metre deep with a layer of sand and gravel at the bottom and below that the "ground water" at approximately four metres: the source of all drinking and washing water, accessed through wells dug by the inhabitants. Oil is found deep below the earth's surface - nearly two kilometres down - and with the oil lies what is termed "formation waters" - water that is laced with heavy metals, excessive levels of salts and carcinogenic petroleum compounds - obviously incredibly toxic to living beings. When oil is extracted, the formation waters are also extracted - usually 60% crude oil and 40% formation water, sometimes 50/50. The liquids are pumped directly from the earth into huge storage tanks where the oil rises to the top (as it is lighter than water) and is "scooped" off before being sent down networks of above-ground feeder lines to the huge 500 kilometre "Trans-Ecuadorean" pipeline (also constructed by Texaco) which leads west to a coastal town, Esmeraldas, before being shipped to the United States for refining and selling.

Formation waters are a waste product which under legislation in the United States require testing and re-injecting deep into the ground so as not to contaminate water or soil sources. In Ecuador however, Texaco simply dumped the formation waters into unlined pits dug directly into the earth about three metres deep, dangerously close to the ground water aquifers.

When drilling for oil, a substance is used for lubrication and sealing, commonly termed "drilling muds", which is formed from a combination of highly toxic chemicals including cadmium and barium. After the drilling is completed, this fluid also becomes a waste product which requires careful disposal - in Ecuador, Texaco slopped the drilling muds into the unlined pits along with the formation waters and the waste crude that is produced when a well is first drilled (also highly toxic).

Texaco drilled approximately 340 wells in its concession area, with between two and five earthen waste pits for every well, amounting to somewhere between 800 and 1,000 abandoned pits of poisonous "soup" and, not surprisingly, this liquid waste has seeped through the clays and down into the ground water, contaminating the freshwater source of the campesino settlers with highly toxic substances. In addition to the toxic waste pits, formation waters and chemicals used for well maintenance (including the highly carcinogenic chromium 6) were pumped into small streams in the forest, where they flowed downstream into the rivers used by the local communities and indigenous tribes for drinking, washing and fishing - before continuing into the Napo River, a direct tributary to the Amazon.

Texaco left Ecuador in 1992 after dumping more than 45 billion litres of waste into this fragile ecosystem.

For some 30 years the nearly 30,000 local inhabitants have been forced to drink, wash and fish in contaminated waters - they simply have no other choice. In San Carlos, a tiny, hot, impoverished oil town near Sacha the cancer rates are astonishingly high: children in this area are four times more likely to suffer from leukemia than in the rest of the country and are frequently born with genetic mutations and physical deformities. Women have abnormally high rates of cervical, uterine and lymph node cancers and suffer from spontaneous abortions. Cancer rates in men are also abnormally high, and abnormally aggressive, typically of the stomach, rectum, soft tissue and skin. Skin irritations, respiratory and sight problems are also unusually frequent and severe.

Walking the edge of a river near San Carlos on a hot afternoon highlights just how important water here really is - the rivers are a central tenet of life - they are where the women wash clothes, the children play and swim, families bathe and where cooking and drinking water is collected. It also shows the extent and severity of the contamination: rainbow patches drift gently downstream and when the sediment is disturbed, black globs of oil hiccup into the water. I watched, in anguish, a woman who stood waist deep in this river, scrubbing clothes on a rock, toxic water being gently absorbed by her internal soft tissue as she laboured for her family, and downstream, her children played by the river's edge next to an old Texaco oil drum. These people know their waters are contaminated, but there is simply no alternative. During recent testing in the area polynuclear hydrocarbons were found in freshwater rivers with levels up to 10,000 times greater than allowed under guidelines of the US Environmental Protection Agency; chloride levels between 100 and 400 times greater than the limits accepted in California and salinity levels 30 to 100 times greater. These are all toxic components found in crude oil and formation waters.

This environmental disaster is akin to the entire population of Chernobyl living in the town after the nuclear accident. People here literally live on top of toxic waste sites. Near the notoriously lawless oil town of Shushufindi we visited a family whose house had been constructed directly next to an abandoned waste pit where after some 30 years vegetation has grown over the surface and the poisonous sludge has permeated deep into the surrounding earth and ground water. The elderly campesino who lived there greeted us warmly and led me to the rear of his property where he attempts to grow some fruit and coffee trees. He broke pieces of soil with his work-roughened hands: thick black crude literally oozed from the centre and the smell of the oil was overpowering. Crude has literally seeped up from the ground and formed hardened crusts on the surface, the underside remaining a thick gooey mess of toxins. We walked around the old waste pit and poked a stick into the surface - the ground literally rolled with the liquid underneath and the stick was covered in black sticky waste. The trees here don't produce any fruit, and the ground water has been so contaminated that this man is losing his eyesight and his arms are unusually pale, covered with small irritated lumps. His wife lay ill inside the wooden house, dying slowly from cancer while they remain here in enforced passivity - trapped alive in a site with petroleum hydrocarbon contamination thousands of times higher than accepted limits under US legislation.

The smell of the waste crude in the area is overpowering. At the abandoned pits, the fumes were enough to give me a headache in a few minutes. And yet people live directly next to these areas. Nowhere else in the world would it be possible to be so close to toxic waste without even a fence for protection. Testing carried out in the soil surrounding the waste sites has proven dangerously high levels of chromium 6, cadmium and barium - all toxins associated with the drilling and maintenance processes.

And as if the dumping of waste products was not contamination enough, the pipelines constructed by Texaco have proved to be dangerously substandard - running almost entirely above-ground (through towns and villages and next to people's homes) and in the 17 years of Texaco's management of the major Trans-Ecuadorean line, it suffered 27 breaks, spilling over 64 million litres of oil into the environment, most of which was not cleaned up.

It is difficult to convey the enormity of this situation, probably the largest environmental disaster in the world. Texaco knowingly used production methods outlawed by its home-state of Texas in 1939 and knowingly breached its contractual and ethical obligations to protect the natural environment and the local communities which it exploited and profited from. At the same time as conducting this substandard behaviour in Ecuador, it adhered to stricter regulations in other parts of the world which chillingly seems to show that the lives of the impoverished and indigenous are viewed as having less worth than those of the wealthy and the white.

"In this battle I have understood that working for a clean environment today is working towards peace for humanity tomorrow - facing the future. That is what I intend to do." - Pablo Fajardo

In 2003 a class action lawsuit was filed in the region's first oil town, Lago Agrio (ironically meaning Sour Lake), against the multinational corporation Chevron (who acquired Texaco in 2001) on behalf of the 30,000 peasant settlers and indigenous communities for the remediation of the area which covers some 2,700 square kilometres. This is potentially the largest environmental trial in history, and an emotional battle fought by a small team of Ecuadorian lawyers, supported by an American litigator, Steven Donziger. The lead Ecuadorean lawyer is a mestizo peasant named Pablo Fajardo, a man who after being born into extreme poverty, grew up in these violent oil towns where the fish floated dead in the rivers and the rain fell with oil. Pablo Fajardo acquired his law degree at night school and only graduated in 2004: this is his first case, and he is against a powerful team of corporate lawyers from the United States and Ecuador's oligarchy who are well trained in the art of litigious delays - presumably to drain their opponents of resources and will for as long as it takes. Chevron is a dangerous enemy and the case has already been delayed for some 15 years after it was first filed in a New York court in 1993. The Federal Court in New York ruled that the case did not have jurisdiction in the United States as the contamination and original contracts were made in Ecuador - and so in 2003 the proceedings were shifted to Lago Agrio and the litigious dance has begun again.

Chevron does not dispute that the areas have been contaminated; it simply disputes that the contamination is the fault of Texaco. This isn't helped by the fact that since Texaco pulled out of the region, the nation's petroleum company, Petroecuador, has been operating there with some dubious environmental practices of its own. But this does not detract from the fact that most of the waste pits date from the 30 years when Texaco was the sole operator in the region and the extent of the contamination is clearly in the hands of Texaco. In 1994 Texaco signed a remediation agreement with the Ecuadorean government, to clean up 37.5% of the waste (the percentage that Texaco accepted responsibility for) and paid an American engineering firm $40 million to carry out the cleanup. The cleanup was never monitored and no independent testing of the remediated areas was ever carried out by the then Ecuadorean government - the efficiency of the cleanup has been vociferously disputed by the plaintiffs who have tested the areas supposedly remediated which still show levels of toxicity thousands of times above the legal contamination limits. It would seem that the 1994 remediation effort was solely a ploy to have the contamination suit discredited.

At stake is a remediation bill estimated to be some $8 billion, with a potential additional fine of $8 billion for "unjust enrichment" at the judge's discretion. This might sound like big money, but in the first quarter of this year alone Chevron posted profits of nearly $6 billion. This is no small time company. And this is no small lawsuit.

The Court process in Ecuador is slow and mainly evidence-based. The judicial inspections of contaminated sites have now finished and the closing statements of both sides are due. Judgement is expected in perhaps one or two years time. And after that... who knows. From Chevron's behaviour thus far, it doesn't look promising. There are still several levels of appeal courts within Ecuador, and after that, Chevron can argue (and it is likely that it will) that the Ecuadorean court system was unfair and corrupt and the case will return to the United States. It seems a systematic tactic to drag this out for as long as possible and the longer that the contamination is allowed to exist, the more that the people of this region will suffer.

How can one even put a price on freshwater ecosystems, on soil integrity, on a river's right to flow? How can you put a price on human life, on a child who suffers from leukemia or birth defects; how can you compensate a mother whose ability to give life has been taken from her? It is simply not possible to restore this environment to its previous condition and to remediate the contamination will be at least a 20 year process. You can't clean river water, but the polluted sediment can be cleaned and the toxic waste in the pits can be removed, or re-injected deep into the old wells. Clean water can be provided to the inhabitants and the health care costs of those who are suffering can be paid. But the real costs of this contamination can never be compensated. The lands and rivers of the indigenous communities have been destroyed, their fish are gone and their historic culture sits on a dangerous precipice as globalisation creeps ever more slowly into their world and erodes their traditions and erases their ancient wisdom.

At the very least this case provides a strong precedent for the rest of the world's resource-extracting industries that no longer will people stand by and watch as their environment is destroyed for the greed of multinationals. No longer will it be more profitable to ignore the strictest environmental regulations and most efficient technologies. No longer will the "Davids" fear the "Goliaths" in this world - and the people, united, with truth on their side, will rise up and fight again.

Sharing the domain of the THUNDER DRAGON!

2008-05-08T13:39:00.000-07:00

I finally reached the land of my dreams, the "last Shangri-La", the mythical country of mountains and monks and happiness... Bhutan... how surreal and how bittersweet to arrive in this long dreamed of place with such a broken heart as I had leaving Nepal.

But if there is ever a salve for a broken heart, it is Bhutan... this tiny landlocked kingdom in the Himalayas, so removed from the industrialised world for so long and now slowly, slowly opening up to western influences... and how interesting this process is! Bhutan's line of five monarchs seem to have possessed amazing wisdom and foresight - the fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, studied at Oxford and after realising that despite the huge wealth of western nations their people remained profoundly unhappy, he returned to Bhutan and created legislation to protect the Bhutanese from the same fate by declaring that in Bhutan "Gross National Happiness" is to be regarded as having priority over "Gross Domestic Product". GNH is measured by achieving four goals: good governance, environmental protection, cultural preservation and social development. GDP must come secondary to these goals and in order to protect the Bhutanese from the environmental and cultural destruction of mass tourism, Bhutan imposes a steep tariff to all tourists for every day that they are in the country (US$220), a part of which the government uses for community development projects. When comparing the state of Bhutan to that of Nepal you can really see how this policy works to protect the exploitation of the people and their environment and although Bhutan is poor when comparing their economy with that of a "western" country there is a distinct lack of "poverty" - no begging, no homelessness, no sad faced children chasing you in the street for a rupee, or shopkeepers hassling you for a "good price". The people of Bhutan do indeed seem happy... and polite, considerate, shy, gentle... this is certainly not to say that life is not hard, especially for the rural Bhutanese, and those who live in the mountainous areas, but a hard life is not necessarily an unhappy one and in Bhutan all education is free, health care is free (and includes traditional and alternative treatments like acupuncture) and the country does not suffer from food shortages, or lack of access to water. So... a "shangri-la"? Perhaps, but I don't think that it's that simple...

After a hair-raising flight through the Himalayas and down into Paro Valley, I met my assigned guide and driver (two young Bhutanese men dressed in the traditional gho as is required of all Bhutanese while employed) and I slowly adjusted to the presence of these escorts, a very strange experience for me with my love of independent travel... but, this is the only way a "tourist" can see Bhutan and while it felt very passive for me, I appreciated their consideration and kindness toward me. We hiked to Taktshang Goemba, or the Tigers Nest monastery and what a beautiful and moving introduction to the kingdom... a 900m hike up toward this architectural miracle - a traditional Bhutanese style monastery literally hanging off the edge of a cliff - it was built in the 1700s with no architectural plans (as it customary in Bhutan) and it is believed that the structure is held onto the cliff by the thread of angels... the monastery was built to consecrate a cave in the cliff top where Guru Rinpoche flew on the back of a tiger to pacify a demon and then spent time in deep meditation. It seems that most of Bhutan's history is based upon these beautiful religious stories of demons and deities and Bodhisattvas, the real so intermixed with the mythical that it is hard to sense where one ends and the other begins. I don't think I've ever seen anything as incredible as this monastery in my life, and the interior is completely decorated with traditional Buddhist paintings depicting various explanations of Dharma and the Buddhist explanations of the universe. The intense sattwa inside the main temple was so moving, and standing outside on the edge of the cliff with the prayer flags whipping in the wind was a feeling of wonderful freedom and peace.

Religion is a huge part of Bhutanese life and culture - it dictates cultural values, governance, behaviour, everything. The Bhutanese are devoutly Buddhist and monasteries and temples and chortens cover the landscape. Prayer flags fly from every hill and every mountain top, huge decorated prayer wheels sit in the base of every river and a bell sounds every time the water flow turns the wheel. Monks are everywhere, their beautiful saffron robes sweeping behind them as they hurry about the towns and villages. In every region there is a dzong, or fortress, built in ancient times for leaders to monitor the invasions of the valleys from hostile neighbours (particularly Tibetans who invaded Bhutan multiple times in the 1600's). In every house there is a shrine to Buddha, in a specially designated room, and also in every house there is a picture of the king, who the Bhutanese love with an unrivalled sincerity. It's quite amazing to see a people so seemingly dedicated to their leaders, to the point that in the recent elections (the first democratic elections in Bhutan's history) the biggest unrest was from people who didn't want to convert to democracy at all - and the party that was elected was the most royalist of several royalist parties, their policies to follow the policies and plans already set out by the king!

Religion also seems to have ensured an incredibly high level of conservationism in Bhutan, also guided by the fourth and now fifth king, who have legislated that Bhutan must always have forest cover of 60% (currently forest cover is 72%!). The forest is a huge asset for Bhutan, it ensures the integrity of the soil (important in a country with hills as steep as Bhutans to prevent landslides and flooding), ensures maximum biodiversity (Bhutan has one of the highest biodiversity levels in the world), and acts as a watershed to protect the production of water which is Bhutan's largest economic source; the production of electricity from hydro power exported to India. Every tree in Bhutan is protected, even on private land - a permit from the Ministry of Forestry must be obtained to fell any tree in the nation. National parks make up 32% of the country, and 9% acts as protected biological corridors between the national parks. Bhutan must have environmental protection laws that are the envy of any conservationist or ecologist the world over. I was fortunate enough to be able to meet with Bhutan's most respected botanist, and the head of WWF in the region who have given me a wealth of information about the institutional protection of Bhutan's environment and their visions for sustainable agricultural development in the country which are really interesting - I think that there is much that the "developed world" can learn from Bhutan!

Sadly though, for all of Bhutan's careful conservation, it stands to become one of the first victims of climate change. As the glaciers in the Himalayas melt, the lakes that sit in the mountains become bigger and the soil that stands between them becomes softer. The water flow into Bhutan is increasing and if the lakes flood, which is unavoidable if the glaciers and ice cover keeps melting, then the lakes will burst and flood down the mountains, destroying both the carefully managed biodiversity, and the human communities. Bhutan stands to loose everything from climate change, and for a country whose carbon emissions are a negligible 0.2 tonnes per capita (USA 20 tonnes) I think this is one of the biggest injustices of the modern world. Again, we see how intrinsically linked are human rights and environmental rights - and the worst climate criminals are the least effected. The threat of climate change is one that Bhutan is very concerned about, and can do little to impact. Within Bhutan, the largest environmental problem is waste control - plastic bags have been banned in Bhutan with the realisation of their environmental impact, but this has done little to stop the problem of plastic waste - as pointed out to me by all the Bhutanese I spoke to about it, everything they import comes in plastic - and they import a lot of their products - even simple things like soap or biscuits comes in a swathe of plastic packaging and there are no recycling facilities in Bhutan as their low population makes it ineffective (the country's population stands at 800,000). All gathered recyclables are trucked to India for (hopefully) recycling, but this is a problem that the entire world is facing (and ignoring) as our land fills overflow and our waterways become blocked and this problem is so heightened with travelling, I am horrified by how much plastic I use, even as much as I try to limit it.

With the Bhutanese shyness, and the passivity induced by having to have a pre-declared itinerary, I found it more difficult than usual to really connect with ordinary Bhutanese people. I stayed in a local farmhouse in the Bumthang Valley and this was the closest interaction I had, and how valued it was! The farmhouse was simple and clean - wooden floors and a wood burning stove in the kitchen where the family sat around at night. We drank a lot of tea - milky and weak and sweet (the Bhutanese put butter and salt in theirs also) and focused most of our attention on their 10 month old baby girl. It was nice to feel part of a family and to see the farm - Bumthang is in central Bhutan and was the most beautiful part of my visit - rolling green fields with the density of the forest above, babbling rivers of mountain water, apple trees in blossom, cows and yaks being herded, the simple smiles of the farmers - their faces lined and wise and proud, their ghos colourful in the dusk, so perfect in the setting with the smell of woodfires in the cold air and the snow topped mountains peaking between the green hills (if you can call a hill a hill when you're at 2500 feet!).

The most beautiful moment I experienced was early one morning when visiting a dzong in the Punakha valley - we were quietly observing the interior of the temple as my guide (Tenzin) deciphered the meaning of the Buddhist paintings when the sound of a gong broke the air, three times, and suddenly the temple was filled with the sound of pattering feet as young monks rushed in from every direction, scurrying to their places on the floor, their saffron red robes behind them, their faces smiling and urgent (and curious at this white woman sitting at the back of the room) - hundreds of monks - all sitting in lines on the temple floor and the beginning of the rolling, lilting, sound of mantras being chanted started to fill the space around us, the small bodies of the monks rocking with the rhythmic lines, the older 'disciplinary' monks walking amongst them, slapping their heavy prayer beads against their legs, and two young monks "on duty" rushing between the lines dishing out scoops of rice into white cloths for the monks morning meal - the rice is bundled up into the cloth and stored away in the folds of fabric, to be enjoyed with tea during their morning break. I felt so blessed to witness this, such a peaceful, yet busy, process - the training monks, some as young as six, their robes dwarfing them, their small faces distracted by the sights of the huge, ornate temple room with it's towering gold statues of Guru Rinpoche, and the foreigner in the back!

So, is Bhutan a Shangri-La? I don't feel convinced... there seemed to be an sense of restriction, mental restriction. Perhaps it is cultural, and these thoughts are merely my imposing the values of myself and my culture (argument, descent, liberalism, intense and perpetual analysis) onto a people who don't wish to lead lives with the same. Perhaps the Bhutanese are indeed happier, with their beliefs in the Dharma, in their beloved monarchy, in their beautiful, protected country... but does happiness come at the expense of something else? Certainly I wish that a country like New Zealand could develop environmental protection policies with the foresight of the Bhutanese monarchy, but I also appreciate the values of a political system that has diversity of opinion. Some people have suggested that Bhutan is some pseudo totalitarian state, but I don't think that this is the case either - I think that perhaps cultural values, defined by religious values, have created a people who value the community over the individual, and the environment over the economy, and who have complete faith in the vision of their leaders, partly perhaps because this leadership has proven their trustworthiness through the creation of policies that protect the cultural and environmental integrity of the country.

And regardless of this abstract title "Shangri-La" that guide books are so excited to bestow, Bhutan is an immensely beautiful, welcoming, complex and interesting country with a wonderful history and a strong culture built on values that we should all aspire to. Not only that, it offers a real example of a successful alternative system to the destructive capitalism that has driven us to the environmental precipice on which we now find ourselves.

"Mosquitos make music, and sometimes... they kiss you"

2008-04-17T01:12:00.000-07:00

Namaste...

So another journey has begun, and here I am in Pokhara, Nepal - the midday heat is well upon us and small lizards have sought respite in the shade under the computer desk! This is my first day back in the land of computers and tourism, after two weeks on a permaculture farm in the mountains above Begnas Tal... but, I should begin at the start...

I flew into Kathmandu at night, and from the short ride to my hostel my perceptions of Nepal as a moderately developed country were shattered. Nepal is poor, Africa poor. The road from the air port was pot-holed and dusty and the tiny Susuki taxi's engine struggled to make it into the city - the smells of poverty are identifiable the world over... sewage, exhaust fumes, urine, animals. Even the massive amounts of tourism that this tiny country has seen has done little to alleviate the poverty issues of its people. The first morning I awoke and ventured out into the city, the same sad sights met me as in Africa - rubbish, defeated faces, hagglers, tiny children playing in the streets, cheap Chinese printed tee-shirts for sale and the air a cacophony of vehicle horns and the calls of traders. The main difference between Kathmandu and a West African city is the amount of Western tourists - everywhere!! New-age types attempting to relive the "silk road" trails of the 60s and 70s, hikers and mountaineers in their North Face clothing, volunteers and gap year students - a hugely diverse mix, and so many!! But they remain very "separate" and the Nepalese who live along the "Lonely Planet Trail" seem a bit jaded...

Without realising it, I arrived in Nepal in the midst of the country's first national elections - and Kathmandu was alive with campaign fervour - Nepal has suffered from political turmoil for many years, and has suffered a violent insurgency by the country's Maoist party who fought the government troops in the hills for a number of years, only calling a truce in 2005 under international mediation to prepare for a democratic election. This process has been stopped and started for many years and with the fragile peace at stake, I could feel the tension. My first day some small bombs were set off in Kathmandu, and some larger ones in the South. With public transport being closed down in the run up to the election day I decided to head out to the first WWOOF farm nestled high in the mountains between Pokhara and the famous Annapurna ranges of the Himalaya. The bus ride out of Kathmandu was amazing - winding roads down cliff roads, past tiny villages and terraced hills, with the amazing Himalayas sitting on the horizon like some ethereal hallucination.

I arrived in Begnas, a tiny town on the edge of a lake sitting at the base of a mountain range where my directions to the farm ended - apparently there are no addresses in the mountain villages... it was a huge act of trust as I began my ascent of the mountain, asking people along the way "Suraya Permaculture Farm?" and their response, a gesture forwards. For hours I climbed dirt and gravel roads, the view of the lake below beautiful and serene, the quiet of the mountain villages such a blessing after the mania of the city. I met a family who were making their way home for the election and together we walked, helping the sick husband. Nepalese women are so gentle and kind - I thanked the woman for her companionship and for showing me the way "no problem", she said, "if I was not with you, God is with you". I felt such uncertainly in this environment, in the middle of nowhere, with no idea where I was walking, or what I was walking to. I had to remind myself to trust in myself, in the situation, that it would be okay. And, of course, it was. Eventually I arrived at the farm - a tiny brick and mud building with two buffalo tethered outside and as I walked in, the mother "amma" came out of her tiny blackened kitchen with the kindest smile on her face, her hands together in prayer position, her eyes twinkling as she said "Namaste, Sister" (Namaste means "I greet the divine in you"). Seeing her face and the gentleness in her voice, my fears were relieved and she showed me to the room I would sleep in, up a small wooden ladder in a mud walled space with flax mats and bags of grain and some wooden bed frames with blankets across them for mattresses (oh yes, am I glad to have brought that goose-down sleeping bag!!).

I sat outside in the small courtyard under coffee trees and as the sun began to set, the air was cool and the birds were singing and she offered me organic coffee from their farm - drank black and strong, with lots of sugar. I was glad to see two other "western" volunteers - a French man named Marco who has lived there for five months and will marry one of the women who works on the farm, and the other an American photographer, RC, on a project to make a photo documentary of rural Nepalese agriculture - both of whom can speak Nepali well and really helped me to settle in, explaining organic techniques and Nepali culture, and the farm dynamics - including the risk of tigers who live in the mountains and regularly attack small farm animals... (a comforting thought when your door consists of a curtain).

The election excitement was not lost in the mountains however, with the rural branches of the political parties also demonstrating and much talk of the coming peace after so much unrest and war. Election day in the mountains passed peacefully however, with people lining up from early in the morning to vote for the first time in their history, and the competing parties guarding each other outside the local school building as the ballot papers waited to be collected. When the news came that the Maoists had won, the dynamics changed slightly - loud marches began early in the morning as the young Maoists made sure everyone knew who is now in charge. Maoist flags suddenly sprang up everywhere, and the Maoist insignia was sprayed on any available surface. Little else than that changed to my novice perception though, and it seems that rather than the Nepalese people believing in a communist ideology, they elected the Maoists because they are tired of the wars where they have seen children taken as soldiers (on both sides) and lives lost and their economy destroyed. With the Maoists in power, there is a chance of peace. So now I write from a communist country and the King will be dethroned soon - perhaps things will change for the better? The Maoists at least recognise the suffering of the poor in Nepal, 85% of whom live on less than $2 a day, and women with an especially hard and bleak life. The condition of women in Nepal I have found especially difficult - marriages are arranged, women's rights are virtually non-existent, girl children are not educated and the majority of work is undertaken by women and girls - fetching water, firewood, tending animals, vegetable plots, cooking, cleaning, child-raising, washing... it is hard to witness. I guess the politics of eating sums it up quite well - women prepare, cook and serve the food and then do not eat themselves until after the men have finished all they want.

Life on the farm is hard, with no running water, and the nearest source a well about 10 minutes walk down hill, where water must be carried back up on a basket tied with rope around the forehead. The work is hard, and the day begins very early for the farm workers (western volunteers get a much easier deal) who are all women, their hands and feet cracked from years of daily labour, some of whom are as old as my grandmother and still work every day labouring for less than $1. But, this is life for rural Nepalese, and the conditions of the permaculture farm are better than most. Nothing is wasted. The rain water is captured and stored for washing dishes, any food scraps are fed to the buffalo whose manure and urine is used for the compost, leaves falling from trees are stored for use as mulch, ash from the cooking fire is used to wash the dishes (surprisingly efficient!), the bark from felled trees is used for the cooking fire. Everything is used, and re-used and maximum diversity of crops ensures food security and environmental sustainability. No field is monoculture - ginger is planted with corn and taro, to ensure that the slow growing ginger is provided with shade by the fast growing corn, and that one field provides many yields, and maximum insect and bug diversity in the soil to prevent any infestation. In permaculture, the answer to all problems is found within nature. It's quite wonderful, and while requires much more thought than standard contemporary agriculture, the beneficial results are so apparent - now Suraya is beginning to teach other farmers the principles, as they see the product of his theory in comparison to their standard monoculture planting. Crops are cross-bred to ensure their adaption to the conditions - especially coffee which is the only crop used for export - organic and delicious and perfect for the conditions of the mountains! But with such biodiversity comes all creatures, great and small, sweet and scary. My room is shared with many eight legged friends who look frightening, but I have slowly learnt to accept - spiders are an important part of ecology, as are the bees who live in the hives just outside my door, and the many small flying bugs that kamikaze themselves towards my head torch as I make the night journeys to the outside latrine... my first few days and nights were very jittery!

We eat twice a day on the farm - at 10am and 7pm - and in Nepali, there is no word for "meal", instead it translates as "rice eating", and that is exactly what it is. Rice eating. Mounds of white rice, with spicy lentil dhal (more like a soup) and curried vegetables. The same meal twice a day, every day. Salty and spicy and everything with chilli!! Sometimes a papaya will be cut from a tree and even this is eaten with chilli!! I realised what a plain food person I am in comparison. We eat together in a circle sitting on the flax mats in the kitchen where amma cooks over a fire - the volunteers with spoons and the Nepalese with their right hands - the volunteers cross legged and the Nepalese sitting on their haunches, and they can sit like this for hours!! Needless to say, I am glad of the touristy aspects of Pokhara for the diversity of food - and the first thing I ate when I arrived was muesli with fruit!! It's not so environmental to eat specially imported food, but for a day or two it's a luxury that I cannot resist!

It has taken me some time to adjust to the Nepalese lifestyle, the conditions of an undeveloped country again, the slower pace, the passivity of not being in control, of not understanding the language, the culture. It is good for me to learn to moderate myself, and I am beginning to find more peace within myself in this adjustment. To be in the moment, rather than to control the moment. Namaste.

Reflections on identity...

2008-02-11T07:04:00.000-08:00

They say that distance brings perspective – perhaps this is why after travelling halfway around the world I can now recognise my cultural identity with such beautiful simplicity. I have been away for nearly two years now; one of the 600,000 New Zealand ex pats who’ve left their home in search of opportunity and adventure abroad. I can still remember the process of leaving so clearly – flying, for the first time, over the Tasman Sea and beyond, seeing the dark green tip of the North Island disappearing miles below me and the infinite blue of the ocean stretching ahead. It was such a surreal feeling – a strange mixture of anguish and exhilaration, of profound loss but limitless freedom.

As a Pakeha, or tau iwi New Zealander, I never really felt like I had a right to claim spiritual connection with the land in Aotearoa, that it wouldn’t be legitimate somehow, that my land lay somewhere offshore, somewhere “out there”. The process of leaving and experiencing life in Europe has proved me undeniably wrong. The feeling of separation remains acute, like I am missing a part of myself, a piece of my soul that must lie deep within the folds of the earth. Such a fundamental part of my being that it means I never feel truly whole while I remain away. Indeed, the longer I am away the more I seem to realise how well Aotearoa New Zealand represents who I am.

The process of my own self-realisation must also somehow echo the process of a nation’s self-realisation: the formation of our collective cultural identity in this new era of Aotearoa New Zealand. Last weekend I stood in the grey, numbing cold of London’s city centre, watching the unveiling of the new war memorial in Hyde Park. It seemed an interesting representation of our nation; this modern, powerful bronze statue christened with a waiata, a haka, a prayer, a speech from our elected leader and Dave Dobbyn singing the poignant “Welcome Home”.

But what I felt truly reflected our nation was the words that were left unsaid. As the leaders of New Zealand and the United Kingdom spoke diplomatically of our past alliance – how we fought “side by side” in the great wars “for democracy” – I thought of Iraq. Pride swelled in my chest as I realised how our refusal to participate in that illegal war defined us with far more accuracy than any kiwifruit coloured tourism board spin. No one can now dispute the foresight our government had in standing up against the US led war; as we watch Iraq burn for a second time I can only feel a deep respect for Helen Clark in facing the animosity she must have received from our previous “allies”.

As I stood stamping my feet from the cold that morning the phrase coined by John Sawhill came clearly to mind: “A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy”. These words seem to represent the collective identity of our nation so well. I began to think of the way that Aotearoa New Zealand has defined itself to the world over the past twenty years – breaking away from the traditional alliances of Australia and Britain and clearly marking its place in the South Pacific as a unique and independent land.

As a nation we have indeed defined ourselves through what we have refused to destroy. Our nation’s leaders have stood strong against larger nations in defending our values – a shining example of this being the overwhelming support of Aotearoa New Zealand being nuclear free, an act which cemented our self-determination and proclaimed our pacifist ideals to the greater world. As with Iraq, in doing so we faced hostility from our “allies” but in standing unified as a nation with a strong leader (this time in David Lange) we solidified our national identity. Again, in our opposition to the apartheid state in South Africa we stood unified as a nation against racial injustice and in doing so reaffirmed our own social values.

We are a land rich in diversity of colour and creed, but as our short history has shown, our unification in that diversity is what has made us strong. I believe this diversity should be even greater celebrated, with a deeper understanding of all the cultures comprising our nation being paramount. From my experiences of living in London – a city of incredible racial diversity but very little racial harmony or understanding – this belief has only been strengthened. Xenophobia seems to be a disease that nibbles at the edges of any diverse society and I believe that education and integration are the only real solutions to this. The more we understand each other, the greater unity we will have and the stronger we will be for it. What makes us special are our differences, but what makes us all New Zealanders is our equality.

It is essential that our protectionist nature, our refusal to destroy, must also extend to our biodiversity. While our tourism industry likes to promote Aotearoa New Zealand as a clean, green paradise we can all recognise that this is quite far from the truth. I spent some time working on a forest restoration project in the Scottish Highlands where I truly realised the timescales involved with restoring wilderness. The Caledonian Forest was once a magnificent being that covered a huge part of the United Kingdom and was rich in flora and fauna alike: now only 1% of this giant remains and the majority of the species that depended upon it have been destroyed. The reason for this was unsustainable agricultural development and excessive monoculture forestry… bringing hauntingly to mind the development of our own fragile land. Scotland now faces an enormous and hugely expensive task in restoring this vast wilderness and it is fighting a losing battle to save the last of its rare birds and insect life. It takes a long time for a tree, or a person, to grow and a very short time to cut one down. Seeing as Aotearoa has only been developed in modern terms for less than 200 years it seems that it won’t take long before we reduce our natural habitat, our places of wilderness, to the same state as the forests of Scotland today – the sombre skeleton of a mighty giant.

Dangers to both our social and environmental integrity exist in many forms. I am sure these can all be loosely defined as being primarily motivated by greed. The recent attacks on our nuclear free status was warning enough to me that a distinct shift toward Australian / American policy is occurring. Likewise, a warning bell was heard with the proposal by Mighty River Power to convey coal across the Ruakaka Conversation Area; a proposal that has been indicated to be approved in its initial stages by the Department of Conservation – a government department supposedly established to protect such integral pieces of land and the biodiversity so essential to all life forms. This land is owned by all of us, and by future generations of New Zealanders to whom we owe a duty to protect it. These proposals begin so insidiously and receive very little media attention – if it wasn’t for the dedication of independent environmental campaign groups then the corporations who lobby for environmentally destructive projects would have even greater success.

It is easy to forget our individual responsibility in defending both our social values and our environment. The apathy-inducing beast of consumerism preys on New Zealanders of a younger and younger age with increasing intensity; sometimes it feels very difficult to separate what is real from the conditions of a world built on corporate interests. To me, this fast changing social climate gives more weight to the argument for increased wilderness preservation. I think we will all mourn the days of a country where our children were not the subjects of constant surreptitious advertising: the more time I spend in intensive city environments the greater I appreciate my childhood on Ohope Beach where the stores totalled no more than 10 and the majority of which were independent and locally-supportive.

Of course it is easy to label this all a utopian vision and admittedly there is some amount of rose-tinted nostalgia in my reflections, but I think that “utopian visions” are precisely what our nation requires. A utopian vision measures the difference between our current situation and that of where we aspire to be. The more we keep our ideals in mind, the closer we will become to achieving them.

I am proud to call myself a New Zealander. I know where I am from and I know what my origins represent. They represent justice. Travelling overseas has taught me much about foreign culture and environment, but it has taught me even more about myself. I will never again doubt my deep connection with the land of my birth. My belief in myself and my belief in my country have been solidified. I now know what we, as a nation, must defend.

In the face of climate change, deforestation, soil erosion, over fishing, species extinction, nuclear power and consumerism it is imperative that as a people we maintain our sense of identity, our self-determination, our refusal to destroy. We must all recognise our spiritual connection with the land and our inherent personal responsibility to protect it, as well as the many diverse beings that belong to it. In doing so, we will not only be recognising our trade mark, but the key to our survival.

Entering the quagmire with squared shoulders...

2007-11-03T08:01:00.000-07:00

The first thing I noticed about Israel was the flags. Everywhere. Like Europe during the world cup. Little cotton symbols of nationalism flying from flag poles, car aerials, balconies. The icon of Judaism - a symbol of religion and one of a nation, draped across the windows of stores and across the side of buildings. You are constantly reminded whose country you are in. Like that the presence of a flag marks something permanent and valid.

The second thing I noticed was the guns. Everywhere. Young military conscripts brandishing their semi-automatics like extensions of their ego - patrolling the streets, the airports, the shopping centres. Standing in groups, talking, leering. I felt uneasy. Comically, while on a bus to Akko I heard a young American pilgrim comment to her friend “when I arrived in Tel Aviv and saw the military guy with his huuuge gun, I thought, wow, this is a really safe country”. If only the presence of weapons made people safer. History teaches us much different.

A few hundred kilometres south lies Palestine. Palestine. How can one even begin to talk about this issue? The information on the subject is immense. That is, if you choose to look for it. It is a topic that polarises views, that sparks sensitivities, that provokes anger and hurt and if one does not tread carefully in the quagmire of debate, it is all too easy to be branded as anti-semitic, or a sympathiser with terrorists, or another equally loaded stereotype. It seems that one cannot be a neutral body on this subject. You must choose: one side or the other. You’re either with me, or against me. If only life was really that black and white.

As I weave my way through the multi-shaded greys of reality in an effort to better understand this conflict, I am helped by three brave and inspirational people who I met in Haifa. Three of the unsung heroes of conflict worldwide: peace activists. People who give their lives, their freedom, their finances, their energies; all in the defence of those who are marginalised and oppressed through conflict and occupation. What makes these people sacrifice so willingly that which others have had taken from them by force? What motivates them to enter conflict zones in assistance of those with whom they have no family or ethnic associations? And what would the world be like if these people did not act?

David Lisbona, director of “Middleway”
“The victims in all of this are the Palestinian public; the ordinary people who just want a free and dignified life.”

Escaping the baking Middle Eastern sun under the shade of a tree on Haifa’s Ben Gurion Street, David shared his knowledge on the history of the region – the conquest of this small area of arid land firstly by the Romans, whose domination was the catalyst for the original dispersement of the Jewish people, and then by the Ottoman Empire, finally being “won” by the Allied Forces in World War I and, reminiscent of the carving up of Africa, Britain and France took “mandates” over various areas of the Middle East; France controlling Syria and what is now known as the Lebanon, and Britain obtaining a mandate over the areas now known as Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jordan. In 1921 the area of Palestine was formed when the British divided the region into two, the area east of the River Jordan becoming Jordan and the west of the river becoming Palestine.

The population of Jewish people in this area had been growing since the late 19th century with the birth of the movement for Zionism (the Jewish nationalist movement). By 1914 the population of the area of Palestine stood at 60,000 Jews and 683,000 Arabs. Most of the original Jewish population were centred around areas of religious significance and Arabs and Jews coexisted in relative peace. During the period prior to World War II, Jewish immigration increased sharply with the persecution of Jews in Europe. This began to cause more hostility between the populations as the Arabs felt threatened by the increasing number of immigrants. British interest in the repatriation, or immigration, of Jewish people oscillated because of this and in the mid 1930s the British curtailed Jewish immigration following the escalation of race riots.

Following the end of World War II and under pressure from America, a weary Britain allowed the immigration of Jewish refugees under the contentious 1917 Balfour Declaration (hyperlink) but limited the number of refugees to 100,000. There was also illegal Jewish immigration during this period, largely from camps in Cyprus. Racial tensions and fighting escalated between the two groups as the Arabs felt their land and sovereignty under threat from the immigration.

On May 15th, 1948 Britain withdrew from Palestine due to the escalating conflict. The situation was largely turned over to the United Nations who in 1947 had voted for the creation of two separate states in Palestine; one for the Arab population, and one for the Jewish (this of course was never realised). Following the British withdrawal, the Jewish population (who were, by and large, more organised than the Arab) declared the state of Israel, effectively dissolving Palestine and creating a new nation state. Neighbouring Arab states then invaded the new state of Israel but following the arrival of superior weaponry, the state of Israel conquered territories even beyond the original borders. In 1949 an armistice was drawn between Israel and the neighbouring Arab states and the new government of the state of Israel then opened the floodgates for Jewish immigration to the region.

Major guerrilla fighting ensued and Arab states began to persecute their Jewish populations and support the Arab resistance within Palestine / Israel. As a consequence of the war, about 700,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees in neighbouring areas. The hostilities between Israel and the Arab states continued despite the armistice which culminated in the 1967 “six day war” in which Israel showed definite military superiority (largely with the assistance of American military financing and weaponry) and conquered territories including the West Bank (which had been controlled by Jordan following the 1948 war), the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula (from Eygpt) and the Golan Heights (from Syria).

The majority of Palestinian Arabs now live in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. A minority of Palestinian Arabs live in Israel, mostly as second-rate citizens and whose allegiances are questioned by both sides. The resistance to occupation by the Palestinian Arabs has been continual and increasing, and numerous attempts at resolution have occurred with little success and much disintegration of trust between the Palestinian authorities and the Israeli government. As it currently stands, the political situation in Palestine is divided between two major groups – Hamas and Fatah. Fatah is a secular organisation that was created following the disintegration of the PLO and is led by Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas. Fatah’s reputation has been sullied with corruption and collaboration which led Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) to win the 2006 elections in Palestine, an election result not recognised by the “international community” due to Hamas’ “extremist” policies and involvement in acts of terrorism such as suicide bombings in Israel. And here lies the current impasse.

Hamas now controls the Gaza Strip and Fatah controls the West Bank. A large concrete wall encircles both areas with Israeli soldiers manning all entry and exit points and controlling all that enters or leaves – in effect creating the largest prison in the modern world and restricting the most basic human right, the freedom of movement.

The diaspora of Palestinians living as refugees in neighbouring Arab countries number around three million, with the largest percentage living in Jordan (about 1.3 million). Most of these people still live in dire conditions in the refugee camps initially set up in 1949; the problem being equally that of the host country’s unwillingness to effectively integrate the refugees and the refugees’ unwillingness to rescind their ties with their historical lands and their desire to return.

Dani Grimblat, ex-soldier, current activist.
“What we have today is a reality that I know. What I am asking for is a very dramatic change in that reality.”

Aung San Suu Kyi once wrote that the courage she most admires is not fearlessness, but conviction. A courage of the mind. I think courage of the mind is exactly what Dani Grimblat must possess in order to have transcended from the role of a soldier in the Israeli army to that of a peace activist, putting himself on the line for a people with which his nation is at war.

In Israel, military service is obligatory for all who reach 18. Dani described joining the army in complete belief of what he terms as the Israeli narrative – the glorification of the Israelis and the demonisation of the Palestinians (who are referred to as savages, driven by hatred and whose only motivation is to kill). Dani was initially posted to the Ketziot prison camp on the border with Eygpt in the early 1990s. About 3,000 Palestinians were held here at this time, with two-thirds of these people being “administrative” detainees (i.e. without charge). They were held in very poor conditions which didn’t even comply with Israel’s own laws for detainment, restrained in tents and cages and used as labour for the building of the prison. Interrogation and torture were commonplace, with specially built huts on the outskirts of the prison camp being used for interrogation by members of the Israeli secret service. Common tactics of division amongst prisoners were used, with specific prisoners being authorised to speak to guards and monitor their fellow detainees. Isolation cells were frequently used, there being 16 of these concrete and solid rock chambers with a small opening in the door used for communication.

Prisoners could be held here as administrative detainees for up to six months at a time, which clearly is in breach of international human rights law. This detention without charge could be extended for periods of up to three years on orders from a military General. When prisoners were to be released, they would be blindfolded and transported, threatened by soldiers that if they “caused trouble” they would remain in the prison. Bullying and abuse was daily routine.

Dani served in the army for one year before being given leave for health reasons. During this time he visited America and went through a self-imposed period of restriction from all forms of media. It was during this period that thoughts began to enter Dani’s mind about the brutalities he had witnessed and his “programisation” by the state began to unravel. After a period of imprisonment for his refusal to serve in the army, Dani began to visit the West Bank to see for himself the people that lived there and the conditions that they lived under. Sometimes his access would be blocked by Israeli soldiers manning the borders which only increased his interest at what these soldiers so vehemently didn’t want to be seen.

During these visits Dani saw the huge disparity between his world and the world of the Palestinians. The poverty was stark and real – a lack of sewage systems, a lack of electricity, a lack of water resources. The basics of hygiene and the necessities of life simply were absent for these people. The memories of the treatment of Palestinian prisoners began to integrate with the reality of treatment of the Palestinians.

Dani’s activism went from strength to strength, initially co-ordinating groups with Amnesty International he began to become involved with more direct forms of activism, joining the anti-war groups Peace Now and Peace Block. He has helped with the reconstruction of houses demolished by Israeli tanks, become involved with direct intervention and confrontation of the military and protested in many forms, including being involved with various protests that have been attacked by the military. Protestors in Palestine are frequently arrested, imprisoned, tear-gassed and shot at with rubber bullets. Freedom of speech and freedom of public assembly? Apparently not in Palestine.

For some, international human rights “law” like the rights to freedom of speech, or public assembly, can seem a bit abstract, especially in times of conflict. So here are some good old fashioned statistics to ground ourselves in the disparate reality of this war: between September 2000 and August 2007, records taken by the Israeli human rights’ organisation B’teslem show that 69.84% of the 4,274 Palestinian deaths were civilians, 20.05% of which were children. During a two year period (2000 to 2002) 25% of the 2,570 killed were the result of heavy weaponry and 75% from live ammunition. During the same two year period more than 41,000 Palestinians were injured, 35.7% of which were children and a significant portion of which now have permanent debilitating disabilities (like the loss of limbs).

The essential (and extremely limited) health services to assist these people also come under attack. Hospitals have been shelled, fired at and refused access to (resulting in the deaths of injured people and creating damages of infrastructure costing into the tens of thousands). 197 ambulances (clearly marked) were fired at, 432 denied through-access at roadblocks and two were deliberately crushed by tanks while attempting to provide medical assistance to the injured. In the two year period outlined above 15 doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers were killed while on duty, 275 medical personnel were injured and 70 emergency personnel and medical volunteers were arrested.

International journalists and peace activists have also been killed including the famous cases of the 23 year old American, Rachel Corrie and the 24 year old British photography student, Tom Hurndall. 295 journalists were wounded in the two year period above, with nine journalists killed.

Damages to land and property include attacks on schools, churches, mosques, water wells, orchards and olive groves. Agricultural land is bulldozed and burned, taking with it the livelihoods and heritage of many families who rely heavily on the crops in an area where unemployment is extraordinarily high, and nearly half the population lives on less than $2 per day.

When we cast our eyes to the other side of this war, we begin to see the disparity. Most Israelis live in relative comfort and security with ready access to all services and a strong economy supported by the United States. 1,024 Israelis were killed in the same seven year period, just 23% of the number of Palestinians, with no attacks on hospitals, schools or emergency personnel. Certainly there have been breaches of international law and ethics with the use of suicide bombers in public areas by Palestinian groups like Hamas and I do not want to detract from the legitimate Israeli victims of conflict but instead simply highlight the disproportion of force and the breaches of international covenants like the Geneva Convention.

Looking to the future – what hope can be found?
“When I went through the process I supported the two state solution, or variations on that. Now I don’t choose one or the other. I choose to step back. The solution should be reached by dialogue – the refugees deserve the right of return, or financial compensation and recognition. I only act against what I oppose. I haven’t decided what I am for. It should still be negotiated. The Israelis are into hard-line negotiations, like being in a market. Negotiations should be respectful and wanted and no side should dictate who will sit and who will not.” Dani Grimblat.

Sitting in the current impasse of Palestinian politics can only lead to further disintegration of unity and the prolongation of this conflict, with all of the very real suffering it entails. I watched in horror a television broadcast that showed children at schools in the Gaza Strip being segregated into “Hamas” and “Fatah” supporters, with equal hatred being directed to the opposing side. How many generations will it now take to breed out these new divisions? How much more innocent blood needs to be spilt on this already soaked earth? The resolution of this now 60 year old conflict is imperative not only for peace within the region, but for peace within the greater world in which we all live. Osama bin Laden frequently refers to “his brothers in Palestine” and it is a common foundation for the arguments of injustice from Islamic extremist groups who resort to methods of geo-terrorism. Resolving this conflict removes one (quite substantial) theoretical leg for these groups to stand on.

But just how to resolve this seems an age old and largely impossible question. The impossibility of which seems to lie more in the unwillingness to enter meaningful dialogue than the impossibility of reaching a satisfactory resolution. Hamas currently refuses to negotiate, either with the Israeli government, or with any Israeli group (including pro-Palestinian peace groups!). Fatah will negotiate, but lacks the peoples’ support due to allegations of corruption and collaboration. And there is also the substantial issue with the diaspora of Palestinian refugees...

According to David, Israel could never allow the refugees to return as this would cause the Palestinian Arab population to be larger than the Jewish and thus, restricting the ability of the Jewish to maintain political domination. On that basis, and for other reasons, a bi-national state isn’t particularly feasible. The creation of two states may result in the massive developmental differences leading to new conflicts and the requirement for huge infrastructure investment and meaningful development and may take many decades to effectively implement. (Which is certainly no reason not to start!)

Meaningful and open dialogue seems the key to resolution. What currently limits this is the dictating of terms before dialogue is entered into: who will speak to whom, and on what basis. As we have seen from recent American policy in “mediating” such talks, the invitations go to those who they consider ‘deserving’ of an invitation, as opposed to those who have a real ability to end the conflict.

From what I can see, some strong and charismatic leaders are required, on both sides: leaders to unite their people, to facilitate real dialogue and to begin to re-humanise these deep divisions. At the end of the day, whether we are Muslim, Christian or Jew, Hindu, Buddhist or atheist, we are all human beings. We all love our children and want somewhere secure to rest at night and some meaningful work during our days. We want safety and peace and enough food to eat and if we cannot find common ground even on this basis, then in an increasingly mutual world, what hope can exist for our future?

A strange and sad farewell to West Africa... April 2007

2007-07-24T08:56:00.000-07:00

Well I'm at the end of the West African adventure... the past few weeks have passed in a blur and I am struggling to recollect the detail of them! After we returned to Ouagadougou I fell ill with a particularly nasty intestinal infection but was amazed at the efficiency and professionalism of the Burkinabe medical system (albeit private system) - I was given comprehensive reports of all the bacteria in my system and prescribed proper antibiotics that came in a labelled box and not just unidentified pills in the corner of an envelope like in Ghana! I guess Africa, like the rest of the world, is full of inconsistency and while Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world it also supports a wonderful private medical system (I certainly wouldn't hold such positivity for their public system though I'm sure and probably adequate health care is something far beyond the reach of the majority of Burkinabe). So the infection knocked us back a few days and we left for Bobo Diollasou later than expected - unfortunately I was ill for most of this time also so the majority of my impressions of Bobo came from within the walled compound of the Rastafarian 'auberge' we stayed at!! It was a great experience though because not only was it a guesthouse (with three rooms) but also a bar, restaurant and recording studio for local artists! It was more like staying in some bizzarre extended Rastafarian family and there were small dreadlocked children running around the entire time with an array of dogs and cats and wonderful African art and two huge mango trees that were wonderful to sit under during the heat of the day!! The music in Bobo was incredible however (and the main reason why we journeyed down there) and so a lot of time was spent listening to music. I ventured out one day to see the old part of the city, like a village within a city, and incredibly poor which was really sad within this relatively prosperous city - halfway through our exploration of the 'old centre' I had to return to the auberge though from the huge pains in my stomach!! Never mind, it was a great experience nonetheless and we travelled back to Ouagadougou with the Rastafarian family in the back of a colourful muralled Bedford van with "Zion" painted across the front!! After Hedy's patient nursing of me during the previous week she fell ill the day we returned to Ouagadougou and was diagnosed as having contracted malaria for a second time! So it was my turn to play nurse and this extended our stay in Ouagadougou for another two days...

I finally made it through the border back to Ghana on the 31st and spent two nights at the Hand in Hand project before heading down to Accra to meet Emily (my friend working for Medecines sans Frontieres next door in the Ivory Coast) on the 2nd of April. We spent a wonderfully relaxing and inspiring week at an eco-lodge on the coast near an area called Dixcove - what a wonderful time and what a wonderful friend to share it with!! It was a perfect ending to my West African journey and so important to have time to digest everything that I have experienced and to compile my thoughts on the experience...

Ghana is a wonderful and complex country filled with natural resources, huge 'people power' and huge potential to develop into a "first world" nation but it is jam-packed with small NGOs and development organisations who have been working there for years without any real social or environmental change or sustainable and lasting development from their presence. In fact the environment in Ghana is worse than it has ever been with massive deforestation, soil erosion, water and air pollution, huge waste issues particularly relating to the black plastic bags that everything is sold in and are then thrown out the windows of buses and acres of land completely burnt in the north simply to make it easier to catch "bush meat" by creating fire traps with no regard for the huge environmental impact (it would take decades to restore the soil quality and to regenerate the destroyed scrub). Sure there have been schools, orphanages and hospitals built and thousands of volunteers have passed through the borders to help run these institutions but is this success? I am not so sure. There must be over 400 small NGOs and development organisations working in Ghana alone and this is completely without regulation or the requirement of them having to be accountable to a higher authority for the effectiveness of their work. And the huge number of volunteers who come to work in the country (while doing a wonderful service and doing so with the best of intentions) actually implicitly perpetuate western cultural imperialism. Even with the best will in the world just the presence of volunteers in small villages creates this from their bringing with them "necessities" like mobile phones, iPods, electronic clocks, even shoes and clothing are through their presence western cultural imperialism and I am beginning to have doubts about the effectiveness of the presence of so many volunteers. In addition to the implicit cultural imperialism and the creation of a misconstrued perception of the "western world" the huge amount of NGOs and development organisations has also (in my opinion) disempowered the Ghanaian people from resolving their own problems. In Ouagadougou we met a British documentary film-maker who was travelling through the region providing some basic medical kits to remote villages - he said every Ghanaian village he went to the people expected him to make an analysis of their village and to answer all of the problems that they experienced. "What is wrong with our village?" they would ask, "what are you going to do to fix it?". He said it was quite shocking and like nothing he's encountered before in his travels to many other remote parts of the world. I began to realise the dangers of having too many development organisations in a country and began to realise some of the issues that surround this sort of work. Especially in Ghana people have become over-reliant on foreign help for the solution to all of their problems and I think this is incredibly dangerous for the spirit of the people within a country, I guess in NZ terms it's like destroying someone's mana. Of course the issues are incredibly complex and Emily and I discussed this for days without coming to a clear conclusion but something we thought would help to reduce the harm would be for a government (if able) to dictate the requirements of the country from development organisations ( i.e. for the construction of accessible schools in all regions and volunteer teachers to train locals teaching methods and the provision of books) and then have the NGO be accountable to the government (or regulatory authority) for completing this goal within a specified time period and a date for completion, with the NGO leaving the country and having the local population then take responsibility for running the new infrastructure. The other obvious issue is the dis-empowerment of people by having so many volunteers brought in from overseas instead of training local people to carry out these roles themselves - I think MSF is a good example with their policy of having a staff comprised 80% of local employees and 20% foreign volunteers. This ensures in some small way that the organisation is working in a way that is sympathetic to the beliefs and culture of the local community and that is also in keeping with the desires of the community for their own development. I think I need to think about all this in much more detail before I can adequately convey my thoughts but I think that the crux of it is that I think that development work should be focused on empowering local people to resolve their own problems. And the involvement of foreigners is really dubious as to its effectiveness - while yes I can say that the children of the orphanage benefited from my presence, to what extent did my presence also damage them with the implicit cultural imperialism that I undoubtedly brought with me and also from the short time period of my involvement. I know for a certainty that the smaller children developed strong bonds with me through my care for them that would have been broken by my departure and this is certainly emotionally damaging when there is no permanent mother figure in their lives or any consistent care-giver. I think I have concluded that to actually be of any lasting benefit you must dedicate your life to the cause. The only NGO that I was really impressed with, and really certain as to its effectiveness, was the Hand in Hand project and I think that that is solely from the fact that the woman who set the project up (Ineke) has dedicated her life to it - she has lived for 33 years in Africa (25 of those years in Ghana). She speaks the local languages, she understands local culture and the problems of the local community (and the issues of the country in a broader sense) and has dedicated her life to it. I think it takes a lifetime to understand the issues let alone begin to resolve them and while I care deeply for the plight of Africans, I don't think that it is something that I want to dedicate my life to. At this stage if I will dedicate my life to anything it will be to a cause in New Zealand. So I guess I'm less sure about the role of development organisations than I was at the beginning of this journey and I'm more confused about the world!! But, I think that's also healthy and I can definitely see some areas for improvement - perhaps the role of international organisations should only be for emergency aid work in times of crisis and in stable countries should be only to provide expertise in setting up infrastructure that is sympathetic to local culture and beliefs and training local people to run that infrastructure therefore empowering people in their own development and limiting cultural imperialism by western countries?? I don't know the answers right now, but my head is certainly full of the questions!!

It was an incredible experience though and something I will never forget. I just hope that my environmental and cultural footprint on the lands in which I travelled was as light as it could be. I will have to think in much greater detail and do much more research on the issues surrounding development work to reconcile the questions that have been stirred within me and will limit my international volunteering to environmental causes until I have reached a more definite conclusion!! Planting trees seems wonderfully simple in comparison and the potential for creating harm is pretty limited!!

Friday, 13 April 2007

I can hardly believe it but I have left - en route to Morocco but having to stop over in London due to restrictions with the flights. How strange to not be in Africa anymore and even stranger to be here in London where it feels like a complete other world so devoid of colour and smell!! Travelling into the city was quite awful, sitting next to me on the train were two wealthy English women talking about their recent skiing holidays, the layout of their chateaus in the Swiss Alps, the private schools their daughters attended and how they hated having to cater for vegetarians! It was awful to listen to them; how artificial are their worlds!! I felt like a person in grieving - being on the tube was harder still, surrounded by so many white people - so white that they are almost transparent and all wearing suits and faces absent from all emotion, staring down in front of them. I felt so alone and so alien! Public transport in Africa is so... public! Everyone wants to know who you are, where you're from, your family history, your religion, your world. Life is so public in Africa and so incredibly private here. It truly is a completely different world, but yet geographically, reasonably close. I've found it really hard to readjust and can't wait to leave again on Sunday morning for Morocco. Admittedly however after taking my first hot shower in three and a half months (which was truly divine) I felt like I could get used to living in the "Western World" again!

The ancestors, the Mami Wata, Somba Country, Gorom Gorom and more... March 2007

2007-07-24T08:38:00.000-07:00

Sunday, 18 March

Finally I have a chance to compile my thoughts on the events of the last week, what an incredible journey it has been... Benin has stirred something deeply within me, moved me in a fundamental and permanent way that I almost can't describe. From the first night of our stay in Benin I felt this rousing in my soul which has not left me since; we sat outside our small hotel on Route de Esclaves in Ouidah and heard the most amazing tribal, drum based music that filled the night with a powerful rhythm and moved people to dance in the street, adults and children alike, dancing not like Europeans do with a movement of the legs but rather they danced with their entire beings, their heads bowed, their backs arched, as if they were not just dancing but instead the music was passing through their bodies and they had succumbed to this innate necessity to move with it, in it. It was an incredible moment and I felt my heart ache to be a part of it; the music calling to me, urging me to dive into this culture, to this land, and that calling has not yet left me.

I am now in Natitingou, a town in North Western Benin; today we returned from "Somba Country", the home of the Betamaribe people, but that is racing ahead and first I must share the incredible experiences of the previous week... Hedy, Marie and I left Ouidah last Sunday and travelled to Porto Novo, a beautiful and refined city with parks and book sellers, cheese, coffee and bread! We walked through the city and the market area admiring all the Beninoise people who dress in much more 'African' clothes than anywhere else we have seen, all brightly coloured fabrics with large hats or headscarves, such a beautiful and colourful sight; the people are obviously proud to be Beninoise and not trying to dress like 'westerners' like in Ghana or Togo. We were walking down a lane when we saw these huge beings that strongly resembled haystacks with small grills in the front!! We stood back in amazement and watched these beings pass, accompanied by many small laughing children and more serious adult guides; we had seen egunguns in Ouidah but these looked completely different and we just watched in amazement! Later we discovered that these beings are called the 'Night Watchmen', kind of like voodoo security guards who monitor the town and communicate with the spirits - if people break the laws of the town, or displease the spirits (even by simply littering) the night watchmen will come to their house and yell out their offences in a terrifying and loud voice - if the person has seriously disobeyed the laws then the night watchmen are also capable of killing the person, a scary thought... the world of voodoo here is so real - there are shrines and temples everywhere and the force of voodoo (or vodun) in the people is huge; it is an incredibly strong political and social force with 80% of the population practicing voodoo. Spirits are real here, real and honoured and feared - it is incredibly interesting and we were lucky enough to have an audience with a voodoo priest in Porto Novo also. The priest wore bright coloured robes with a matching hat and many beaded necklaces, each to represent the different aspects of voodoo - the voodoo of the water, the voodoo of fire, the voodoo of the ancestors and necklaces that show his status as a priest. We sat in his compound next to large structures that are houses to the three spirits that he communicates with which he interestingly calls 'the father', 'the son' and 'the holy spirit'. Next to those structures was a large rock shrine dripping in the red substances of previous offerings to the spirits; the priest said he would communicate with the spirits to ask for our good health, happiness and wealth - he first poured an amber liquid over the shrine and rang a large bell while chanting in a low toned voice; this process lasted about five minutes and then we had to make an offering (CFA3000) on a woven oval box which he offered to the spirits and broke a kola nut over it, the pieces landing in an equilibrium meaning that the spirits were happy with us and that we already possessed wealth, happiness and health; following this good news we had to chew the kola nut (very, very bitter and mildly intoxicating), drink blessed water from a communal calabash and then take a shot of strong schnapps. It was a wonderful experience and quite different from the experience with the malam in Ghana.

From Porto Novo we made a trip to a stilt village called Eguegue, about 12 kilometres down the river; we again took a pirogue with two brothers who lived in the village and explained to us the history. Eguegue started as a> refugee camp from people fleeing the slave traders, they built houses on the marsh lands in the lagoon and learnt to fish - over the years the community has developed and now over 10,000 people live in this community, earning money from fishing and trading in the market in Porto Novo. It was a beautiful ride out to the village and so interesting to see this wee bamboo houses on tall wooden legs rising out of the water - children ran to greet us shouting "Yovo, Yovo!" And we were invited to sit inside a stilt house with an elderly grandmother who told us about her life; she had grown up from a small child in the village and was poor but happy, her eyes glowed with life and she welcomed the small children into her home, holding them on her lap while she talked with us (bare chested but wearing a skirt as seems> to be common with women in villages in Benin).

On a day trip to Cotounou to replace Hedy's stolen camera and mobile we visited the large fetish market there - it was a pensive journey, not knowing what we would discover but as we turned into the lane of the market we could immediately smell it, the stench of death overpowering and nauseating - tables and tables of animal parts; heads of snakes, crocodiles,> monkeys, dogs, goats, leopards, hundreds of beautiful coloured birds, the feet of cats and the shells of turtles, snake skins and cow skulls, live chameleons and hedgehogs - what an overwhelming and frightening sight!! A fetish seller invited us to speak with him and explained to us the various meanings of the animals and what they are used for; I was invited to crawl under this table heaving with death to make an offering to the fetish of the market and we came away with three small personal fetishes (secrets of Dahomey but apparently made with owls' inners and wood and various other secret ingredients) - a travellers fetish, a workers fetish and a 'lucky doll'.

Marie returned to Ghana after this and so Hedy and I continued on alone to Abomey, home to the kings of Dahomey (Benin's original name) - we stayed in the most wonderful, eccentric hotel (La Lutta) which was really the extension of someones home filled with fetishes and books and woven cloth - we were the only yovos now, having last seen a handful of other travellers in Cotounou - Abomey was such a wonderful town, teeming with history, the owner of the hotel ("the King") drove us around on his zemi-john to show us the remains of the old palaces and the various fetish shrines around Abomey, we sat outside under the stars until late into the night to learn about voodoo and wow, what a wealth of knowledge we discovered!

Voodoo honours one main god, Mawu-Lessi (although that god is actually more like a pair of twins). Humans cannot communicate directly with this god so> there are lesser gods and spirits that act as mediums between the physical world and the world of God and spirits. Therefore there are "priests" and other people who the spirits choose to act as mediums and to represent the spirit world in the physical world - there are a number of sects which carry out this role for different forms of voodoo (the voodoo of the water, the voodoo of iron, the voodoo of the ancestors etc). The spirits communicate via the priest or priestess to tell what is needed to rectify the problem, the person then carries out this (like purchasing various parts of animals) and returns to the priest/ess who communicates with the spirits who then tell what is required to be done with the animal etc. It is obviously far, far more intricate and complex than that, but that is the reasoning for the animal sacrifice and the fetish shrines - when we were speaking with the voodoo priest he said "you can study voodoo for the rest of your life but you will only ever learn what can be seen between two blinks of the eyelid"... What has interested me most about voodoo is the feminist side of it - for once this is a contemporary religion where women are as equally empowered as men and involves Goddess worship! Specifically the voodoo sect of Mami Wata, the Goddess of water. The Mami Wata sect is almost exclusively female, because people do not 'choose' to join the sect but rather the spirits choose the people - and Mami Wata, she prefers women!! The Mami Wata dress in amazing white robes with the priestesses wearing red scarves in their hair, they cover their faces with white powder to symbolise purity and wear many bright necklaces and bracelets - Mami Wata loves to laugh and members of the sect often fall into trances where they laugh and laugh, dance and sing. Unfortunately we didn't see any Mami Wata ceremony but I felt so drawn to this that I am certain I will return to Benin to find the Mami Wata and learn more about this...

Equally with the empowerment of women, nature is respected and revered - trees are spirits also and some play an important role in the community, bright bright cloths of red and white were wrapped around some tree trunks and when we asked what that represented we were told that the trees had asked for it - the trees were also prayed to by people in the community.

Somehow I think that the reverence of voodoo has meant Benin has maintained environmental standards much higher than their neighbours - the streets were so clean, there are trees, plants, flowers and even grass in places - animals appear to be so much more respected and cared for (aside from those > who are sacrificed...) The practice of voodoo is also a huge political and social force in Benin, over 80% of the population practice voodoo and 10% are formally initiated. It has survived for 2000 years, through the colonisation by the French and the centuries of missionaries trying to convert the people to Christianity or Islam, declaring voodoo a satanist and> idolatrous cult but the people have clung tightly to their beliefs and it is so inspirational to see!!

Anyway, Abomey was wonderful, the old ruined palaces intriguing - we even saw the throne of one old king which was mounted on the skulls of four of his former enemies!! We travelled north to Natitingou from Abomey and as is usual for African countries poverty became more apparent the more north we headed and the land more arid, but still there were trees and still we didn't see the abuse of animals like in Ghana or Togo. From Natitingou we left for Somba country, the home of the Betamaribe people, suppposedly thought to have originally been from the Burkina Faso area but chased away thousands of years ago - they are anthropologically very interesting as they are individualist rather than community or village based; preferring to live in their mud fortresses alone in the centre of their plots of land rather than in a group or village. They are also very strong in their culture; surviving (perhaps due to their isolation) the colonisation, the slave trade and the missionaries that swarmed West Africa and destroyed so much historic culture - the Betamaribe didn't even begin to wear clothes until the 1970s!

We had to travel about an hour from Natitingou into the very north east of Benin, down red dirt roads into the middle of nowhere!! When we reached the last town, Boukombe, we met with a guide from an ecotourism NGO that only uses female guides and have set up excursions into Somba country, all of the profits being given to the Betamaribe women. Even though this is such an incredible part of the country and such an interesting group, we were the only 'tourists' that had been there since July 2006!!! (This was quite wonderful however as we didn't encounter the jaded faces of people in remote areas saturated with camera happy tour groups as in other parts of Africa!!) With our young guide and two small boys from the family we were to stay with we began the walk into Somba country - and what a walk! Four hours across red piste stone tracks; arid ground for miles and brilliant hills on the horizon - on and on and on... the Betamaribe are truly remote, but what an amazing experience!!! Their houses are incredible, architectural masterpieces - small mud forts with circular turrets and thatched roofs: you have to stoop down low to enter and through a kitchen at the front of the house, then through an animal shelter and to climb up stairs - a branch with grooves for feet cut in - and out onto the roof which is flat and closed in by the exterior walls - the tops of the four turrets serve as storage compartments for grain with the top of the thatched roofs being removable, underneath this is a small cubby for sleeping when it is cold; otherwise the family sleeps on the flat roof, protected from animals> and from any aggressors by the complex entry - the houses are truly wonderful - and so amazing to see in their solitude centered in an arid field of maize or grain. The family we were to visit were so welcoming and although the communication wasn't verbal we managed to understand each other so well; what an incredible group of people!! The poverty was huge - none of the people wore shoes, the soles of their feet hugely cracked; life is so hard for them, working for hours in their fields and the one day of market per week a four hour journey on foot and back again, but their eyes glowed and they welcomed us into their world with such openness it was heartwarming and inspiring. As soon as we arrived (exhausted and swollen from the heat and the walking) we were given children to hold, buckets for fetching water, our faces were touched, our hands were warmly held, we were part of their family, and they a part of ours. We slept the night on the flat roof under the stars, with no light pollution the sky was brilliant and the air cool - much better than in a stuffy hotel room!! Unfortunately a large grey spider became entangled in my sleeping 'natte' and in his fear bit my thigh quite aggressively!! I was deep in sleep by this time and so flew from my slumber with a sharp jolt of intense stinging pain!!!!!! I lept up and awoke everyone else who all inspected the bite on my leg, declared it not poisonous although large and then hunted down the poor spider and ended its life abruptly. I felt a little afraid for awhile and the bite area on my leg stung for about 24 hours but it was all so worth it to be there and experience life with the Somba. The children were incredibly beautiful; all the women topless and the older men, the Grandfather of the family, retaining his 'traditional' dress (nothing but a small wrap around his groin, his wonderful thin legs poking out, smoking a pipe and so interested to look at us, strange white women with bags full of strange things!!!) It was sad to leave them and we promised to send photos via our guide, Antoinette, who was an Betamaribe orphaned so grew up in an orphanage in Boukoumbe and now runs a small sewing business and accompaines the few people who journey to Somba country every year. The small boys walked with us back to Boukoumbe, where it was market day, and we witnessed for the first time animal abuse in Benin - a man was dragging a piglet tied by its front leg - of course it couldn't walk like this and was hoppîng on three legs, screaming in pain and fear, his front leg twisted by the man pulling > on the rope. It was an awful and disturbing sight and the piglet was so stressed out that I felt compelled to act and bargained with the man for the> purchase of the piglet. I had to pay about US10 but I successfully saved this stressed wee being and we fed him water and untied the rope; all the Beninoise at the market crowding around in amazement at this white woman who> had bought a pig!! We named him Louie, took his photo and gifted him to the children with strict instructions that they were to carry him home to their family who would care for him and raise him till a ripe old age. They were> so shocked as a pig for them is a huge thing, and after seeing the way that the Betamaribe kept their animals very carefully, even providing them shelter in their houses, I feel confident that Louie will be cared for.

Friday, March 23rd...I am now writing from Burkina Faso!!! We arrived here three days ago after > spending two amazing days in the national park in the north of the Benin where we saw lions, slept in the open and swam in beautiful waterfalls with> the local children who dived from rock faces completely fearlessly!!! Burkina is very different from anywhere we have been before - it is the second poorest country in the world and unfortunately, that is quite apparent. We entered from Benin and stayed in Fadi n'Gorma before heading north to Gorom Gorom which is near the most north western border with Niger. For miles we drove through nothingness - the land completely barren,the soil erosion so huge it was like looking at a mining quarry, every village we passed so incredibly poor, the houses nothing more than tiny mud huts in the middle of this baking hot sahel, no vegetation, no hope of growing anything in this barren soil, no water, no wells, the lakes dried up > as we are now in the middle of dry season here, the hottest time of year.> It took over 12 hours to reach Gorom Gorom, the last leg of the journey in an old ute jammed with people, about 16 inside with 8 more on the roof on > top of the luggage, nearly all the people were Tuareg or Fula nomads, the men wrapped in turbans and long robes - we were squished like sardines> between these people on hard wooden benches, foolishly I had worn a singlet (my last piece of clean clothing) and I think that the sight of all the white flesh was too much for the old nomad sitting next to me who at one> point licked my shoulder!! I felt a rough wetness and turned around; I think he was taken by surprise by his own action and a sudden look of regret and shame crossed his face and he turned away!! It was quite funny all in all and being in a ute jammed with old nomads was an experience I have never had before!! The hotel, a Catholic mission, left a lot to be desired - the bathroom and toilet crawling with huge black cockroaches, not the tame brown> ones that inhabit the coast of NZ but huge fearless African roaches that fly!!!! I had tears in my eyes at the sight of them and after the long> journey it was more than I could cope with. We washed under a tap in the> yard and spent a baking night in the airless room before waking early the following morning to experience the Gorom Gorom markets...

The market is a huge event, nomads from Chad, Sudan, Niger, Mali and Burkina> come to trade animals, food, metals and leathers. Gorom Gorom is practically complete desert, winds howling in and wiping up the sand - within five minutes we realised why nomads wear their turbans completely covering their faces! The market was huge, pulsating, intriguing, full of colour and life - the Fulani woman crowded the exterior, wearing the most beautiful coloured clothes and scarves, they retain economic independence from the men, their wealth kept in the form of silver coins and silver jewellery tied into their hair and around their arms and necks - their faces are tattooed during important life events and they are stunningly beautiful - tall, slim, dark, mysterious. They offered us milk fresh from their cows which is drunk from small spoons, we held their children and stared aghast at their beauty and admired their independence; the hardship of their lives> in this incredible climate where the mercury rises well into the 40s - it > was 46 degrees when we were there and the sun is fierce. We had to wrap ourselves in scarves to protect our skin and understood why these women are so covered, only their faces showing under the bright fabrics. We bought dates from Arabic date sellers and watched the camels and cows being traded> - bulls as big as camels with horns that are huge and curled!! Donkeys and goats and sheep with no wool, this is life for so many - it was a sensory > feast and exhausted we clambered back onto a rickety bus and made the long> journey to the capital, Ouagadougou, late last afternoon.

Today is my 23rd birthday. It feels strange to have a birthday in a country where all the girls we have spoken to don't even know their own age - I guess when poverty is at this level there is no space in their worlds to count numbers or years, no celebration of time that passes, life is one day after another, selling peanuts and dates from bowls on heads, attempting to make enough money to eat the next meal, to feed the children. We have breakfast at small cafeterias (stands that sell bread, rice and instant coffee with condensed milk) - small boys no more than 10 stand at the entrance holding empty tin cans, waiting for people to finish and then> quicky scrapping the plates into the cans, then pushing it into small mouths with little dirty hands. It's quite heartbreaking to see, no school, no books, no holidays or presents. Just life, one day after another. In saying that though the people are proud, strong, they laugh, they joke, they don't look at us with unkind envy but rather a deep curiousity. It is a very interesting country; the Arabic influence is very apparent, as is the large nomadic influence. The big names of development are all here - the country is lined with projects from Save the Children, World Vision, Oxfam, the UN... they're all here and it's interesting to see, but also is such an indication of how hard life is for the people of Burkina Faso. I am glad to be here though and tonight we will eat dinner in a Tuareg tent to celebrate my birthday - it will be an experience!! In a few days we will head to the south west of Burkina and in a week or so Hedy will enter Mali and I will return to Ghana. What a journey this has been...

Beginning the journey east... March 2007

2007-07-24T07:44:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, March 6th...Well it's over. I can hardly believe it! But yesterday morning I took my pack and walked out of dusty Besease and away from the children for the last time. It was hard to leave the children, especially the young ones who I built such a bond with. It is a strange feeling to spend such intense time with them and then to walk away, knowing that I probably will never see these children again. And having to accept that - that this is the nature of 'development' work. Of course I will never forget them, and I will never forget my time in Besease and the lessons I learnt there. I think for the children it is easier, they are used to volunteers who come and go, bringing presents and promises and the tastes of a better life enjoyed by those lucky enough to be born in foreign continents and into foreign lives. Of course it is never easy though and they begged me to stay "just another month, until another volunteer comes". It was sad to say goodbye. I think that they will remember me mostly for the little coloured stars that Mum sent though!! They would line up outside my door or my window in the morning saying "Luisa, please, stars!!" and I would fill little cupped hands with piles of shiny stars which were stored deep in lint filled pockets to brandish on the playground to envious peers. As I left I threw handfuls of stars over them and blew kisses and fought back the tears pricking the corners of my eyes. It was a sad and reflective journey east. I am now in Hohoe, near the border with Togo. Last night I arrived and met up with Hedy and Marie (a Swiss volunteer) - early tomorrow morning we will cross the border to Togo. Today is Ghana's independence day, there are big celebrations across the country as people cheer "Free Forever! Ghana is free forever!". Although to me it seems empty somehow, because Ghana is not really 'free', it is colonised in another form, the pseudo colonisation of trade restrictions and political impositions by countries like the UK and the US and those who control the World Bank and the IMF and the other institutions that Ghana has taken massive loans with, complete with massive strings. In saying that are any of us really free though? Is any country truly free or instead are we bound together with our mutual economic dependence? Perhaps none of us are free, but I would suggest that these poor west African states are the least free of all. It is nice to see the celebrations though and patriotism is running high with bright flags flying, cars tooting their horns and children marching in the streets.

Sunday, March 11...

Bonjour du la Republique Beninese!!!!

So much time has passed and so much has happened since I began the above email... We are now in Porto Novo, the capital city of Benin... I can scarcely believe we are here already, but I will begin the story at the beginning... and apologise for the typing as I am using a French keyboard with the keys all in different places!!

We left from Hohoe early on Wednesday morning, arriving at the tro tro station at 7am only to wait five hours for the tro tro (this time the most wonderful old PK blue ute from the 60's!) to fill up! We passed the time by helping the workers shout "Kpalime, Kpalime, Bra bra, tem tem!!" (Come come quick!) The ute finally pulled out of the station complete with 16 passengers all crammed in like sardines and our luggage piled high on the roof, along with tires, sacks filled with yam and bunches of plantain, all held on with a big net - we were off to face the border!! The drive towards the border was amazing - the hills that line the edge of Ghana are incredibly green and lush - we peered out the back window of the ute drinking it all in and buzzing with excitment about what our journey into Togo would bring... unfortunately when we reqched the border we were turned back by the control guards as Marie and Hedy didn't have pre-purchased visas and so we had to take our packs, farewell our fellow passengers and walk back to the main road to begin the journey down to Aflao were we could cross the main border - by 5pm that evening we had crossed to Togo and were only bribed once for 1000CFA which was much better than we had expected. After a brief stop in Lome to change money we drove straight to the town Agbodrafo, nestled on the shores of Lake Togo and about two thirds of the way across the country (taking about an hour to drive there - Togo is a very small country!). When we arrived at the lodge it appeared deserted with the lights all out and only the gentle lapping of the lake audible, it was so dark and quiet, eerily so, but after locating the manager we settled down to sleep and when we awoke we were greeted by the most beautiful view! The lake was huge and so calm, fishermen were dotted all over its surface in their traditional wooden pirogues fishing with nets and collecting crabs from the shore line. Everyone spoke French very well and they speak French to each other rqther than their traditional African dialect which was such a difference to Ghana were English is spoken reluctantly over their traditional dialects! We arranged a pirogue ride over the lake to Togoville, the founding village in Togo and the home of Togolese animism. The pirogue ride was beautiful but we kept commenting on how deserted everything felt, there were no tourists, no volunteers, in fact we were the only guests in the entire 'auberge' and it didn't appear that they ever had guests... after we crossed the lake we were met by a guide at the shore who led us around Togoville, pointing out various fetish shrines and showing us the old areas where the slaves were held - it was a lovely small village and the people were very friendly - it looked amazingly different from Ghana, with many more palm trees and the people appearing very different in their stature and facial features (much thinner and with higher cheekbones). After a few hours we returned to the shore to catch the pirogue back to the auberge on the other side of the lake; by this time the wind had picked up quite substantially and the calm lake was disturbed with white crested waves, we clambered back into the wooden boat, children running out into the water with us and diving and splashing at the helm of the boat - the children ran out after the boat, their beautiful dark bodies clearly visible jumping in the water and waving us goodbye as we journeyed out further onto the lake. After a few hundred metres it became apparent that the boat was taking on a substantial amount of water, both through cracks in the hull and from waves splashing over the sides. As we passed over an area called "Hippopotamus Hole" (the deepest part of the lake previously home to hippopotami) the gondolier passed me a calabash and I began to scoop the water from the bottom of the boat!! It was hard work and an endless task as the water continued to come into the boat but it was an amazing and empowering feeling - bailing water from a pirogue on Lake Togo, how far I had come and how free I am, and indeed how free we all are! Once we had reached calmer waters the gondolier bezgan to speak with us (in French - I am kucky to be with Marie and Hedy, both fluent) about his life in Togo. Togo is controlled by an autocrat who seized power following his despot father's death - Togo has been rife with corruption and coups for 20 years now and riots in Lome two yeqrs qgo resulted in 500 civilian deaths; as a result educated people from the cities hqve fled to the villages to live lives as simple fishermen and farmers in poverty but relative safety from the dangers held in the lawless cities. The gondolier had fled from Lome, "if you become too vocal, too political or it is known that you are opposed to the regime then they will come and take you from your home" the gondolier said "the police will take you and drag you away to kill you". And so nobody speaks a word of opposition, it is a country ruled in fear. We thanked the gondolier repetitively for having the courage to tell us these painful truths and gqve hi, some money to help him in his life. Back at the lodge we began to realise why the counbtry seemed so deserted and why Lome appeared like a cowboy town from the wild west...

The next day we caught a taxi to Aneho, a beach town on the border with Benin, and here our suspicions about Togo were all confirmed. The day was incredibly hot, after walking about the town in the morning we had to spend the afternoon lying on the concrete floor of the motel to cool our overheated and exhausted bodies. Again we were the only guests in the entire hotel and saw no other foreigners anywhere in the town. Aneho appeared very nice, although very sandy, with no shade and the stores seemed all to be very empty, the supermarket had little more than some old bottles of wine, cans of tuna and an empty battery box! At about 6.30 we decided to walk down the main road to buy street food for dinner (all the chop bars were empty) - we had a nice dinner of rice and beans sitting next to an empty train track and began to wander back to the hotel when a man ran up to Hedy and grabbed her bag - she screamed and held tight onto her bag but the man pulled at it so hard that the material ripped from the strap and the man sprinted down an alley toward the dark beach, we were all screaming "THIEF THIEF!!" as loud as we could, to alert the locals to the danger but noone seemed to do anything for what seemed like the longest time! People approached us after about 30 seconds and we communicated what had happened, Hedy was now in complete shock and we managed to get back to the hotel where we asked the clerk to call the police - we were told "there is no point; the police will not do anything". "No matter" we said, "please call them anyway". Eventually a policeman arrived in an old beat up red toyota, he was not wearing a uniform but the clerk seemed to know him so we went with him to the police station. "The police station actually no longer exists" the man told us, "some rioters tore it down last year so we work from the gendarmerie near the border". The night got stranger and stranger. When we arrived at a big crumbling stone building we were told this is the gendarmerie (and quickly thought of an escape route in case it wasn't), we went inside and after Hedy bribed the officer CFA6000 he agreed to write an attestation about the robbery so that she could at least use it to claim insurance for the stolen camera, cellphone, money and memory cards. It was a long night and we all felt very shaken. A woman at the hotel told us we were very lucky, "Usually they'll slit your throats to take your money" she said "never go out at night in Togo". At 8am the next morning we left for the border, grateful to be leaving and grateful that it was only material objects that had been taken. Now we realised why there were no tourists in Togo...!

The border crossing to Benin was very smooth, 'no man's land' filled with market sellers with huge piles of produce, fruits and vegetables, watches and sunglasses and men selling every currency under the sun 'for a price' where we were forced to change money at appalling low rates and in doing so support the black market of currency trading! Rife all over West Africa and the majority of which is Algerian currency??

As we drove from the border to Ouidah, another coastal town, we felt hesitant, all promising each other that from now on we would be more careful, and if anything else happened like that we would leave. We needn't have worried as Ouidah was the most wonderful place, with many French tourists and the most wonderful energy to it!! Benin is amazing, the French influence is so strong here - the streets are paved, the sewers underground, trees grow alongside the roads and everywhere there are French bread sellers and vegetable sellers, and voodoo fetish shrines!!!! Of course the country is still very poor and in the northern region and in small villages people meek out a hard existence but how wonderful what we have seen has been!! We visited the Route de Esclaves where tens of thousands of slaves were marched in chains to waiting slaver ships en route to America or Europe. It was haunting and sad and I could feel the linear sense of chained beings marching to the sea in fear: a monument marking the Point of No Return stood on the beach, wonderfully African in design and so fitting. Ouidah is filled with zemi_johns, old Yamaha motorbikes which zoom around (no helmets) to transport all manner of things and people (sometimes four on one bike!!).

Being in Benin is like being in some strange parralell universe, a hybrid between Africa, Frqnce, Brazil and some sort of mystical other world where spirits are real and honoured. We have already seen many voodoo priests and egunguns who walk the streets in brilliant dress to communicqte the spirits to the living. It is truly incredible!! Last night we sat out till late in the night at the hotel and listened to the most inspiring African tribal music and watched the people dancing in the street; their bodies tqken over with the power of the music, compelled to dance and so breathtaking in doing so...

The time on the computer is about up so I must rush the end of this email but there is so much more to say about our wanderings into Benin - I will write again soon. After a fez days we will head north; to Abomey and then onto the northern territories; home of the incredible Somba people...

Farewell to Besease, March 2007

2007-07-24T07:33:00.000-07:00

Well here I am, the end of one journey and the beginning of another. On Monday I finish my work placement in Besease and begin the travels east into French Africa...I can hardly believe that I've already finished my placement. It has gone so quickly, but I can feel in my spirit that I am ready to leave - I feel tired, spread thin, and need a break. Living in the orphanage is hard work, like being mother, teacher and friend to 24 children around the clock!! But the journey has been a rewarding one and I do feel that I have accomplished something during my time and set in place some systems that will help future volunteers, and, more importantly, provide the home and the children more structure and routine in their daily lives. Aside from the volunteer manuals, experience books and roster system, we have developed a link with the Ahmadiyya Muslim hospital in the nearby village Asokore who have agreed to see the children for free, including providing free medicine! Which is so generous of them in a country where there is no free public health care, emergency or otherwise. My study group is gearing up for their exams in April - I have arranged a local man from the village to take over running the group and teaching in exchange for a few English lessons! So the rest is up to the universe and I have to trust that the systems put in place will be continued. I'm meeting the director of Child Aid today for a debriefing - the weekend will be spent with the children and Monday morning I will head to the Volta region to meet up with Hedy, a Dutch volunteer who I will travel east with over the next few weeks... we will cross the border to Togo on the 7th of March - the day after Ghana's independence day (50 years since independence this year!)

Last week I took two days off and went to visit the "Hand in Hand" project, a home for disabled people in Nkoranza. It was simply wonderful! The project was started 15 years ago by a Dutch doctor and a Ghanaian man to care for intellectually disabled children who are otherwise alienated from society here. Traditionally disabled children were thought to be either the return of a punished ancestor or the rape of the mother by water spirits. Therefore the children were feared and cast out from the community - traditionally being left by the river for the water spirits to "take back". In modern times children are more commonly left under bushes, or on the roadside to die of dehydration. There is no social welfare here and no support for disabled people. A number of children with intellectual disabilities are kept in psychiatric hospitals with adults suffering from chronic mental illnesses like schizophrenia. The Dutch doctor (Ineke) saw this huge problem and so bought some land from a local chief and began the project to care for disabled people. Slowly orphanages began to bring disabled children to the project and some were transferred from the state psychiatric hospitals and the community began to grow - it's situated on the outskirts of a farming-based village but feels like a wonderful oasis in the desert of poverty and struggle. It is a large compound, neatly walled with many bright bouganvillea trees and fruit trees, a big security gate with a security guard, paved walkways, tame donkeys who roam around grazing on the grassed areas, four big friendly labrador dogs and a medley of chickens and cats. The children live in round huts - three to one full time caregiver who also lives with them - there are about 40 adults and children living at the project, the majority of whom suffer from cerebral palsy. There is a set of houses that are semi-independent for the adults who can care for themselves to some extent and they have set up "sheltered workshops" for the adults to carry out meaningful work and obtain training - they make beads from recycled plastic and glass and thread beautiful bead necklaces and bracelets - there is also a kente cloth weaving workshop where a few of the older men have been taught to weave kente. It is a process which takes them an immense amount of time as their muscles do not work properly, but the joy on their faces as they work is immense. In a country where any paid work is hard to come by, the opportunity for disabled people to work and generate income is amazing. The younger children and those who are so disabled as not able to work at all are cared for throughout the day in a seperate area, with a play ground and swimming pool where once a day all the children and adults swim. The energy of the place was overwhelmingly positive. They have also set up three small guest huts where visitors can come to stay and observe the project - visitors are encouraged to get involved and to swim with the children, to assist in their care and to assist in the workshops - and it works so, so well. The children (and adults) love the visitor's involvement and it feels very genuine, very meaningful. The entire compound is clean and bright and well cared for - there is even a retired priest who was invited to come and spend his retirement there - he spends his days walking with the children and doing gardening. In the visitor rooms a copy of the annual report for the project lies on the bedside table with every dollar accounted for and open to public viewing - I have never seen such transparency and openess in any development organisation anywhere. It was incredibly refreshing and inspiring. The cloth and jewellery that the children make are sold, both to visitors and through a disabled persons co-operative in the Netherlands. All of the profits are put back into the project, and it shows! I am going to try to set up a link between Trade Aid and this project as I think that these beautiful creative jems would be perfect for the NZ market! I hope to return to the project and stay for longer, perhaps on my journey back through Ghana from Burkina Faso... The contrast between this project and the orphanage at Besease is huge though, and I felt saddened to think that the orphanage in Besease could share the same energy, the same positivity and creativity if only it was managed in a constructive and honest way. I shared my thoughts with Child Aid who have made a commitment to bettering the home in Besease and are already using the donation funds to finish off the kitchen building and to rewire the home so that there are lights for all the rooms. They have also agreed to send volunteers on a regular basis, and so hopefully I am the first of many...

As I prepare to leave the home, and Ghana, I am becoming more reflective of my time here and what I have learnt - about the nature of giving, of receiving, of patience and of care. About the complex patchwork of issues that surround development work and the nature of life for Africans. My Buddhist teacher said to me before leaving that the biggest piece of advice that he could give me was to give (money, time, energy, love) with no expectation of anything in return - not even an expectation of acknowledgement. He said to give with no acknowledgement and to want to continue to give is a sign of true loving compassion. I can't say that I have mastered this and some of the behaviour of children (and adults) here is quite hurtful, but I have definitely begun to understand this idea... as for Ghana in general, several things have disturbed me quite deeply - the absolute disregard for the environment and the absolute disregard for the lives of animals. I don't know if I can justify poverty as an excuse for this behaviour in my mind but if anyone has a theory, I would love to know.

The Big City, The Big Lessons, February 2007

2007-07-24T05:36:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Accra, Ghana's capital city...

We (Amanda, Carrick and I)\ntravelled down here from Besease on Tuesday morning with an Amadiya Muslim\nfriend - Amanda and Carrick leave for Togo tomorrow and so I thought I would use the opportunity to get my onward visas and to do a few things in Accra that I had wanted to do. Accra feels much different from any other part of Ghana - the wealth here is so apparent in comparison to central / northern Ghana - mainly due to the development levels here being very high. I believe that this is true for much of Africa - the colonisers settled on the coasts of all the countries and developed these areas as they were comfortable and profitable (slave trading, exporting minerals etc) and it also meant that the colonisers did not have to travel far into the heart of the continent which proved very difficult due to the dense jungles, the tropical diseases and the less than welcoming indigenous peoples... Accra is like the best and worst of Ghana - luxury, wealth, development (to African standards of course - the open sewers are still on either side of the road and our 'hotel' does not have running water or glass windows) and the worst of poverty; people pushing carts to make money, desperate beggars, shanty towns and street children. Accra feels hard, it is hugely expensive in comparison to Besease and the people are less open, less friendly - people grab your arms everywhere, wanting to sell you things, wanting to steal from you. Being 'obroni' is so obvious, everywhere, there is never any anonymity. It's like wearing a giant neon sign on your forehead. We do our best to hide our obroni status and use twi as much as possible when speaking with Ghanaians. This seems to help enormously in avoiding being scammed - they laugh and the barriers seem to come away as soon as a few words of twi are injected into the transaction negotiations... I guess it shows more of a respect for their world and they must be used to dealing with so many ignorant and disrespectful foreigners (which there are plenty of in Accra")

Yesterday morning we rose early and, taking advantage of the luxury Accra offers, drank coffee at a coffee bar!! This was my first coffee in five weeks and wow... I had forgotten how much I love coffee!! It was bliss and we felt so decadent to sit down at a table in air-conditioned comfort and begin the day like Europeans! This small luxury was enjoyed but short lived and we met Romeo, a Liberian refugee friend of Chris Williams (thanks Chris!) who I had contacted a week previous - Romeo took us to the Liberian refugee camp about an hour outside of Accra - we had to take three different tro tros, at the station the 'mate' of the van yelled "Liberia, Liberia!!" - Romeo told us that they no longer say "refugee camp", it is now known simply as Liberia. I thought it was wonderful that the negative connotation had been removed. During the tro tro ride he told us about his life. He lived in Liberia with his family, attended school and had a relatively normal life in this progressive West-African nation until 1989 when the civil war began. The civil war began as a tribal clash which quickly escalated into full scale civil war between armed rebel groups -the fighting didn't reach Romeo's town until 1990. He was 7 years old. He remembers being at school, another normal day, when he heard gun shots and screaming in the street. There was chaos as people ran and the teachers and students fled from the school - he ran home to his family but when he arrived they were gone (he thinks they must have run to the school to find him). The streets were chaos, people were being shot, raped and killed, he didn't know what to do so he ran after a crowd of people fleeing from the town. He followed this crowd to the sea ports where a man looked after him and got him on board a ship of refugees being taken to Ghana. When the ship ported there was again huge confusion as thousands of people flooded the streets, panicked and in shock, this wee boy lost the man who was caring from him and in the frenzied crowd again found himself completely alone - seven years old and in a foreign country. The UN refugee agency took him to the refugee camp set up outside of Accra on barren land (where he was by no means the only child separated from his parents) and he has lived there since - for 17 years now. My eyes pricked with tears as he spoke, the pain of separation from his parents apparent in his face, his hope as he spoke of his belief that one day he will find them again, or one of his two siblings. I couldn't imagine how hard, how painful, how frightening life must have been for this small boy. And for thousands just like him - now all over the world.

As we drove and I digested this painful story we saw a man killed on the road outside of Accra. He was in his mid-twenties, a young, handsome boy - his crumpled body lying on the black asphalt, his head at an angle that confirmed his fate - a trail of blood running down his arm. People were running about yelling, frantic. I felt sick to my stomach - shocked - like I had been kicked in the throat. I have never seen a man killed before and it made death such a reality, such a painful, intense reality. I realised how every death is as shocking as this one before me. That every death in the civil war in Liberia, every death of every person everywhere, is as shocking and as gruesome. War, genocide, 'conflict', is often so arbitrary, so remote, so theoretical. We hear of it as a figure, often a figure with a trail of zeros, this figure is bounced around in books, in academic circles, in human rights groups - a million deaths, a hundred thousand killed, 'mass murder'. But there is no such thing. Mass killings do not happen but rather thousands of individual killings. Individual deaths. Every one of these people as important as the last. Every one of these people with beliefs, with fears, with dreams. Just like you and just like me. Just like this man whose contorted body lay before us on the road. My heart sat hard in my chest like a stone. I wanted to vomit, to scream. I put my head in my hands and wept. I wept for this man whose young life was so quickly taken from him before us, I wept for the man sitting next to me, I wept for all the people whose individual lives had been taken from them in mass killings everywhere, for all the refugees from all wars, for those who never escaped. It was a brutal, shocking morning.

We eventually arrived at the camp, although it is hardly a camp anymore, more like a village of its own. Years have passed since the UN tents stood tall, in their place now small concrete structures or wooden shacks. Little alleys lead all over this wee village, this mini-Liberia. Small shops, small attempts at business, at rebuilding lives, stand everywhere. Little chop bars (places that sell cheap food, usually rice and goat or fish stew) and market stalls selling shoes or vegetables or water. The ground is so dry, so dusty, covered in small pebbles. It feels like another country entirely and everyone, everywhere is Liberian. And everyone of these Liberians is a refugee, with equally as painful memories and stories as this brave man who led us around. The UNHCR had set up offices on the outside of the camp, they are organising a census of the camp and repatriation programme as the civil war has long ended and Liberia is now recognised as being 'safe'. Lines of people waited to see the officers - we looked at the notices informing of the programme - the UN will give each family a pack (including mosquito net, tarpaulin, cooking pan, kerosene) and US$5 for each person upon arrival in Monrovia (Liberia's capital). US$5... I asked Romeo if he wanted to be repatriated. He said "where would I go? My home is gone, I have no family, I have nowhere to go and there are no opportunities in Liberia. What would I do with $5? Buy dinner?". He is right. How can you build a life in a country with no support on $5? It was amazing to actually see the UN working though, for me they are so often just a theoretical organisation, something removed and arbitrary. It was amazing to see that this organisation actually exists and to see it in action. The WFP was also there and many small NGOs who have set up schools and other support structures, like counselling and mentoring for young people, violence support centres for women and HIV/AIDS clinics. The camp was an incredible experience, and a heartwarming one. It restored my faith in humanity, at the resilience of people, who will loose everything and rebuild their lives again, strive for education, for success, for spiritual awareness. We met a woman whose husband had been sent to the USA and now sends her money - she uses the money to set up a small business selling small grocery items and runs a micro-economic funding scheme for women to start their own small businesses in the camp. The refugees are technically not allowed to work in Ghana, but the government overlooks the economic community occurring in the camp. None of the refugees are given any money, I am not sure how the UN or the Ghanaian government expect them to survive, so as soon as anyone receives a small amount of money they try to set up a business venture within the camp, or build a shelter for themselves. For people like Romeo, with no family or support and no prospect of employment, life is hard. He lives on the goodwill of friends who allow him to sleep on their floor. He said when people started to build in the camp he worked making bricks from clay and with the profit he funded himself to attend a training school but he fell ill and had to stop making the bricks and attending school. His dream is to start a small business to earn enough money to finish his schooling - he wants to do marketing - and to find his family again. He is now 25.

Set up in the camp were huge notice boards lined with photos of children's faces. These are all faces of children who had become separated from their families and were in refugee camps in other parts of the world. Romeo said that somewhere in another part of the world his face is on one of these boards in the hope that someone in his family would one day see it and contact him. I guess the prospect that his family did not survive the rebel attack is not one that he will entertain. The hope, the will to survive, the ability to dream of a secure future was something that astounded me in him. I left him with some money and said I would keep in contact. I don't know what I can do to help these people, but as we drove away from this dusty and poverty stricken camp I felt deeply moved, deeply changed. The journey back to Accra was spent in silence.

We arrived back in Accra and made our way to the Togolese embassy to collect our onward visas (we managed to get a visa that caters for Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger and the Ivory Coast) - it was an interesting experience in itself. The Togolese embassy official tried to bribe me at the desk, advising that I should give him an extra CFA5,000 as a 'gift'. I said "oh, is this the way it works in Togo?". He laughed and I refused to be bribed. I made sure I was given a receipt told him if I was asked for more money at the border I would have the border guards call him directly! He then asked me to marry him and kept us in his office for 45 minutes, not giving our passports back, and giving us a lecture on how women should be obedient to their husbands. Amanda and I were shocked. I told him he would hate being married to me as I would never be obedient. He laughed and said that he would get African medicine to make me obedient and I told him I was too strong for any medicine he could give me. If this is the embassy official I hate to think of the ordeal that awaits us at the border.

In the late afternoon we met Aleem again, the Amadiya Muslim friend who drove us to Accra. Aleem had organised us to meet the Amadiya Muslim Mission's chief in Accra. This man (Ameer Adams) is also the head of the Amadiya Community in Ghana. He has won many international peace awards and is apparently a very revered man, working as part of the reconciliation commission in Ghana. The Amadiya community is persecuted in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan. It is a branch of Islam that is pacifist, their motto being "Love for all and hatred for none". They run schools and hospitals throughout the world - their goal is to serve humanity and practice tolerance and love. The Ameer welcomed us into his home and served us coconut milk, fresh tropical fruit and a herbal tea and talked to us about his work and his faith and his beliefs. He was an incredibly interesting man, and very funny - we were laughing and laughing! He was very kind-hearted and has challenged the Muslim community on many claims that are made about the Koran stating things like that 'infidels deserve death'. There was a case two years ago in Nigeria where a woman found guilty of adultery was sentenced in a Sharia court to be stoned to death. This man made a challenge in the Nigeria media for any Muslim to show him where in the Koran this was condoned. He was abused by many Muslims for daring to say this, but (unsurprisingly) no one could find anything in the Koran which condoned this woman's stoning. The community runs homeopathy centres near Besease so they have invited me to visit their hospitals and the homeopathy centre. Of course I agreed and really valued the opportunity to meet this man. Amanda and I decided not to raise the issue of the veil and womans' rights in Islam and in the Amadiya community as we didn't think it appropriate, but this is something we discussed afterward and said even though the Amadiya community disproved many commonly made negative claims about Islam we still didn't feel that women were truly equal here either.

Tomorrow I return to the orphanage and to my newly implemented roster... the home is feeling slightly more structured with this roster system but ensuring that the tasks are done every day is definitely easier said than done. It usually involves chasing them around the yard, shouting encouragement and guiding them through the work. It's an exhausting process and helping a 10 year old clean a boys' toilet when there is no running water is definitely not the most pleasant of volunteer tasks! Perhaps this is why it hasn't been done until now and I hope that the new system is upheld. Once the precedent is set and the routine established then the home will be a much cleaner and more structured environment. After the children finish their tasks I reward them with a bright sticker which they put on their forehead or earlobe and march off to play, proudly displaying their medal to their peers! This has proved a great way to encourage others to do their tasks. I think that the lack of water is the biggest impediment to their lives, fetching the water from the pipe is really hard work and it's amazing to see how they will conserve the water once fetched! One bucket of water will be used to wash all their clothes, then the dirty water will be used to wash their shoes, with the remainder being used to flush the toilet! The children work hard and are usually quite helpful - I often wonder how a child in the 'developed world' would react if made to walk to a well, manually pump up water and carry it home in buckets on their head every time they wanted to wash or drink or clean anything! Perhaps they would reconsider the amount of times they turn on a tap every day? Most of the children in the home are slim, their arms ripple with muscle from all the physical work - one of them kindly pointed out how my arms are "soft" - I laughed and said "yes, I don't fetch enough water!!".

There has been some disturbing events in Ghana recently. From talking with Aleem, who is the headmaster of a school run by the mission, he told us about a deworming programme in schools set up by UNICEF in partnership with the Ghanaian government. They have been deworming children in schools for the past week - so far 10 children have died and 37 have been hospitalised. I can't believe this could happen. Of course both organisations are desperately trying to cover up their tracks but it seems to me that this medicine hadn't been adequately tested before being released to these young children and their malnutritioned bodies couldn't handle the strength of the poison in the dewormer. It's an absolute tragedy. Aleem alerted all the schools and parents he could to tell the schools not to administer any drugs to the children. If this happened in a "developed" country it would be headline news - the companies would be held to account, prosecuted for negligence, the families would be compensated (but how can you compensate for the death of a child?!!?). Here, it's swept under the carpet.

I also have heard (through a congratulatory article in the Economist, my only source of international news!) that GM crops are now being released in Africa. A genetically modified maise crop is being planted in southern Africa. The article congratulated "African scientists" for this "new" technology and said that it hoped many more GM crops would be soon to follow. I was horrified and outraged. The article said that GM in Europe has been halted by "scared consumers" - more like INFORMED consumers who realised that the release of GM crops cannot be retracted once planted and if cross-contamination occurs then there is no stopping the process. Again, Africa is used as a testing ground for western science. GM is no African invention and its implementation here is little more than a mass experiment. There is no public forum to discuss this issue. The local farmers probably won't even realise what GM is and what the dangers are of its release. Food supply here is fragile enough without unleashing some short-sighted experiment onto the local plantations. I feel so powerless in the face of it; when I talk to Ghanaians about it most of them don't even know what genetific modification is and the lack of access to information or to the internet will ensure their continual ignorance of its potential dangers.

The third piece of disturbing information I have received relates to child slavery in Ghana - poverty stricken parents are selling their children to work on fishing boats, on plantations and in quarries. An NGO has counted hundreds of children working in slave conditions such as these now. I felt so shocked but then realised that child slavery actually exists here in many more less obvious forms - the small children who sell chewing gums and handkerchiefs through the windows of tro tros are also child slaves. They are kept from schools to make money for their parents, or for street child gangs. This problem is so entrenched that I don't know how it will be overcome. The trade is so apparent, but also so underground. The apathy of the Ghanaian government and the corruption of the police force will ensure that this trade and the abuse of these children is not a temporary problem but a permanent one. I'm sure that child labour and child slavery will also become even more apparent as we journey west into Togo and Benin, countries that suffer from even greater poverty than Ghana.

Life in Besease, February 2007

2007-07-24T05:28:00.000-07:00

So I caught malaria...!! I guess it was somewhat inevitable after my bold words about how healthy I was feeling... I began to feel ill last weekend and spent an agonising 24 hours with violent vomiting and diarreoah and as it was 'lights out' my misery was only heightened by the lack of a fan! So there I lay with a small flickering candle and several children peeking through the wire mesh that is my window chanting "Luisa is sick, Luisa is sick" in twi! Being so ill actually made me realise how truly public life is in Ghana - it felt like half of the village walked past the window, or through my room, to look in and witness the obroni heaving over a bucket and lying flat on the floor with wet rags on her head!!! The next day Amanda and Carrick took me to the local clinic run by catholic nuns and after my hand with a massacred with a needle they diagnosed me as having a 'light case' of malaria. So I am taking a colourful cocktail of obscure and unknown medication - when I asked the nurse to explain to me what each pill was she said "because you're sicko, they're to make you feel better"... I'm well on the road to recovery now though and feel much better although my energy levels are very low which I find immensly frustrating! So life continues... the children are becoming more and more familiar with me, and I with them. The new volunteer who was supposed to arrive last weekend didn't, and so I face the next month alone again. And as of Tuesday I will feel much more alone as Amanda has now completed her required hours at social welfare so she departs Ghana for good with Carrick. Wow. We have grown quite close over the past month and I really value all her help - she is so familiar with Ghanaian culture and custom, she even speaks twi! So being with her is really fun and her presence will be sorely missed by all. In saying that, a UK Ghanaian man, Daniel, is going to come for a few hours each day to help me do some more physical work around the home - the children couldn't believe it when they first saw him "a black man?" they said "a black man is going to help?!". They are so used to the volunteers being white and female that they couldn't believe it and looked at him with a bewildered curiosity. I think his presence will be a real value - especially as the home has more males than females and they could benefit hugely from a positive male role-model. Even if only for one month. I wish that there could be more permanent volunteers here as I think what the home lacks is consistency - children need stablity and routine in their lives - but living in Besease can feel so exhausting that I think you would need to be superhuman to live there for any real length of time. I have finished drafting the manual however and am implementing a set roster which is to be laminated and set on the wall so hopefully this will provide at least some consistency in the role of future volunteers and the work that the children are expected to do.

The heat continues. And, strangely, the rains are increasing. It is dry season however but it has now rained (and when I say rained, I mean the skies open up and release a fury upon the earth!) four times since I have been here. This is unusual but all the Ghanaians who I speak to say "the weather is changing all the time, you can't go by the old seasons anymore" - the rains are not due to come until April / May. I love it when it rains though - everything is refreshed and the colours are so intensified. I love the colours here - everything has such colour - the little shops (which are like little wooden shacks with doors that open outwards to display their wares) are painted bright blues and bright greens (and all have some reference to religion in their title as if enticing the good will of the spirits: "If God wills it Rasta-Hair Dos" or "Blessed Jesus Fried Rice"!!) - the ground is always such a brilliant terracotta red, and the greens of the forest are intense. Life is colour here. Colour and smell. I read a fantastic passage about the smells of Africa by a Polish man, Ryszard Kapuscinski, who lived in Ghana and it is so good (and so accurate) that I feel compelled to record it here:

"Something else strikes the new arrival even as he descends the steps of the airplane: the smell of the tropics.... we instantly recognise its weight, its sticky materiality. The smell makes us at once aware that we are at that point on earth where an exuberant and indefatigable nature labors, incessantly reproducing itself, spreading and blooming, even as it sickens, disintegrates, festers and decays. It is the smell of a sweating body and drying fish, of spoiling meat and roasting cassava, of fresh flowers and putrid algae - in short, of everything that is at once pleasant and irritating, that attracts and repels, seduces and disgusts. This odour will reach us from nearby palm groves, will escape from the hot soil, will waft above stagnant city sewers. It will not leave us; it is integral to the tropics".

The malam who I went to see sent me a message the other day - the spirits had told him that I am to be robbed!! He was concerned and so made me a special alm for protection which is a small vile of clear oil - before I travel anywhere I must dab the oil into the palm of my hand and using the first finger of my right hand put a spot of the oil onto my forehead and chest and rub some on my forearms and the spirits will protect me. I must say it has acted as a wake up call to me to be more cautious in my dealings, sometimes I forget that I am in Africa and become too relaxed about personal safety.

I am becoming tired of the starchy diet and long for fresh vegetables - after a month of the Ghanaian diet I can feel the difference in my body - I can't wait to cook for myself again! Ghanaians use oil like a vital ingredient in their meal and I don't think I ever want to eat white rice again in my life after I leave Africa!! At least fresh fruit is available and so I try to eat as much as possible - it revolves around three varieties though: pineapple, banana and orange.

On Thursday Carrick and I went to a monkey sanctuary in a village, Boabeng-Fiema, about 180k from Kumasi. 180k seems like an easy distance when thinking like an obroni but to travel 180k in Ghana took us five long, hot, dusty hours in a tro tro! Most of the road was dirt and very uneven, the van rattles and crashes over the holes, the windows shaking and dust coming in everywhere! The dust is so fine that it permeates everything! You have to hold a handkerchief over your mouth and nose but still it settles in your hair, in your clothes, on your skin - everything is covered with a soft layer of red and you can feel it irritating your lungs the entire ride! The monkey sanctuary was definitely worth it however - the people of the village believe that the monkeys (two species, the Mona and the Colobus) are 'children of the gods' or that they are the souls of the ancestors. Therefore the monkeys can do as they please, roaming the village to scavange food, eating from the plates of the villagers and taking food from cooking pots!! If a monkey's body is found dead then it is buried with full honours by the local fetish priest, laid out in a small wooden coffin and buried in a cemetery which is reserved for the bodies of monkeys and the fetish priests. Each grave is marked with the monkey's details: sex, age and the date it died. It was a beautiful sight! I loved that the animals were so respected by the villagers and the monkeys were very sweet, unafraid of humans (aware of their protected status?) they came close to us and ate peanuts that we fed them. We left the village by about 4pm and caught a ride back to the closest town with a German man who was there - by the time we found a tro tro returning to Kumasi it was 6.30pm and already night was falling - night comes quickly here, sunset lasts about 20 minutes, and I was filled with the thoughts of warnings of travelling at night! In the distance we could see lightning flashing in the sky and halfway through the journey the storm was upon us - rain poured in the van and the driver was skidding around - trucks and other vans zoomed past us and us past them on this dirt road, honking their horns as the only measure of safety, everyone driving so fast that I felt terrified, apparently they must go so fast in order to skim over the tops of the bumps... it was a long journey back and I must say for most of it I was clutching my pounamu and fearing that I wouldn't ever get home again!!

But all was okay and the malam's protection prayers must have worked! The following day I heard from a friend, Hedy, who I met while in the northern region - Hedy decided she wants to travel to Togo and Benin with me so we will cross the border from Ho on March 7th! I'm really happy that she will accompany me as she can speak French (and they are both Francophone countries) and she is a really interesting, outgoing and positive person - the perfect travelling companion!! I can hardly believe that in less than a month I will be leaving Ghana - it has gone so quickly! Next week I will travel to Accra to get my onward visas and to visit Ma's family (the mother of the orphanage) in Tema... it will be nice to have a few days away from the orphanage.

Last week it was announced that the Ghanaian government will reissue the currency (cedi) and knock four 0's off every bill. They say to "make it easier to count" but it seems to me to be more of an attempt to hide the increasing inflation problem in the country. The more time I spend here the more I see that the government tries to hide all its problems rather than confront them. I have spoken with Ghanaians about this and they agree - because Ghana is a child of massive IMF and World Bank "assistance" they want to appear like all of the programmes instilled by these organisations have worked successfully when in reality they haven't... the currency reissuing is quite representative of their system... when it doesn't work, cover it up. Like the problems in the education system, the health system, social welfare etc...

Well, as usual, time is running short and I must get going with the day's activities to be home in time to run the study group...

Settling into Besease...

2007-07-23T09:23:00.000-07:00

A second greeting from Kumasi on a sweltering hot African day... last night I experienced my first tropical storm - wow!! About 6pm the dry sky was filled with lightning and booms of thunder, the air was warm and moist and there was a strange stillness around - all the animals were quiet and were nowhere to be seen - I lay outside awhile and watched the sky - the flashes of lightning were so close together, lighting up the dark sky with such intensity! Then a few warm, fat drops of rain fell... my first time to feel African rain! After 5 minutes the rain stopped and I went inside disapointed... about 10 minutes later the sky opened up and the rain began to pour from the heavens!! I have never heard it rain so hard in my life!! Wow - the noise was deafening, and then the winds began... howling through the building, the tin roof pounding, the doors banging - the electricity went out and we were alone in the darkness with this immense display of mother nature's power! It was amazing - I found a candle eventually and realised the lock had broken on my door - it was a bit scary but I tied the door shut with string and enjoyed the cooler temperature to sleep in! When I left Besease for Kumasi today (about 12) the electricity was still out but the ground had the most glorious smell of earth and the air felt so fresh. It was a beautiful morning - although unfortunately the orphanage didn't fear so well and half of the concrete banister that surrounds the exterior had come off! But after the cooler morning the sun has come out in it's usual intensity and as per normal my skin is beaded with sweat and my clothes are sticking...

Life in Besease continues... the orphanage is challenging and I am beginning to realise the level of problems in Africa... it can be a bit overwhelming when I think about it. The problems here are so great that I don't know how they will ever be overcome. Even the smallest thing is an immense challenge (like teaching the children that it is not wise to throw their rubbish on the ground - they just think you're stupid - what else is the ground for?!!). I take the orpahange as a microcosm of greater Africa and it is already teaching me so much. The church which "runs" the orphanage is virtually permanently absent - they receive money every month from an American organisation and the majority of the funds disappear in paying the church members salaries for doing the most inconsequential jobs! Like the "administrator" (who has been there twice in the time that I have been living there) decided to double his monthly salary for petrol costs in driving to the orphanage from Kumasi (about 45 minutes). Then he says that he does the work "from the goodness of his heart"!! And the children go without... without enough food, without enough clothing, with no underpants, no bedding, no school books. The 24 children who live in the home were expected to use 7 bars of a soap for an entire month. For washing themselves and for washing their clothes. This is what the "administrator" thought was appropriate. I have had to buy the children's school books and text books from my own money because otherwise they simply wouldn't have them! And the same goes for soap, underpants and pyjamas. There is simply not enough money and I feel certain it is because the money is taken by the church members who run the home to make a profit for themselves. It is immensly frustrating. Amanda (the Canadian student there) has been working with social welfare and trying to install a social worker to attend the home twice weekly - social welfare has written reports about the orphanage and offered advice but the church will not take the advice because social welfare is partisan and "doesn't understand the way the church works" or "doesn't understand the religion". And when Amanda or I offer advice (Amanda has been trying to get them to change the systems for a year now) they disregard the advice because "you are obroni, you don't understand how it works in Africa". And so, we pay for the things the children need or we see them go without. It feels overwhelming and the immensity of the issue is exhausting! And this is one small orphanage in a rural Ghanian village. Extend these issues to a continent rife with corruption and the obstacles to development here can begin to be comprehended.

I have begun to feel quite helpless in the face of it all!!! But, I am taking every day as it comes and trying to do the best for the children with what I have and what I can provide. Even if I can only slightly positively influence their lives for the time I am here then it is all worth it. And as was explained to me before I arrived - things here progress very slowly. Life is slow - frustratingly slow at times (like this computer!). I am trying to set up systems at the orphanage in an effort to keep things cleaner and more organised but the children miraculously can't understand English when one is asking them to clean their room!! It's a challenge, but they are worth it. And when I see them smile and see that they are being taken care of then it is all worth the struggle. Life is hard for them - and will be hard for them for a long time, the biggest chance they have to escape the poverty trap is to do well at school and either get scholarships to foreign universities or get sponsored to complete university in Ghana and get a well-paying job. For most they will never acheive this though and the level of unemployment in Ghana is huge - there is no welfare system here either. If you don't work, or beg or steal then you go hungry and homeless. People sell things everywhere - anything - even pencils and shoelaces - they will try to sell to you through the windows of buses or on street corners. Women walk through traffic in the blistering sun all day with children strapped to their backs trying to sell things to passing traffic - I think how hard life must be for them and how it must appear that "obroni" have it so easy. And perhaps it's true... perhaps we do have it so easy. On Saturday another volunteer arrives - a 30 year old from Holland - hopefully her and I will be able to set up more of a routine and perhaps get some much-needed cleaning done around the orphanage! I think it will be easier then. I have also decided to stop working at the community school. After some sadistic behaviour by the teacher I decided that to stay would be to be a passive participant in child abuse. The children would be beaten for anything - for misspelling a word (an offence which the teachers are constantly guilty of!) they would have to come to the teacher with their fingers held in a bunch - she made another student bring her a plastic 30cm ruler and with the sharp edge of it she brought the ruler down hard on the children's fingertips - again and again and again. The children were yelping with pain and pulling away - their eyes filled with fear. For not remembering their times tables they would be beaten around the head and back - for lateness or "disrepectful behaviour" they would be caned - I counted 12 times a child was caned in one setting. And Amanda told me of an incident she witnessed where a child was layed out on a table, their legs and arms held, and their back caned repetitively - just like how the English colonisers treated African slaves in the 1800s and that is deemed human rights' abuse, why is this not also!?! I decided that I could not participate in the system that allowed this to happen and found out the ministry of education requirements for discipline - this behaviour is definitely outside the mandate (the ministry allows the headmaster to cane a child no more than four times on the palm or the buttock for a certain type of offence - lateness and disrepect - definitely not for getting the answer wrong and definitely not by the teachers!). So this morning I went to the school and waited for an hour to see the headmaster. While I waited I spoke to one of the teachers and told him my thoughts - "you can't say that to the headmaster!!" he said "say something else, but don't tell him that you are leaving because of the discipline, I don't know how he will react - it will never cease so why tell him?". I said that because it won't cease I MUST tell him and that I had a responsibility as a human being to tell him, no matter his response. When I finally could speak with him he gave me a big exapserated sigh. "You don't understand" he said "African children are very different from European children" (how so, the pigment in their skin?) "if you tell a European child to sit down, they sit down. If you tell a European child to go to school, they go to school" (what sort of magical country does he think I come from?!!) "African children must be disciplined and they only respond to being beaten, otherwise they would not come to school". I told him that I thought they would not come to school for fear of being beaten. He said that all "obroni" dislike the discipline used at the school but that we don't understand African ways. I explained to him the ministry of education regulation and said that beating the children for getting the answers incorrect is illegal. He said he agrees and would inspect the classes and "redirect" the teachers if he saw it "but I am a very busy man, and I can only go and inspect the classrooms when I have some time". So I doubt anything will eventuate, but at least I said my peace. Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that people do not talk audibly about the behaviour - that the teachers are afraid of the school systems, and of the headmaster. The violence acted out in the school perpetuates itself in the orphanage; the children beat each other and I am constantly breaking up fist fights - between girls, between boys, between boys and girls! Even as young as 3. Someone must break the cycle and it must start somewhere! The teacher agreed with me, but will anything happen?
\u003cbr\>So I am focusing my time on the orphanage. Writing a manual to help other volunteers and trying to work out a roster for jobs. I am also attending the social welfare office to see how social welfare works in Ghana. Yesterday I was allowed to sit in on a family mediation where a man had died and his family had not allowed his wife any of his property as they believed she had killed him by putting a curse on him! In Ghana women have very little rights under the law and if a woman wants to leave her husband she is entitled to nothing. She has to buy her husband a bottle of schnapps to appease him and then she walks away with nothing. Of course very few women will leave abusive relationships and the development of womens' rights is trailing sadly behind. On Thursday I am going to youth court with the social worker which I'm very much looking foward to.\n\u003cbr\>\u003cbr\>The highlight of my week was Sunday when I went to a malam (a traditional African fetish priest) with one of the older boys at the orphanage (he wanted something to help his football team win a match they are playing on Friday!!) I couldn't pass by the opportunity to experience this first hand so early Sunday morning we left... we had to take a tro tro to another village and there we began to walk into the forest. What a journey! We walked for about an hour through this incredibly dense, green forest - the air was so humid and the bush kept rustling with snakes fleeing as they felt our footsteps approaching. We met many people who were journeying through the forest - cocoa farmers and yam farmers, women carrying massive bundles of vegetables on their heads and men with machetes going to harvest crops. They were all so friendly and when I greeted them "akwaba" they would laugh and give me things - I collected two oranges and an avocado - they must have wondered what an obroni was doing so far into the forest! A cocoa farmer stopped us and allowed me to watch him collect the cocoa pods from the trees with a long pole, he cut one of these green pods open and showed me the cocoa beans inside: white and gooey and not particularly appealing! I tasted one, the gooey exterior is very sweet but tastes nothing like cocoa! (The seeds are dried in the sun before being transported to Europe for turning into chocolate). After about an hour of fast paced walking we arrived at the malam's house, completely isolated apart from one neighbour in the middle of this West African forest! As we walked through the forest nearing the house we were surrounded by the most brilliant butterflies I have ever seen in my life! It was incredible - butterflies of all sizes, gold and green and blue and purple, flying in front of me and next to me, darting from one bush to another - it was incredibly magical and apparently a sign of good luck. Once we arrived at the house - a tidy compound with three mud buildings and straw roofs and a cooking fire in the centre, we waited for about an hour on a wooden plank while the malam was called in from his farm - we sat with some of his children and one of his wives (he has two). One of his sons had dreads and all the others had shaved heads, Ato (the boy from the orphanage) explained that this boy has dreads because the spirits have chosen him to become the next malam. As such he cannot cut his hair until his father dies, if he does then he will fall ill and die. The boy was bewitching! He had the most beautiful, sparkling eyes and kept shyly stealing glances at me and looking away! (I think seeing an obroni woman out there was a novelty!) The wives could not speak english but smiled and greeted me warmly with their presence, they wanted me to photograph them and laughed and laughed at their images on the screen! Eventually the malam arrived and we were permitted into the room (without shoes or socks) - the room was small and cool and dusty - in the centre was a shrine with schnapps bottles, two wooden post red with the blood of sacrified animals and surrounded by white feathers and a small bowl with black powder inside and two white eggs. There were various other instruments for diving and some obscure objects that were apparently a part of a spirit - the malam sat on a stool in one corner and we faced on a small stool - he had a kind face with smiling eyes and a gentle demeanour. He smiled at me and asked me to ask any questions I wanted (Ato translated) - I talked to him about the spirit world and his work as a malam and the traditions, I could write immensely about our discussions but this email is long enough as it is so I will summarise with the explanation that the tradition is ancient, passed down from father to son - the spirits choose the son who they want to become the next malam - he takes no payment for his work but gifts are required for the spirits. He said we all have spirits and when we die our spirits will leave our body and enter another (reincarnation!) but some spirits do not go into other human beings and these are the ones with which he communicates. He said he will prepare something for protection for me and my family and he told me that the spirits liked me so he allowed me to photograph him and the room (including the objects that were part of a spirit) - afterwards we sat under a tree with his wives and his children and he told me that he would like me to stay and become his third wife and provide him with white children!! I laughed and laughed and told him that two wives were more than enough! The wives laughed and asked me to stay - they were all so kind and welcoming and open that a part of me wouldn't have minded to stay in the forest and live with them!!

So I am focusing my time on the orphanage. Writing a manual to help other volunteers and trying to work out a roster for jobs. I am also attending the social welfare office to see how social welfare works in Ghana. Yesterday I was allowed to sit in on a family mediation where a man had died and his family had not allowed his wife any of his property as they believed she had killed him by putting a curse on him! In Ghana women have very little rights under the law and if a woman wants to leave her husband she is entitled to nothing. She has to buy her husband a bottle of schnapps to appease him and then she walks away with nothing. Of course very few women will leave abusive relationships and the development of womens' rights is trailing sadly behind. On Thursday I am going to youth court with the social worker which I'm very much looking foward to. The highlight of my week was Sunday when I went to a malam (a traditional African fetish priest) with one of the older boys at the orphanage (he wanted something to help his football team win a match they are playing on Friday!!) I couldn't pass by the opportunity to experience this first hand so early Sunday morning we left... we had to take a tro tro to another village and there we began to walk into the forest. What a journey! We walked for about an hour through this incredibly dense, green forest - the air was so humid and the bush kept rustling with snakes fleeing as they felt our footsteps approaching. We met many people who were journeying through the forest - cocoa farmers and yam farmers, women carrying massive bundles of vegetables on their heads and men with machetes going to harvest crops. They were all so friendly and when I greeted them "akwaba" they would laugh and give me things - I collected two oranges and an avocado - they must have wondered what an obroni was doing so far into the forest! A cocoa farmer stopped us and allowed me to watch him collect the cocoa pods from the trees with a long pole, he cut one of these green pods open and showed me the cocoa beans inside: white and gooey and not particularly appealing! I tasted one, the gooey exterior is very sweet but tastes nothing like cocoa! (The seeds are dried in the sun before being transported to Europe for turning into chocolate). After about an hour of fast paced walking we arrived at the malam's house, completely isolated apart from one neighbour in the middle of this West African forest! As we walked through the forest nearing the house we were surrounded by the most brilliant butterflies I have ever seen in my life! It was incredible - butterflies of all sizes, gold and green and blue and purple, flying in front of me and next to me, darting from one bush to another - it was incredibly magical and apparently a sign of good luck. Once we arrived at the house - a tidy compound with three mud buildings and straw roofs and a cooking fire in the centre, we waited for about an hour on a wooden plank while the malam was called in from his farm - we sat with some of his children and one of his wives (he has two). One of his sons had dreads and all the others had shaved heads, Ato (the boy from the orphanage) explained that this boy has dreads because the spirits have chosen him to become the next malam. As such he cannot cut his hair until his father dies, if he does then he will fall ill and die. The boy was bewitching! He had the most beautiful, sparkling eyes and kept shyly stealing glances at me and looking away! (I think seeing an obroni woman out there was a novelty!) The wives could not speak english but smiled and greeted me warmly with their presence, they wanted me to photograph them and laughed and laughed at their images on the screen! Eventually the malam arrived and we were permitted into the room (without shoes or socks) - the room was small and cool and dusty - in the centre was a shrine with schnapps bottles, two wooden post red with the blood of sacrified animals and surrounded by white feathers and a small bowl with black powder inside and two white eggs. There were various other instruments for diving and some obscure objects that were apparently a part of a spirit - the malam sat on a stool in one corner and we faced on a small stool - he had a kind face with smiling eyes and a gentle demeanour. He smiled at me and asked me to ask any questions I wanted (Ato translated) - I talked to him about the spirit world and his work as a malam and the traditions, I could write immensely about our discussions but this email is long enough as it is so I will summarise with the explanation that the tradition is ancient, passed down from father to son - the spirits choose the son who they want to become the next malam - he takes no payment for his work but gifts are required for the spirits. He said we all have spirits and when we die our spirits will leave our body and enter another (reincarnation!) but some spirits do not go into other human beings and these are the ones with which he communicates. He said he will prepare something for protection for me and my family and he told me that the spirits liked me so he allowed me to photograph him and the room (including the objects that were part of a spirit) - afterwards we sat under a tree with his wives and his children and he told me that he would like me to stay and become his third wife and provide him with white children!! I laughed and laughed and told him that two wives were more than enough! The wives laughed and asked me to stay - they were all so kind and welcoming and open that a part of me wouldn't have minded to stay in the forest and live with them!!

I also attended a Ghanian/Duth rastafarian wedding on Friday night which was another experience altogether but I am running fast out of time as I must get back to the orphanage by 5pm for the study group I have set up...

Oh and something I missed in the previous email! While we were at the national park there was a scorpion in the bed! I had never seen a scorpion before and it caused a bit of a stir... to say the least! My fear of large spiders is well and truly cured though as I share my toilet and wash room (shower bottom with a hole for a drain and a bucket) with several large but seemingly friendly spiders...!

Arriving in Ghana, January 2007...

2007-07-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

I am here in Ghana, I arrived on January 7th after a 3 hour delay in Nigeria (for no apparent reason - the man sitting next to me said "welcome to Africa"!!). How appropriate. I got off the plane at midnight and was greeted by the immense humidity! It was about 25 degrees and I felt like I was swimming through the air walking from the plane to the (antiquated) airport. I was gripped by fear most of the journey thinking that I would not be collected by the aid agency - I needn't have worried as standing at the exit was a woman with a sign to collect me! The relief was immense! We slept for about three hours before having to catch a 5am bus to Kumasi (in the typical Africa style the bus was late and we left at 7.30am!). The bus ride was amazing - here was the Africa I had been waiting for - as we drove out of Accra I had my face pressed to the window - what a visual feast!! Women carrying all manner of things on their heads to sell through the windows of the bus - goats and chickens running everywhere and red dust as far as the eye could see!! Accra is more like a collection of little villages all stuck together and the poverty was so apparent. People just live in shacks with corrugated iron pieces as the roof (if they are lucky, some had wood and others had no roof at all) - everywhere people sit on the side of the roads to sell things - anything - to make a living. I was the only white person (obroni) on the bus and I don't think I have ever experienced that before - truly the ethnic minority and how refreshing!! I could feel everyone looking at me (especially the children who just stare half fascinated and half horrified at this person whose colour has been drained from their skin!!). We arrived in Kumasi by 1pm and meet with some other people from the aid organisation. It was unclear which project I would be going to as there had been some confusion with the arrival date and I had arrived three days later than the other volunteers. This must have been fate as it turns out to be completely in my favour and after speaking with a Canadian woman (Amanda) who is friends with the manager of Child Aid, I decided to go to a village about 45 minutes from Kumasi called Besease. Amanda has been in Ghana for a year as part of her education in social welfare / development studies - she has been working at an orphanage which desperately needs help and until now there has not been regular volunteers or regular funding. It sounded perfect for me! So by 4pm we were on a tro tro (a taxi van that services regular routes between villages and towns - usually a very old Toyota that has the doors tied on with rope and regularly breaks down but costs the equivalent of US$0.38 for an hour long journey!) to Besease. Unlike the other volunteers with Child Aid I would not be staying with a host family but instead living at the orphanage. Besease is a very small and very poor village without really the facilities for a host family set up. We arrived in Besease and began the walk up the dry red dust road to the orphanage which sits at the back of the village - as soon as we entered the village we were surrounded by packs of small children yelling "obroni, obroni, how are you?" "obroni, obroni, what is your name?" - being white here attracts attention everywhere you go (for better or worse - there are a a lot of people who think that if you are white you are automatically rich and can give them money). By the time we got to the orphanage night was falling and I was exhausted, I greeted the children who all wanted to touch me and Ma, the woman who runs the orphanage and does all the cooking, before falling asleep in my room amongst the noise of the children who run up and down the halls until they are tired... this was such an appropriate introduction to life in the home. Noisy. Ghana is a sensory feast - there is always noise - children screaming, crying, laughing, shouting, the noise of the animals (which are everywhere - goats and chickens and dogs - the roosters start crowing at about 3am), there is always smells - the spicey food cooking, the street vendors, the smells of the open sewers and drains and toilets... the sights are incredible - such colour everywhere! The red dry dust that you are always covered in, the bright clothing of the women, the green of the trees and the bush and the rubbish everywhere! There is no refuse system here - rubbish is just thrown in the street and the black plastic bags which everyone sells things in are everywhere!... and always, the feeling of heat and sweat and dirt... Ghana feels very alive. I commented on the array of smells to Amanda once who said that when she left Ghana for the first time and flew to Amsterdam the first thing she noticed was the lack of smell - sterile she said! And perhaps she is right. Life is so obvious here, so vivid, so real and also so hard.

There is no running water in the village - we must take buckets to the local well and manually pump the water and then carry the buckets back to the house (the children carry the buckets on their heads but I have to lug it by hand - much harder and much more is spilt!). We shower using buckets and always with cold water - and the electricity (thank god it is there at all) is quite unreliable. About once every fews day the electricity goes off and we use candles and torches. There is no kitchen at the orphanage - food is cooked in big black pots on fires at the back of the building - and is quite repetitive. I am treated like an honoured guest when it comes to meals and Ma always gives me the best of what she has, I receive an orange every day and milk in a little can - apart from that we eat a lot of rice (white) with spicy sauces or plantain and yam with sauces. I am given oats in the morning or bread but the children eat sourghum (which looks like glue). There is very little variation and almost no fresh vegetables. When Ma has cabbage and tomatoes she will make me a salad but this is very special and the children never get fresh vegetables.

My usual day consists of getting up around 6.15am and helping the children get washed and dressed for school - they have jobs which I help with like fetching water, lighting the fires and sweeping the dirt compound (with small bristle brushes tied together with string) - school starts for the older children at 6.45am and the younger children start at 8am. I eat my breakfast and wash when they have left and then I attend the community school (where they go) from 10am to 3pm - I am in a class of 10 - 13 year olds (the equivalent of NZ standard four) and I help the teacher and work with the children who need extra help. After school I play with the children and tutor those who need help (especially with english) and we eat dinner at about 4.30 or 5pm because it is usually dark by 6.30. I go to bed by about 9pm and the children run around until they are tired and they put themselves to bed - there is very little structure for them but apparently this is the African way... when I arrived the children did not have any mattresses - they slept on the wooden slats of the bunk beds or on the concrete floor. Since I have arrived Amanda has raised money and bought mattresses for them - the joy it brought them was huge and they sleep through the night now whereas before they wake several times from discomfort.

There is no running water in the village - we must take buckets to the local well and manually pump the water and then carry the buckets back to the house (the children carry the buckets on their heads but I have to lug it by hand - much harder and much more is spilt!). We shower using buckets and always with cold water - and the electricity (thank god it is there at all) is quite unreliable. About once every fews day the electricity goes off and we use candles and torches. There is no kitchen at the orphanage - food is cooked in big black pots on fires at the back of the building - and is quite repetitive. I am treated like an honoured guest when it comes to meals and Ma always gives me the best of what she has, I receive an orange every day and milk in a little can - apart from that we eat a lot of rice (white) with spicy sauces or plantain and yam with sauces. I am given oats in the morning or bread but the children eat sourghum (which looks like glue). There is very little variation and almost no fresh vegetables. When Ma has cabbage and tomatoes she will make me a salad but this is very special and the children never get fresh vegetables. My usual day consists of getting up around 6.15am and helping the children get washed and dressed for school - they have jobs which I help with like fetching water, lighting the fires and sweeping the dirt compound (with small bristle brushes tied together with string) - school starts for the older children at 6.45am and the younger children start at 8am. I eat my breakfast and wash when they have left and then I attend the community school (where they go) from 10am to 3pm - I am in a class of 10 - 13 year olds (the equivalent of NZ standard four) and I help the teacher and work with the children who need extra help. After school I play with the children and tutor those who need help (especially with english) and we eat dinner at about 4.30 or 5pm because it is usually dark by 6.30. I go to bed by about 9pm and the children run around until they are tired and they put themselves to bed - there is very little structure for them but apparently this is the African way... when I arrived the children did not have any mattresses - they slept on the wooden slats of the bunk beds or on the concrete floor. Since I have arrived Amanda has raised money and bought mattresses for them - the joy it brought them was huge and they sleep through the night now whereas before they wake several times from discomfort.

Last weekend I took a trip to Northern Ghana and spent three days with the other Child Aid volunteers at Mole National Park - it was great to speak to the others about their projects and we visited several projects in Tamale - rural schools where the children are being taught under trees until they classrooms are built (funded by Child Aid). Apparently the volunteers are critical to ensuring the children attend school as many will walk for miles to go to school where they can see an obroni! Child Aid is also setting up feeding programs in schools as another incentive for children to attend school - it is also a reason for parents to send their children to school as some parents would rather their children stayed home and worked. Mole National Park was amazing - we went on several safari walks and saw herds of elephants, lima monkeys, antelope, bushbucks, baboons, warthogs and many amazing bird species. Apparently there are lions, cheetahs and hyenas there also but we didn't see any as they only come out at night. The baboons were not at all scared of people and even came into our rooms to steal things! On the way back from Mole we stopped at a village called Larabanga, home to the oldest mosque in Ghana and one of the oldest in west Africa (built in 1471) - we were allowed to go into some of the peoples homes (small one room buildings built from mud and sticks which are mainly used as store rooms and people sleep on the roofs). It was really amazing and the people were so welcoming!

So here I am, facing the next two months of work and life in Besease. The children are beginning to warm to me and are no longer afraid to tell me what they need and talk with me about their problems. It's so heartwarming to have begun to earn their trust. Next month Child Aid will send another volunteer to Besease to help me so I will (with Amanda) draft a manual to help them and begin the foundations for regular volunteers to work here. Amanda also works with social welfare in the neighbouring village, Ejisu, and has invited me to work with her there to gain an understanding of the government "social services" in Ghana. It's been such an amazing experience already and I have learnt an immense amount and met some wonderful people - we have been taken to a nearby village and taken into the family of a man Amanda works with who allowed us be part of a ceremony where the naturally produced palm wine is drunk and fufu is eaten (a strange dough like food made from yam, kassava and plantain that you eat with your hands and a sauce in a communal bowl).

I find attending the school a struggle as I have realised how difficult life is for the students here - they are taught from a government program that is largely religious propoganda and independent or analytical thinking is definitely not encouraged. The children are also beaten when they do not get the answers right - and they are quite severly beaten around the head and on the back - they are also caned for being late and caned for speaking twi (their indigenous language). It's very difficult for me to sit through this but there is little I can do as this is accepted practice here. Even little children of 4 or 5 are beaten. The school is filled with the sounds of crying children. I don't understand how children can really learn in such a climate of fear and they never ask questions for if they say they don't understand then they are also beaten and ridiculed in front of the class. It's very difficult. So I teach the children in my own method, trying to allow them to think critically and answer the question themselves rather than just being told all the time. Hopefully I can provide some relief for them and they can learn something from my being there. And physically I am doing well - I have been taking a cocktail of vitamins every morning and hopefully this eleviates the bland and starchy diet (the orphanage is vegetarian so is perfect for me!) and aside from one bout of diareoah I have been in good health!! Two of the other volunteers who also started in January have contracted malaria already and one who started in December caught typhoid fever!! I am pretty lucky considering...