My dear Friends who have followed us this far: Yes, this is my last Green Letter, for I am leaving Colombia today, perhaps forever. Not our community, just me. I have decided I can no longer bear to hear of and watch the massacres in Palestine without taking more direct action, and I am leaving today to join the International Peace Brigades who are attempting to act as human shields against the incredible brutality of the Israeli Army there.
Our longterm coworker Mary Kelly is already out there as a nurse, and has been for many weeks. Her anguished reports make harrowing reading.
I will now begin a whole new series of Letters, simply called "Letters
From Atlantis" which will report from wherever we are, and will also contain
accounts of our continuing work in Colombia. I beg anyone who at this stage
wishes to cancel receipt of these bulletins, to let Becky know at: Con's
Boatyard, Baltimore, Co. Cork, Ireland or by email at:
atlantisfoundation@eircom.net Thankyou.
'This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of
them out there .. if we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we
embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy, but
just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from
now.'
Bush adviser, Richard Perle.
Any takers? Or would you prefer:
'Quietly and softly a shift is occurring, there's something in the air
..a glimmer of vision and possibility are starting to break through the
blackness which is choking our spirit and our very life. In the distance,
a hum: the soft sound of other people waking up: waking up to what is
possible for the Earth at this unbelievably sensitive juncture, waking up to the
call that is coming from our ancestors and from future generations, a call to
awaken ...'
- from Carlos Zorrilla, a Cuban American friend living and working in
Ecuador, dedicated fulltime to environmental work.
In March, Anne finally brought our murdered boys home - just some of their bones. Javier's parents are so poor, they could afford neither a funeral nor the RENTAL for the cemetery .. and so they asked us to take him with us .. the only part the DNA experts could identify for sure that is, his skull .. to lie with ..part of ..Tris forever. Anne reports on this strange happening which occurred before she was able to travel home to the farm: "I was staying with my friend, Rodrigo, whose house is strewn with herbs which he dries for a medicine man of the Kogi tribe in Northern Colombia. The two small boxes that are what is left of our two beautiful young men, we kept amongst the herbs and agreed to tell no-one about them. When the medicine man, whom I had never met before, arrived, he heard I was an astrologer and suggested an exchange of skills: that I do his chart and he would do a reading based on his tribal knowledge for me. "He threw out a pile of beads, shells and general bric-a-brac and immediately looked at me accusingly and said in a sharp, aggressive manner: "WHY ARE YOU LIVING WITH TWO DEAD PEOPLE?" I jolted with shock and asked him how he knew. "I can see them standing behind you," was his answer. I then explained about our boys and that the authorities had recently given back the bones and that they weren't buried yet. "That's no good!" he said, "they will never be at peace until they are returned to the Earth."
But he was wrong about the peace. Here is the translation of a report written by a black Colombian boy, Rafael, longterm member of our commune, and close companion of Tris - in fact it was nearly Rafa and not Javier who went on that last fatal journey with him. One Thursday afternoon, we buried the bones of Tristan and Javier here in the garden and I couldn't stop thinking about them. When I finally fell asleep that night, I dreamt that someone was outside the window. I thought I was awake. I saw Tristan outside the window and he was putting his hands on the plastic blind which covers it and looking in. But I knew he was dead and woke up shocked. When the fear had passed a little, I fell back to sleep again, but this time I dreamt that Tristan was inside the room, with someone else - Javier. I couldn't see them but I sensed them, and then I felt how they were beginning to pull my feet and lift my blankets, yet I knew they were dead and that they couldn't drag me away as they wanted to. I felt their hands and was so frightened, I woke up again in shock ..."
Rafa only told me about his dream after the following happened to me:
I returned to the farm from yet another stint in Popayan arriving late at
night after a four hour gruelling trot along deserted country roads, and
through fields, falling gratefully into bed when I got home. I dreamt
vividly of Tris over and over again all night, but it wasn't until I woke
up in the morning that I remembered Anne had brought the bones to the farm ..
I staggered out to the kitchen in the first dawn light and said alarmed and
half asleep, "Ned! Where have you put Tris?!" He looked at me shocked,
then realized what this mad woman was on about and said, 'Outside the gate'.
I then told Ned my dreams: First, the whole commune was there, warm, cosy,
happy together, lying around on mattresses in a communal room. Tris was
with us, lying on his back, white as in all our dreams, but joking and
happy and making a magical lampshade. In life he was our theatre magician,
dexterous, clever, full of mischief. And so it was: the lampshade kept
changing shape, it was like a kite, all lights and colours. I was
transfixed, amused, watching it, deeply contented. Then suddenly, he let
it go and Pouff! HE disappeared, leaving only the magic lantern.
I was gripped with a grief so mortal that I was choked with a crying
that would not come out, I couldn't breathe, I was gasping for my life and
grabbing on to the nearest person for help ... I woke up, shocked and
suffused with fear. Eventually I returned to sleep, and suddenly, Tris
reappeared again, in an old car, swerving cheekily to a halt in front of
me with a group of boisterous friends. Recalling my recent agony, I said
alarmed, "No! Not you again!" admonishing him not to come back, to keep
away, I didn't want to go through that deception again. But when I pushed
him away like that, his face stared at me white and shocked, crumpled and
he began to cry, whereupon I relented immediately, and said, 'No, no, it's
OK, of course you can stay with us,' and when I woke up, I vowed never to try
and stop him coming to us again.
Next day in the afternoon, out gardening with the girls, I said to Laura,
"Where exactly did they bury Tris?" and to my astonishment I discovered that
he was lying only 10 yards from my sleeping head at night.
I was then forced to have serious doubts about the non-survival of unhappy
spirits after they have been ripped away from life before time .. unlike
Rafa, I had not been thinking of Tris. He came to me.
Tristan was named after Tristan Jones, a lone round-the-world sailor man
from Wales who wrote a series of magnificent books of his travels. He
himself had been thus named because his mother gave birth to him on a boat
off the island of Tristan de Cunha. When we first planned to go to South
America in our own sailing boat, I got in touch with Tristan Jones and
asked him to be our sailing captain. At that time, he was planning a voyage
to look for the old Atlantis .... We met and discussed joining our two
journeys together, but tragically he lost first one leg, then the other,
from old war wounds, and eventually died. When we sent him news of Tris's
birth and of him being named after him, Tristan Jones wrote the new baby a
beautiful letter. Here is an excerpt: 'You are born into a world which is
in grave danger of self-wounding. I do not believe that if the worst comes to
the worst, humanity will completely destroy itself - there will be survivors
....you will see soothsayers and priests among your people. Look upon
them with a wary eye and be prepared to cut them down as soon as they appeal to
such false emotions as 'patriotism' or 'honour' -for they are the seeds of
the next holocaust... With your appearance you brought hope to the world,
as babies always do ...the human race will always be the same, with its
tragedy and comedy, its kindess and cruelties, its sadnesses and elations,
its expectations, its disappointments, and its Love. To take the last
amoung the stars is the mission of you and your generation .. and a little
part of that Love will be mine, for all of you..'
As I leave Colombia, this is the state of play of our Campaign and our community: back home in the forested valley where our farm lies, after us continuing to complain to every authority possible about the desecration of the forests, the FARC revolutionary army unexpectedly stepped in and threatened all wood-lorry drivers with a crippling fine if they took out one more log ... I made moves with a local leader and with Anne to investigate the financing of a project to teach local people carpentry and the making of small fine objects and furniture to give them an income using a minimum of wood. Anne will continue following this up. Our farmlands and food basis flourish as ever, being visited by ever increasing numbers of individuals, families and groups interested in seeing what is possible without chemicals.
In Popayan, our girls daily grow more famous for their ecological, social justice, war and peace songs, appearing on TV just before I left. A Reuters TV team who interviewed me yesterday about my journey to Palestine is travelling down to film the girls singing tomorrow. During Easter week celebrations, the girls performed at many cultural events to wildly enthusiastic audiences. Their messages and style of delivery melt the stoutest heart.
Anne continues to work for us amongst the Bogota middle classes, making all sorts of astonishing contacts along the way and working with the small but growing people's party called the Political and Social Front which is the only one that addresses the social justice issues which create the need for an armed insurgency in the first place. In the past, such parties have been massacred wholesale. There are some signs that this one is so far being left to campaign in some kind of peace.
Down in Caqueta where we used to live, where we began the Green Campaign, where we were given 5 days to leave on our first exile, and which eventually became part of the massive demilitarized zone where the now failed talks between guerrilla and government took place - we still have campesino friends who write to us. The day we heard the Army had once again taken over this region, I received these words from our firmest friend there: 'When we heard the peace talks had broken down, many families fled from the region in fear of paramilitaries entering and massacring us as they have in other parts of the country. Our beloved Colombia goes from bad to worse, people die simply because they work the land, there is no such thing as human rights here, every day you hear the crying of widows and orphans and there is no consolation for these people. I don't know when this terrible war will end.'
I wrote to him as best I could .. but now I must go off to a far worse war,
where the dreadful has already happened and where the Men - and Women -
in suits are given 90% of all media time to invent their false history and
weave excuses for the next massacres ...
Perhaps if any of you are in touch with Mr. G. Bush, you might like
to mention to him that, apart from thousands of innocents dead, the net
result of his machiavellian 'war on terror in Bogota is the following, spotted
by Anne: 1. a taxi and 2. a hamburger stall, both called in large letters:
'Ben Laden'. Looks like some simple folk have accepted Bush's theory: "If
you're not with us ..."
Following the report in the last Green Letter of an impromptu birth
before dinner, our totally unwarranted medical fame led Ned into deep
waters, when one evening an anxious and diminutive Indian mother came marching
up the garden path with her boy in tow. He had just cut his finger off. He
had it in a bag. While the rest of us hid away to faint and quell our
nausea, Ned valiantly sewed up the other badly slashed fingers - but
balked at the presumably highly skilled task of finger-replacement. (There
is no question of poverty stricken families being able to afford either the
travel or the treatment that you and I might consider our obvious right).
I am mentioning this incident in case any of you have useful knowledge,
advice or gifts of simple medical equipment to offer Ned as the mother and boy
left so delighted with the treatment and care they received that .....oh dear.
And now for an anecdote on the urban Colombian education our young country
lasses are receiving: Katie, 16, going to classes on her bicycle, is stopped,
attacked, threatened with a knife and knocked off her bike by some boys in an
attempt to steal it. Ever cool, Miss Kate wraps her legs around the bike as
she falls deftly pretending to be tangled up in the works. The boys panic at
the time their theft is taking - shopkeepers and passersby are starting to
notice something is up - and flee, sans bike. I insisted she go to the police.
Like everyone brought up in Colombia, she says, "Ah, they won't do anything".
I push, insist. She goes. And returns with the following: The police cannot
do anything UNLESS SHE GIVES THEM THE NAMES of the thieves ... well, well.
And to complete the light relief, I will give the closing shots of this
letter to my friend Elaine in England. We have never met but have
maintained a deep correspondence ... during which she must have got to
know me, as she had this to say upon hearing of my departure for Israel:
"Any road up, Jenny, you are a strong and fearsome woman, destined to make
any army take cover and run ...'um, have they been ..'er ...warned? And ...
don't you think it would be sort of .. fair ..to give them a fighting
chance, or at the very least the chance to scarper bloody quick??!!" So
much for my efforts to appear a nice middleclass English lady to new
penfriends ....ta, Elaine,
Aftermath-11-September-2001@yahoogroups.co.uk These people will send you
regular news reports and articles mostly of a very high standard.
Readers may also be interested to know that the March-May issue of
Peace News contains an interview with us. Available from: 5 Caledonian
Road, London N1 9DY.
and love to all of you, Jenny (James)
PS 'The same stream of life that runs through my veins
runs through the world
and dances in rhythmic measure.
It is the same life that shoots in joy
through the dust of the earth
into numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves
of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life
that is rocked in the ocean cradle of birth and death
in ebb and flow
My limbs are made glorious
by the touch of this world of life
And my pride
is from the life throb of ages
dancing in my blood at this moment.' (Rabindranath Tagore)