"I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has
progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return
to simplicity of thinking and living." Lin Yutang
Most of this Green Letter is written by Becky, mother of Tristan who was murdered in Colombia in 2000. She is at present staying on our mountain farm in the South of Colombia. She writes:
"This is the second time I have visited the Atlantis settlement in Belen, Huila. The first time was 2 years ago, when I was fighting the Colombian Government and the British Embassy who saw fit to kidnap my youngest son Brendan after the death of my eldest son Tristan and hand him over to my estranged husband who did not even know the boy. I have never seen him since.
"But life moves on and I have been working on our old wooden sailing boat in Ireland for the last three years, restoring her and using a lot of my shock, horror and dread at what happened to Tristan and his friend Javier, both aged 18 at the time. I needed to keep my feet on the ground and use my body and energy in something that could absorb me fully as I was frightened of going very dead or totally mad.
"At the end of 2003, I decided I needed to be with everyone at home on our farm in Colombia to recharge my batteries over the European winter months, as we are now faced with a huge project: of joining the 'Flotilla of Hope' in the Pacific Ocean, a campaign run by Australians concerned at their government's cruel and hypocritical treatment of refugees, and which requires boats to sail to an isolated prison island. Also we intend to join another more dangerous action concerning the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
"I want to tell you about the Atlantis settlement. To reach our farm, you travel on a bumpy open-sided bus on dirt tracks - there is only one service per week on Sundays, market day. Our farm is at the very end of the line, after that there are just the mountains of Purace National Park. Once off the bus, you have to walk about 30 minutes and cross over a swinging bridge spanning a very fast, wide, rock-strewn river. When I was last here, this bridge was just a couple of rotting planks and a wire; now it is a little more substantial.
"Two years ago, as you entered our land, there was just an empty field. Now it is full of banana palms, sugar cane, potatoes, giant cultivated blackberries and the many local root crops we depend on, which seldom have English names.
"At the top of the field, you come to an archway of flowers which leads to our communal house. Just before you enter, there is a small grave covered in growing flowers where Tristan and Javier lie.
"You pass through the floral archway into a lovely flower garden surrounding our large wooden house. Inside there are 7 bedrooms, all different shapes and sizes; a large kitchen and a common room that is used for music practice, dancing, movement classes, group therapy sessions and for the new baby to play in.
"We start the day at 5.0 a.m. but it is not light till 6.0 a.m. As my own internal clock is still operating on European time (6 hours ahead), I am the earliest riser. I light the fire and start up the kitchen. All the food we eat is from the garden, and from the goats who give us milk. Preparing breakfast and dinner is an energetic, busy, communal job - no packets, tins or easy food here. Eating only organic home-grown veg. makes your body feel slimmer and your skin feel clean and smooth.
"After breakfast, the busy morning changes gear: it is time for outside work, a good three hours out in the very˙large garden, some of which is on a slope, the rest on flattish land. The garden slopes down to a mountain stream and is surrounded by banana palms. An amazing amount of food comes out of it daily, carrots, beetroot, greens, salads, onions, cauliflower, parsley, rocket, cabbage, spinach, Chinese vegetables and much more, including local fruits.
"I have been planting maize, which shows its head in 3 days and is ready to eat in 4 months, growing in that time to well above the height of the tallest man. All the work is very physical and hard-going, but incredibly satisfying.
"At midday, those that are not too tired prepare lunch and those that are exhausted do gentler 'office jobs' or collapse in a hammock, two of which swing in the rabbit run and give a wonderful insight into the incredibly active and varied life of dozens of rabbits who live completely naturally, except that their food is brought to them in big sackfulls. We keep them as lovely friends and for the compost they make, we don't eat any of our animals.
"I am writing to you in our front garden where there is a year-round riot of colour from an ever-blooming flower garden, a delight for the eyes and soul. Also a lemon tree and tree tomato trees all around as well as 'ordinary' tomatoes, difficult to grow because of the blight that descends from the surrounding forests. In one day here, the early morning can be very nippy indeed, reaching too hot to work in by midday, with rain, sun, breeze, cloud - an ever-changing sky as different weathers sweep up the river valley or down from the mountains. I have fairly dark skin yet got badly sunburnt here, but the magic healing properties of aloe vera sorted that out immediately. This wonderful plant grows abundantly here, and is free, in stark contrast to the 8 euro watered down variety you get in Ireland.
"We use the 'packaging' of the fun part of our theatre to enclose our environmental messages which are mainly contained in my sisters' exquisitely delivered green, peace, social and political songs. However the immediate 'environment' of the Indians' communal house was quite shocking to us: first the 'stage' we were expected to perform on was a series of muddy uneven planks hurriedly and unsafely erected and not even nailed down. Our resourceful professional dancer Louise, however, on seeing it simply said, 'Oh don't worry, I've danced on worse than this.' Eventually though, after rather a lot of pushing from us girls, the guambianos were prevailed upon to put in a few nails and take down a balustrade to give us a better space.
"We had been promised a changing room for the 6 women and one man forming our theatre grup. Dark despair and deep annoyance as we arrived to discover a dirty, mud-floored, foul-smelling shack with no coverings for the window holes or doorway and row upon row of large chunks of slaughtered cow hanging on hooks in the rafters above us.
"Jenny went immediately on strike. Luckily, she has a good relationship with the female leader of the indians, a lovely bright, suitably bossy woman who gets things done, and fast. The mud hut was cleared of debris, bricks, ash, fire wood, and slaughtered animals, and drapes were hastily hung, much to the disappointment of the dozens of indians happily crowding round to watch us change.
"The next battle came over the absurdly earsplitting ugly music blaring out over the loudspeakers, a tragic comment on the decadence of the indians' natural culture and their taking on of the general awfulness of mainstream Colombian values. A fight ensued with a visiting male guambiano leader who when he wasn't beating dogs half to death, was intent upon taking us over completely in the most outrageously arrogant manner - the tribe is utterly male-dominated in spite of there being a female leader locally. It took all the persistence of angel-faced but iron-willed Louise to insist that our own CD of meaningful songs should provide the background for our show.
"We were then informed that we had to perform later than arranged as the CATHOLIC PRIEST had not arrived to say MASS. Jenny pointed in horror at one of the indians' own posters encouraging them to keep their ancient culture and said out loud to those standing around: 'How is accepting the religion of the colonialists keeping to your traditions?!' Maria Antonia, their leader, smiled wryly and said, 'Yes, there are many of our tribal leaders who would agree with that comment.' She added words which indicated that they have more or less decided to pay lip service to Catholicism in order to receive various government handouts available to them (which in turn then further ruin their tradition of self-reliance).
"During our show, more than half the guambiano population (several hundred of whom had bussed into the area from another settlement for the occasion), stayed behind their communal house out of sight of the stage squatting around an open air fire consuming large quantities of meat. One single toilet served for this vast population. It was perched on the edge of a muddy slope and preceded by a ditch you had to jump over surrounded by barbd wire. To end the morning, Jenny got caught in the wire and I had the delightful job of extricating it from her flesh, leaving a hole in her arm.
"The best part of the outing was when we had all packed up and were running home in the tropical rain declaiming in loud (English!) voices the usual 'never again' and planning to build a decent theatre on our own farm....
"I was quite distressed by my romantic ideas of maltreated, sweet native
indians coming to such a muddy end. The truth is they are mostly lethargic,
never smile, are terribly interbred in an attempt to keep their communities
intact, and really very uninspiring, except for one or two bright souls who are
our good friends."
"Our way of life: ... we will be exchanging the grand achievements of
large-scale technological society for modest accomplishments on a more human
scale. We will once again be a part of mankind's great journey, no longer set
apart from it and seeking to manipulate it like technological gods. We will
regain a degree of stability that will permit the deepening of culture and the
enrichment of lives lived simply. Above all, we will have the comfort of
knowing that our relationship with the environment is sustainable, and that the
earth is a true home to us."
"A strong and fearless woman, we re-met her on the plane on the way out of the Zone. She had problems with her ticket and we lent her money to sort it out. She was very grateful and paid it back to us as soon as we got back to Bogota. She came to our flat there and met several more of our people. She asked lots of questions about our interpersonal relationships, whether we had our babies at home, how we dealt with violence and disagreements, and we were very open with her and told her anything she wanted to know.
"She sat in a long yellow dress with long flowing hair and beautiful skin, we all sat on the floor and it was a very interesting evening. And then we asked her some questions about the indian tribes and what they get up to, and soon we were transfixed in horror as she told us in a very matter-of-fact way what they do to their own women if they are found sleeping with a man other than the one they had married.
"They take the woman and tie her up in the middle of a public square, strip her naked and tie her legs apart. Then they shove a pole or sharp instrument up inside her until she bleeds, sometimes to death. They do this in front of the other women who all let it happen. No punishment for the man one notes.
"Anne and I looked at each other with shivers going through our bodies. Then
we said, 'So, not many women ever go off with other men then?' 'Oh, yes they
do,' replied the indian woman, and the punishment always follows.' She showed
no shock or protest against the custom and spoke coolly about it. We told her
what we felt and thought and she could see our horror, but she was firm and her
attitude was 'that is just what we do.'
Next morning, Lou was still worried enough to prepare herself to go out and visit the young man again to see if he was healing well, but she was prevented from doing this by a further more pressing emergency: we were called out to the wife of a friend who was in late pregnancy, had fallen, and labour had been brought on but was going badly. Becky and Louise rushed off to respond to the call. Here is what Becky reports:
"We met up with the woman who was walking from her own farm in the hills to a shack they have on the roadside. She was accompanied by her husband, a grown-up daughter and a female cousin.
"She had been in labour for the previous three days, was 43 years old but looked about 60 and not in a condition to be having more babies. She had been told four babies ago not to have any more, as it was dangerous for her, but her husband would not agree to her being sterilized. This was to be her twelfth baby.
"On meeting her on the pathway, we heard that her waters had just broken and that she was having contractions very close together. We laid her out on the planks of one of the local bridges over the river and I gave her an internal examination on the spot in case the baby was about to be born But despite having been in labour so long, she had not dilated at all. So we continued up to the road and all sat in the little wooden shack. It was very small indeed, just a tiny single bed and one small table inside. When tropical rains fell, six of us could only just squeeze into it
"Louise and I were able to talk freely to one another in English, a blessing as we had to let each other know what we thought of what we had landed ourselves in. We broke into the kitchen of the nextdoor neighbour's larger shack, as the shed we were in had none. The absentee owner is a friend of ours and we knew he would not mind. Then we had to make beds, clean up and generally sort everything out, as the woman had not eaten or drunk anything for 24 hours. Her husband had gone off during the previous days on a booze-up.
"Lou and I found ourselves doing practically everything while the grown up daughter sat reading our Spanish verson of 'Where There is No Doctor.' We started to feel a little aggressive and pushy and soon got everyone to move and work, the husband cutting wood, the grown daughter making drinks and food and the cousin picking herbs to bring on contractions.
"Poor Louise was still feeling ill from the day before when she had to travel far to help the young man who had cut his leg open. But we stayed about 8 hours with the lady, though we could see that without conventional drugs, she was in big trouble. Her cervix was not dilating and despite all our efforts to get her to take lots of liquid, she had gone too long without fluids and was now very weak indeed.
"I was personally horrified at the coldness from her husband. He would hardly look at his wife when they sat next to each other. He was still suffering from a hangover. The woman had put up with this man for years, and so it was hard to feel sorry for her either. Over all, there was a feeling from all the family members of total uninterest in each other.
"We sent notes home to our farm about 30 minutes away with one of the woman's youngest boys to ask for food, blankets, towels, warm clothes for us and many other items as there was nothing in the shack at all. I know these people are poor, but there is a really given-up almost spoilt attitude from them.
"Louise and I were worried for the safety of the baby and mother. We discussed it with the mum and dad and said we thought they should go to hospital but the mother said, 'No, please don't send me, they treat you so badly there' and they also charge so much that the local people cannot afford it. We respected her plea but we knew that in the end, she would have to make that journey if she wanted to survive. We had been with her from 8.0 a.m. and it was now early evening, so we did a swap with Julie, 14 and Laura, 18, two sisters in our community, and they then did the night shift.
"They helped all they could throughout the night, but in the early morning
had to send the woman on her way to hospital The surrounding circumstances and
background, not to mention the terrible family relationships, all made a home
birth impossible. We eventually heard that another day and night later, the
baby was finally born, and that mother and child were infected and still in
hospital."
They survived, but once again we would like to ask that people with specialized knowledge in midwifery and first aid share their experiences with us, and that anyone who is in a position to, help by sending us local anaesthetic, surgical sewing needles and thread, plus medicines that can be used to speed up labour, as we are often faced with these emergencies. Thank you.
In a country like Colombia, this is a very beautiful death indeed.
And on that note I will end, with love to all our helpers, supporters and correspondents. Anyone interested in either visiting or joining our farming project in Colombia or boat project in Ireland, please write to:
Jenny James, Atlantis Ecological Community, Belen, Huila, Colombia
email:atlantiscol@hotmail.com website: www.afan.org.uk
PS. "The future is not some place we are going to but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination." John Schaar
"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."
Arundhati Roy