Friday, 8 Dec 2000

RESERVA INTEGRAL SASARDI, Colombia

Most of us crashed early last night, although a few lasted through Enrique’s raw video footage of Bolivia. I was awakened by a sound like the beating of hummingbird wings, but hummingbird wings rise and fall in pitch and this noise was more constant — and besides, it was pitch black. I couldn’t figure it out. An over-the-mountain helicopter? A Trigana chain saw? A nocturnal honey bee? At last it dawned on me as I detected cautious steps on dry leaves. It was the growling of a panther or tigerette, so quiet it hadn’t awakened the dog or disturbed the snores of Julio, whose bed platform is much closer to the prowler’s path. As it moved uphill, it tripped the early warning system of the howler monkeys, whose shrieks rolled everyone over and made the dog bark. Light was still an hour away, so everyone was soon back to sleep — except me. I rose and wandered down to work on my gray-water system, transplanting water plants into the rock filter at first light, pacing the distance to available stream gravel, and gathering tools.

The gray-water beds (under construction).

Photo: © Institute for Appropriate Technology.

Everything clicked in the council meeting today. We slid through a tough agenda with relatively little friction and a dozen significant agreements.

Today’s decisions:

1. Approved the ENA logo
2. Reelected officers
3. Created 9th region
4. Chose the 9th region’s initial council delegate
5. Selected an Ecovillage Contact Office (ECO) in each region
6. Limited access to the council internal list by lurkers
7. Clarified the decision-making process between meetings
8. Approved the regional network autonomy policy
9. Elected a representative to the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) board
10. Created a timetable for developing our next strategic plan
11. Created a plan for bylaws revision
12. Reported numerous decisions by committees

There was some disappointment with unfulfilled expectations related to the budget and our fund-raising plan. Maybe we should have spent more time in the financial committee meetings. Likewise, the ECO guidelines were presented too unformed and have been sent back to committee. But on the whole, we are satisfied. For a group that has to work in three or four languages, we did all right.

After lunch, I mustered a dozen pairs of hands and started putting golf ball-sized stones into bags at the stream and schlepping them up the hill. If we had twice as many people, we could have formed a bucket brigade, and if we had twice as much time, we might have rigged a cable hoist. As it was, we used the four strongest backs — the Cuban, Roberto; Juan the Colombian; Giovanni the Mexican; and the Venezuelan, Orlando — to make the most climbs carrying sacks of rock 130 meters up the slope to the newly constructed wetland by the dishwashing sink. Within the hour, I shouted, “Finito!,” and we were back up top admiring our work. Giovanni set about reworking the Reserva’s wooden drums — disassembling the broken pieces, sanding the edges, repairing the rawhide strings, and cutting new hides for heads. Others prepared for another trip to Unguia, where they will begin a community conflict and consensus course in three days.

Playa Sardi, one of many pristine beaches.

Photo: © Institute for Appropriate Technology.

A woman who works for the network of National Reserves had a sad story: Sixty of the Natural Reserves, about half, have been closed by the violence in the past few years. The first of the Darien parques has recently fallen the same way — the residents who study the biology and host the visiting scientists have been forced to leave on penalty of death. To the south, repositories of biodiversity have then become battlefields, suffering indiscriminant burning by the guerrillas, aerial bombardment from the army, crop and forest defoliation for narcotrafficantes, and other unthinkable crimes against the very heart of nature. It is Szeberniza or Sarajevo, the peacekeepers withdrawing to leave an utterly dependent refugee safe haven in the hands of killers. The country is not moving toward peace, she said, it is moving toward war as the base of its economy, with impoverished youth taking jobs with whomever can pay, clothe, and feed them. It is ecowar writ large, not in the barren oil fields of Kuwait, but in the deepest sanctuaries of life.

The
precariousness of Sasardi is stark. Paramilitaries control the beaches. Guerrillas control the mountains. The isthmus is a prime transshipment point between the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts, and from the coasts much of Colombia can be reached by sea or by river, which is why it is so strategic for all parties to the war. And there, smack dab in the middle, are the natural reserves — biological treasure chests exposed to the raiders of our future.

Soon I will be back in Tennessee, greeting our new apprentices and preparing our new courses. We go through life collecting people and places we love, and they become our memories. On this trip, I’ve collected the ex-mayor of Unguia, the dockside at Turbo, the beach at Trigana, the black-faced Tamarins of Sasardi, and Leon’s fruit milkshakes in a little open-aired restaurant on a dirt street in a poor, dusty, embattled cowtown in the richest country on earth.