The case of the mysteriously felled tree

This photo needs explanation beyond the translation. The sign hanging from the side of the truck says the following: "Greenpeace extracted a Brazil-Nut tree from an area that had been impounded by the federal government." It's a scathing accusation, hung on the truck that was transporting said tree (trunk) from Castelo de Sonhos to points south. And the thing is, it's absolutely true, if bizarre. Two weeks ago, the world-renowned environmental organization Greenpeace entered a sustainable-development settlement on the margins of the Br-163 outside Castelo, and dragged out a 52 ft. long castanheira trunk, a species protected by Brazilian law against being cut. Greenpeace claims that they had government permission to remove the trunk, and that in fact the tree had already been cut down and partially burned by a rancher (this is unconfirmed). The population of Castelo, already very critical of Greenpeace's activities, didn't let the team leave the town with the trunk. Greenpeace was planning to transport the log to a "exposition illuminating the problems of deforestation" in São Paulo, but were compelled to abandon the tree when they were surrounded by nearly 300 Castelo residents. The climate was tense, but the situation ended peacefully.

When writing about the Br-163, Greenpeace functionaries often make sweeping accusations, blaming all roadside residents (ranchers, smallholder farmers, sustainable development projects, etc.) of the area for the accelerating destruction of the rainforest. As a result, the 300 protesters who forced Greenpeace to abandon the tree-trunk represented a cross-section of Castelo society, all of whom were mystified as to why an environmentalist organization would come to Castelo and remove a tree. No one missed the situation's irony.

...More updates (camels?) from SW Algeria

Thank you, Jeremy, for posting my last update! I will likely have to revert to that method of posting again. For today, at least, my internet connection seems unusually cooperative. I learned from a friend, Bill, who works for Human Rights Watch on Western Sahara, that a link to our blog was sent out as a google news update to the recipients of a Western Sahara news alert. Yikes! Hopefully it goes without saying that what you find written here is indended as a log of my observations, not a news source. What I am experiencing now will take many months, maybe a lifetime, to sort out. Luckily, Bill (or Billy as our Arabic instructor used to call him) is coming for his first visit to the camps in a couple of weeks and it happens to be his job to write up reports on a dime!

I am finding both my Hassaniya lessons as well as my part-time work at an English school here extremely rewarding. I wish only that I had more time to balance out my language work with the important business of socializing. Even in my brief time here, I have had a difficult time negotiating my dual expectations to 1) get a handle on the language and 2) be a responsible, if temporary, member of society here. I am still living with my friend Alice's host family and find myself very busy trying to keep up with all of the family commitments I have inherited through her despite/because of the fact that I cannot effectively speak the language. Every time I try to steal away to study, I feel like I am neglecting some social responsibility (who did I forget to visit? did I stay long enough?). At the same time, I know that I have to learn Hassaniya in order to get to know anybody. I have been keeping all this in mind as I've looked for a host family of my own. On Halloween, I will be moving in with a family, which seems to be very sensitive to the challenge of balancing family and study. My primary host's name is Haha. Appropriately, she has a great sense of humor and two small boys who are already pulling pranks on me.

One of the biggest surprises so far in my trip is how many breaks I have been given because I am married. I have found myself unexpectedly exempted from some of the interpersonal concern and social commentary that surroud unmarried women's behavior and comportment. Married woman have a code of their own, which I am coming to learn. For instance, I am not allowed to make myself beautiful with henna or jewels while my husband is absent. (I am still getting used to the idea of being approachable by other women without consistent access to bathing water, let alone beautiful.) Many women live apart from their husbands (many of whom work in Spain), so our distance does not strike anyone as particularly odd. Naturally, everyone I meet is eager to meet Jeremy and some have suggested we slaughter a camel when he comes. After attending a huge wedding where a dozen animals lost their lives (and after which I was ill for a few days from eating one poor goat's head), I politely declined the offer.

Letter Excerpts from the Camps

Maddy wrote the following to Jeremy recently, and encouraged him to post pieces of the letter to the blog, as her internet connection in the camps is close to non-existent:

"My trip into the camps has been guided by something beyond myself, which is not to say it has been easy. My plane was hours late and my luggage got lost again on the flight down here and I didn't arrive into the camps until 5 am on Wednesday. Fortunately, the principal of the English school in Smara was kind enough to drive to the airport (an hour away), wait for me, and drive me back to crash in the school for a couple of hours. Waking up Wednesday was like waking up into another life. I don't know how else to describe it. I tried to live my same life for the first couple of hours, continuing to advance a go-get-em graduate student attitude, letting my mind do all the work. But by mid-day, I knew I could not do it alone (not "it" like the fieldwork, but "it" like the day itself). I had to ask for help. I know that might sound crazy, but it was at that moment that simple. In retrospect and after talking to a new friend, Alice, I am realizing its not crazy but the reality of living in this incredibly difficult place. You cannot lead with your head alone here. I think that will make sense to you after a few days here. I had gone to the guest house and there was not a soul there at first and the place was even more run down. No locks on the doors, etc. I didn't know where I was going to stay.

"So looking for a place to start, on Thursday, I went to FEB 27 (another camp) to meet Alice, a grad student from Cambridge, whose name I had heard from the Glycines center in Algiers. I had no idea what her story was though. It turns out, Alice is an anthropologist working with Marilyn Strathern! She insisted right then and there that I move in with her until I find a host family of my own, arguing that me being around could help us both out in our fieldwork because it is very difficult for women to move around alone here, etc. She has spent just short of 6 months here working on language and has 15 months left thanks to the generous UK educational system. I have spent the last couple of nights with her host family, which has already given me a Hassaniya name (Nisreen, a kind of rose). They live close to the family with which I stayed last time. I will be spending the day over there today, and possibly moving back in later. I have had many (too many) offers for tutors. One had heard about me and actually showed up at the house last night to introduce himself. He has taught Hassaniya for several years in Mauritania and is fluent in both English and French so it would be a good match. I will start lessons on Tuesday.

"In the meantime, I am working at a huge wedding tomorrow and possibly going for a ride into the desert to the so-called liberated Western Sahara, on Monday. Neither of these things would have been conceivable to me as possibilities during my last trip. From that very first day I felt like this was a totally different place than the one I visited a year ago. For better and for worse, I have been treated differently this time--as a temporary resident in Alice's footsteps and not a visitor. That is an incredible honor, but also a lot of responsibility to have already. So, for example, people are feeding me what they eat, some of which makes me gag like camel lard, and sheep intestines. Some folks cannot understand why I don't already speak Hassaniya, which is really hard, but I am definitely feeling motivated to learn it."

"The Ghosts are Arriving"

The banner at left hung from the rafters at a 300-person strong rally in Santarém this week calling for the government to repeal its cancellation of 99 recently-created agrarian reform projects in Western Pará. Accused of being "ghosts," of not really existing at all, scores of families from the region's farming settlements traveled to Santarém and camped out until their leaders could negotiate a deal with the government. This banner--saying that the ghosts would arrive--hung from one of the buses that left Castelo on Monday to make the very long journey to Santarém on the unpaved Br-163. The agrarian reform settlements were canceled by the government in August when some of the 99 projects in the region were found to be fronts for illegal lumber operations. The farmers in the photo insist that their agrarian reform projects (e.g. the PDS Brasília in Castelo) are not in bed with the lumber mafias, and that the government's wholesale cancellation of all 99 settlements was a hasty move. "The responsible parties for deforestation and violence are not the small family farmers, who were brought here by the government in the first place," one settler said. "We're being accused of that, but in fact it's the lumber people and the ranchers who are working against the law, and often against us!" The 300 settlers stayed in Santarém all week, and left for their homes this morning, after receiving word that INCRA and the federal watchdog ministry (MPF) had reached an agreement guaranteeing the future of the agrarian reform settlements. Another farmer: "Now they see we're real, not ghosts...I hope I can get back to work now!"

Workin' on the Br-163

Here's Jeremy, busy interviewing one of the most charismatic labor leaders along the Br-163 a few weeks ago. "Alenquer" goes by the name of the city where he was born, some 900 km north of Castelo de Sonhos, where he currently lives. He was the architect of the roadblock that gained regional and national media attention, and he has recently accompanied more than 100 landless workers from Castelo on a journey to Santarém for a regional social movements meeting. Their task over the next few days is to decide how to respond to the cancellation of agrarian reform projects in Western Pará, as their settlements have been accused of lacking environmental approval and thereby contributing to rampant deforestation along the Br-163. In this photo, Alenquer is describing (for the video camera) how the Castelo roadblock was organized: 60-90 people worked in shifts at the blockade, with teams assigned to security, cooking, camp cleaning, and public relations. In a few days, we'll know whether or not the roadblock--which in large part resulted in this crucial meeting in Santarém--had any effect in calling government attention to the fact that poor rural settlers are paying the price for the actions of highly-capitalized lumber and ranching interests.

More camp photos...

This photo shows the outside of a typical bodega in the camps. Western Sahara used to be a Spanish colony (Spanish Sahara) and Spanish remains a common second language after Arabic. "Victoria y Exito" refers to a widespread sentiment among the Saharawi in Tindouf that the only "victory" for Western Sahara is Morocco's total exit from their territory. This outcome appears increasingly unlikely as the negotiations at the UN seem to be veering in the direction of a U.S.-backed proposal that would make Western Sahara an autonomous, but still Moroccan, province.

This picture shows a sun-set view of another camp, 27 February, so named to commemorate the inaugural of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, which was forged on February 27, 1976. SADR, Western Sahara's government in exile, administers the refugee camps at Tindouf.

Pictures from the camps

I am off for Tindouf tomorrow night and will send word as soon as I am settled in Smara camp. In the meantime, here are some pictures as promised. The first photo shows the main road into Smara camp and several residents walking along it. Quite unlike Jeremy's field site in the middle of the abundant Amazon, here we see a pristine, paved road in the middle of sand. It is striking driving into the camps on it, surrounded by what feels like nothing. In fact, the desert is not nothing at all. It is land that people know well. The women in white are wearing mulafa, long clothes wrapped around the body and head to keep out the sun and sand. Men frequently tie cloth around their heads for the same reason. It is the beginning of the cooler season in the Sahara: the high temperatures still top 90 degrees, but it can dip down into the 50s and even below at night.

For my Dad

As our grade-school teachers always implored, "If you have a question, ask, because you are probably not alone." So, thank you, Dad, for requesting some geographical and historical orientation about Algeria and Western Sahara (and my project). In a few days I will be flying to Tindouf, shown here in westernmost Algeria at the desert borderlands of Morocco, Western Sahara (W. Sah. on this map), and Mauritania (south of W. Sah.).

If you have been confused about what country Tindouf is actually located in, it is for good reason. Tindouf has historically been an important site along the trans-Saharan caravan and has been "ruled" in turn by Saharawi (Western Saharan) tribes, the Moroccan King, the French, and finally the Algerians. When the King of Morocco invaded the territory of Western Sahara in 1975, a war began between Morocco and Western Sahara that left thousands of Saharawi refugees homeless. They fled the war-torn Western Sahara for Tindouf, by then part of the independent state of Algeria. Morocco still "rules" Western Sahara and thousands of refugees remain in Tindouf, where they have been provided protection by Algeria and aid by the UN. Technically, the war between Western Sahara and Morocco ended in 1991, but the UN peacekeeping and diplomatic channels designated to assist in the decolonization of Western Sahara have proven ineffective.

If you headed due West for a couple hundred miles from Tindouf, you would end up in the capital of the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, Layouune. If you headed further West a hundred miles or so, you would end up in the Canary Islands off the coast of Western Sahara, where Maddy, her Mom, and her husband will be spending Christmas (and where there is also a considerable Saharawi refugee population). Unfortunately, you can't actually get to Layouune from Tindouf because of a vast sand wall, built by Morocco during the war to insulate its colony from the Saharawi war effort, then based out of Tindouf. Since my access to internet in Tindouf will be unreliable, I will post a few pictures from the refugee camps in Tindouf over the next few days, so you can put a visual with the place name.

Eid Mubarek!

Today in Algiers is the beginning of Eid al-Fitr, the 3-day holiday that marks the end of the month of Ramadan. The timing of the holiday depends on the sighting of the moon, and as a result, it varies around the world. The whole city has been bustling over the past few days buying foodstuffs, gifts and decorations for the holiday. Today, the streets are silent; the stores, closed. Yesterday, at the height of the pre-holiday rush (similar to that before Christmas, it is said), a few friends from the Glycines and I went to the Kasbah, or the old city. Built in the Ottoman era in the mid-1700s, the Kasbah is a maze of narrow roads and pathways underneath tall stone buildings built one on top of the other. The Kasbah is extremely overcrowded and perched on the hillside next to the sea. In this sense, it is mildly reminiscent of a Rio favela. But, unlike most favelas in Brasil, the structures are centuries old, four stories high and growing up rather than out. Here are a couple of pictures from the rooftop of one building, the home of many, many families. In the first, you can see the historically “harem” (off-limits, protected) interior courtyard characteristic of Ottoman architecture, where women are thought to have stayed. Today this is not the case. Many Algerian women do wear the hijab (head scarf) when they leave the house, but their scarfs tend to be markers of the latest fashions, depending on their prints and labels, rather than an indication of static traditions. In the second photo, taken from the same spot, you can see the rooftops of neighboring buildings and the sea in the background.

Peace in the countryside

I snapped this photo last week, when the federal government came to town to negotiate the ending of the Br-163 blockade. The logo of the Agrarian Reform Agency, here shown on the door of a truck, is telling: a dove and a heart-warming slogan, "Peace on earth, peace in the countryside." In the 1990s alone, over 600 people died in the Amazonian countryside, victims of a low-intensity war in which more highly-capitalized southern Brazilians are expropriating land settled by poor colonists and indigenous groups.

bel Alger...

This is a photo I took last Fall from the roof-top deck of the student hostel where I am currently living in Algiers (Le centre des Glycines, room 28). It is a stunning city. During my first trip, I was taken aback by the city's physical beauty (imagine Paris' most charming features in a hilly densely packed sea-side city). But since the beginning of this trip, I have found myself struck more by what the current architectural facades reveal. Between the world-shaking War of Independence and the recent civil war ending in 2002, this city has lived through unfathomable trauma that I am only able to pick up in whiffs and hints. If it weren't for the omnipresent police militaire, you might not know the city's legacy from a stroll down the boulevard. P.S. I have not yet received my second duffel containing my power adapter, but am able to post this having made the acquaintance of a fellow Mac enthusiast here at Glycines. Florence, who is here on work from the European Commission, lent me her outlet-appropriate power charger. Also staying at le centre des Glycines are: several interns at various European various embassies here--all very interesting; a fellow UC student working on his PhD in history at Irvine; and a friend of mine from Arabic Camp in Wisconsin is due to arrive any day.

News from Algiers

It's Jeremy here, in Castelo de Sonhos. I am thrilled to report that the internet gods cooperated a bit with Maddy and me today, and we were able to chat online. She arrived in Algiers safe and sound on Thursday evening, though without any of her luggage. Maddy writes:

"I have arrived safely in Algiers where I will remain until I retrieve my luggage, which has gone missing in transit. Luckily, I have incredibly generous contacts here who have welcomed me into their homes and shuttled me back and forth to the airport. Now I am staying in the student hosel/research center where I stayed briefly during my last visit."

It's ramadan right now, which surprisingly means MORE food than you can imagine, after sundown. Again, Maddy says, " at dinner we had fish, chicken, and beef; two kinds of stew; two kinds of couscous; and lots of fruits and vegetables." Man, that certainly beats the rice and beans routine here in Castelo!

We can't wait to hear more from Algeria...the place where Maddy is staying has wireless internet. As soon as her luggage arrives (and she can recharge her computer), I'm sure Maddy will be in touch herself.

Roadblock

I'm taking advantage of the unusual quick connection from Castelo to post this photo of last week's roadblock. The sem terra eventually disbanded the blockade when the government promised them food rations and buses to travel 950 km to Santarém next week to attend a large public meeting. Traffic is free to pass, for now.

Off to Algeria

I am off to Algiers on Wednesday and should arrive at the camps which are the site of my study (in the Sahara) by late Friday. I won't have consistent access to internet there, so I thought I'd post my itinerary for the next few months. I'll be in the camps working at an English school by day and studying Arabic by night until December 16th when I fly back to Algiers. It will be Ramadan when I arrive on Friday, so I am hoping that my first post from the camps will contain some lively stories about the festivities!

At the roadblock, Castelo

It's Jeremy here, back in the "Castle of Dreams," some 900 km south of Santarém on the unpaved Br-163. I arrived here on Saturday morning, and was lucky to have been able to get to Douglas and Cris's house (my hosts). Since September 20th, a group of agrarian reform clients (sem terra, or "landless workers") have been operating a roadblock at a crucial wooden bridge located 3 km north of Castelo, on the Br-163. They are protesting a recent federal court decision to suspend the operations of land reform settlements in Western Pará, as it was decided that the settlements are accelerating deforestation and illegal land occupation in the region. The settlers are trying to call attention to their plight: they've waited for four years for their settlement to be legalized; have received many promises of land and techincal support from the government; they've been involved in low-grade warfare with ranchers and lumber companies who run over their land with impunity and are the real accelerators of deforestation in the region. Now, it seems, they might lose all they've worked for and/or been promised.

When my bus arrived at the roadblock at 7 am on Saturday, I got down and began socializing with the protestors, many of whom are my firends. Within 20 minutes, someone had gotten a motorcycle ready to give me a lift into the center of Castelo. My companions on the bus had to wait another 5 hours at the roadblock, as the protesters only open the road for traffic at noon and midnight. If I had a fast enough connection, I'd attach the photo of a sem terra protester, Matheus, lighting a set of tires ablaze at the roadblock. Last week, before I arrived, a group of lumber-folks and ranchers tried to take over the roadblock by force and liberate traffic on the Br-163. Matheus made sure some of them took 2nd-degree burns away with them, and the roadblock continues.