The following posting is from Hayden who is at our Forest Defenders Camp. Learn more about the camp and threats to Indonesian forests.

Yesterday afternoon we received a visit from 22 members of various regional and local police and police intelligence officers.  They hung around the camp all afternoon, taking pictures, asking us questions, and speaking with some of our Indonesian campmates.  One of them also helped himself to Frode's last piece of chocolate, which Frode wasn't too happy about.  I grabbed my camera and asked if we could get some pictures with them, to which they happily agreed.

Finally at around 7pm they departed, but they've left two armed officers here at camp to keep an eye on us.  We're making every effort to explain to all the various law enforcement agencies why we're here, and that our work here is also about helping the Indonesian goverment.  Hopefully this message can get through to the right people, and we can continue our work unabated.

And a big Hi from Rob, he really is the greatest guy

The following posting is from Hayden who is at our Forest Defenders Camp. Learn more about the camp and threats to Indonesian forests.

Yesterday our real Communications Hardware Coordinator arrived, over a week late.  This means that I was replaced.  Which is a good thing.  I was tired of having to stay here at camp and be the comms center for our various activities.  And when I came here I never anticipated having this responsibility.  I was happy to fill in until Geoff got his Visa taken care of, but I knew that it was just temporary.

Geoff arrived yesterday morning, and we did a walk through of all our gear here and how it functions.  The solar system, lighting, satellite comms, radios, GPSs, etc. etc.  And then I was free, finally.  I immediately got on a "pong pong" (local diesel power boat) full of very heavy building materials and worked for hours and hours, carrying many tons (literally) of building materials including sand and lumber in 100 degree heat.  I was so hot at the end that I actually dove into the dark black water of the canal.  The water was so acidic is burned every cut and scratch on my body, and there are many.  I figured that if anything the water helped disinfect my wounds.  I'll try to get some photos up in the next few days from our photographer, Oka.  Attached is a photo of some of the materials we had to unload.

And this morning, I was able to leave camp once again, this time to help support Cedar, one of our para-motor pilots.  He was doing an aerial survey of the concession, and looking for peatland fires.  Since many of the Indonesians had to go into town to the mosque for their Friday prayers, that left me and another bule (white foriegner) to be on the motorbike team.  So that was a lot of fun, but getting out of camp is quite challenging, especially for someone who's experience is solely on road bikes.  But I got the hang of it pretty quickly, and the most challenging part was wearing full motocross protection, boots, body armor, gloves, helmet, goggles, in this heat and humidity.  It was nearly unbearable.  But I still enjoyed it.  There's something exciting about riding a motocross bike covered in Greenpeace logos.

So that's what I'm up to now.  I'm also doing more work for the international media team.  I'm one of the talking heads featured in a web video that should be up on the Greenpeace International site soon. Also some news networks very familiar to the United States will be
visiting the camp soon, and it's been suggested that an American accent may be in demand for parts of that.  And since I'm the only one here with one of those, it's assumed that I'll be doing some work with them. And the last update on the media front is that I just wrote my first blog for the Chinese website QQ.com, which as I mentioned earlier is the largest web site in China, and the fifth largest web site in the world, so I'm told.  There going to have someone translate it into Mandarin, so hopefully I end up saying the same thing on the other side.  I'm going to have a friend in the Greenpeace China office letting me know how it's
sounding on their end once it's translated.

Okay, more building materials are waiting for me.  Also, we're about to be visited by the city and provincial police forces today.  Hopefully that all goes well.  I may actually take a cue from others at camp and register with the U.S. embassy.  Though I'm confident things will be
fine, especially with all the attention we're beginning to draw.

More coming.

Hayden

The following posting is from Hayden who is at our Forest Defenders Camp. Learn more about the camp and threats to Indonesian forests.

Last night at camp we had an incredible display of talent from all over our planet.  We had an amazing blend of cultures on display from Germany, Finland, Papua, Java, New Zealand, Australia, the U.S.A. and Argentina.

The talent show, or what we called the unjuk bakat in bahasa indonesia, is definitely a foreign concept to Indonesians, and probably to many others in camp from places farther afield.  I'm not sure of the cultural history of the talent show, but it is certainly something familiar to most Americans.

I suggested the idea of a talent show last week, when I noticed that after our nightly debriefings about the days events, the camp separated into separate groups, generally based on languages spoken.  I wanted to create a fun evening event that would get us all together.

It was challenging at first to get the Indonesians to sign up and participate in this foreign concept.  I even got a bunch of prizes together to try and encourage participation.  Most people were wary to participate, but the night of the event when it really became apparent how it was truly open to all comers we had some late entries from our local hosts.

I started off the evening, figuring that I should set an example of how it's not that bad making a fool out of yourself in front of everyone, and it can actually be quite entertaining to the audience.  I created a skit (which was a new word to many people here, including most of the english speakers) - it was called "The Debrief" and I played Rob Taylor, our fearleass kiwi leader, and re-enacted one of our debriefs, except different people played different characters.  The highlight was JJ, one of our pilots, dressed up as Yifang, our Chinese forest campaigner.  He wore some of her clothing, which was quite funny considering that he's about twice her size.

After the skit, we had an incredible performance by both of our pilots, JJ and Cedar.  They did a duet with a guitar, and a single stringed bass, made from a 5 gallon drinking water container, a large piece of bamboo, and a piece of nylon twine recovered from the construction of our camp.  They also put in some lyrics in Bahasa Indonesia - "bule bule, bule gila!" which means "white foriegners, crazy white foreigners" - which of course was received with rousing applause and laughter.

Frode, our Nordic campaigner really put himself out there.  He did a three act performance: the native forest, forest destruction, and then forest recovery, sung by a cat.  Yes a cat.  He was backed up by JJ and Cedar.  My face hurt from laughter after that one.

Rob Taylor then did a re-enactment of his punk rock days from twenty years ago.  He played so hard that JJ had to take some time to re-tune his guitar.

After this we had a story told in bahasa by Yusef, from Papua, translated by Findi.

Richi, our camp manager from Jakarta, then stepped up and had us all play a game, based on the concept of forest fires, that had us all running around and knocking each other over, and laughing like crazy.

Arti, our Argentinean video editor, played an electronic song that he made earlier in the day on his Mac computer.  It was pretty impressive, especially when considering he only put about 30 minutes into it.  Arti followed this with an awesome 1 minute video about our action in the forest from a few days ago, where we hung a giant banner that read "Save Our Forest, Save Our Climate".

Our last performance was a slide show put to music by our photographer, Oka.  It was lots of personal shots, and it was great to see how much we'd actually accomplished in the past 2 weeks.  We got to see lots of fun shots that we normally don't get a chance to see - the ones that don't make it to our website, on TV, or in the newspaper.

At the end I handed out the prizes to all who participated.  The prizes, or "hadiah", included two bottles of soda, which is a very hot commodity here at camp, a coupon for a 15 minute massage from our campmate Hengke, a coupon for two free hours of solar charging, for phones or laptops, which also is in high demand here.  And finally, the grand prize was a free paragliding flight in Byron Bay Australia, courtesy of Cedar.  The coupon was non-transferrable, and didn't include transportation to Byron Bay.

It was a late night for the camp, but it didn't seem that anyone minded.  In fact, there's been a request for encore performances.  So we'll see if that happens in the coming weeks.  We're actually getting busier every day, so it's not something that I can really think about now - but I think we may have some mini-performances in the coming evenings.

Stay tuned for exciting things - I'm moving from the Communications side of things to more of a laborer, so I'm looking forward to that.  I'll write more when I can.

Hayden

The following posting is from Hayden who is at our Forest Defenders Camp. Learn more about the camp and threats to Indonesian forests.

So today is a pretty relaxed day, other than having about 100 people at camp today for day 4 of the fire fighting training (and on a side note I got totally shafted and was on dish duty yesterday and had to help wash what seemed like hundreds of dishes.)

The highlight so far today is that I just sat down for an interview with QQ.com, the fifth largest web site in the world (and the largest in China.)  I was a bit circumspect as to why she wanted to interview me, of all people (as opposed to Hapsoro, our Indonesian forest campaigner, or Rob Taylor, the overall logistics coordinator) and Yifang, our Chinese forest campaigner didn't help at all when she supposed that she wanted to interview me because I'm "an attractive and charming American" - the internationals in the room thought that a bit of an oxymoron. Regardless of the reason I wasn't about to turn down an opportunity to tell 120 million people about why this campaign is important, and about how China and the U.S. are partners in leading the world in creating pressures that lead to deforestation - and how all of that links to global warming.  I definitely hit all the important points, as to what she chooses to write, that remains to be seen.  I wish I could read Chinese (or Mandarin, I suppose.)

I definitely got the feeling that some of my more assertive comments won't make it to print.  Being such a large website their content is watched closely by the Chinese government, and any criticism of the government must be balanced with compliments.  Needless to say, I didn't have too many good comments about China's role in forest destruction, other than that they are beginning to do a decent job of protecting it's own forests.  And of course I linked the U.S. into that equation, as China is many times just the middleman for manufacturing of products that end up in American homes and buildings.

On a completely unrelated note, half the camp was awoken last night by a blood curdling scream.  We all got up to look for the source for the scream, but to no avail.  I think it was just someone having a vivid and vibrant nightmare, not a too atypical side effect of taking Chloroquine, an anti-malarial.  It took me awhile to get back to sleep after that. Especially with the chainsaw snoring resonating from the women's sleeping quarters.

That's all I have for today.  We're busy unloading materials for an upcoming activity that we're working towards.  I'll write more about that next week.

Hayden

Yesterday evening, a very powerful lightning storm came through camp. As we though it was winding down I was crouched on the porch of the warehouse talking with one of our pilots, Cedar, when a lightning bolt struck a tree about 30 feet from us.  A massive shock came up through my feet and into my legs.  It was very painful, without a doubt the most powerful electric shock I've ever received.  I looked at Cedar, and said some things that shouldn't be put into print, and then asked if we're okay.  Both of us were shaken up, to say the least, and kind of stumbled back to the main building.  It turns out that a lot of people felt a shock to some degree.  Suzette, who was in the communications room (and my bedroom) writing an email got a major shock.  It turns out that the electric charge likely came up through a ground wire into the room and burned into some of the floorboards.  Also, our inverter, which converts the battery power (charged by our solar panels) from 12 volts into 220, was completely fried.  So we're without power for some of our most essential electronics.  But we're working fast to get a new one (and I'm typing fast, since this computer is running on battery power.)

So yesterday was a very exciting day and I think we're all lucky that no one was seriously hurt. And now I have yet another story to tell when I get home.

Hayden