Greenpeace

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