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

I haven't written a web log entry for a few days. I've been busy building dams for Greenpeace.  I never thought I'd type that line.  Usually we're opposing dams, not building them.

Building dams is apparently extremely laborious and time consuming work. Fortunately we've had an infusion of community members from the local village helping us out.  They really know how to work and have shown up most of the city folk here.  They also are extremely entertained by seeing a "bule" put in some hard labor.  They've taken to calling me by the name of some soccer player who plays for AC Milan who they think I look like.  Probably some white dude with a beard.  They also call me "Mister Sport", which I'm not sure is a compliment or an insult.

So yesterday we finished two dams, and it was incredibly satisfying to see the water level rise behind the dam.  Rob said it one of the coolest and most effective actions he's ever been a witness to.  We have three more dams to go, however.

The idea of building these dams is to help raise the level of water in the peatland area to its previous height, thereby restoring the area to it's natural state.  This would take quite some time, as the forest has been cleared and burned.  But damming the canals is the first step towards restoration.  The oil palms, already planted in the area certainly aren't going to like the rising water levels.  But that doesn't really concern us, especially as seeing as this palm concession is illegal under international law.  The law states that any peatlands over 3 meters in depth may not be deforested and converted.  The peatland area where this concession exists has peatland depths of over 8 meters (26 feet).  8 meters was the maximum depth that could be measured with the tools that were used by the surveying crew of scientists who helped us measure the peatland depth.  In many areas the peatland depth exceeds 8 meters.

So far we haven't had any reaction from the company that owns and operates the concession, Duta Palma.  Some of the workers have come by to check out our work, but none have done anything to stop us - yet. There could me many reasons for this, such as the probability that they know that their operation is illegal.  Another possible reason is that they know how much support we have among the community, and even among the local officials, which brings me to another story.

We had yet another visit from government officials.  This time we were told to expect about 6 people, and of course about 15 arrived.  They were mostly officials from the Indonesian equivalent of the county level.  Also with them were some people from military intelligence.  The government officials were extremely friendly. They even visited one of the damming sites and expressed their support.  The military intelligence officials, dressed in all black with sunglasses, weren't quite as vocal in their support.  But I assume that's just their MO. It was great though to see the support we are getting from official government in Indonesia.  This can sometimes be a risky place to make bold statements, and how Indonesian officials will react cannot always be predicted.  Right now it seems that we are safe from goverment intervention.

After our last visit from the police and police intelligence I contacted the U.S. embassy,mostly because the visiting officials asked me if I had registered with the embassy.  I have to say that I have had excellent support, especially from the consulate in Medan on Sumatra. They have kept in contact, and even read my web log.  Illegal logging is an issue that is very important to them.

I only have a few more days left in camp.  It has been nearly a month. I acclimated to the heat here, I sleep well every night, I haven't had a beer in a month, and I wake up at 5:30 almost every morning, and people make fun of me for my American accent.  I have a feeling that some changes will be coming soon.

I'll send out more updates on our progress, and any reaction from Duta Palma, if they react at all.

Also, I'm told that my web log is being translated to mandarin and is published on the largest web site in China.  So that's kind of cool.

Hayden

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

Today we began the process of damming the canals that drain are draining the peatland forests of the bordering palm oil concession.  We began work with about 40 people at 6am this morning, mostly volunteers from the local communities.

The first job was to finish moving all the damming materials over half a mile up one of the canals.This is a huge task that requires hours of work, as we're talking about tons of material for each dam. We use canoes to carry the sandbags, and we float the wood poles in the canals and someone has to wade through the coffee tinted water pushing them up the canal against the current.

We are planning on building a total of 5 canals in the coming week. Assisting us are experts in canal dam building and peatland restoration from Indonesia.

In addition to the challenge of moving many tons of material over many miles, we also have the additional challenge of having to time our work with the tides.  We use high tide to move the materials up the canals, and then we use the lower tides to begin the building process of the dams.

I was fortunate enough to not have to work most of the morning, as I was supporting our para-motor pilots.  I have to stay on standby with first-aid supplies in case of any incidents.

When I finally got to one of the dam building sites most people were already exhausted.  They had been working at the site since 7am with only a break for lunch.  I helped carry wooden cants to the dam building site.  After about an hour of that I went to work with an axe sharpening the ends of the cants so they could be pounded into the ground for dam supports.  Cedar and I worked on that as many people watched, and apparently were very entertained by the site of two white guys working with axes.  We chopped on amid the laughter, and made our own jokes about the irony of working on a Greenpeace action that involves chopping wood.  Usually we're on the other side of that.

More damn building tomorrow.  I have to make this short as bugs are attacking me and the computer I'm writing on.  Ah, one just flew into my eye.

 

 Hayden 

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

I get the sense that people are interested in the staff behind the curtain here at Greenpeace so here is one story of an inspiring forest defender.  If you receive the quarterly newsletter you've met Jeremy before and should enjoy this update. 

 

Last week Forest Campaigner Jeremy Paster was awarded the People and Planet award by Rainforest Action Network (RAN).  Here is an excerpt from the event as covered by Branden at RAN.

 
"And finally, a surprise award, for Jeremy Paster. Jeremy was one of the key organizers of the ‘99 WTO protest and has been a great friend to RAN and the movement. He was diagnosed in 2006 with advanced metastatic prostate cancer at the age of 35. He was recovering from an operation when we announced this award - to recognize his great contributions to the world through his activism, his photography, his work and his spirit. RAN ED Michael Brune took the stage with Jeremy’s friends, Ilyse Hogue, John Sellers and Marianne Manilov. The three of them managed to gain the attention of the room - 650 people mind you - with Jeremy’s story. And while holding the space by telling stories of Jeremy (which I invite them to post on this blog) Jeremy was racing to the venue, having “escaped from UCSF”, in his own words. And after quite a few emotionally charged minutes, Jeremy made it to the party. Escorted by friends and family he was wheeled to the stage and stood to accept his award. And in accepting it, his humility and grace honored us. We are so very blessed by this very very fine man. If you’d like to learn more about Jeremy, visit www.jeremypaster.com. You can make a donation to help offset his significant medical expenses here: http://jeremypaster.com/donate/" 

Congrats Jeremy! 

 

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

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

 

We all got up this morning at 4:30.  The group of climbers wanted to  make it to the edge of the palm oil concession without being noticed by the workers, or the security patrol.  The edge of the concession, or what we call "the forest wall" is where the burned clearcut ends and where the native forest begins.  However this native forest is in the process of being cleared for more palm oil.  The "forest wall" is just how far they've gotten in clearing the forest.

To edge of the concession is about 4km away, but is clearly visible from our fire lookout tower.  Rob and I were up in the tower at 5am as the team left.  My responsibility was to run communications for the climb team, and also for the para motors, which were scheduled for a flyover at 8am.  My new title, as Rob told me yesterday, is "Communications Hardware Coordinator", so now I'm no longer just the U.S. campaigner/volunteer.   GPI is even putting up a photo of me with that title, apparently.

So, back to the action.  The team, of all Indonesians, hung a huge banner (36'x30') from two trees accross the road that runs into the forest from the concession.  Shortly afterward Cedar flew over in the para-motor, this time with the wing that has the Greenpeace logo on it. We got some great images, and the entire event went remarkably smooth. No conflict with the workers at all.  And as of this writing the banner is still hanging.  We decided to leave it there as a parting gift.

In other happenings, we dug up some maps of the area, and I found out that the river that runs by our camp has it's headwaters in the hills, not near town, so now I've started to go for swims in the afternoon (I can't go in the evening, as the local residents believe that if people swim in the evenings, and have fun, that bad things may come.)  Today I went for a swim with JJ, Frode, and Hengke, and we had a great time, diving off the dock.  As we were getting out a boat arrived that was unloading about 80 huge bags of sand.  We did the Indonesian thing to do, which was to pitch in and help carry the bags of sand up the dock to land.  So we worked for about 20 minutes, and these guys were really surprised and entertained by 3 "bule" (white foreigners) helping them carry heavy loads up the dock.

And that's all I have for now for an update.  Stay tuned.  The most exciting stuff is yet to come.  Also, I'm happy to report that there aren't any lingering effects from the lightning strike.  I'm fine.

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

Today was finally the day we got in the air.  Yesterday we had to call off the launch of our two para-motors due to some shaky weather.  This morning we were all up before 6am, waiting on standby for the weather conditions to become right for flying.

After a lot of waiting Cedar took off from our makeshift runway, which is on a small clearing in the oil palm concession.  I was acting as the tower for the flight.  I was up in our fire spotting tower with a couple radios and a high powered scope to keep track of our pilots.

Cedar flew over the concession and got some excellent aerial photos of the forest destruction, and the native forest that borders the oil palm area.  He also got a pretty sweet aerial shot of our camp.  Though, after taking a look at the photo, we all realized that we need to do a little cleanup of the construction materials lying around camp.

An hour and a half later Cedar touched down.  It was a great first flight.  He didn't spot any peatland fires, but he only saw a fraction of the oil palm concession.  Tomorrow Cedar, and our other pilot JJ, intend on flying much farther into the forest clearing in order to spot and illegally set peatland fires.

That's all the updates I have for now.  It's still hot here, there are still a lot of bugs, and every day a cold beer is sounding better and better.

Hayden

This morning we got up early and took a walk into the concession area to do a show and tell to the new campaigners that just arrived.  They toured the forest destruction caused by conversion of forests to palm oil plantations.  We took a walk through the wasteland of the charred remnants of trees and saw the network of canals that have been dug to drain the peatland.  Yifang and Frode, from our Chinese and Nordic offices had many questions, and the tour, not surprisingly, was sobering.  I've attached a photo which can give you some idea of what it looks like out there.

Our camp borders the concession area.  The local village, Kuala Cenaku, has contested the rights of Duta Palma, the company clearing the forest and planting the oil palms, saying that they have historical rights to the land.  And if it were up to them, they would've preferred that it stay as native forest.  Tragically, the forest next to their village is being logged and burned, and it continues to be logged today.  From our fire observation tower we can see the edge of the forest clearing. We're using every means we have to put a stop to this forest conversion and all other peatland forest conversion, until a region-wide environmental sound policy can be implemented.

Meanwhile our camp is nearing completion.  Nearly all the walkways are built, John and I spent all day yesterday treating the water so that it is safe enough to wash and cook with, and we only have a few finishing touches to put on it for the camp to be fully completed.  Some people have noted that it's beginning to look like a sort of "eco village", especially with the addition of some campaigners who spend some of the day "lazing around" in the shade under the trees typing things on their laptop computers.  We've also had a lot of new arrivals lately and we're nearly at capacity.  In fact, we've decided to build an annex to the main sleeping quarters to accommodate even more people who will be arriving in the coming weeks. The camp has really taken on a more active vibe.  Evenings are filled with meetings, planning sessions, and even English and Bahasa Indonesia classes so we can help bridge the language gap among us.

In addition to the campaigners, we've also had some guitar players join us, who also happen to know how to pilot a para-motoring machine.  A few evenings we've had late night guitar playing sessions and stayed up until the very late hour of 10:30.

That's all I have for an update now.  We have to do a quick cleanup, as the village chief is paying another visit to our camp this afternoon.

More to come....

Hayden
at the Forest Defender Camp, Sumatra, Indonesia

I'm finally back in town after 4 days and 3 nights at the Forest Defenders camp.  I've really begun to enjoy being out there.  The main building is complete, and we've installed all of the lighting (powered by solar, of course) so we can stay up later, working, talking, etc.    There's still a ways to go to complete the camp, but it's looking good.  As John, our tech guru says, it's really beginning to look like the television set of "Survivor Sumatra" 

I've begun to get a little involved with the design.  A building in front of the Belair Adat (the main building, and I really have no idea how it's spelled)  was being built.  and they were going to clear out some very small trees/shrubs.  After I threatened to chain myself to one of the shrubs, the architect yielded, and now it has become a nice deck area, with some small trees coming up through the coconut wood to provide shade.  Now we've planned to get some party lights (or what we may call "christmas lights&quot and string them on the trees for evening lighting. 

 This morning I went on a hike into the concession area (the area of forest that the company Duta Palma is clearing for palm plantations) and we surveyed some canals that were dug in order to drain the peatland.  This is a crucial step in clearing the land.  After the canals are dug in the peat (that in this area is many meters thick) the water drains out, irreversibly drying out the peat.  The dried peat is then ready for burning, which as I mentioned earlier, releases enormous amounts of greenhouse gases into the air.

 We were measuring water flow and water depth of the canals.  While I could surmise many reasons, I honestly can't tell you exactly why we were doing this, as it was a request from some science geeks back in Europe.   But it was very interesting to see the clearing process first-hand after reading so much about it. 

A few notes about the Forest Defenders Camp: 

 There are so many insects there, it's incredible.  Now that we have the lighting installed for evenings, we've become extremely popular with our six legged neighbors.  Probably the most noteworthy are the Rhinoceros Beetles.  They are freakin' huge!  And when they dive bomb into camp, they circle the lights and are the size of small birds.  They slam into anything in their path, including you.  I got a great picture of one who visited us two nights ago.  They really do have horns similar to a rhinoceros. 

 Also, an update on my bag, which on my last entry I mentioned was stuck in Taipei.  Well, it finally arrived and was kindly delivered to me by Hengki and Yusef, two new forest activists who just arrived from Papua.  I immediately popped my malaria medication, and I'm hoping that none of the first 100 mosquito bites I received were from malaria carriers.  I'm sure I'll be fine. 

 One more update:  I'm also now one of the camp medics.  Our camp doctor, Naki (who we endearingly refer to as Doogie Howser) is leaving for Idol Fitri.  So it's me and a local nurse who arrived today.  Funnily enough, within an hour of her arrival she ended up being my first patient.  She was unpacking her supplies and happened to burn her hand on a bottle of pure hydrogen peroxide (unlike the %1 or %2 solutions you buy over the counter) -  oh the irony.

 More to come...

 Hayden

Okay, here we go, my first blog, ever. I've already done some trash talking with my friend Kieran Mulvaney, who prides himself on his blogging abilities - so let's hope that I can pull off an interesting and informative blog.

I'm now sitting at our not quite complete Forest Defenders Camp in Riau Province, Sumatra, Indonesia. And I'm exhausted from a very long day of hard work.

What would possess someone to spend 5 days traveling, with almost no sleep, enduring 40 straight hours of spending time in airports and on airplanes, followed my more airplanes, followed by a death defying drive across Riau Province, to arrive at a town that is still a 3 hour boat ride away from the camp? To save the Peatland Forests, of course.

The peatland forests need to be saved, but not just to protect all the cute little (and huge) creatures in it. They actually need to be saved to save us, humans. Peatland forests are an enormous carbon store. And these forests are being converted to oil palm plantations at an alarming rate. And when this conversion occurs, they burn the peatland forest and all that carbon that has been stored is released into the atmosphere as a Greenhouse Gas, Carbon Dioxide. This forest conversion has helped to propel Indonesia into third place in Greenhouse Gas emitters, behind the world's largest polluters, China and the United States. I find that fact staggering, considering that Indonesia isn't a huge fossil fuel hog, like its co-polluters. Who knew that saving our forests could be just as important as switching to clean energy when it comes to stopping Global Warming?

So now you know why we're here. Now let me tell you a little about what the camp is like. First of all, it's hot. Really hot. They say it's been getting up into the low to mid 40's. So that's well over 100 degrees. And did I mention the humidity? It's not easy building a camp in this kind of heat. But I can't complain too much, I've only been here one day. And it was a very long day, with lots of work. I helped install the solar array, and we finally got power to the camp, thanks to the sun, and a lot of hard work. I'm writing this email now using some of the energy we produced after 1pm, when we finally got all the wires wired (and narrowly avoided a 6 inch long scorpion, which decided to hang out behind our battery bank.)

The camp is coming together, though we still have a ways to go. We have the main meeting house and bunk quarters nearly complete. We got the roof on our kitchen today, and our fire-spotting tower got a little taller. We also now have solar power, as I mentioned earlier, and tomorrow we'll get our water tank installed, make our solar installation more permanent, and keep plugging away on the buildings to get them finished.

It's Ramadhan, and most people are about to break fast. In other words, it's time for dinner. I'll keep the updates coming as the camp progresses, and hopefully send along some photos of our progress. And remember, when the camp is finished, that is when our real work begins. I have many more stories to tell, just from my first few days (did I mention that my bag still hasn't arrived at the airport?) but it's already been a 13 hour work day, so I think I'll call it a day.

Hayden

Kimberly-Clark, the world’s the largest tissue company, destroys ancient forests to make its disposable products.  They film Kleenex commercials by inviting people to sit on a couch in famous public places and “let it out” with a fake psychologist.  Sounds goofy, right?  Also sounds like a great opportunity for creative activism!

When Kleenex came to Times Square in New York, Greenpeace activists infiltrated the shoot and shut down filming with a banner.  The video is a classic (watch it here).  And, like any good classic, it deserves a sequel.

This time we were in Chicago.  It was a beautiful day for a ball game.  Fans decked out in blue and red Chicago Cubs gear were streaming towards historic Wrigley Field, eager to watch their team advance to the major league baseball playoffs.

Meanwhile, in a parking lot across from Wrigley Field, a Kimberly-Clark advertising crew was setting up another Kleenex commercial.  They had thought of everything…except the irony of trying to sell Kleenex at a Cubs game while clear-cutting cub and bear habitat in the Boreal Forest.

What a set up!  It was almost too easy for undercover Greenpeace volunteers to throw curve balls at the Kleenex crew.

What happened next?  Watch the video!

Pssst: If you have a YouTube account, rate the video, save it to your favorites list, and leave a comment for Kleenex to see.

You can read more, see photos and take action here.

Share the video and spread the word about Kleenex and Kimberly-Clark with family and friends!