Guatemala

Guatemala was a journey of four quarters, which together did not make the whole picture that let me see under the skin of this diverse and, in many ways, troubled country (an ex-army general who happily admits to extra-judicial killings is way ahead in the polls for the presidential election as he is seen as a man able to tackle the drug cartels, even though he is clearly in their employment). As such i will give you snippets:


Äre those army boots?¨

My boots had been passed back from the front of the turista minibus and the muscular guy infront clearly hoped they were indeed from the military. In that moment my train of thought joined up with the mainline and made it´s way into the central station: i had met a whole load of israeli young people in the previous week or two and despite a large effort on my part not to judge them based on the war crimes and apartheid-creating tendencies of their government, I had not been able to shake off the impression that the majority- though not all- of the maybe 2 or 3 dozen israelis that i had interacted with, were aloof, insular and often bordering on rude. this had been reinforced in some conversations with guatemalan barmen and tuktuk drivers; they stay together in groups, rarely mix with other travellers (for example, in two of the places i visited they had their own hostels) and, i was told, could be really condescending to the locals.

but then i realised- some, probably the majority, of these people were fresh out of the IDF- Isreali ´defence´force- and had been told time and again that the world had an irrational bias towards the palestinians and that they might have a hard time on the road. probably why these guys had picked a place as far removed, geographically and politically, from the whole issue as possible. and, knowing that the question ´what do you do where you come from?´is part of any good getting-to-know-you travelling conversation, and knowing that ´well, i used to be in the IDF´would cause plenty of consternation amongst us right-on, left-leaning travelling types, they probably thought ´well, why bother when i can just hang out with people who Understand?´...
and would there be any point taking up the issues- the settlements, the blockade, the water and land rights, the future´- with these young, touchy and at least partially brain-washed travelling buddies? as we hiked down to the gobsmackingly beautiful fresh water pools at semuc champey behind two ex-IDF officers, i refined and re-refined what i would say to them if they asked my opinions about the whole thing. i wanted to be clear and for what i said to be useful. ´stop building settlements... stop all restrictions on goods entering gaza... bring down the wall... stop thinking of palestinians as inferior to isrealis... accept that there will never be peace whilst israel is a state based on one religion... yes i am against zionism... no it isn´t anti-semetic to be anti-zionist... we need to bring down the governments of both america and iran before there will be a solution to this issue... no that isn´t a colonialist thing to say...´and i could see the whole conversation rolling out infront of me, with my friend´s jaw slowly tightening as he either clammed up or let his fury loose. so when we sat in the cool of the pool and he told me about his experiences in the idf i said nothing, just listened. and when he told me i should ´follow my dreams while i can´and be a musician , i did not ask him when the people of gaza, 45 percent of whom are unemployed, would be able to follow their dreams... what would have been the point? if we had become actual friends, perhaps drank some whisky together, and his respect of my thoughts was high enough and his social barriers were low enough to actually maybe listen and absorb, maybe that would have been the time...

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Turkey

I have concluded that the best moments of travelling happen in the in between bits, the examples of the proverb ´life is in the journey´. it is the people that take you in for a meal or for the night when you are stuck in the middle of nowhere. sharing a knowing look with a old lady on a hot day as you walk down the street. trying a new fruit bought through window of a bus.

and it was with this in mind that i began to walk around lake atitlan in the western highlands of guatemala.

after the first days hike i ended up in something between a town and a village. as i walked in a guy that turned out to be the village idiot accosted me and in turns insulted me and asked me for money. i shook him off when someone else asked me what my calabash was. for the umpteenth time i pulled it off my back, fixed the mbira in it and began to play. nhemamusasa. after about a minute i looked up to see a sea- perhaps 20- mayan women, all in exactly the same traditional dress- blue with multicoloured trim, crowding around, their small stature giving the impressiom that i was in the middle of a slowly swaying sea of egg shaped blue domes. i stopped, they laughed and passed the mbira around as i asked if anyone knew anywhere i could stay. one of the women took me down some back alleys to her house, populated by three angry dogs, a load of chickens and two MASSIVE turkeys. i laid down my things, went down to the dock of the bay and played mbira in the company of two small children, one in a barcelona shirt (there are so many barcalona shirts here- after the champions league final they let off fire crackers in the small town i was in) and watched a massive storm slowly roll in.

and then it hit and the rain sheeted down as i ran up the hill to the nearest cover- the local church. and, as i half read woodie guthrie´s autobiography (an amazing book; everyone should read it) and half listened to the (at times ear splitting) church rock band soundcheck, the church slowly filled up with maybe 100 people, all the women in beautiful traditional dress.

and afterward the best chicken and chips i have ever tasted, then the next morning i sat and played more mbira as i watched my host make fresh tortillas to go with the boiled egg and beans that were my breakfast. lovely stuff. totally random, unplannable, and what i travel for.

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birthday in the jungle

this time last year i was trying to smooth over the rude cracks in the SOAS end of year party at Club Egg in London. There were awards to be given out (and accusations of bias to be slighted), queues and bouncers to assuage, bands to soundcheck, DJ´s egos to manage, cleanliness and sobriety to be maintained and smalltalk to be chewed out. As I rode/wobbled home at 4 in the morning, job done, with mari on the back of my bike, i vaguely thought that whatever i happened to be doing on my birthday the following year, it would be siginificantly less stressful than the night i had just had.

and, lo, june 7th 2011 was as mellow, interesting and special as all the days in my life seem to be on this road, though most of today happened to be spent on a minibus, squashed on all 4 sides by rigid guatemalan men.

We- me and shelley- were heading into the jungle. The minibus took us to a trailhead and then an 8km hike took us from the road, though fields full of cows with huge floppy ears, and into the jungle proper. The ancient mayan people built huge structures that attached to cities all over what is now guatemala, but apart from the big tourist attractions many are wholly or partly buried under the ever-returning jungle. This was one such place- silver/black stone structures prodded out of the ground, some a few feet, some 10 or 20 metres high. One would be walking along a trail and realise the steps one was walking on were clearly the original mayan steps.

But for me, just as impressive was the natural architecture: tree roots like the sprawling limbs of a giant forming natural sets of steps. Thin but immensely strong tree creepers plunging down to the ground from unseen branches above, rooted in the soil. Extended families of mushrooms colonising the forest floor and fallen trunks. Ants making 6 inch wide paths that stretch for dozens of metres in the grass between their nests and particularly tasty trees (the overall effect of this from above was like seeing a superhighway system and cemented my (and alan merriam´s) belief that ants will be the new humans once humans die out). Monkeys in the trees howling like at the dawn of creation and then, as we tracked their cries and found the trees the were in, they became silent and just hung there and looked at us, looking at them, looking at us. And down a long, winding path a big old river and a young lady slowly paddling a canoe, with her husband slinging his net.

But as beautiful as this was, the mosquitos were relentless and the heat pressed in like an overbearing auntie and sucked away energy and enthusiasm and for the first time i think ever i dreamed of the joys of a dreary scarborough afternoon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ2v1Sl1nbc

I am having many amazing musical moments; this one happened to be recorded. San Christobal, Chiapas, Mexico, in one of the buildings the Zapatistas occupied in 1994... if you are in the 3 minute attention span category of listener, skip it forward to 4mins 30seconds :)

A History- Belgrade Road Part 1

ofcourse people have been squatting in london for a long time. england's seemingly unique squatting laws were an effort to give servicemen returning from the 1st world war who had lost their homes the ability to live in empty ones left by their expired comrades. in the 70s and 80s they were the base of the civil and gay rights movements and alternative scenes in the capital- whole streets in north, east and south london were squatted, and some of our elders reminisce about that time with dewy eyed glee.

these days, for a person who sees the folly of the capitalist system and the work-survive-work-die ethos that it necessitates, squatting is one method, along with skipping, hitchiking and other creative means of living outside the system, of both ignoring and subverting this state of affairs, of living according to ones ethics and supporting the local community.

a squatted space is much more than a place to find shelter and cook food (though it can be just this too). it is a space in which a collective of individuals, lovers and sometimes families can forge a safe and creative space that is free from the stigmas and rules that have been honed over decades to make us dependent on an overarching fear that seems to pervade all the rhetoric of the mass media- fear of failure, fear of being different, fear of the 'other'. Beyond this, squatting opens up a plethora of super cool shit to be done, skills to be learnt and ideas to share. In just two years living in, visiting and partying in such places in london, i have learnt more about electrics (how to make a building safe, how to make electricity free), woodwork (how to build a room out of scrap wood) and the law (when to tell the police to fuck off; when to grab my shit and go) than i would ever have the time or the need to learn if i were renting. I have learnt how to resolve disputes in non-violent ways, how to live with people on the edge of sanity and, moreover, learn from them, how to swear in several european languages (because there are many, many italian, polish, spanish etc squatters). I have learnt the minimum of my requirments for personal space, possessions and cleanliness, and to respect that others' requirements are different and that that is cool too.

I had some inkling of these intricacies, though non of hte experience of them, when I finished university and, along with a crew of mostly fellow newly-graduated, began to walk and cycle the streets of north london looking for empty buildings.

We had a copy of the (excellent) Squatters' Handbook (available from Freedom Bookshop in whitechapel and, i think, online), but there was no book, and no up to date lists, of empty buildings to be liberated (people I know have got such lists off local councils, but for some reason we never got round to doing that). Our crew was nebulous and squat-virgin. We knew more about foucault than faucets (and i knew nothing of either), and could wax lyrical all day about the revolutionary necessity of squatting without ever having sat up all night by candlelight knowing that our only defence against the police, baliffs or indeed anyone was a plank of wood jammed between door and staircase.

But, considering all this and looking back, I think we did pretty well.

Squat 1- an empty shop with house above on a busy street in islington. Massive paintings of drunken santa claus's and upside-down jesus's denoted a former temporary christmas art squat space. We were extremely excited for all of 5 days until 6 beefy polish guys showed up in the middle of one sunday night and began crowbarring down the door. We called the police (we had the theoretical law on our side). They came, chatted with the poles, made some jokes and left. The door (and it's plank), were almost finished. They gave us an ultimatum through the letterbox with their crowbars in their hands. We left. A clever owner of a squatted building will realise that it is much quicker and more cost effective to hire some heavies to illegally evict than to go through the courts and do it legally. This, it can only be assumed, was one of those cases. The shop is now a spot to buy some polish pottery (not a joke).

squat 2- The Arundale Arms- a pub behind Dalston Kingsland that was big enough to hold our entire crew, but dark enough (all of the windows on the lower two floors had been covered with the squatter's mortal enemy- cytex) and dirty enough to drive away three or four of our original group, one of them later telling a friend 'i just don't know how people can live like that'. We cleaned the hell out of that place, including scraping pidgeon shit from the entire top floor. I had a tiny and beautiful room on the top floor of that place, just big enough for a raised bed from which one could wriggle out of the window and sit on the ledge smoking and feeling like the king of all dalston.

Then at work one day I got a phonecall, and cycled hard to find all of our things on the street, getting soaked in a light drizzle, with a couple of police vans, and my friends looking pretty shaken. The owners had come, and when we refused to leave, called the police, stating that we have caused criminal damage (a lie). This was all the police needed to get out their huge battering ram and, when they couldn't get through the front door (our wooden wedges held strong) had punched a whole straight through the back wall. Bastards. There were lots of us and we had the help of NELSN, the north east london squatters network, who recorded the whole thing (always good to have a camera incase there is any police violence or unlawful arrests) and allowed us to stay at their place up the road, an old solicitors' place, whilst we looked for somewhere else.

Squat 3- It was deep into winter by now, and we were basically couchsurfing. The cats who had been in the place up until then were really nice an accomodating, but there were many of us and we were pretty bummed out, chainsmoking and cold, and after a while it became clear we needed to leave. Along with 5 others (give or take), I slept on the ground floor, a former office with no windows, in two sleeping bags huddled next to a friend. It took a huge mental effort to get up in the mornings but, on the plus side, our hosts were skippers extraordinaire and we ate like kings.

Squat 4- Things seemed a bit desperate now and our party had shrunk somewhat, and everywhere we looked was either decrepid, unenterable or full of smackheads. And believe me we looked. All over north east london on bikes. Lists of properties made, late night excursions executed, nothing promising. We eventually ended up in a 2 room flat near manor house, squashed in and actually (for me at least) having quite a nice time being bunched up like sardines. Maybe the group at that time was special and particularly loving, but i do remember feeling a bit like being in a liferaft after a storm with the solidarity and penchant for heavy drinking that that would create.

Squat 5- A most beautiful of houses in highbury, with no sound of traffic and a huge oak tree holding firm and majestic out of my back window. The walls had beautiful murals on them painted by previous squatters and the water in the bath was hot and powerful.

But I am getting way too sidetracked. this is a post about 2a Belgrade Road.

We lasted at the Highbury place a couple of weeks with an eviction date from the previous squatters fast approaching. We had a list of buildings, prioritised according to their potential, and had been systematically checking them out- a former meat packing house near smithfields market that was the first place to really scare me as Bob climbed up a metal ladder to the electric box and prodded around, me with a fist in my mouth, shitting myself he would electricute himself. Terrace houses with neighbours calling the police. Town houses with concrete poured down the toilets (to ward off scum like us)... the last place on our list was a warehouse-looking building just off Dalston high street, with a big gate shrouding a huge metal door. Late one night three of us with our best jedi robes uttered the magic words and the big, black door opened to reveal a big room, the size of a 5-a-side football pitch, a bright lamp still lit, illuminating a floor filled with miscelannious crap- videos, speakers, a monopoly set, shopping trolleys, empty cans, furniture- all over the floor, as if the former residents had had a little 'throwing things around' spree before they left. The walls were covered in pretty artistic graffiti, dominated by a capitaled, iron-coloured sign with each letter as big as a big man- 'DIY OR DIE'. We ventured quickly up the dark staircase to the second floor, and found a similarly sized open plan room with a similar mix of crap all over the place. Another staircase led higher, but this was not the moment for surveys, and we popped on our D-lock and reported to base.

It was November 2008. We were so happy to find somewhere, anywhere,to stay that the full potential of the space did not dawn on us immediately. We sat in a small room off the big one on the ground floor, keeping warm and considering how to put in a new lock on the steel door. Soon enough though, our excitement of the possibilities of that place was piqued. We learnt (i can't remember how) that the previous squatters, mostly spanish, had got an eviction notice and left in a hurry. Their legacy was the mess, a big ass stash of needles that had apparently been used to mainline ketamine btu that had been put neatly in a sharp box, the graffiti, some rotting food in the fridge and, on the top floor that we had not initially explored, a patchwork of plywood, struts and bits of huge material that made up around 6 rooms- some complete, some collapsing, some just mounds of wood, that together gave the top floor the appearance of something between a shanty town and an extended treehouse. It was {beautiful}.

The sign on the wall read '100 flowers cultural centre' and we found many documents about various liberation struggles in turkey and kurdestan. the 100 flowers was a phrase coined by mao during the cultural revolution, and had been taken on by the PKK and, in this deeply turkish area of dalston, had it`s share of revolutionary history, though most of our crew thought that the maoist connotations and the , er, flowery name meant we should disgard the namesake and the place became known simply as 2a belgrade road. one day, however, an old woman died down the street and her belongings, which included over 100 plastic flowers, were donated to us. someone tied 100 of them to our gates.

Belgrade Road Part 2

The rooms were slowly colonised, though the interior walls- if you can call them that- only rose about 10ft off the ground, leaving a huge gap between the high vaulted ceiling, allowing sounds, lights and inanimate objects of all varieties to pass over them. it was a lesson in the meaning of 'privacy'. I set about building my room out of the wood and plastic sheeting lying around the house- possibly the only time in my life i will be able to build my own room. after christmas i nailed the branches of the christmas tree to one wall, and smelt the pine sap each night as i watched the leaves slowly turn brown over 6 months.

the 9 or so months in that place were wondrous in so many ways. our communal skipping missions yielded treasures- one night we dined at 2am on 2 roast ducks with all the trimmings, fresh from the bins of waitrose behind old street. the bottom floor filled itself with bikes (and, by the end, a motorbike and arcade game) and tuesday morning was bike workshop morning. the english teacher, who we used to engage the local immigrant community to learn english, stole one of them one day and was never seen again. 2 or 3 bands practiced there using max's drum kit. we began to hold benefit nights, stretching the borrowed PAs with all types of live music. the only gig of my unnamed dream band was played out there. local activist groups held workshops and meetings there.

and, oh, the people that passed through! from every place, for every reason, they were all given a bed, a rolly, and invited to outline their lives and loves in the many and various sofas that swallowed people, stories, days... there was italien lorenzo, who came with his girlfriend and brother and claimed he was writing a book, even though he couldn't have been more than 21 (the book, in italian, later arrived and featured a potted history of the space). A whole gang of australians slept on our floor, got arrested for graffiti and went to prison, came out and recolonised the floor. our friends and lovers popped in and stayed for weeks, sometimes months. another italiean, this time an old man, came to a party one night and then just kept being there, not saying much but passing round a little top quality hashish every night- apparently he was escaping the rainy season in some far off land. seed-banker mohit, chinese-medicine graeme, silent piotr, lizzie, sebilio, jah steve... pretty much everyone who needed to stay cut a pair of keys, found the lightswitch in the toilet and stayed.

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And then, after maybe 9 months, inevitably, we got the eviction notice. from a Mr Lamb, who live in surrey and wanted us out not because he wanted to do anything with the property but because, allegedly, he couldn't insure the place against fire whilst we were in it. We sent him a letter with photos of how nice we had made them place. he ignored it. we went to court and lost, but the solicitor indicated there was a potential for us to pay a nominal rent in exchange for living there. the arguments for and against are clear- for: an amazing place to live for a nominal rent. against: buying into the system of owner/occupier and therefore implying that it is ok for someone to have a piece of paper saying he owns a house without actually living in it and thus make a profit. our camp was split, but the decision was made pretty swiftly- our morals held out and we did not contact lamby. whilst i would have contacted him and at least found out his offer, even at that time i could see that some of the belgrade magic was wearing off- the parties were becoming less benefit parties and more profit-driven raves full of coked up shoreditch twats who thought that squats were places to be disrespectful and chaotic, rather than other other way round. some of our core members had already left, and others were talking about finding somewhere quieter. on the day the baliffs were due to come around 30 of us stood outside the gates. the look on the baliff's face as he checked the address on his piece of paper and realised that the building he wanted to evict was the same building as the one with all the scruffy hippies outside was priceless. he left without talking to us.

but we knew that was only a temporary victory and a small crew of us found a beautiful new spot a few streets away and moved out shit out of there.

The place quickly refilled. The ground floor was dominated by a gang of australians and their friends, whose signature was the intense smell of spray paint as they (very unartistically) painted over all the beautiful graffiti on the bottom floor. The middle and top floor was a mix of some who had remained and a load of freshmen and women from SOAS, with great intentions but not necessarily the practical experience of maintaining a community. We heard vicariously that a gulf had opened between the residents, that there were no meetings (ours had been infrequent but had happened and had been democratic), that people were stealing each other's, and the neighbours' stuff. Greg took it upon himself one day to take the cooker out of the kitchen and give it to a friend, ripping the heart out of the house and pissing many of us off royally. A couple of people increased the frequency and mashed-upness of the parties there- they were raves by now- killing off any of the sympathy that our neighbours may have had for us (at the last party there one of the neighbours threw and egg at me as i walked in). Things were falling apart in a most unedifying manner.

And then the second eviction notice came, for 7am on a tuesday. some of the people who lived there at that time asked some of us old residents to be part of a meeting to strategise a resistance, but they came home frustrated that people just didn't seem that bothered about resisting.

But there was no way that we could let belgrade road be evicted without a fight. we sent a text around that said something like 'tomorrow 7am attempted eviction of belgrade road. tonight 7pm free dahl, live music and resistance building. bring a sleeping bag'. celeste and skye made a big old pot of food and i found musicians happy and willing to play... we gathered and played-(myspace.com/emilyfchurchill , myspace.com/louisajones myspace.com/theobard were some of them) drank, argued about the wording of the banners and ate until almost dawn. it was a magical night.

photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/occluded/sets/72157623252138162/

and at dawn we found the baliffs waiting for us at the gate. we streamed out bleary eyed, holding coffees and hangovers. i watched the baliff try not to look alarmed as more and more of us streamed out of the house, maybe 30 in total, and then the gates were abrutply slammed shut and locked.

it was a cold morning. a few police arrived, were briefed by the baliffs, shown the high court order and looked up at our banners. more police arrived. some of us were still in the building, hanging out of the window. 'how many of you are there in there?' the police asked '3000!' our friends replied from inside. more police vans arrived. those of us who didn't want to or couldn't be near the police stood on the other side of kingsland road and kept watch, agitatedly. we played some music. the police gave us their final warming/plea- if we didn't move now, the riot police would come. as a unit we laughed at them and they got on their walkie talkies. the road was blocked off. a stream of police vans and cars arrived- 14 in total. from round the corner came around 20 riot police, the ones with circular shields, forming a line directly in front of us (at this point dougal, the guy taking the photos, was taken away by the police.). more police took up positions on the adjacent roofs. our banners flapped in the wind. the police gave us one last ultimatum. we catcalled. the riot police moved in and we linked arms, some sat down, others braced themselves against the gate.

it was all over in a couple of minutes. they pulled us away, detained a couple, and used the biggest pair of lock cutters i have ever seen on the gate. we watched as they failed to break through our reinforced steel gate, and instead smashed a hole in the wall, just like at the arundale arms. we then watched as another group of riot pice, these ones with riot shields that streched from head to toe, went into the house, clearing the washing machines and fridges that lay on the stairs as they went.

the last and perhaps best scene of that day, perhaps the whole time at belgrade road, was photograped by mast. it shows several pairs of legs under duvets, cups of tea on the table, and 10 or so riot police, looking alien and ridiculous, lined up against our back wall with some of the life drawing photos- us naked in various poses- behind them. it is beautiful. apparently the first cop had run into the room but got his shield stuck in the door frame and had had to turn to the side and shuffle in... a few weeks later the last of the plastic flowers had disappeared from the gates.

so that is the story of belgrade road, which i don't think it would be overegging the pudding to say represented a great deal to a lot of people and helped the activist community in london in many ways (the shopping trolley pirate ship of the 2009 G8 protests was assembled and set sail from belgrade road). Ed told me i should write down a little of what happened in that place and that time, and so here it is.