It is 7am on our last day in Majuro and the the sails are quivering in nervous excitement as I grab the internet once more before we go. While my substantive blog post is below, I must quickly pass on a request. We are not likely to hit internet again until the end of june, after the UK`s referendum on whether or not to stay in the EU. I want to vote, but won`t be able to. I want to vote to stay in the union, and I am hoping that someone who wasn`t going to bother to vote (understandable)will read this and then be like `oh, go on then, ill get my shit together, register to vote, vote...`.
Why remain? My main reason is very simple, though there are many others (and, granted, strong arguments to leave also). I believe that borders are basically unnecessary, and that people should be able to go anywhere they want in the world without some arbitrary authority (elected through an outdated and fairly undemocratic system) requiring bits of paper or fingerprints or lots of money for the privilege. There are free trade agreements galore (TTIP being the latest example) that allow money, goods and services to move freely; why on earth shouldn`t humans? This is one of the basic tenets of the EU and I think it is fantastic. It is fantastic that I can go to Berlin or Vienna and do a masters there for a few hundred euros, because they still believe in education as something positive for society in general, rather as a pathway to making loads of money. Fantastic that I can go and work as a ski instructor in Switzerland or a teacher in Greece or a rock star in Civitanova Marche. For as long as I want. And if I get sick, I can go to a hospital and be made well for free.
I haven`t done any of these things (except the rock star one), but what I have done is had my life massively enriched by EU citizens who have ended up in London. Some of my best friends in the UK hold EU passports and they, like the last two people I have been in love with, would not have been able to live and work in England without EU freedom of movement. And that would have sucked.
The well worn `the schools are full... the NHS can`t cope... this is because there are too many immigrants` counter argument must not be dismissed out of hand. As rabid lefties, we are prone to do this, and come off as holier than thou in the process, but these emotive ideas are the crux of the debate for many, and must be addressed methodically. Having said that, the internet is so slow here I won`t be able to find the references to do that, but the basic rebuff is that EU migrants contribute way more in taxes than they take in benefits, healthcare etc, and of course should be afforded the same rights to stay healthy and educate their children as the rest of us.
The real scroungers are the multi-nationals who can afford to pay teams of lawyers to practice tax avoidance (remember when it felt like Google was run by really nice tech geeks? How naive we were); the Sir Philip Greens who buy companies, strip them of their assets then allow them to go bankrupt, private jet safe in it`s hanger, pension fund subsidised by the taxpayer; the Bullingdon boys with trust funds in Panama... These people are denying the public purse millions, millions that could be spent on new hospitals and schools, and this daylight robbery will continue whether or not we are in the EU (unless of course we get together and stop it). The media uses `the migration issue` to play on our fear of losing the way of life and standard of living we cherish to distract us from the fact that a small group of people are screwing us every day. And when they do report on it, it is implicit that this is just how things are, and always will be whether we like it or not. Which is, of course, a lie...
But look at me going off one one... The point is that the EU mitigates nations` borders and allows us to explore new people and places without having to ask anyone`s permission, and in my eyes this is great and very progressive. The UK leaving the EU is like the flatmate who doesn`t like the smell of simmering fish stock, or is angry because someone used a bit of his cheese, so locks himself in his room and won`t talk to anyone, considering them evil personified, whille the rest of the flat has a great time sharing pasta with chilli and garlic, drinking wine and falling in love.
Let`s not be that guy.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Sunday, May 08, 2016
'Let me take you back to Majuro...'
Seven weeks in Majuro, capital atoll of the Marshall Islands. We came here for a week en route to Micronesia, but boat repairs and a crew change have slowed us up and allowed me to get mixed up in the community. Every week or so I sit down and blog about this place, polemic as ever, but before it is finished I observe or am shown something from an angle that alters my understanding, just like I imagine the queen does as she sits and looks at the light hit the diamond on her crown each night in between Coronation Street and bed, and I have to start again. But we will leave soon, it is now or
never...
Humans first arrived here around 1500BC on canoes, probably from Taiwan. They developed their mastery of canoe building and navigation, created the objects needed for their daily and ritual lives from coral, coconut and pandanus trees, and shark bones, and listened to Pink Floyd. Then the Europeans came. First as explorers, then whalers, then missionaries, then soldiers and diplomats, then businessmen, then tourists, then teachers/NGO wonks (who are also often missionaries), and last but by no means least, Richard 'coralbleachedheart' Branson, the `ocean elder` and 'environmental
figurehead' who owns both an airline and a space tourism company and uses the billions he pledged to spend on reducing carbon emissions writing off his tax bill. One of his private islands is here, and if we happen on it i am going to climb a coconut tree and stay there until he walks underneath it.
While this is a narrative familiar to islands across the pacific, the Marshallese have been, and continue to be, struck by the blunt end of `civilisation` more than most. Colonised first by Germany in the 1880s, then Japan between the
world wars, the Marshalls were the focus of numerous brutal battles between North America and Japan during WWII. They were then taken as a 'protectorate' of the USA until independence in 1979. This protection came in the form of 67 US nuclear tests until 1959, and ongoing Intercontinental Ballisic Missile tests. Three islands are still uninhabitable due to radiation in the soil. A few hours before one test the wind changed, meaning tons of mashed up radioactive coral would fall on the island of Rongelap and it`s 1600 inhabitants. The american government know about this and went ahead anyway. Thyroid cancer and miscarriage/birth defect rates spiked. The residents were evacuated but, incredibly, were resettled there a few years later and told it was safe, allowing the US to secretly study the long term effects of eating irradiated food. They were treated as nothing more than lab rats. Indeed, they were described as uncivilised but `more like us than mice`
at the Atomic Energy Commission.
In the years that followed, the US tried to make amends in the only way it knew how: by piling in money and aid. It wanted to give locals a taste of the
American Dream, and the main island has gone from subsistance living to
post-industrial capital city in 80 years. A single lifetime. Compare
this to the 500 years of development in europe.
So
And what do we find? 30,000 people on an atoll island that is at no point
more than 600 metres in width and three metres in height. 60 million in
US Aid each year (two thirds of the country`s GDP). A strict social
heirachy, with a handful of 'royal' and historically powerful families
owning literally all the land and making up most of the government and business
elite. Extreme and not very well hidden government corruption. Public
schools with no board rubbers or running water. One in five babies born
to a teenage mothers (highest rate in the pacific, about 5 times that of
the UK) One of the highest diabetes rates in the world. A massive
suicide problem - in the 1980s, the suicide rate among men aged 19-30
was 20 times higher than in the USA. An annual migration of 4% of the
population to the USA. 40 purse seiners (tuna fishing boats) and tuna
cargo boats in the harbour, part of a pacific tuna fleet that catches
40% of the world's tuna - 300,000 tons , 2 billion dollar annual profits. Cargo
ships that bring in everything an expat could ever want, from hummers to
hummus to ... humburgers ... all for sale in US dollars in US style
supermarkets. A massive drought that sees public water turned on only
three times a week for 4 hours. One coconut oil factory. Three jehovah's
witnesses temples. Young Mormons with southern accents riding bikes in
28 degree heat in startched white shirts and ties. Weekly bingo. Merl
Haggard's old guitar player riffing out on a yacht next door to us. If
there was ever a microcosm to show how fast-tracked capitalism affects a
society, it is here.
The people - ex-pats and locals both - are of course totally fantastic, but walking around at any time of the day or night you see people, especially young men, sitting around doing absolutely nothing. Not even smoking. Bored and laconic. There are few jobs, and many of the things that gave
Marshallese men a sense of purpose are no longer available to them. The
island is living on imported food, imported values, imported religions.
Americans run most of the NGOs and teach at the high schools and college.
Affluent Marshallese live in Hawaii or Oregan on rent collected from
shanty town plots of land back home. Poor Marshallese save up for the
1500 dollar flight to Arkansas to work in `chicken processing plants`,
or join the US army; paid to kill humans instead of chickens.
Not many options.
It could be argued that all societies are like this in part, and that it is the microscopic size of this society that bring these issues into such stark relief. But in my opinion it is more than that. At the heart of the matter is a lack of agency - the ability to make choices and define ones own destiny. The best analogy I can come up with, and it is not a nice one, is that of the wife of a violent man. He performs acts of violence (nuclear testing, concealing truth, denying soveriegnty, emptying the seas of fish), then showers gifts on her in apology, but these gifts are chosen in the image the abuser, and tie her to him, unnourished, and rob her of her ability to assert her own identity. She
becomes a market into which he can dump his own high-fructose corn ego
excrement.
Fishing is a great example. The Americans (and others) pay a pittance for fishing rights in Marshallese waters, take so many fish that the locals can no longer catch any using their traditional methods, then sell the fish back to them in cans. Fisherman from the outer islands move here to look for alternative work, some ending up working for 2 dollars an hour in the fish processing plant, others dependent on handouts. No pride in work, no mastery of traditional skills This in turn leads to addiction and family breakdown. Over time the local fishing knowledge is lost, and people become even more dependent on their benefactor.
Meanwhile the lights of the huge purse seiners and cargo ships create a cityscape out in the lagoon, my last view before sleep each night. You
can tell a purse seiner by it`s reconnaissance helicopter and the (not
so) mini fishing boats that hang at the stern. These are launched at sea to drag a net in a big circle – up to five miles in diameter – around the main boat, bringing in everything that happens to be in the sea at that time into the mothership, which then comes back to Majuro where the fish are hoisted onto cargo boats and then on to markets in asia and beyond. I spoke to a russian sailor who said that a cargo ship needs a load of 1000 tons of tuna to break even and sometimes wait four or five months to fill its hold. The
philippino, chinese, burmese, vietnamese sailers hang out at wifi
hotspots, creaseless t-shirts and three quarter length shorts, absorbed
in their 7 inch samsungs or smoking cigarettes, surrounded by boxes of
ramen noodles to take back to their boats. I imagined heavy drinking,
pasty, tattooed russians selling heroin and debasing the local female
population, but if that is here (and it may well be), it is not apparent.
But take a boat 20 minutes out of town and across the lagoon, and all this is forgotten. Here more than anywhere we have been, our idea of `tropical paradise` can be photographed, climbed up, swam in (those underwater photos taken by emma). The sand a thousand pale yellows.
Reef fish almost camp in their vivid blues and yellows. Smoke from the
coconut husk fires shining white in the shifting light that streams
through the palm leaves. One night the moon rose full, tiptoeing above the
palms and illuminating the reef 10 metres below the waterline, fish as
shocks of silver above ghostly coral. We donned snorkels and wiggled
around underwater, waiting for mermaids.
Education
Laura and I have been continuing our penpal project, writing songs and
letters with two schools here, one public, one private, the gap in
musicality minimal, the gap in learning vast. It reminded me that it is
in the institution of the school that a child is told what is expected
of him/her in life, and by extension their worth. Music is the great
leveller - everyone can make it, it is non-competitive, it can be used
to develop other skills (in this case language and literacy), and it
makes people feel good about themselves. Here is the Co-op school song,
written and rehearsed in three workshops. Even though the lyrics are
simple, they sum up very succinctly the reasons why locals love it here,
and stay (and what is missing for them in the US):
I also had a great time working with the Assumption school Jazz band. The
amazing music teacher there, Ashleigh, has built a music department out
of nothing in just two years, with the Jazz band just a term old, and I
tried out some approaches to improvisation from Victor Wooton`s book
`the Music Lesson`. The students were naturals.
I also met college teacher Nina, and ended up facilitating a handful of
Sociology and Psychology classes at the College of the Marshall Islands.
I have never studied these two subjects, but the psychology class was
looking at `Educational Psychology`, so I developed a session looking at
(and, of course, trying out) approaches to learning and group dynamics
in informal music education. The sociology students were examining
`Cultural Hegemony`, something I had to look up. Early in our stay, at a
yoga class, I met and made friends with Lala (yoga classes - the
place where everyone is the best version of themselves, so if you have
any chance of liking them, you are going to like them then). A
Marshallese native, she had spent her formative years in the USA before
moving back with her new husband, having a child and starting a
business. She was just about to join her husband and child back in the
states when her grandfather, a clan leader on an outer island, had died.
In his will he left her two things - an island (not a big one, but an
island nonetheless), and a thirteen year old girl whose mother was
unable to take care of her, and who he had been bringing up since she
was young. He wanted Lala to adopt her, and pluck her from her life in an
extremely remote island community to.... Scottsdale, Arizona. Lala had
agreed.
The teacher in me wanted to go right away to her atoll and let
her know that american kids might act tough but are actually products of
a society that has made them insecure consumers, and not to worry if
they seemed completely bonkers. But flights to her island are once a
week and 200 dollars, and the prevailing wind meant it would be
difficult for Karaka to back. So instead, I used the sociology classes
(and then, when I got invited back, the psychology classes too) to
discuss with the CMI students - aged 18 to 30, some of whom had been to
or lived in america - the realities, decisions, threats and
opportunities that this young woman was going to face when she entered
her new life. The most interesting discussion was about integration
versus retaining culture, the example being whether or not she should
wear hotpants (Marshallese culture traditionally isn`t fond of
hotpants). The students felt a loss of culture wasn`t inevitable, but
that she shouldn`t hold her own culture as sacrosanct. Then we summed up
the general conclusion in song form, ready to send to her. Killer.
An in between the classes and the socio-cultural hand wringing I have been doing my best to fill the days with fun and adventure. I found a nice selection of musicians who let me play with them - country music with the Bilge Water Band, a Romanian fiddler, a very hairy , well-wisdomed irish singer (they tend to be...). The only low point was an absolutely horrendous karaoke duet rendition of `you`re the one that i want` from Grease (she was quite good, which made me seem even worse), reminding me once again to never be talked into doing karaoke. We visited the coconut oil factory and spent many evenings driving to moonlit beaches listening to the Notorious BIG and making badass gestures with our arms. After 7 weeks of almost daily yoga and meditation my mind is light and I feel like there is a column of air around my spine. Have also become much more sensitive to how my body reacts to what i put in it - caffeine,food, tequila, sleep - but have yet to listen to these sensations fully.
Tomorrow we leave for the outer islands; back into the wild. It will be good, but then round here everywhere is...
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Hot and Bothered
Dave asked me to write about the Karaka community for his excellent website www.towardcommunity.com, but I ended up writing this instead:
'Why do we bother?' - Towards Community in the Now
“When you're so committed to the future, it's real easy to let your life right now turn to shit” - Brad Warner
Picture the scene: around one hundred activists on an embankment above the outer fence of Kingsnorth coal power station. Our first attempt to storm the place has led only to some broken fencing, and now a line of police wait inside the fence to arrest anyone attempting to climb through. Someone is having an epileptic fit and a police medic arrives to provide advanced first aid. Most of the group stand in a circle discussing how to proceed. There are some good ideas, the merits of which are being debated. Despite the fact it is just 10am, one activist is really drunk, and keeps disrupting proceedings with loud, obtuse and irrelevent comments. As he is less and less politely told to shut up, he begins to verbally assault some of the other activists. Some of what he is saying is sexist, and draws an angry response from everyone else. Eventually someone accuses him of being planted there by the police to disrupt the meeting, to which he acts with outrage. Meanwhile, no decisions are made, energy seeps from the action, the minutes roll by, and the coal continues to be burned...
Or this: Occupy London's Finsbury Square, a couple of weeks in and in the 'information gazebo' we are busy engaging with members of the public – the curious, supportive, derisory – on the topic of 'the financial system as it is and how it might be made fairer'. Sleeping in a tent in the middle of central london with the constant threat of eviction is not a restful experience, and I am tired but putting all my energy into a discussion with a taxi driver, who has heard on the radio (LBC) that what we are doing is actually pretty good, and wearily but with open ears he has come to ask some questions. Just as he is coming round to the idea that this ugly protest camp may be part of a solution to problems that he himself acknowledge are key to our collective future, one of the homeless chaps who has been staying with us wanders past, drops his pants, and takes a huge crap at the bottom of a tree in full view of us and everyone else. The taxi driver looks at him, looks at me, winces slightly, then walks away in disgust.
One more: the interminably long community meeting, badly facilitated. The discussion: whether to collectively buy expensive organic coffee or cheap inorganic coffee. The discussion goes around and around is circles, a few people get fed up and leave, and three well-meaning, principled individuals are left frustrated and angry as no decision is made (the third argues that we should only comsume things we can grow in our own climate, and shouldn't drink coffee at all).
If you are part of a community in which everyone has an equal voice – be it a housing co-op, activist group, community garden, bike workshop – it is highly likely you will have been in situations like these. Moments in which everyone's hard work and utopian dreams seem to be slowly unravelling, and the overwhelming question in your mind is: 'why do I bother?'
I have spent much of the last 10 years in communities of various sorts – living in squats, forests and caravan sites, protesting and partying, making music and planting seeds and building movements – and have observed scenes like these manifest in many ways. I have also seen enough good people drop out, burn out or fade away from movements because they asked themselves the above question and couldn't find a good enough answer. In these few paragraphs I want to share my own response, and perhaps in the comments section below you can share yours.
My current community is a special one: five souls sailing across the pacific ocean on a beautiful steel boat named Karaka- adventuring on remote islands, fishing, reading, vomiting, mending sails, making music, staring at an ever-shifting, unfathomable ocean. When I first arrived on the boat there were no spare beds, and I would sleep on the roof of the boat, close to the steering wheel and gear-box. I have always been known for being clumsy – losing things, breaking things – but always saw this as an endearing if slightly annoying part of my character. A couple of times I accidently stood on the gearbox in the middle of the night, but thought nothing of it, until one night, sailing between islands, the wind dropped, we started the engine, and it quickly became apparent that the gearbox was broken. The next day, as the captain strained and swore over bent steel tubing, I felt full of shame and realised for the first time that for most of my adult life I have been wandering around in my own thoughts – my memories and appetites and dreams – and very rarely been in the present moment. Just like when you are eating and watching TV at the same time and suddenly your plate is empty and you can't remember tasting the food at all. Or when you really need the toilet mid-conversation and you are waiting for the other person to finish speaking so you can make your excuses, and then have no idea what the person was actually talking about. I realised my life was like this nearly all the time. It was a big shock and also quite funny.
And so I started playing with this, and trying to be in the present moment as much as possible, and suddenly lots of things happened. For one, I started noticing much more of the world around me, and by really listening to people started to hear the intention behind their words and actions much more, and was therefore able to increase my empathy and usefulness. I also started being able to see my emotions for what they were – knee jerk reactions that were always going to appear, but by holding onto them I was preventing myself being present in the here and now. On the small, close-quartered boat, and in random island communities where I was dealing with ways of thinking and being totally different to my own, these realisations were incredibly useful.
Additionally and somewhat paradoxically, being more aware of myself* in the present moment means I can better survey my past and understand how I have got to where I have got to, and why, and how I might best position myself for the future (long night watches on the boat, under the stars, help with this too...). I remember my formative experiences as a young person, listening to punk and post-rock and reading Crimethinc and Kerouac. I remember the moments that opened my eyes to the fact that our consumerist, capitalist society is not only vacuous and boring but also necessitates extremes of poverty and wealth, constant war, environmental destruction, and the isolation and disempowerment of both community and individual .
And I remembered the glimpses of alternative communities that I had in those formative years – squats in Bradford, beach communities in the canary islands, our very own 'DIY Collective' in Scarborough – and how great it felt to be building something new, radical, meaningful. I realised that all our achievements had been temporary, but the process of achieving or not quite managing to achieve- of building, planning, struggling – is what I remembered, and those memories were good ones. Perhaps you can take a moment to pinpoint the moments, people and learnings that shifted your compass to where you are now, reading this rather obscure little article, building your community.
The novelist Ursula Le Guin (for the ultimate study of non-heirachical community building, read her amazing novel The Dispossessed) states 'I learn by doing the things I have to do'. I realised that once one has eaten the matrix's 'red pill' and seen society for what it is, the only thing one can do is try and build something better, or spend forever cynical, detached, and probably drunk. Each community – yours and mine – has a vision that brings people together and inspires them to put in the time and energy to make it happen. We need that vision. But the vision – however important, be it self-sufficiency, conversion of people to your religion, global revolution – is intangible, far off, may never exist.
And that which does not exist is not as important as what does exist. And the only thing that we can be sure does exist is the community as it is in the here and now, warts and all. A group of people working together, sharing food and space and laughter and memories and knowledge. And the aim is to be able to savour every positive moment, and see every negative one – especially the momumentally frustrating ones – as a chance to ask yourself 'are we doing this in the best way possible?' and 'are our aims and methods still relevant to the community?'. At the very least, they are an opportunity to better hone your sense of the absurd. My example of Occupy London – in the end we functioned more like a soup kitchen/first aid centre/safe space than a revolutionary vanguard, but that was probably much more useful to the community around us. Kingsnorth power station – perhaps next time we need better medics, or smaller groups of activists, or a strongly enforced no-alcohol policy. The coffee – perhaps the learning points are around non-violent communication training, or a better decision making system, though of course we all know that coffee is a bourgeoise luxury and bad for the stomach...
But the point is that you have to do these things and learn from them because there is something deep inside you that pushes you to take the hard road and experiment with new ways of living and interacting that are as challenging as they are exciting. The emotions we feel when things are not going well are unpleasant, but if responded too with skill are the very things that make a community stronger, more focussed, and more effective. Building communities is not about creating the ideal community or individual or society in the future, it is about the reality of the here and now of yourself and the other people, animals and coffee beans around you.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't be aware of how our actions will impact on the future. Instead, we need to know that treating ourselves and those around us with dignity, patience and humour is much more likely to create a future we want to live in than resenting or reprimanding a colleague for not eating zapatista hula-hoops, or believing that some cops are actually ok, or feeling guilty or indignant because someone has accused you of the very same. The existence of your community – a space in which all are welcome, treated with fairness, working towards a common goal – in such an unforgiving world is an achievement in and of itself, and that should be explicit.
And if the beauty and ugliness of the present moment are not enough for you, take a cold look at the changes taking places in our climate. It is clear that things are going to get a lot worse for humanity in the next decades. Our boat has just visited an island that is expected to be uninhabitable in 30-50 years due to rising sea levels, and as activists and citizens in the west the issues we deal with in the future may be at the level of access to food, water, and personal safety, rather than councils cutting arts budgets, use of pesticides and the democratic process, important as these issues are. What we are learning now as we build our communities are the skills we will need when society decides to face the gathering storm. Your community then may be your family, or your street, or your town, and the skills you are learning now will be essential then.
So to my brothers and sisters who are indeed asking themselves 'why do I bother?', I would like to suggest that the real measuring stick of whether or not to 'bother' is not 'did we achieve our goal' but 'did we truly live the experience, and what have we learnt?'. We are building communities because, on some fundamental level, we know it is the way forward for ourselves and those around us. Some work some of the time, some work nearly all the time, some don't make it out of the pub. All of them bring together people, ideas, and an endless supply of present moments to make the most of, and in this sense, it is always worth bothering.
*the word 'mindful' probably best describes what I am talking about here, but as this word seems to have been co-opted by business as a way to feel ok about continuing to maintain the capitalist status quo, albeit with occasional pauses in the lotus position, I avoid it.
21/3/16
'Why do we bother?' - Towards Community in the Now
“When you're so committed to the future, it's real easy to let your life right now turn to shit” - Brad Warner
Picture the scene: around one hundred activists on an embankment above the outer fence of Kingsnorth coal power station. Our first attempt to storm the place has led only to some broken fencing, and now a line of police wait inside the fence to arrest anyone attempting to climb through. Someone is having an epileptic fit and a police medic arrives to provide advanced first aid. Most of the group stand in a circle discussing how to proceed. There are some good ideas, the merits of which are being debated. Despite the fact it is just 10am, one activist is really drunk, and keeps disrupting proceedings with loud, obtuse and irrelevent comments. As he is less and less politely told to shut up, he begins to verbally assault some of the other activists. Some of what he is saying is sexist, and draws an angry response from everyone else. Eventually someone accuses him of being planted there by the police to disrupt the meeting, to which he acts with outrage. Meanwhile, no decisions are made, energy seeps from the action, the minutes roll by, and the coal continues to be burned...
Or this: Occupy London's Finsbury Square, a couple of weeks in and in the 'information gazebo' we are busy engaging with members of the public – the curious, supportive, derisory – on the topic of 'the financial system as it is and how it might be made fairer'. Sleeping in a tent in the middle of central london with the constant threat of eviction is not a restful experience, and I am tired but putting all my energy into a discussion with a taxi driver, who has heard on the radio (LBC) that what we are doing is actually pretty good, and wearily but with open ears he has come to ask some questions. Just as he is coming round to the idea that this ugly protest camp may be part of a solution to problems that he himself acknowledge are key to our collective future, one of the homeless chaps who has been staying with us wanders past, drops his pants, and takes a huge crap at the bottom of a tree in full view of us and everyone else. The taxi driver looks at him, looks at me, winces slightly, then walks away in disgust.
One more: the interminably long community meeting, badly facilitated. The discussion: whether to collectively buy expensive organic coffee or cheap inorganic coffee. The discussion goes around and around is circles, a few people get fed up and leave, and three well-meaning, principled individuals are left frustrated and angry as no decision is made (the third argues that we should only comsume things we can grow in our own climate, and shouldn't drink coffee at all).
If you are part of a community in which everyone has an equal voice – be it a housing co-op, activist group, community garden, bike workshop – it is highly likely you will have been in situations like these. Moments in which everyone's hard work and utopian dreams seem to be slowly unravelling, and the overwhelming question in your mind is: 'why do I bother?'
I have spent much of the last 10 years in communities of various sorts – living in squats, forests and caravan sites, protesting and partying, making music and planting seeds and building movements – and have observed scenes like these manifest in many ways. I have also seen enough good people drop out, burn out or fade away from movements because they asked themselves the above question and couldn't find a good enough answer. In these few paragraphs I want to share my own response, and perhaps in the comments section below you can share yours.
My current community is a special one: five souls sailing across the pacific ocean on a beautiful steel boat named Karaka- adventuring on remote islands, fishing, reading, vomiting, mending sails, making music, staring at an ever-shifting, unfathomable ocean. When I first arrived on the boat there were no spare beds, and I would sleep on the roof of the boat, close to the steering wheel and gear-box. I have always been known for being clumsy – losing things, breaking things – but always saw this as an endearing if slightly annoying part of my character. A couple of times I accidently stood on the gearbox in the middle of the night, but thought nothing of it, until one night, sailing between islands, the wind dropped, we started the engine, and it quickly became apparent that the gearbox was broken. The next day, as the captain strained and swore over bent steel tubing, I felt full of shame and realised for the first time that for most of my adult life I have been wandering around in my own thoughts – my memories and appetites and dreams – and very rarely been in the present moment. Just like when you are eating and watching TV at the same time and suddenly your plate is empty and you can't remember tasting the food at all. Or when you really need the toilet mid-conversation and you are waiting for the other person to finish speaking so you can make your excuses, and then have no idea what the person was actually talking about. I realised my life was like this nearly all the time. It was a big shock and also quite funny.
And so I started playing with this, and trying to be in the present moment as much as possible, and suddenly lots of things happened. For one, I started noticing much more of the world around me, and by really listening to people started to hear the intention behind their words and actions much more, and was therefore able to increase my empathy and usefulness. I also started being able to see my emotions for what they were – knee jerk reactions that were always going to appear, but by holding onto them I was preventing myself being present in the here and now. On the small, close-quartered boat, and in random island communities where I was dealing with ways of thinking and being totally different to my own, these realisations were incredibly useful.
Additionally and somewhat paradoxically, being more aware of myself* in the present moment means I can better survey my past and understand how I have got to where I have got to, and why, and how I might best position myself for the future (long night watches on the boat, under the stars, help with this too...). I remember my formative experiences as a young person, listening to punk and post-rock and reading Crimethinc and Kerouac. I remember the moments that opened my eyes to the fact that our consumerist, capitalist society is not only vacuous and boring but also necessitates extremes of poverty and wealth, constant war, environmental destruction, and the isolation and disempowerment of both community and individual .
And I remembered the glimpses of alternative communities that I had in those formative years – squats in Bradford, beach communities in the canary islands, our very own 'DIY Collective' in Scarborough – and how great it felt to be building something new, radical, meaningful. I realised that all our achievements had been temporary, but the process of achieving or not quite managing to achieve- of building, planning, struggling – is what I remembered, and those memories were good ones. Perhaps you can take a moment to pinpoint the moments, people and learnings that shifted your compass to where you are now, reading this rather obscure little article, building your community.
The novelist Ursula Le Guin (for the ultimate study of non-heirachical community building, read her amazing novel The Dispossessed) states 'I learn by doing the things I have to do'. I realised that once one has eaten the matrix's 'red pill' and seen society for what it is, the only thing one can do is try and build something better, or spend forever cynical, detached, and probably drunk. Each community – yours and mine – has a vision that brings people together and inspires them to put in the time and energy to make it happen. We need that vision. But the vision – however important, be it self-sufficiency, conversion of people to your religion, global revolution – is intangible, far off, may never exist.
And that which does not exist is not as important as what does exist. And the only thing that we can be sure does exist is the community as it is in the here and now, warts and all. A group of people working together, sharing food and space and laughter and memories and knowledge. And the aim is to be able to savour every positive moment, and see every negative one – especially the momumentally frustrating ones – as a chance to ask yourself 'are we doing this in the best way possible?' and 'are our aims and methods still relevant to the community?'. At the very least, they are an opportunity to better hone your sense of the absurd. My example of Occupy London – in the end we functioned more like a soup kitchen/first aid centre/safe space than a revolutionary vanguard, but that was probably much more useful to the community around us. Kingsnorth power station – perhaps next time we need better medics, or smaller groups of activists, or a strongly enforced no-alcohol policy. The coffee – perhaps the learning points are around non-violent communication training, or a better decision making system, though of course we all know that coffee is a bourgeoise luxury and bad for the stomach...
But the point is that you have to do these things and learn from them because there is something deep inside you that pushes you to take the hard road and experiment with new ways of living and interacting that are as challenging as they are exciting. The emotions we feel when things are not going well are unpleasant, but if responded too with skill are the very things that make a community stronger, more focussed, and more effective. Building communities is not about creating the ideal community or individual or society in the future, it is about the reality of the here and now of yourself and the other people, animals and coffee beans around you.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't be aware of how our actions will impact on the future. Instead, we need to know that treating ourselves and those around us with dignity, patience and humour is much more likely to create a future we want to live in than resenting or reprimanding a colleague for not eating zapatista hula-hoops, or believing that some cops are actually ok, or feeling guilty or indignant because someone has accused you of the very same. The existence of your community – a space in which all are welcome, treated with fairness, working towards a common goal – in such an unforgiving world is an achievement in and of itself, and that should be explicit.
And if the beauty and ugliness of the present moment are not enough for you, take a cold look at the changes taking places in our climate. It is clear that things are going to get a lot worse for humanity in the next decades. Our boat has just visited an island that is expected to be uninhabitable in 30-50 years due to rising sea levels, and as activists and citizens in the west the issues we deal with in the future may be at the level of access to food, water, and personal safety, rather than councils cutting arts budgets, use of pesticides and the democratic process, important as these issues are. What we are learning now as we build our communities are the skills we will need when society decides to face the gathering storm. Your community then may be your family, or your street, or your town, and the skills you are learning now will be essential then.
So to my brothers and sisters who are indeed asking themselves 'why do I bother?', I would like to suggest that the real measuring stick of whether or not to 'bother' is not 'did we achieve our goal' but 'did we truly live the experience, and what have we learnt?'. We are building communities because, on some fundamental level, we know it is the way forward for ourselves and those around us. Some work some of the time, some work nearly all the time, some don't make it out of the pub. All of them bring together people, ideas, and an endless supply of present moments to make the most of, and in this sense, it is always worth bothering.
*the word 'mindful' probably best describes what I am talking about here, but as this word seems to have been co-opted by business as a way to feel ok about continuing to maintain the capitalist status quo, albeit with occasional pauses in the lotus position, I avoid it.
21/3/16
Location:NTA Driveway,,Marshall Islands
Saturday, March 19, 2016
Fanning island, Kiribati
Lobsters in Lobster pot: 0
Edible fish in Lobster pot: 3!!!
As we head to more and more remote areas of the pacific, and I spend less and less time talking to anyone, it becomes harder for me to relate my experiences in words. There are less reference points, and the essence of my surroundings, as well as my own thoughts and emotions, seem to be of a quality that I cannot quite weave into words. I feel I have slipped into a different reality.
We spent 16 days on Fanning Island, Kiribati, and the place at once revealed itself and remained an enigma. It challenged many of my ideas about happiness, the richness of simplicity and frustrations of poverty, the desire and ability of people to move, grow, adapt and maintain, the traveller's simultanious role of 'guest' and 'stranger', and how to think about change in general, and climate change in particular.
So let me try and do the place and my time there justice.
1. The Place
Fanning Island started life as a volcano, erupting out of the middle of the pacific before slowly sinking down over thousands of years to create a large lagoon surrounded by a thin ring of coral, never more than two metres high, pacific wind and wave lashing against it.
The uninhabited island was eventually found and claimed by a Brit named Fanning who created a coconut plantation. Imported workers from the Cook Islands planted coconuts, taro, breadfuit, and hauled in their nets full of fish from the reef. In 1984 it became part of the independent Republic of Kiribati, a group of around 20 islands spread over some 200,000 square miles, home to just 100,000 citizens (some stats!) whose capital, Tarawa, lies over 2000 miles away from Fanning. The Kiribati government encouraged resettlement from other, more crowded islands, and leased land for free to anyone prepared to say goodbye to their loved ones indefinitely and get on the boat east. This migration was further encouraged with the arrival of norwegian cruise ships from hawaii, and for a few years the islanders made easy money selling handicrafts to daytripping americans.
But now the liners are rare and the population of 2000, strung out in villages around the atoll, generally fall into two categories: coconut and seaweed harvesters/fishermen, who lead what can unpatronisingly be called a subsistance living, and a few professionals sent from the capital on four year contracts – teachers, the police chief (his name translates as 'on top', but this is slightly misleading as there are only six other policemen on the island and no one seems to pay much attention to him), the solitary nurse.
The island has resources of fish, coconuts, taro, pigs, chickens, breadfruit, bananas, pandanus. Every six months a sailing-cargo ship drops off rice, tinned meat, sugar, flour and petrol. They load onto it copra (for coconut oil) and seaweed, and from the proceeds buy tobacco, instant noodles and petroleum products. No doctor and no way to evacuate seriously ill people encourages a slightly more philosophical view of life and death. In the clinic there is a big sign saying 'leprosy is curable'. The disused airstrip hasn't seen a plane for years, electricity only from solar and generators, no TV (what a thought!), no glass windows, no chocolate. The internet had been broken for 3 months when we got there. Petrol is extremely scarce, but that isn't so bad as there is nowhere really to go that isn't a cycle ride away, unless you are a school child with no bike. The shops sell a small and random assortment of tinned goods from asia, matches, garlic paste and solar lanterns. Things are that simple.
Except they aren't. The weather, according to the locals, has changed drastically in the last 10 years. It rains and floods more, affecting the ground water and washing away roads. The downturn in the chinese economy means that as of last month no one will buy any seaweed, which means some families can no longer buy books or pens for their childrens' schooling. Higher commodity prices mean less rice and flour arrives on the boat. The president of kiribati is currently at climate talks in new zealand, and the official line is that fanning is likely to be uninhabitable in 50 years. His slogan is 'migration with dignity'. The incessant wind and two shipwrecks in the lagoon complete the feeling of isolation. Of course there are other places in the world where people have a lot less (people tell me that no-one is hungry here, and I believe it), but absolute poverty is often offset with wealthier areas (here I am thinking of india), so you get the feeling, probably falsely, that people can move up and down the social ladder, or at least go and live in a city.
The flip side of this is that lots of the diseases that are endemic in larger places have yet to reach Fanning. And we are not just talking about HIV here. Early in the voyage I strugged through the terribly written 'Story of B' by Daniel Quinn, which posits that the almost global attitude of 'produce as much as possible at whatever cost to the environment and other species; value progress and efficiency' is not inbuilt, but one approach among many. However, as part of this approaches' need for incessant growth, and it's incredible efficiency, in the last 300 or so years it has swallowed up other approaches, potentially more sustainable. On Fanning we find that alternative approaches still exist: Here people work extremely hard, but the focus is very much on the present moment, rather than striving for an imagined future, and on living with the land rather than dominating it.
The other major difference is their attitude to visitors. I have known many other places that are extremely welcoming, but here any visitor is an honoured guest, to be given (not sold) everything they need and welcomed like family anywhere they say hello. At times my western, capitalist mind felt wrong and vaguely guilty- I needed exchange for things to be fair! But, as they* say, 'the giver should be thankful', and as they brought whole branches of bananas, breadfruit, more fish than we could eat, out to the boat, I put away these thoughts and gave as much gratitude as I could, knowing that these things were not in abundance and it was really a big display of generosity. On the last day I missed the ferry across the pass. It had got all the way over to the other side before somebody obviously saw me and the whole boat, filled with maybe 50 people, turned around to come back and get me!
II – The People and the Stories
We arrived on the island on a leaden-skied Sunday morning, after a 13 day, 1500 mile voyage. Our first interaction was a visit from 'customs' – three men (including the blustering On Top) rowing out on a flimsy fisherman's outrigger. One florescent tshirt with the word 'customs' on it , a walkie talkie, a very incongruous pair of black leather shoes which the man ended up not putting on, and only a vague grasp of the neessary paperwork. In short, like an ill-conceived wandering performer at Boomtown Festival. They asked only for a bottle of rum for payment (they got a box of wine instead) and in exhange gave us an official stamp, and the lowdown on local greetings and local fish. I greased the wheels of beaurocracy with a few glasses of limeade.
Over the next few days the weather oscillated between 'brooding' and 'torrential downpour' but the next day I kayaked to the village and put into practice my well-honed 'walking around looking for the health centre, smiling at everyone and saying hello ('maori' in the kiribati language)' tactic of getting to know a community. Joseph appeared, a retired teacher, who took us to meet bruno 'the frenchman', who came here on a sailboat 30 years ago, got addicted to the island way of life, married a local, and now has the only house on the island made of stone (official buildings are concrete with tin roofs, houses are made from braided pandanus leaves and bamboo). He in turn took us to meet Ty, a fascinating chap – half irish, one quarter kiribati and one quarter maori. He arrived on the island 20 years ago when the cruise ships first started coming, and made money selling phillipino handicrafts to tourists as kiribati originals. With the proceeds he built a cava bar on the island, and started trading in seaweed, built a bakery, generally made good. But now the cruise ships are irregular, the sea is rising, and noone is buying seaweed, and he has got his british passport as an escape route.
We spent a few afternoons in his empty bar drinking tea (me happily given the union jack mug) and telling island stories – the korean man who came and killed 6000 sharks, chopped off their fins to sell in china and has radically altered the island ecosystem. The 9 BALES of cannabis that washed up on shore on the next island, leading to the whole island – even the missionaries – being stoned for a couple of months. Good sermons apparently. The smiling german who spent three tranquil years living on the island, handing out hundred dollar bills like chocolate bars, then disappearing just before the FBI showed up – he had been one of the pilots that had trained the 9/11 bombers. The four local lads who caught fish for the aquariums of the world, storing them in bags under the pier at christmas island. They were checking the fish were ok during a storm when a tidal wave hit, their mangled bodies washing up on the beach a few days later.
But he also explained how people live day to day not only in terms of resources, but also planning – there is no contingency should the rice and flour stop arriving, or the ground water be salinated. There is no word for 'maintainance' in the language. It would be funny if the stakes were not so high. The scientific consensus is that islands like fanning will be uninhabitable in the next 30 to 50 years, maybe sooner, and the Kiribati government has bought land in Fiji for a limited resettlement. But will it be enough for everybody, and how will the people make a living in their new home, never mind retain a sense of identity and an equality with other groups on the island? But then, on the other hand, what can people do to prepare? Go there now? Diversify their incomes or produce on the island? Stop having so many babies? One idea is outlined below, but you see the predicament. The effects of changing weather patterns were clear. It was supposed to be the dry season, yet we could barely dry out our washing. Forty breadfruit trees had just died after their soil became salinated. There are fewer fish in the lagoon.
Another day I ate dried fish with an uncle and nephew copra farming team in a village further north. They showed me the copra preparation process (see the photo with all the coconuts) north. They showed me the copra preparation process and all the things they harvested from the tree – green coconuts to drink then crack open and spoon out the jelly-like flesh; brown coconuts to make coconut cream or copra; the sap from the chopped branch making toddy, a delicious sweet cordial, which can be left for three days to become sour toddy, like cider, or boiled to make a sort of coconut molassus, kamaimai. In typical Fanning fashion he then insisted on filling my big 2 litre water bottle with the latter, precious though it is.
Two doors down from him I was invited by another copra harvester, who I had seen on the ferry, to drink some sour toddy. He spoke no english and had never gone to school, but his partner was the daughter of a school principal and spoke fluent english. She had come to Fanning a few years ago from tarawa, the capital (which is much closer to a 'western' setup) to act as housekeeper for her parents. A local family had asked her father if she could marry their son. He agreed and here she was, a year in, drying copra and staring into space. I had sort of concluded that, whilst I didn't think my lifestyle and priviledges (books, variety of food, electric light, variety of sub-cultures to get involved in) made for a happier or more content existence, I would find it incredibly difficult to move from the lifestyle I knew to this one. And she was doing it. Did she ever get bored? Sometimes. What did she do when she got bored? Dry some more copra. Was everyone happy on Fanning Island? Mostly. Was she happy? At this, she looked at me with big eyes and an inscrutable expression. An expression that could have been saying many things. I was a guest in her and her husband's house and it was inappropriate to probe further. She asked if I had any books she could read. I walked the 90 minutes home on the coral-sand road as the darkness gathered, avoiding big crabs and puddles, the wind whistling through the big coconut palms overhead.
The next morning I was brushing my teeth, watching the ferry (imagine an old school army landing craft) take school children from the other side of the island to the middle school. As it crossed the inlet of the lagoon it was suddenly and violently sucked out towards the ocean by the outgoing tide.
I kayaked over to the gathering crowd on our side of the pass. They thought that there must be a problem with the engine. If there had been an anchor on the boat they could have just dropped it down and at least stopped moving, but I knew there was no anchor, nor radio, nor life jackets on board, and as we watched some people jump out of the boat and began swimming for shore. Definitely time to do something. By the time I had kayaked back to the boat the rest of the crew were already preparing the boat to go out. By the time we got there, perhaps 20 minutes later, they were already 2 miles out and continuing to drift. Everyone on the boat- around 30 13-15 year olds and maybe a dozen adults – seemed calm and chirpy, though I later found out there had been quite a lot of panic followed by general rejoicing and praising of the lord when they saw our ship begin to move. Apparently one lady said 'they won't help us, they're 'white' ' and then was so happy when it was clear that we were. We strapped the ferry to the side of the boat with ropes and tyres, and headed back. Would have been dodge to make a thing of taking photos but I managed to sneak one just to remember the occasion.
We thought nothing more about it, except that I now didn't worry about not paying for the ferry each morning on my way to school, until we received an invitation to a 'presentation' at the middle school the following friday. Myself and Tom went (I was quite upset that the others didn't come, as it felt like we gave the impression of ungratefulness, but I can only be responsible for myself) and sat cross legged on palm mats on the east side of the school's maneaba, a traditional communal space a bit like a large pagoda, the place reserved for the guests of honour.
There followed prayers, songs, skits, more prayers (the theme for the day was 'ask jesus to forgive your sins'), and then attention was turned to us, and two students danced a wholly ambiguous 'traditional polynesian meets christina aguilera' dance for us, and then garlanded our heads and necklaced our necks. Each class then danced and/or sang for us before presenting us with gifts – beautiful jewellery and bowls made from shells and twine, shark-tooth knives, a model canoe, and lots and lots of food for our trip – four sacks of coconuts, breadfruit, papaya, a taro as thick as an elephant's leg. Overwhelming, especially as it was only that morning that I had mentioned to one of the teachers that we were looking for coconuts to take with us. I suspect that the students had given their own lunchtime coconuts to us. And then the principal made a speech, and then I made a speech, and then there was a special 'thanks for the speech' clap and dance, and then the line of tupperwares that were lined up on one side of the hall that looked so inviting were opened up, and all manner of delights were cooed over, spooned onto plates, and eaten. A giant lobster, sweet and sour beef complete with bits of pinapple, fried breadfruit, pandanus with coconut cream, raw fish with coconut, sweet taro cakes, papaya salad... all washed down with coconut water. Amazing. That night everyone had gone to bed with most of the legs and head of the lobster needing to be eaten or thown away. I made a quick garlic butter and slowly, thoroughly, stripped the animal of it's meat, dipping thick tasty leg meat into the butter and feeling like the luckiest man in the whole world. I don't think i'll need to eat lobster ever again.
III – Learning and Teaching
I met Atah, the inspiring headteacher of the largest of the three primary schools on the island, early on in our stay, and we agreed that it would be a good idea for me to do some music workshops in her school. She is from the capital island and has a brilliant mix of local and global mindset, and we clicked immediately. She encourages the parents not to beat their children, but also understands what kind of education the children need in the context of this very closed society. She has three children of her own, has adopted a forth and lets a fifth, who is a pepperoni short of a pizza, hang out at her house and eat with the family. She teaches year 1 in the daytime, tutors her friends' children in the evening, cooks lunch for visiting guests, chases up the non payment of her staff, ends up giving away all her crockery to those who have none, and is generally one of those superwomen who often end up in the education sector.
I should say something about this sector in Kiribaati. Primary schools are free, with exercise books and pencils provided by the australian government. This has meant that more children attend school (35 in year one compared to 18 in year 6) but health problems (swollen feet and diorrhea), transport problems (when the island runs out of petrol or the truck breaks down some children have a round trip of several hours), and parent's prioritisation of coconut gathering mean attendence is still a struggle.
Middle school (11 – 14) and high school (15 – 18) are fee paying, with annual tests providing the top 20% with state scholarships. At sixteen, Fanning's young people must go to boarding school on Christmas island, a 24 hour boat ride away, the capital island, Tarawa, more than 2000 miles away, or to Fiji, New Zealand or Australia. Again, the state sponsers the top 20% of these students.
Studying is mostly in English, so the importance of a strong foundation in the language is essential for those hoping to carry on into tertiary education. With this in mind, I prepared and delivered workshops that integrated spoken and written english and music to all the year groups. I have written further about it here and part of the song we wrote as well as an interview with Atah is here
The other thing that stands out in the schools is the heavy influence of the christian church. One morning I found myself cross legged in Atah's house, machete in hand, shaving the husk off green coconuts to give to visiting missionaries. It got more surreal when we shared the coconuts along with tuna, rice, bread made by laura, honey brought by me. Whilst we ate, Atah got all the teachers together and they started singing – lilting songs beautiful 3 part harmony (one us at the end of the video). Imagine schools in england with a teachers' choir entertaining guests! Then the lead missionary asked me to play and sing a song. The only song I can play and sing with any confidence on guitar these days is 'When Ye Go Away' by the Waterboys, so I duly belted it out as small children peeped in the staffroom windows and crowded in the door. Then I asked the missionaries, dressed in black and white and from both catholic and protestant churches, to sing. They obliged, and I pulled up a chair close by, closed my eyes, and listened. A beautiful sharing.
Atah runs a great school and the kids have a strong and happy education, but of course my western mind looks at the bare concrete walls and floors and says 'let me help this school get more resources'. Perhaps a computer with an offline version of wikipedia (they can run it off solar) or some ukeleles, or even some wall posters or a job lot of footballs. But then I ask myself – do they really need these things? If a child gets used to bright bits of plastic on the wall, or watching youtube videos – however educational – perhaps the seed of yearning for more material goods will be sown in them? And then the next question – does anybody need this stuff? If I fell in love here and wanted to stay, could I actually live so simply, or do I need my fix of match of the day, high quality live music, fish and chips, mature cheddar?
The latter question I have no intention of having to answer, but Atah suggested a penpal scheme to broaden the students' horizons and improve their english. This would be made much easier with a computer and the internet (post takes up to 4 months to get to or from fanning, depending on when the cargo ship arrives), which myself and Laura will fundraise for, and with a bit of luck one or more schools in the english speaking world will see what a great opportunity this is for some cross cultural dialogue and develop ties.
The best way to sell it to schools would be: 'see the face of global warming! This island will be underwater in 50 years, talk to your peers who are on the front line!', but there is something of 'the other' about this approach, and besides, plenty of the teachers I spoke to didn't seem too concerned about climate change...
So yep, Fanning Island, a big learning experience for me. On the last day we got one more delivery of fish and the ferry gave us a royal drive by, with grins and waves and 'sapu!'s all round. And then we pulled up the anchor, hoisted the sails, and set a course north west to get the trade winds to Mujuro, Marshall Islands...
>'They' being a story in 'zen flesh, zen bones'
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Anaho & Music
Music
Island: Nuku Hiva
Lobsters in Lobster pot: 0
The late afternoon sun creates a dazzling white path on the water, past bobbing sail boats and into the hills, which stand mute grey-green, shadows beginning to lengthen.
It has been a big couple of weeks in the little microcosm that is my world at the moment. Since I last wrote we moved from Ua Huka, itself barely populated and stunningly beautiful, to the north side of Nuku Hiva and a bay called Anaho. Like many of the bays we have been to, this had a beige sandy beach that fronted a steep, verdant vally, mangoes and limes falling off trees everywhere, big rays swimming under the Kayak. But this place felt different. For a start, there were no cars, and the only access was by foot or horse (all the locals used horses) over the hill pass, or by boat (I had a brilliant afternoon where I walked to the village over the hill and found the only visible occupants of the village, a small, fat, laughing 10 year old and his friends, sat with an ipod and a big Bose speaker, playing soca-style drummy pop and gyrating his layers of tummy blubber. I joined them, dancing my most outrageous dance and, after almost dying of laughter, the kids joined in) It also has the only extensive coral reef in the Marquesas, and fish buzz around everywhere. Back in the day ('the day' being between 1200 and 1700 before european diseases killed around 80% of the population) this reef supported over 1000 people, providing the raw material (oyster shells) to make highly prized fishing hooks and trading them across the archipelago. Now the population is around thirty people. They live in houses raised off the ground, and (as previously discussed), don't really seem to need money very much what with hunting, fishing, foraging and gardening, but what money they do make is from producing copra, the raw material from coconuts that goes on to become coconut oil and beauty products. The air is heavy with the slick sweetness of coconut as it drys in the sun.
We arrived in the bay in the afternoon afternoon, one of two boats in the bay, and the exceptional beauty of the place combined with my return to good health post-infection put me in a wonderful mood. Six weeks into tropical boat life and my body has got the memo – 30 degrees is now normal and not uncomfortable. The bottoms of my feet have thickened so I can walk barefoot, and the tops of my feet are brown enough to no longer warrant sunscreen. My stomach is tolerant with of rainwater and local stand pipes (amazingly, all the water we drink on the boat is harvested from the rain, and we have stored almost 1500 litres for the crossing), and perhaps best of all, my attitude to mosquitos has gone from 'long trousers, deet, annoyance, and constant vigilance' to 'dear mosquito: neither you nor your bites exist'. This new attitude was imparted to me by Heretou, a musician with a voice that should be heard the world over, on the second night in Anaho, as we ate freshly butchered goat with even fresher homemade limeade. I asked him if there were mosquitos here, and whether I should put a shirt on. “it depends on your thinking,” he replied “if you don't acknowledge the mosquitoes exist, they don't bite you. It is the same with ants. If you are still and calm, then leave you alone. If you try and wipe them off, they run all over you. It is instant feedback on your state of mind'. I had had a stressful encounter with ants earlier in the day, so this resonated, and I have been trying out this new relationship with insects ever since, and it really works! I get bitten, but not as much as before, but the bites don't seem it itch hardly at all! Perhaps because I am used to them, but it really improves things, especially when I am with locals and wearing repellent and getting stressed would mark me out as different and, let's face it, deeply uncool.
Heretou and I played some really deep, communicative, funky music together in the two nights we were there, and he played me the music he is producing, which blends traditional and incandescently beautiful Tahitian and Marquesan songs (with as much as 9 part vocal harmony), with strong beats and electronic elements. Could have been shit, but was infact really good. I learnt his limeade recipe, and I was all ready to settle in, snorkel around the coral, set my lobster net, perhaps write some proper music together (he had logic pro and a good keyboard), maybe find a wife, plant some coconut trees and stay there forever, when suddenly we realised that our food shipment from Tahiti was arriving on the other side of the island the following day (4 days early), and at dawn we waved goodbye to this paradise for the provincial capital, Taoiai (tie-o-why-ee), where we are now (which is, incidently, the location of Herman Melville's Typee, a true story of being captured by a tribe with cannibalistic tendancies).
I said goodbye to Heretou at midnight, the night before we left, in a big rush as he jumped off the dinghy between waves and I span the boat around to navigate the reef (which I almost grounded the dinghy on twice and was only saved by random big waves that washed me precariously back into the channel). I thought that was it, and was sad as I felt I could learn a lot from this man, but lo and behold, he shows up a few days later in the place we are now and tells me he is going to 'get a few musicians together' for us to have a session.
Heretou is half french, half marquesan, beautiful, intelligent, light and inquisitive, and I have no doubt could do anything he wanted with his life. After travelling and spending time in Tahiti, he has chosen to build a house in Anaho, the afor mentioned paradise, and has settled down to 'learn the marquesan way of life'- finding his food, growing his food, cooking, understanding the belief and cultural systems of the people. He tells me his days have no routine but usually include a combination of
spear-fishing
- drawing
- playing and writing music
- gardening
- cooking
- reading & writing
- getting high with his friends
for money he produces copra, or does odd jobs as they come up, such as assisting some kiwi archaologists in the next valley, or being the voice of radio adverts in Tahiti. What a thought, to have each day dedicated to things that are enjoyable, and self-improving, and are based on creativity! We in the west have swapped this freedom for possessions and a promise of a better future, and I think if more people saw that another life is possible, more people would find their own way of reclaiming some of this freedom. I have done it in an extreme way, but for sure there are small things everyone can do to spend more time doing what they love in the here and now. Working part time and reducing consumption (and associated bills), for example. Heretou had told me he was going fishing the next day. When I asked him how it was, he said he didn't go, because he had food left over from the night before. Go figure.
So anyway, the day before yesterday I got picked up from the dock by a couple of friendly but not chatty guys, as well as heretou, and we drove a little into the hills, stopping at an abandoned building with a river running next to it where everyone got out their pipes and smoked, as apparently the wife of our host didn't like it around the place. Then we drove up the side of the valley, )at times the gradient was so steep it would have been barely possible to walk up) listening to upbeat reggae, and finally arrived at this house that was rehearsal studio downstairs, living space upstairs, and 3600 degree incredible views. Some of the musicians – around 6 in all – were from the band takanini, probably the most famous band in the whole of French Polynesia in the last few years, and I recognised some of them from music videos and a documentary about the band that I had watched before coming. This, and the size of the bass amps, pointed to some Serious Music Making.
But I made a mistake. With such little language in common, the small amount of communication we do have becomes more important. I had a choice to either play it cool in the way I observe african musicians I have played with in the past, where it is implicit that everyone knows everythign is awesome so doesn't have to say it, or be overenthusastic and english and overblab, which could be endearing or could be annoying. I went for the former, but I think a bit too much. I should have said 'wow, this is an incredible space. It must have been so hard to build such a beautiful, well equipped studio on this tiny, inaccessible island. And I acknowedge that you are all very well respected, rather famous musicians, and it is an honour to play with you' etc. Instead, we arrived, and I petted the dog, which everyone thought was a completely mad thing to do (I assume because they all have fleas. Everyone else kicked them away), and then just sort of pottered around waiting for the music to start. There was an issue with some missing cables and either this, or my rudeness, or something else, made for a really weird atmosphere for the first sort of 20 minutes. We would start to play and it would sound good and then suddenly everyone would just stop playing, and chat in Marquesan with nobody really acknowledging my presence. Then a couple more musicians arrived, with a bass and a big korg synth, and the groove was put on the top of a nail and nailed into the sonic vista, and we played. And we played. And suddenly everything was ok. Reggae, funk, dub, originals and occasionally covers, everyone able to play all the instruments with finesse, the guys swapping around mid song if they had an idea they wanted to try out on a different instrument. A male and female vocalist. A loop pedal used by a left-handed guitar player who played a right handed guitar upside down. Pre-rehearsed arrangements that included sudden breaks and harmonic diversions that kept me on my toes but also allowed me to show my adaptability and willingness to follow the music. Slowly the band leader, whose house it was, actually started acknowledging my existence, and by the end of the 5 hour session he was giving me melodies to play, and initiatin g some pretty sexy synth/clarinet call and response.
There are, of course, lots of issues around loss of traditional culture and also cultural imperialism and the behemoth of western capitalist culture that they must have been exposed to through the music industry, and it felt like there was definitely a waryness of me that I hadn't experienced in the Marquesas until I came to this town. And I could of handled the situation with more composure. But as the music pitched and rolled around me in that studio on the side of the hill, and there was eye contact and smiles and the groove was so deep my body could not help but move, and the clarinet sounded sweet and on point, I realised that this is what I love doing more than anything else in the world (almost), and this is what I had intended to do in London, but (with the exception of Colin Samurai rehearsals where this happened all the time) got sidetracked by a million other related-but-not-quite-the-same things.
So I was happy, and then came back to the dock to find a big pot luck going on (fruit salad with a coconut and white chocolate sauce) and a jam, and (as has happened at least once before, always with negative outcomes), I tried to enter this jam at the same place I had ended the last one, which was inappropriate, and I got annoyed with myself for playing the right notes at the wrong time with the wrong intention.
And now the days are spent in preparation for the Big Sail to Kiribati. Tom wants the boat in perfect working order, so we have been attaching things to other things (wind veins to masts), taking things (rust and barnacles) off other things, restringing djembes, eating brie. I spent a lot of today sowing thick thread around the ends of ropes to stop them fraying. Now I will head to the internet to send this off and then jump in the (alarmingly warm) sea.
Yesterday was dramatic, today is ok
Island: Ua Huka
Lobsters in lobster pot: 0
I have always liked the title of that Mum song (the band, not my mum), and finally I can use it in a blog. Except that yesterday was only dramatic in my own head, and (I assume) the rest of the world continues to destroy itself today as much as yesterday.
We have moved islands since I last wrote, and are now anchored in the bay of a village called Hane on an island called Ua Huka, population (of the whole island) 500. Mountain goat population: 3000. Wild horse population: unknown. Getting here involved our first overnight crossing, taking 2 hour shifts on the wheel. A fickle wind and the fact that two of us had never steered a ship before (I don't think Henry's canal boat in Dorset counts) provided challenge enough, but on top of that half way through the night the wind dropped completely, and when tom, the captain, went to turn the engine on, we discovered that the accelerator handle was broken. I am not sure if I was the one that broke it, but as I have been breaking things left, right and centre here (including, as regular readers will know, cracking a kayak) I knew there was a decent chance. The next morning, as I watched tom struggle to do the repairs, I felt like a complete loser. This, compounded by a lack of solitude after exactly a month on the boat and a fresh outbreak of my pus-laden infection, put me in a rather pathetic mood. So I put my last clean pair of socks on over my bandages and went for a big walk.
The scenery was stunning – scottish highlands meets jurassic park. Wild horses roamed about. I stopped at an arboretum where the island policeman, married to the lady at the arboretum, showed me round and gave me as many mangoes, starfruit and grapefruit as I could fit in my bag. Definitely the first and probably the last time that will ever happen. I stopped and ate my ham and mayonaise sandwich at the foot of a huge cross, high on a cliff overlooking the sea. And all the time I was struggling to appreciate the beauty of the situation I was in: I was aware of how amazing everything was, I just couldn't pull myself out of the funk, and the fundamental question in one of the books I am reading boiled to the surface of my mind (sacred path of the warrior): how much have you connected with yourself at all in your whole life?”.
And another quote from someone I can't remember who said 'when you have nothing you come to know who you really are' or something along those lines. And I always thought that meant 'when you are penniless and your wife and all your friends have left you because you are an alcoholic' but actually I think it can also mean 'when all the things you define yourself by (e.g. job, band, friends, routine, collective memories) are no longer there to reinforce the person you assume you are'. But this line of thinking has a flip side – it means you can realign yourself and think about what sort of person you actually want to be and steer in that direction, without all the assumptions (and habitual behaviours) that come from the things and people around you.
And thinking about why I ALWAYS lose stuff and break stuff (as anyone who has spent anytime around me will know). And why I often cook too much food, eat it all really fast, and then am a bit sleepy (or like now, when I am eating a big block of chocolate without really tasting it because I am concentrating on this blog). And why I find meditation very hard to do. And especially at that moment because I was walking through this monumentally beautiful and unique landscape and brain-constipating myself on all these questions.
I realised that I AM VERY RARELY IN THE PRESENT MOMENT. I am always in the past or future or wondering about this or that that has got nothing to do with the information coming from my senses. Does this sound like a big revelation to you? To me, at that time, it was pretty big. And I think of people that do seem more in the moment, and I realise it is those people that I really respect and admire, and I think of people who are anxious or carry big burdens around with them and realise that they too seem to rarely be in the present moment.
So currently goal number 1 is: be in the present moment. Practice: Good posture. Eating slowly. Really listening to what people are saying and the meaning of it. Lingering longer with my eyes ears and nose aware of my surroundings (easy here as everything is as if moulded for an elaborate eco-fantasy film). Russell brand says in his book 'revolution'* that the strongest common element in all religions/self help books/spritual systems is an urging to be in the present moment.
I'll let you know how it goes.
* Russell Brand has always struck me as a total knob, and I thought his move into anti-capitalism, pro-systemic social change would be brief and gauche, but actually listening to him read his audiobook (I am about half way through), I have to say that my views are extremely similar to his, and he discusses the ideas of interesting and diverse people, from david graeber to rumi. And it is, in part, very funny. He should probably relieve himself of the vast majority of his money to really be able to speak with any credibility, but perhaps my automatic distaste for him was another example of me not living in the present moment and making assumptions... some of his ideas include cancelling all personal debt, banning titles (e.g. sir, the honerable etc), and banning personal security. All of which are themselves quite revolutionary I think.
Lobsters in lobster pot: 0
I have always liked the title of that Mum song (the band, not my mum), and finally I can use it in a blog. Except that yesterday was only dramatic in my own head, and (I assume) the rest of the world continues to destroy itself today as much as yesterday.
We have moved islands since I last wrote, and are now anchored in the bay of a village called Hane on an island called Ua Huka, population (of the whole island) 500. Mountain goat population: 3000. Wild horse population: unknown. Getting here involved our first overnight crossing, taking 2 hour shifts on the wheel. A fickle wind and the fact that two of us had never steered a ship before (I don't think Henry's canal boat in Dorset counts) provided challenge enough, but on top of that half way through the night the wind dropped completely, and when tom, the captain, went to turn the engine on, we discovered that the accelerator handle was broken. I am not sure if I was the one that broke it, but as I have been breaking things left, right and centre here (including, as regular readers will know, cracking a kayak) I knew there was a decent chance. The next morning, as I watched tom struggle to do the repairs, I felt like a complete loser. This, compounded by a lack of solitude after exactly a month on the boat and a fresh outbreak of my pus-laden infection, put me in a rather pathetic mood. So I put my last clean pair of socks on over my bandages and went for a big walk.
The scenery was stunning – scottish highlands meets jurassic park. Wild horses roamed about. I stopped at an arboretum where the island policeman, married to the lady at the arboretum, showed me round and gave me as many mangoes, starfruit and grapefruit as I could fit in my bag. Definitely the first and probably the last time that will ever happen. I stopped and ate my ham and mayonaise sandwich at the foot of a huge cross, high on a cliff overlooking the sea. And all the time I was struggling to appreciate the beauty of the situation I was in: I was aware of how amazing everything was, I just couldn't pull myself out of the funk, and the fundamental question in one of the books I am reading boiled to the surface of my mind (sacred path of the warrior): how much have you connected with yourself at all in your whole life?”.
And another quote from someone I can't remember who said 'when you have nothing you come to know who you really are' or something along those lines. And I always thought that meant 'when you are penniless and your wife and all your friends have left you because you are an alcoholic' but actually I think it can also mean 'when all the things you define yourself by (e.g. job, band, friends, routine, collective memories) are no longer there to reinforce the person you assume you are'. But this line of thinking has a flip side – it means you can realign yourself and think about what sort of person you actually want to be and steer in that direction, without all the assumptions (and habitual behaviours) that come from the things and people around you.
And thinking about why I ALWAYS lose stuff and break stuff (as anyone who has spent anytime around me will know). And why I often cook too much food, eat it all really fast, and then am a bit sleepy (or like now, when I am eating a big block of chocolate without really tasting it because I am concentrating on this blog). And why I find meditation very hard to do. And especially at that moment because I was walking through this monumentally beautiful and unique landscape and brain-constipating myself on all these questions.
I realised that I AM VERY RARELY IN THE PRESENT MOMENT. I am always in the past or future or wondering about this or that that has got nothing to do with the information coming from my senses. Does this sound like a big revelation to you? To me, at that time, it was pretty big. And I think of people that do seem more in the moment, and I realise it is those people that I really respect and admire, and I think of people who are anxious or carry big burdens around with them and realise that they too seem to rarely be in the present moment.
So currently goal number 1 is: be in the present moment. Practice: Good posture. Eating slowly. Really listening to what people are saying and the meaning of it. Lingering longer with my eyes ears and nose aware of my surroundings (easy here as everything is as if moulded for an elaborate eco-fantasy film). Russell brand says in his book 'revolution'* that the strongest common element in all religions/self help books/spritual systems is an urging to be in the present moment.
I'll let you know how it goes.
* Russell Brand has always struck me as a total knob, and I thought his move into anti-capitalism, pro-systemic social change would be brief and gauche, but actually listening to him read his audiobook (I am about half way through), I have to say that my views are extremely similar to his, and he discusses the ideas of interesting and diverse people, from david graeber to rumi. And it is, in part, very funny. He should probably relieve himself of the vast majority of his money to really be able to speak with any credibility, but perhaps my automatic distaste for him was another example of me not living in the present moment and making assumptions... some of his ideas include cancelling all personal debt, banning titles (e.g. sir, the honerable etc), and banning personal security. All of which are themselves quite revolutionary I think.
Location:Ua Huka
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