I never thought that I would become an international traveller. In the seventies, when much of my cohort were playing "youth-in-Asia", or visiting Europe, I was quite content to pack up the Holden panel van and spend six months touring Queensland or the Australian bush. It seemed to me there was a lifetimes worth of back roads and beaches in the great southland.
Then I found myself in Asia five times in fifteen months, and not in the tourist spots. Organic farming in Indonesia or Sri Lanka is self-selecting for the remotest locations, like Mentawai Islands. My travelling friends were green with envy. Not that they really understood this type of travel. Three hundred kilometres in two days by dugout canoe, including a hundred kilometre trip with 75 km of open ocean, motorbike (pillion) up slippery muddy roads, down narrow jungle tracks and over suspension bridges with one third of the timber planks it should have, while the driver blows clove cigarette smoke back at you. Wooden ferries that stink of Durian and clove smoke and list dangerously to one side. Tropical heat and diseases, roads full of chickens, goats, water buffalo, cats, dogs, children (usually leading younger children or infants), broken down trucks, and goods unloaded in the middle. Even when there is a footpath or verge, the goods still get dropped in the middle of the road, the broken down trucks just stop in the centre too, and pedestrians wander blithely down the narrow bitumen strip. Chilli, fish and rice for breakfast lunch and tea. For the occasional change, you may get offered fried elvers (think large earthworms, crisp fried till they are black, and you are pretty close) or Durian, or boiled entrails.
A five-kilometre stroll up a mountain is a cinch at home. In Sumatra it means dealing with equatorial heat and humidity, tracks littered with sticks and branches that threaten broken ankles, slippery clay paths that have to be negotiated on hands and knees. One step forwards, slide back three - Lampung snakes and ladders. Even if there are footholds cut into the slope, they only fit Asian feet, the same for narrow rice paddy banks. Then there are the spiders, mosquitoes, ants, lice, leeches and bedbugs. On my first day in Aceh I'm astounded by the destruction. The western press reports a few skirmishes, but we see hundreds of houses burnt, whole town centres destroyed by artillery shells. I am shown a bridge where the military are alleged to have hurled 300 dead civilians into a stream. One this day I briefly meet one man, who is quick to greet me and smiles broadly. The next day he is shot through the head and killed, along with one of his workers. Another is kidnapped and never seen again. Everywhere there are military (19 year olds with machine guns and uniforms), paramilitary (19 year olds with machineguns and no uniforms) and guerrillas (40 year olds with machine guns). They all ask for money. They know the other parties ask for money too. They don't care, as long as you give them something. It doesn't take much money, but they may stop you six or ten or fifteen times per day.
I develop a great respect for my driver. He not only knows how to negotiate the potholes and obstacles in the road, he seems to know many people along the way. He is always talking to men drinking coffee in the market square of street stalls. Gradually it dawns that they are the plainclothes police, or the local rebel leaders. At every stop information is gleaned, friendships are reinforced. These connections are critical to gather intelligence about the fighting.
After as much as 23 days on the road, working and travelling every day without a rest day, I return home. Everyone asks how was the holiday. They only know Indonesia from Bali, they can't really conceive of sleeping on mud floors in simple huts.
There is fun to be had too. Genuine, kind, down to earth farmer folks who gladly share everything they have, the simple joy of refreshing coconut milk straight from the nut they have just harvested just for you. It is an adventure - this means that it was not necessarily fun while you were doing it, but you will never forget the experience, and it does make a good photograph or dinnertime tale.
Then I suddenly find myself in Germany for the third time in four months. This trip is also hectic. In five weeks I will visit the USA, Germany, Italy, England (twice), Amsterdam and Sweden. Howls of jealousy from friends at home, but scant appreciation of the downside. All those tourist spots that you have to drive straight past, the museums, art galleries, waterfalls and national parks that you will not visit.
It is always good to visit a new place for the first time. But there are the nights when you have just spent 24 hours travelling, after being up all night, the night before packing bags and trying to finish jobs that will need attention in the next five weeks, including the late tax return. The next day you lie down to sleep, dog tired, but your time-shifted body will not do more than doze for ten minutes at a time. Your room share colleague snores all night long. Sure, sometimes the snores change to snorts and grunts and he flops around in the bed, while you stare at the ceiling. In the morning he complains of a bad nights sleep. Having almost finished the tax return, the form goes into your bag, another task along the way. There are also the long night flights where your seat is in front of an emergency exit, and doesn't recline. By bad coincidence the reading light doesn't work on this seat either, and they are showing only bad American soapies. Then there is the train trip to Italy. The sleepers being booked out, I am told to expect a four-berth cabin with 'couchettes'. In fact it is a six berth, occupied by and Italian family and loaded to the gunnels with baggage. They are already settled down for the night. They remove most of their bags from your seat and point to two square feet under the stepladder where they indicate you can park your bags. You struggle into the dark cabin and try to sleep on the seat. Halfway through the night you discover the back of the bench actually drops to form the bed. This offers a welcome extra few inches width for sleeping, but the bags are in the way. Mama wakes, shoots you a sharp glance and opens the window. An hour latter, Pappa wakes, shoots you a sharp glance and shuts the window. They alternate this way every hour or so for the remainder of the night. It is hot in that cabin, and stuffy, and the vertical pile of bags under the stepladder occasionally slips onto your head.
The organic travellers budget does not stretch to business class.
I should not be ungrateful. There are occasions in Italy where the conference and meetings are catered for by the famous Giovanni, chef and owner of the famous Osteria Vecca Restaurant. The organic menu includes about 80 dishes on the antipasto table. Fine hand made cheeses including genuine parmesan, aged for at least two years, the best blue cheeses I have ever encountered, prosciutto and Lambrusco made by our chef and aged in the restaurant cellar, and many choices of vegetables and beans. Then the main dishes start - three soups, two pasta, one meat platter, and three sequences of dessert. We stay in a convent and castle complex owned by the mayor, and originally built in the 12th century. The narrow streets wind their way up the hill, under old stone arches past beautiful shuttered houses, occasionally opening out into a stone market plaza, with picturesque views over the landscape, to the alpines in one direction and down towards the Poa River valley in another. At night, fireflies, flit all around, bats zoom out of the castle towers, and the air is warm, still and clean.
In Austin Texas we stay in a lovely cabin overlooking the oak and walnut forest. Or dine at an organic conference dinner, and dance to the music of Roy Carrier and the Night Rockers. Roy is a cousin to the late Clifton Chenier, and the oldest and possibly best exponent of the energetic Zydeco music.
In Britain there is opportunity to catch up with long-lost relatives, and drives down country lanes thick with hedgerows and historic architecture. Unfortunately we can only admire the 10th Century Saxon chapel from the roadside, due to the recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease, but everywhere there are Tudor pubs and houses, thatched cottages and grand castles. At Hay on Wye there is what must surely be the largest concentration of second hand bookshops in the world. Old stone buildings front straight onto the narrow streets, every third one is a second hand bookshop, and some contain a labyrinth of rooms, hallways and staircases that could occupy a half day of browsing alone. Another third of the buildings are pubs, antique shops and cafes. Here I am reminded of the words of the famous Dutch philosopher, Erasmus, "When I get a little money, I buy books; if any is left I buy food and clothes".
I also get to meet my colleagues from around the world; every continent and many countries are represented at these meetings. IFOAM alone has more than 700 members from 104 nations. Many of the members are themselves peak organizations made up of numerous local organizations. My fellow conference delegates and meeting attendees include Nellie Newman, daughter of Paul, and many other famous and fascinating individuals. They are vital people, travelers, conversationalists, achievers and committed conservationists. Our work is also vital and exciting. We plot with Greenpeace and the 'Trial Lawyers for Public Justice" how we can bring a shudder to the monolithic Monsanto and halt the rapid expansion of the GM industry. We form alliances with The Fair Trade network, the Forest Stewardship Council and Marine Stewardship Council to pressure for recognition of a private sector guarantee system for regulating trade. We invite governments to see that we have the support of everyone from input manufacturer, grower, trader, processor, retailer and consumer, the so-called "paddock to plate" system. We invite governments to be involved with us as regulators and policers, but not as standard setters, where we have the knowledge, experience and support (when they do it, the goal is trade development, when we do it, the goal is consumer protection and preservation of the earth).
So these are an organic traveller's tales. The story mixes the good and the bad, the fun and the furry, the fulfilment and the loneliness of hotel rooms. It is a great opportunity, and a privilege, I am grateful to be part of the excitement.
© Tim Marshall 2001
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© Jonathan Sturm 2001