Foresters Diary
By eleven o’clock, we were getting tired and thirsty. We had left the main house at six, and had set out onto the vast, rolling plain before sunrise, which, when it came, was muted and hazy. Before long the promise of fair weather had given way to a high blanket of thick, grey cloud. There was no wind, but by mid-morning a light breeze was rippling the dark waters of the river, on whose banks we slumped down to rest. Our next problem was to get across.

Our guide lit another cigarette, and spat spectacularly into the brown stream. He nodded to the far distance, where the green of the plantations showed dark against the distant hills. A solitary cormorantlike bird flapped aimlessly overhead, the only sign of wildlife we had seen since setting out. “Once, this was all forest,” he said. “Once, there were many people living here. Here there was once a farm – look,“ and he pointed to a half-hidden pile of stone. “This was once a house. In this place lived a family which lived and worked here.

Now, “ and once again he spat into the river, “Nothing. Nothing but the estates and the plantations of rich landlords.” The desolate and degraded landscape stretched as far as the eye could see. Once, as the guide had said, this had been a great forest, but logging and the associated roads had opened up the interior. As the forest fell, cultivators slashed and burned the remaining vegetation, and moved on. Then came grazing animals, but the huge ranches soon exhausted the fertility of the delicate soils, leaving behind a desert of dreary, rank, tough, vegetation, difficult and exhausting to walk over.

The indigenous people, who had lived in balance with the forest, had long departed, their simple houses and villages at first taken over by settlers from the south, but then, as the large proprietors tightened their grip, even they were moved on. Our guide pointed to the hills. He blew out an angry column of tobacco smoke. “See, over there,” he said. “They promised my father work in the plantations, along with many of the men of the village. For just three years,” and he raised three fingers emphatically, “they worked.

But now there is no profit from the plantations. The work has stopped. There is no livelihood, and no future, and many of them have moved away, or have no work or money to feed their families. Even those with land struggle to survive. I am a lucky one, for I have this job and I am paid by those who seek to reverse the exploitation of the land.” But surely, we say, the government is now on their side. When we were in the capital, we were told of new policies to reafforest the land with local species, and to reintroduce the indigenous wildlife.

Surely there were new laws already in place to enable the small farmers to buy their land cheaply, and to favour the indigenous people and their descendants? Our guide threw the end of his cigarette into the dark acid water of the river, where it hissed and sank into the murky depths. “The government is not to be trusted,” he said. “This government may call themselves socialists, but in reality they are still in the pockets of the great landowners. Some of these are better than the government, and try to make change. Better to trust these than any government.”

He rose gloomily to his feet. “Nothing will change,” he said darkly. We couldn’t cross the swiftly flowing river, so turned back to camp. In the evening we went into the local town, and found a passable meal in a grubby cafe run by an old Chinese woman. Youths lolled menacingly on dark street corners, and a belligerent drunk suddenly confronted us from a dark passage, muttering aggressive words in an incomprehensible language. We pushed past him and he cursed us. Some garishly dressed, sluttish girls shouted out to us, then jeered and gesticulated when we ignored them.

The next day we got up early, loaded the Jeep and set off south once again. Jonathan drove for the first hundred miles. Then we stopped in Inverness to get cheap petrol in Morrisons and I took over. By mid-morning, we were in the House of Bruar, drinking coffee and buying smoked salmon, and by afternoon we crossed the border at Gretna and listened to the Brazilian Grand Prix on the car radio.
Tanarus