The man and his machine

Today is the day. Judgement day. It started several years back, during the war even. I think it was 1995 when i first visited the magical valley of Diva Grabovica, the natural border between the Mediterranean and Alpine climates. The valley is a garden of hundreds of endemic types of flora and flauna -- worthy of national park status anywhere on this good planet. The magnetic attraction to this place brought be wandering through its plush fields with a tent and a flashlight on several occassions. I just couldn't keep away. The towering peaks of Cvrsnica Mountain sprawl up over 1,800 metres from my lowlying tent, a mere 200 metres above the Adriatic Sea that is just thirty kilometres away. The stars always light the nights at Diva, and the starlight highlights the endemic Munika pine trees that somehow manage to take root in the massive rock faces. Veliki Kuk, the largest rock face on the Balkan Peninsula, is a climbers dream....or for some thier worst nightmare. Well over 1200 metres of sharp rock, many a seasoned, worldly climbers have failed on this face.

So i dreamt of buying a little house in the valley, writing and sipping Bosnian coffee. The thought of daily drinking fresh goats milk from the neighbours, having organic honey being produced in every one of the six tiny households in the valley, and the ridiculous abundance of figs and pomegranates, was all too enticing. Is all too enticing.

One day, not too long after the Dayton Accords starting to actually take roots, appeared a man and his machine. This man and his machine had picked my sacred valley as his location for a sand quarry. Being that the ancient dry riverbed delivered perfectly carved stones of all sizes, this quarry didn't even require much digging. All he had to do was clear the runway for the snowmelt runoff to trickle down into his lap. So he first embarked on eliminating all that bothersome vegetation that had coloured the dry valley. Underground aquifer systems were abundant in the area and a rich array of flora grew right in the middle of the runway. The man and his machine would take care of that, though.

Within a few months the man and his machine has cleared the valley, carved roads up the valley, set up his bright orange rock smashing unit, drilled into the aquifer systems and pumped it back towards his machine, which made a lovely shade of mud used to filter his rock turned sand. This mud, in turn, would run-off into the turquoise blue waters of the Neretva River just downstream. The man was so determined that he decided Diva Grabovica belonged to him, and nobody else but him (well, except for maybe his machine too). So when the government sought to see his permits, of course, he had none. He was the man, and this was his machine. What permits? But in the end, the man was forced to seek permits for his machine. The government said 'no, no'. And the man said 'yes, yes'. And this went back and forth for many years - whilst the man and his machine continued, on a daily basis, to turn rock to sand. The man was finally forced to go to court to justify the evil doings of his machine. Not one court, but two, said 'no, no.' In June 2000 the High Court ruled against the man and his machine and ordered him to cease activities immediately. He did nothing of the sort. For many years he ignored all he no-no's. That's when i reenter the picture.

Although it had pained me to see the man and his machine turn rock to sand and destroy the sacred valley, i didn't think this country nor its government had the will or the way to enforce any of its own decisions and/or laws. Sounds silly, but that is the reality of this central Balkan nation. But the people rose, and this time in large enough numbers to rock the boat...even if just a bit. So we went after the man and his machine via the 'proper channels.' Local governments and federal ministers recieved letters, petitions, and complaints. They all did nothing. So we then took it the Office of the High Representative. The OHR is a Dayton mandated 'protectorate' if you will. They have rather limitless powers to make decisions that the Bosnians simply cannot or do not want to make. They, of course, were not so interested in the environment. After all, how can a post-conflict transitional economy worry about the environment. We'll worry about that later, when the economy is better and our rivers are cesspools and our forests turned to grazing fields. So they passed the buck, and we moved to the Ombudsman's office. The Ombudsman, a quirky Swede, was very interested in our case -- particularly being that he had become so bored with all the human rights violations of returnees and refugees that dealing with a bunch of rocks, a man and his machine sounded like a nice gig.

They were persistent and professional. They nagged and threatened. And it actually worked, or so we thought. The Ministry of the Environment wrote two letters ordering the man and his machine to shut down or they would physically come to the sacred valley and dismantle it. They threatened to cut the electricity to the man's machine (little did they know that the men supplying the electricity were buying cement electricity poles from the rock turned sand produced by the man and his machine). We celebrated...rule of law. Respecting the decision by the high court! The man and his machine laid low, almost conceding defeat. But it was a ploy, and the standard way of avoiding the law is to just stick it out. Wait until the roar has dulled, people don't have patience and time. Once the noise dies down, the man and his machine would continue to turn rock to sand in the sacred valley. And so it was. He started again. And the government, as you can imagine, dropped the proverbial ball.

Back to square one. A few of us decided it was time to just make noise. So we kept making noise until one quiet evening I get a call from the man. At first, he was very nice and calm. He offered to 'work' with us, what is it that we really wanted? Hmmm? For you to leave with your machine I said. His voice seemed to crack and the next half hour was threat upon threat to what he would do to me and my mother (what does she have to do with this?) if i didn't stop harrassing his company. So what did i do? I went on two life talk shows and talked about the man and this machine...AND...his barrage of threats against me. This made him very angry. So we went on yet another talk show - FACE to FACE - where the man showed his real face. He screamed and barked at me like a neanderthal, while I sat rather calm (and secretly pleased) that he was finally starting to dig his own grave. I thought to myself, as many graves as he has dug in the sacred valley, it tickles me pink that he is finally digging his own. So he ranted and raved until the cameras went off. When they did he offered me to come to dinner to 'talk.' We could sort this thing out. If not, he warned, i would be summoned to court for slander. When we parted, we shook hands and he again invited me to 'talk'. 'See you in court,' were my last words. Several days later i was summoned to court. I am being sued for slander to the amount of $35,000.00. Maybe nothing to a corporate giant or even a Green Peace, but to me that is about $35,000 more than my total life savings.

So, after several months of waiting, today is the day. I go to my first round against the man and his machine in front of yet another man - the man. The man (the one with the machine) has publicly accused me of belonging to the eco-mafia. He has illegally exploited a strictly protected area for over nine years without a single permit and against a decision by the highest court in the land. If i ever needed mafia connections, today is the day. Lets hope my phantom eco-mafia godfather comes from above, or hell, even below, to finally put the man and his machine out of business.