Benjamin and I bicycle off into rainy Romania heading north to Rosia Montana where I had learned from our guide the local community is in the middle of a battle to keep their land protected from Canadian gold miners. The company, Gabriel Resources, plans to buy out everyone and evacuate the town, blast the mountain and dam the valley and fill it with cyanide which they use to chemically extract the gold.
Please learn more here: http://www.nodirtygold.org/rosia_montana_romania.cfm
On our way we took an off road where the road completely disappeared and we biked on dirt, rocks, grass, through forests littered with falling yellow flower petals, through small towns where we had to avoid pigs, goats, and small children waving us in like returned war heroes. I kept getting toppled and bruised by my bike in the slippery mud. But finally we made it out to a big road and carried on over hills. We stopped in a small town and asked for campsites at the cultural center and the man offered the garden behind a museum. We set up a tent in the museum surrounded by archeological artifacts and slept hard, woken by what seemed like thousands of screaming birds at 5am and a rush of sunlight.
As we completed our trek up the mountain along the bright orange-colored river, we came upon a small wooden house with signs reading La Gruber Hostel and Save Rosia Montana! We knocked on the door to no answer. An older couple passing by gestured to the side fence but there a large German Shepard was barking furiously and gnashing her teeth and on the gate was a photo of her biting a trespasser’s arm in case we didn’t get the message.
The friendly neighbors shake their heads and come over to knock on the window. There is a stirring and out from the fence, comes a short young woman in slippers and a t-shirt that says, appropriately, Please Stop Fucking Me. She speaks perfect English and invites us in after tying up the dog and serves us dried fruit tea. I ask why she needs a guard dog and she says, “Have you heard about the mining?” well, apparently since the company has been pushing out the locals, so many houses are abandoned and people break in and steal what they want so they might think La Gruber is empty. But it is definitely not for sale. Ani and her boyfriend, Andrei, are there to stay, holding on for dear life.
Rosia Montana has been based on mining for hundreds of years since the Dacians and the Romans. They had slaves carry gold out in baskets working all hours of the day. The government made it impossible for any other industry to exist. There is plenty of land but hardly any farming, just small private plots. Barely any tourism. Maybe one restaurant. But Andrei opened his house into a hostel and a group of activists started FanFest, a free festival on top of the mountain with music, theater, art, and the locals sell their goods and teach their trades.
The mining company will even pay you to unbury your dead family members and move their bodies. They will pay for a very nice plot, somewhere far away.
Even though there used to be visible thick veins of gold, now the resources are so diminished they have to use cyanide to chemically treat the land to extract the microscopic gold deposits. It would only last for maybe 10 years more and hundreds of people will be displaced, lose their family land, their heritage and the mountain will be bombed, water polluted with cyanide.
We took a tour of the Roman mine gallery with a very exuberant tour guide who was a miner for 15 years and was clearly fascinated and in love with the process. He described the gold like the Italian film director, Roberto Benigni accepting his Oscar, with wild hand gesticulations as if he could feel the gold again in his fingertips, lifting the pick ax in an ecstatic dance.
We hiked up to Raven’s Peak and I gazed out across the breathtaking mountains, only one mountain visibly shattered and stripped that has been blasted to a third of its original size like a sandy open wound amidst the green and spent an afternoon with their friend, Mr. Justin, who spent his whole life there, his father built his home there and now Mr. Justin has built his family home and is building one for his sons in his spare time. He farms, tends to chickens, horses, cows, pigs. Ani told me she helps out at the farm there and elsewhere in a bartering system- labor in exchange for cheese, milk and vegetables.
Mr. Justin told me, “A man must do three things in his life; plant a tree, build a house and have children.” I said I will plant many trees and hopefully that will make up for the other two.
He kept offering me his homebrew of a wild blueberry schnapps and some other liquor made from grass that were extremely strong and pleasantly burned my throat. After awhile as I was getting to the point where I might start rolling on the floor and dancing, he asked me if I I’d like to ride a horse. He led me out to a field, right at the top of the valley the company wants to drown in cyanide. He gave me his knee and I flung my body up onto Mishstra, the golden mare whose brand new colt tagged along close behind and nibbled my shoelace as we wandered through the field. Her strong muscular body warm from the heat of the sun. I have only ridden a horse once before but it was heavily laden with straps and gear and it was a revelation to ride bareback, to feel her body move, to feel the articulation of her muscles. I felt like a centaur.
Mr. Justin’s older sister sold their parents’ land to the company without consulting her 4 brothers and she took the money to live well in Sibiu. Mr. Justin does not speak to her any more. I asked him what he would do if the company wins. He cannot think about that happening, he said.
He just keeps working and preparing for the long winter months.
Benjamin met us in the valley and everyone is fascinated by his moustache because that is how miners used to wear their facial hair in the old days.
Ani and Andrei took us to the family-owned pizza restaurant and we got cheese pies and shared jokes. Andrei is quiet and doesn’t speak English but understands every word and will occasionally light up with an elfish grin of recognition. Ani says its time for this generation to start thinking about the future, to consider everyone else.
I leave Rosia Montana with a heavy heart and even though we were headed down a nice easy downhill, it felt harder than going up it, as I rushed past the blur of trees and old women tending to the gardens and the orange river I held my breath. It will survive. It must. They have already won. In the face of money, a new house, corporate power and pressure, they stood their ground. No thank you, they have all they need right here. And they are free.
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Serbia is burning. My lungs are burning. Coal is burning.
I want to smash cars with hot pink sledgehammers. I want to cover mines with soft moss and red tulips.
I can barely make it up a hill. My sensitivity to pollutants has increased greatly as I grow older and I wonder if it isn’t my body adapting a heightened defense since my father was killed by noxious fumes traveling through the air penetrating his lungs.
I’m developing a nasty cough again. Similar to what I had in Cairo, which apparently has the third poorest air quality in the world.
I bike everywhere with my dirty red bandanna covering my face and Benjamin, now joining me for this leg of the trip, in his curly moustache and sinister black garb and steel-toed boots. We must appear like strange cowboys from the old west with bikes for horses.
Last night we attended the Dah Theater Festival in Belgrade. We saw Peter Schumann of Bread and Puppet Theater perform solo with his violin and plastic trumpet kazoo tell the story of a Palestinian boy whose life was destroyed. We had a beer with him afterwards and he told me his new show is Man as Carrot, because “you know we discovered that man originally evolved from the erect carrot” Peter joked with his sparkly eyes.
And what will I find in Serbia today?
A beautiful terrifying portrait.
ReplyDeleteThank you,
- Brian