Firewood

Since most people rely on charcoal fires to cook their food and boil their water, it is necessary for them to have a regular supply of firewood. They can either buy it, grow their own eucalyptus trees if they have the resources to do so, or find it wherever they can. This last practice often causes problems, as was demonstrated by a small drama we encountered this morning.

I have mentioned before that the wetland on our property is a place where some of our neighbours have started fires in order to make charcoal for themselves. Burning the wetland is illegal since it is protected by NEMA (the National Environmental Management Agency) and it is also private property (ours!), so we try to discourage it whenever we can. Between June and October last year, we had three major fires in our wetland and some of the brush there is still blackened and damaged as a result. Our security guards keep an eye on this area and even caught some of the people responsible for starting one of the fires; they were given very strong warnings not to repeat the practice.

Earlier this week, we noticed some people chopping down some of the small, blackened trees in the wetland, so our guards (once again!) went down and chased them off the property. However, this morning, about 10 or so people were down there hacking at the saplings. The dogs were barking at them, we were on our front porches watching, and they knew they weren't supposed to be there, but they still continued to collect the firewood. When I walked to the edge of the retaining wall in front of my house to take the photos below, some of the people ran off because they knew they might get in trouble.

Paul called the guards to take care of the issue, but meanwhile, Arleen set off on her morning run around the compound. The dogs always follow her on these runs, and so the folks in the wetland saw her and the dogs coming towards them and they took off running. There is a chainlink fence between our compound and the wetland, and Arleen wasn't going to do anything to them, but they weren't taking any chances. By this time the guards had also made their way down to that area to chase them away.

As we watched the scene from our porches, we heard all the workers down at the building site cheering and hollering as they also watched these folks running away. It was quite the event!

While we are sympathetic to the problem--the difficulty of finding firewood for people who can't afford to buy it--we still want to uphold the law and protect our beautiful wetland. I think this is probably something we'll be dealing with for years to come.

a rather faraway look at the people chopping firewood in the wetland this morning

you can only see 2 people in this shot, as most of the group ran away

when they saw me come to the retaining wall to take the photo