Diary Updates from the MV Rainbow Warrior in the Pacific
- INDEX
- 9 September 1997: Alice
- 21 August 1997: Stephanie Mills, Campaigner onboard
- P.S. from Lafcadio Cortesi, Pacific Forests campaigner
- 14 August 1997: Alice
- 8 August 1997: Alice
- 6 August 1997: Athena
- 4 August 1997: Alice
- 21 August 1997: Stephanie Mills, Campaigner onboard
From Alice
September 9th 1997
Fiji
A gentle north-easterly swell is rocking the Warrior benignly as she heads for Rarotonga in the Cook Islands; she slipped her lines this morning at Suva wharf after a week in Fiji. And a pleasant stay it was too. Fist couple of days were in Lautoka on the western side of the main island of Viti Levu, where there is a lot of tourist resort development. A group of resort operators came out on the ship for a few hours sailing while a seminar was conducted on the effects of resort development on small islands to the surrounding coral reefs.
Then the ship visited Beqa island, home of some of the finest soft corals in the world. At Beqa moorings are being installed in the reef for dive boats to tie up to so that they do not need to use their anchors, for anchor damage to oft visited reefs is a major source of coral damage. A hydraulic-driven core drill is used to drill a 65mm diameter hole, about 450mm deep in dead coral substrate, and then a stainless steel pin is cemented into the hole, and a line and buoy fixed to that. The boats then tie up to the buoy. The machines to do the drilling are rare beasts, but Greenpeace Pacific has one which is lent out to help people install buoys to protect their reefs. The Warrior could only stop for a few hours en route to Suva to check on progress, but while she was there, who turns up but that wonderful old war horse Vega, the boat that has been in Greenpeace longest. A thirty eight foot ketch, she first campaigned in 1972 at Moruroa, and was back there in 1995 where she was the Greenpeace command post for a while, and was eventually arrested by the French (for the fourth?) time, and held for six months. She is currently having a bit of a holiday sailing around the Pacific Islands for a while, enjoying her - no doubt only semi - retirement. Great to see the fine old lady, and amongst the crew of the Warrior are several to whom she has been home.
Then to Suva, the busiest town the ship has seen in quite a while. A day of schools, then a day open to the public: the transportation of nuclear waste is of evident concern here, with some very detailed questions being asked by concerned citizens. And now we head for Rarotonga, where the South Pacific Forum will be held in ten days. It is there that the heads of government of all the South Pacific island nations - except the French colonies - and also Australia and New Zealand congregate to discuss local issues. And it is also there that the Forum will be presented with the thousands of signatures from people all over the Pacific who have joined in petitioning the Forum to tell the Japanese nuclear industry that these potentially lethal ships must not transit Pacific Island waters, that the people here are not prepared to bear the risk for someone elseÆs experiments, that they must take a different rout for their ships, and that, true to the spirit of the 1985 Treaty of Rarotonga, the Pacific Islands are a Nuclear Free Zone, and must be respected as such.
So, only one question remains: will these governments listen to their people, or will the powerful blackmail them into inaction? We shall see.
From Stephanie Mills
21 August 1997
Departing Collingwood Bay, Papua New Guinea
If heaven exists, it's located somewhere around the corner from Collingwood Bay, in Papua New Guinea's Oro province. The first thing we noticed at the border of the Maisin community was intact forests, spreading from the fringe of coconut palms along the coast up into the spine of the Stanley Ranges and the towering 4,000 metre peak of Mt Suckling. Here, the forests are full of birds, wild pigs, medicinal plants and gardens, the fish are plentiful and the rivers are clean.
In the early 1990s, the seven villages of the Maisin people in Collingwood Bay rejected logging proposals and agreed to work together on alternative development plans. The community sent a delegation to the government in Port Moresby to refuse logging, and published a full page advertisment in newspapers warning developers to stay off their land. The first alternative scheme, in partnership with Greenpeace Pacific, has been the development of an export market for the Maisin's tapa cloth, a fabric art made on bark cloth. After a successful exhibition in California in 1994, the trade has grown considerably both domestically and to the US and now over a thousand pieces are being sold each year. For the last few weeks, print artists from the Philadelphia Museum have been working with Maisin women as part of a joint project leading up to a major exhibition next April. The tapa scheme is operated by a community organisation called the Maisin Integrated Conservation and Development (MICAD) organisation, which organises the artists (traditionally women, although a few men are also now doing tapa), arranges distribution of the profits to the artists and the wider community, and organises the business side of the operation. Greenpeace's Lafcadio Cortesi has been instrumental in the community development and facilitation work necessary to establish the project and the Rainbow Warrior visit was an opportunity to cement our relationship with the Maisin people and to see what Laf calls a "sustained direct action" by the community to stop logging of over 200,000 hectares of primary tropical forest.
The Maisin community is extremely isolated, with no road access and until this week, no telephone or other communication equipment. On the north coast of Papua New Guinea, it is separated from Port Moresby, the capital, by ranges of mountains inaccessible by anything but small planes. A small airport 30 minutes or so by inflatable from the villages is the nearest link to the rest of the world. In spite of this, the Maisin community has produced a calibre of leadership among both its elders and younger people (working in Moresby for government etc) that is truly remarkable, and the unity of their purpose in stopping logging has now been directed into finding alternative paths of development for the community. However, the threat of logging remains, as there are still plans by central government to offer areas on both the eastern and western borders of the Maisin area to the loggers.Our visit celebrated not just our relationship with the community but also the opening of the first telephone, one of the fruits of the MICAD project.
Mirrors glinted fiercely from amongst the coconut palms and thatched huts on shore as we arrived on Monday morning. Warriors armed with spears danced on two large outrigger canoes, challenging us as we came in by inflatable. As we landed on the beach we were surrounded by throbbing drums and brilliantly decorated dancers, calling Oro, Oro, Oro (welcome). Wearing gorgeous tapa cloth skirts, headdresses made of feathers and fur, shells and beads, hundreds of dancers led us across a shallow river and through an arch of coconut palms and hibiscus to the main gathering place. The women wear beautiful full face tatoos with similar patterns to the tapa cloth, and have flowers on their arms, waist and hair when they dance. It was a colourful and spectacular welcome, prepared for many weeks, and followed by three days of amazing hospitality, dancing, feasting and talking.
The two villages of Uiaku and Gangiga straddle the river. The houses are built in traditional sago palm and mangrove timber on stilts, so that people can cook, store firewood and canoes and generally hang out under the house and sleep and eat above. Each family clan has several houses grouped together, with gardens of bouginvillea, marigolds and other bright flowers around and tapa cloth drying on lines in between. At meal times, tablecloths of tapa are brought out onto the verendah and decorated with fresh flowers.
Most of us stayed with people in the village overnight. The people of Gangiga were particularly hospitable because Kingsford Rarama, our PNG deckhand is from there. On Tuesday night we were dressed and decorated in traditional costume by the people of Gangiga and danced for hours on white coral sand in the village square, with the warm glow of a few kerosine lanterns and the light of a full moon overhead. On Wednesday night, the dancing started in the afternoon. Although Athena and I dropped out by 2am, the dancing continued until 6am, the drums beating out all night. The telephone ceremony was on Tuesday. Greenpeace was not only greeted and welcomed, but challenged to maintain its commitment to the Maisin people and the tapa project by one of the elders. Would we just come and go, or were we here for the long term to help stop the big crocodiles -- the logging and mining companies?
On Wednesday and today, the ship was open to the public, and we ferried hundreds of school children and most of the adult population, it seemed, across to the ship by inflatable. Weighed down with gifts of tapa cloth and beautiful clay pots, we reluctantly pulled out of Collingwood Bay at lunchtime, with mirrors again glinting a farewell from the shore.
The spirit of the Maisin people I think is best summed up by a few words from the speech of Sylvester Moi, who is chair of the MICAD Board at the telephone opening ceremony: "Logging and mining is destruction, not development. We come from the land and are part of the land. We want to be the initiators and implementers of sustainable development, not observers or to be dictated to by people outside. We can do this by working together and making sure we are equal in our decision making and in distribution of the benefits." One of the most humbling experiences was to hear the children singing a song written about Greenpeace and the Maisin people for the opening of the telephone, which is housed in what must be the most beautiful phone booth in the world -- a two storey sago palm hut decorated both inside and out with tapa masterpieces:
Peace, give us peace, Greenpeace
We are about to face a war
Maisin warriors against Developers
Of our resourceful land
Rainbow and Maisin warriors
Together we stand to fight the war
Preserve for us our Melanesian way
In protecting our land.
We stand out proud today
We have protected our land
Against developers of our resource
Through our wisdom
Peace, give us peace, Greenpeace
Conserve our Melanesian ways
Extend your rays of love, O Rainbow Warriors
and give us Peace.
We will not forget this place and its people. The efforts of this small community, determined to seize their own destiny and preserve their forest and culture, will remain an inspiration for us all.
Stephanie Mills, Campaigner on board
P.S.
Steph has really said it all above. But as an observer and participant in the Maisin's sustained direct action a couple of thrilling results of the Warrior's visit emerged for me. Having the ship visit brought Maisin cooperation (no small feat between seven villages and over 30 clans) and commitment against logging to a new level. People were so excited and honored that they stepped up their already high level of participation and, as a result, did something that hasn't been done in over 100 years - brought the whole tribe together. Greenpeace and the Maisin's past work together, but particularly the event, and the ships presence, has spurred a cultural revival. Weeks of practice dancing took place previous to the festival, with many of the young people who had never done it before learning and embracing their own culture like never before. At the event itself, several songs were sung and stories told which hadn't been heard for over 40 years. As one Maisin youth put it "I'm so proud, I thank god I'm Maisin."
The Warrior's tour, and particularly its visit to Collingwood, has enabled us to move beyond focusing the majority of our efforts on establishing a model integrated ancient forest conservation and development program and on to disseminating it. The two nation newspaper and two national radio reporters who covered the event have filed over five storied and three or more additional features are planned. Australian Broadcasting Corp. has expressed interest in doing a TV program on initiative towards the end of the year.
This milestone puts us in a good position to consolidate our market work and work with the Maisin to seek permanent legal protection (e.g world heritage listing) over the area.
Lafcadio Cortesi, Pacific Forests campaigner
From: Alice
14 August 1997
Port Moresby Papua New Guinea
'The school on the hill up there has asked for someone to go and talk.'
'I'll go. What time?'
'About two.'
And so I went. Off to Port Moresby Grammar School, on the side of the hill in downtown Moresby.
In a well appointed office I discuss with the head of year the students I will talk to: some of them had visited the boat yesterday, and so had a grounding in the issues, they were of the 16 to 18 age group, and I should talk for three quarters of an hour. Hmm. This was a very intelligent group of young people - that I knew already. I didn't want to bore them with things they had already hear So I decided to try a fresh tack: to try and illustrate the links between the different campaigns of Greenpeace.
I faced a room of some seventy blue bedecked bodies, expectant looks on their faces hungry for more. I laid out my plan: did they think that would be interesting, or did they want to hear about something specific? No, sounds good. So, we have Climate Change, we have Forests, and we have a big problem. We pump CO2 into the air furiously by burning fossil fuels, and the one thing on this planet that counter-balances that is the Earth's forests, only we are cutting them down at a colossal rate. And the solution, if we are to believe some people, is nuclear power, the most poisonous and pernicious thing known to man. If we accept the arguments of those such as the nuclear power industry, an industry that has consistently - in all it's forms - misled the population at large (to but it politely) over the nature of it's operations and their effects; if we accept direction such as this as the way out of our ecological crisis, we surely completely miss the point of how we get into this mess in the first place.
The solution is to begin to think in an ecological way, to look at what we do as part of a flow of events, not an isolated incident each in itself. And the encouragement of that connected way of thinking is vital to the future - our future. Does that make sense I ask? Of course it flies in the face of the direction of our civilization, with its emphasis on specialisation, and that has been a or factor in blinding us to the big picture. Because our ability to affect the planet on an individual level has become so great, with that goes the responsibility to act in a way that will not destroy it. Surely that is a basic concept for any civilization that it should not knowingly self-destruct. And that is what we are doing. This is a very basic element that cuts across all cultures. It obviously made sense to this bunch of school kids in Papua New Guinea.
Next were two classes of 13 to 14 year olds in together. These I told a bit about Greenpeace to, but we came around to the same essential element when the questions got around to rubbish. Responsibility for one's actions, and also to see things as part of a big picture, and not just in isolation. The aluminium drink can tossed into the street comes from further than the shop. The aluminium is mined and then is transported by ship usually to a place of cheap electricity - either coal or hydro ( achieved by flooding forest areas usually) - for smelting the ore to aluminium. The aluminium is then sent to a factory to make the cans. The cans are sent to the drinks plant to be filled. By the time that can is thrown away in PNG it can have traveled half way around the world, only to be to tossed away. The can is in fact far more valuable than the contents. Of course if the can is 'lucky' it might be recycled, but then it wont come back as an aluminium can as the aluminium is by then too impure. Well, I think the kids started to get the point: they kept quiet and still all way through which is usually a good sign.
Back at the ship it's time to pack away the displays and the awnings and prepare for tomorrow's departure to Collingwood Bay, in the bush down south. Moresby is a modern third world city, Collingwoood bay is going to be something else.
8 August 1997
Gizo, Solomon Islands
The day dawns - damp, dark, cool and rather uninviting - and in amongst the passing squalls the Rainbow Warrior can be seen riding her anchor, snug inside the reef in the little harbour of Gizo, provincial capital of the Western Province. We are due to have an open boat again this morning, as yesterday's was so successful. We hope to sneak one in before we leave in the afternoon, but the we her looks as if it may disagree with our plans. But, the showers are easing, and patches of blue sky peek out of the gray in odd spots. By nine the rain has stopped, but no one is waiting on the wharf to be picked up. Nine thirty and five people are bought out to the ship. We wait to see if any more are coming. No. So they get a tour all to themselves: looks like a slow day. Perhaps everyone who wanted to visit came yesterday. It is only a little town. Ten o'clock and....whoa! The dock is besieged with schoolchildren all in uniform beautifully turned out but filling the inflatables rapidly that there is no way you can count them in to keep some order for the ship but anyway they've got there own boat which can take about twenty five children at once so forget about numbers and here goes get those tour guides and videos rolling!! Inundation. At least we are prepared through experience, and so we can deal with it when we suddenly have to. But imagine when it catches you totally unawares, and the results have the power to destroy your way of life.
Because that is what is happening around here suddenly. And it is not school kids that are pouring over the ramparts. It is mining companies. The last few months have seen a plethora of prospectors poking around the knot of lush islands that comprises the Western Province. Their eyes blinded by the light of gold, their methods may not be quite as shining. In Simbo Island landowners have been offered $5000 each to sign an access agreement, an essential prerequisite for obtaining a prospecting licence. The laws relating to mineral resources in the Solomon Islands come essentially from the legal perspective of the ex-colonial power, Britain. The situation is such that what is under your feet isn't yours if it happens to be valuable minerals. For, once a mining company has a prospecting licence, should they then find minerals to mine, the government can compulsorily acquire the land and grant a mining licence, whether the landowners agree with mining or not. If the land is compulsorily bought in order to facilitate mining, then the landowners get no royalties. So the only time the people who live on land that may be greatly and adversely affected by mining can have any effect on the whole process is right at the beginning, a time when they may have very little idea about the potential road they are embarking on. A time when the empty promises of mining companies can seem very seductive to rural folk living a subsistence existence. Again on Simbo, the word is that if this small island should find itself damaged by the mining, then the company will relocate everyone to Australia (an inviting idea for few, except those who fancy they'll be rich by then).
The problems Papua New Guinea has had with mining - and especially gold - are manifold. The magnificent Fly River that drains a huge area of the Highlands into the Gulf of Papua has been choked with tailings and poisoned with cyanide spills (cyanide is used to extract the gold from the ore). On Bougainville just over the border from the Solomons the long-running war has its roots in environmental destruction and division of landowners. People know some of these things, but it can be hard not to be seduced when faced with immediate inducements, false assurances and papers to sign, the consequences of which the signees are totally unaware. And mostly for gold, that most valueless of treasures, purveyor of misery for generation upon generation across the eon
But as two o'clock arrives, and the last children, from the last school, leave the boat in a burst of laughter after treating us to a glorious rendition of harmonisation with 'Hey Diddle Diddle, The Cat Played The Fiddle', we may be exhausted, but we are enriched by the experience. Which unfortunately may not be the case for some of these wonderful kids after their lands have received the added attentions of multinational miners. We will do what we can to help, and we can do a lot. But local people are organising: Women on Kolumbungara Island to the east have already formed a group. They desperately need information, to open up the debate. There is so much to do here in the scattered islands of the Pacific, and the office in Fiji that has organised this boat tour - Greenpeace Pacific - quite small. If anyone reading this cares about what is happening out here, and would like to help, please consider joining Greenpeace Pacific, Private Mail Bag, Suva, Fiji. A few dollars can go an awful long way to helping provide information and support to those brave women of Kolumbungara, and many more like them.
6 August 1997
From: Athena
Pavuvu, Solomon Islands, August 6 1997
Dots of thick rainforest islands surrounded by sparkling white sand beaches, cozy sheltered coves, coconut trees, smiling people, huts; the islands of Alocan and Pavuvu in the Solomons. So close to each other you'd think they were part of a tiny lagoon, warm, sheltered, cozy, stunning, perfect....not.
In the Solomons there are two types of land ownership. There is customary land which is land that belongs to the local people. And there is also what is termed "alienated" land which is land the British took from the people, claiming it as empty land and for the Crown. After independence it became government land. On Pavuvu half the land is customary and half "alienated". Two years ago while local landowners were in the process of setting up an eco-forestry project the government sold logging rights for the "alienated" land of Pavuvu to a Malaysian logging company. When the local landowners tried to stop the bulldozers the government sent in the army. Some months later and after some bulldozers where set on fire, Martin Apa, one of the most vocal local opponents to large scale logging, was "mysteriously" murdered. Or maybe not so mysteriously as a lot of people saw who did it, whose boat was used; yet there has never been an official investigation to the murder.
For a couple of hours before we arrived Augustine updated us on the situation there. Augustine lives on Alocan island, just a fifteen minute canoe ride from the logging camp on Pavuvu. His community is still fighting hard, against all odds to at least stop the company from logging the customary land of Pavuvu which is where their greedy fingers are now pointing. He told us there is rumour there is a hit list for those who will try to stop the logging. He told us he has heard that he is next on it.
How can anyone logically or emotionally digest the fact that trying to save the diversity of ones land, the past and future of ones culture, the lungs of the planet, life in all its celebration, will be a cause for ones' persecution or murder?
The day after we arrived some of the crew where taken to Crocodile Island which is a sacred place for the local people. Some of the crew remained on board ferrying local people back and forth for a ship visit. And some went to Pavuvu, up a creek and into the logging camp. I decided to go with the third party.
This has not been the first time I have seen environmental destruction. Growing up in Athens, Greece and also sailing with Greenpeace for 6 years has given me enough taste of that to last me for a lifetime. So what was it that left me so sad, so frustrated? Was it the forest gone? Of course but I was expecting that. Was it the sad conditions that the workers who had been brought in from other islands were living in at the camp? Of course but I was expecting that too. I think there were two things, two images that have stuck in my mind.
It was those three Malaysian men that came out on the porch of the biggest hut on the camp; the hut overlooking everything. Unsmiling, silent, like the owners of a plantation or a concentration camp; watching. Who are these people? And where do they come from? How can they come into the lands of others and blatantly abuse them? And what a contrast they were to the playful laughter of the little kids who started playing ball with some of us? I so much wanted to go up and ask them "Excuse me, what exactly are YOU doing here? Does this belong to you? Were your children planning to play here? Your wives planning to gather medicines? Your fathers build your family house? Your mothers gather water from the creek? Did your cousin, brother, friend get killed trying to save the tree you took shade under when you were a kid? What ARE you doing here?"
And it was the eyes of the local man who came to talk to me when we first arrived on the logging camp. He asked me what we were doing there and I said we had just come to look. He told me we needed government permission and while I told him it would be OK and went to talk with the women and children I smiled at him, he smiled back. When we left I thanked him for letting us spend some time. He looked a nice man, I remember trying to understand the personal bind he might be in himself, needing to work to feed his family, being watched by the Malaysians. Later I was told that he is one of the people that has been directly implicated with the murder of Martin, that he has worked hard to support the loggers. I don't understand. I just can't understand!
It was amazing driving away from the dock, leaving behind these guys and their hopefully sleepless nights, and the little girls we had played with waving and smiling, and looking ahead at the stunning beauty of the rainforest remaining, the white sand beaches, the beautiful courageous people of Alocan.
Pavuvu left me impatient. Wanting to chain myself unto something, or do a music festival celebrating life on this scared land, or talk with people or just cry really. The local landowners are currently suing the government to make sure that no one can touch the customary land. Hopes are high. They have to be.
4 August 1997
Crew update from SV Rainbow Warrior.
From Alice.
A row of shipping containers provides a slither of shade for the Warriors waiting visitors as the old ship slowly fries in the afternoon heat of the Honiara wharf. It is Saturday afternoon in the Solomon Islands capital, and people have been buttonholing the crew since the ship arrived as to when she would be open to the public. The Rainbow Warrior is well known here, especially for her powerful protests at Moruroa Atoll two years ago; for this year is the first year since 1946 that the threat of nuclear bomb tests has been lifted from the South Pacific Islands. Remarkable. And people here are pleased that it is so.
But our visitors are soon to learn that as the threat of bomb tests becomes history, the cavalier attitudes of the proponents of all things nuclear is sadly alive and kicking. For those folk who don't already know - and it is interesting to see how many already do - are soon to discover how the Japanese nuclear industry is prepared to place the well being of the Solomon Islands at risk to satisfy their own nebulous dreams of nuclear Utopia. To put it simply, Japan is sending spent nuclear reactor fuel to France, where the Plutonium is extracted out of it. The plutonium and the waste remaining is then sent back to Japan in separate shipments. The plutonium ( also the raw material for nuclear bombs) is earmarked for use in a fast breeder type reactor, a type of reactor that several countries have tried to build and operate over the last 25 years of so, yet none has done so successfully. The Japanese reactor of this type at Monju was started up 1994 and has so far produced no commercial electricity, in fact it has spent an awful lot of time shut down. In essence this is a Nuclear Frankenstein: an experiment that others have tried and all have failed.
But the shame of it is that this experiment could be catastrophic for a group of people who have no part in this nuclear alchemy, no desire nor reason to participate, nothing to gain should the experiment turn out to work, and everything to loose should one of this ships find itself in trouble as it passes through the Solomon Islands. For in spite of the Japanese attempts to keep the path of the ships a secret, weather information sent from the last shipment in March clearly shows that the ship passed through the Solomon Islands en route to Japan. One of these ships suffering a fire at sea for example - not an uncommon occurrence, that's why we regularly do fire drills on our ships - could very quickly cause the release of huge amounts of radioactive materials. (When the Warrior was in Kiribati a large Tuna fishing boat burned to the waterline not far away from us.) The nuclear waste containers are already at several hundred degrees centigrade due to the radiation, so a fire could easily tip the temperatures to seal bursting point.
People in the Solomons are concerned about this and so they should be. They are not seduced by the platitudes of the Japanese about how safe it all really is. That line is the one France spouted for years, but they never manage to come up with an answer to 'if it is safe how come you don't do it in France?' and the Pacific wont wear that anymore. The Japanese also refuse to agree to compensate in the event of a ship accident. The beaches around the reprocessing plant at La Hague in France have been closed due to contamination. As for the British reprocessing plant at the notorious Sellafield nuclear establishment, only this week it has been published that plutonium - arguably the most poisonous substance to humanity known - has been found in adolescent children's' teeth in direct proportion to the distance away from Sellafield that they live; and that is country wide! The nuclear industry accuses us of scaremongering: their track record certainly leaves much to be desired. What is there to be gained by trusting them and their patronising attitudes: 'now don't you worry about that, we know what we're doing'. Just remember that when Chernobyl blew up they were experimenting too. Of course it couldn't happen here (don't mention three Mile Island).
This is people's entire well-being they gambol with, people who have had enough going by the Warrior's two days of open boats in Honiara. For on explaining to visitors about the petition we are collecting signatures for against these nuclear waste shipments, to be presented to the governments of the Pacific Island nations at the South Pacific Forum meeting in the Cook Islands in September, virtually everyone signed. The feeling is clear; do your dirty business elsewhere Japan. The Japanese are the major aid donor to the region, and use that as leverage to mute Pacific governments concerns. But that is blackmail. Give your aid Japan because you are a rich nation and the receivers need help. To use aid money to force acquiescence on the less fortunate is deceitful from a country that values honorable standards of conduct so highly. And it wins you no friends in the wider population, as it is quite obvious to the Solomon Islanders for one when you act this way.
People continually thank us for opening up this debate, for debate there is. Information on this issue is scarce, yet there is widespread concern. This is one very important role that Greenpeace can fill with its work in the region: providing information, alternative views. As the groups of people make their way around the ship, listening to different speakers and seeing videos, they spend around an hour and a half absorbing a variety of issues as well as general information about Greenpeace and the Rainbow Warrior. It may be a nice day out to come and visit this famous old ship, but it is also a day to send you home thinking: about how things could - and should? - be.