‘I . . .’ She stammered. ‘We don’t have an equivalent facility in our culture. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. It is you I am sorry for. We are sitting here now and I can feel the presence of my ancestors. They are all around us.’
Tara’s eyes swivelled, trying to ‘see’ the sparkling air and not just the rain.
‘In our village, in Alto Uren, each family has lived on the same piece of ground as his ancestors for three thousand years. Older even than this sacred site.’
‘That’s wonderful.’
‘Yes, it is. We grow over one hundred crops for our food, building materials and medicine. We need nothing from the outside world and we take nothing. We live as we always have done, in rhythm with the forests and the seasons . . . So I am sure you can understand that I have a duty to protect my people.’
‘I do.’
‘We have a saying: that it is better to be a skinny dog, than a dead lion.’
Tara was quiet for a moment, not fully sure she understood. So much of what he was saying was oblique to her. Was he telling her all this because he was suggesting Alex was somehow working against the tribe? ‘William, you do know that the entire point of the project is about safeguarding Indigenous cultures and communities such as yours, as much as it is to do with protecting the rainforests, stopping mining and all that?’
A small smile spread over William’s mouth, but it did not reach his eyes. ‘No mining, that is right.’
‘Exactly. Projects such as this national park mean mining will never be allowed. Your country is leading the world in terms of renewable energies.’
William tipped his head to the side, interestedly. ‘How exactly?’
‘By using hydro-electricity instead of fossil fuels.’
‘Yes. Hydro-electricity.’ He looked her straight in the eye, and Tara had a sudden sense of being ambushed. Led into a trap. ‘And when the handover happens today and the land is given back to the Costa Rican people – specifically, the government . . .’ His downward inflection on that word left her in no doubt of his view on them. ‘They will start to build a dam that will flood thousands of hectares of land which are sacred to my people. The places where we have lived and worshipped for thousands of years will be destroyed. Our villages will be underwater. Our monuments’ – he swept an arm to indicate the stone circle – ‘will be underwater. Our entire culture will be lost, our people will be displaced. And no one will care, because it is far more important to be seen to be using renewable energies.’
Tara stared. ‘But surely . . .’ She frowned. ‘No. There are laws in place to protect your rights.’
‘Laws can be changed. And once the land is made the property of the nation, the laws will be changed.’
‘But I remember my father . . .’ She strained to remember the details of all those many dinner-table conversations she had tried so hard to avoid or block out. ‘I remember him saying there’s a government body specifically set up to protect the interests of the Indigenous communities. Co . . .?’
‘No one from Conai has ever come to our village. It is just a face to show to the world. They pretend to consult us, but nothing changes. I brought you here because I wanted you to see this, feel it and understand. If it is lost, it will be lost forever.’
Tara bit her lip, staring around at the clearing – ancient and hidden, secret and sacred. There was so much she didn’t understand out here and never would . . . but she couldn’t deny things had happened that she couldn’t explain. Her headaches had gone; she had seen plants heal wounds that would have taken weeks at home; both medicine men had intuitively read her psyche in a way no GP or therapist ever had. And there was something unequivocally spiritual about this place. It felt more reverential than any church she’d ever been inside.
‘William, I want to help you. I honestly don’t know if what you’re saying about Alex is true – I can’t say with certainty that it isn’t – but I do know my father would want to help you if he knew.’ She sighed. ‘But we’re miles from anywhere and the handover is today . . .’ She gave a hopeless shrug. ‘It’s too late to do anything now.’
He reached into his bag and pulled out something large and rectangular, like a black brick.
She frowned as he handed it to her. ‘What is that?’ she asked. She turned it over and her eyes widened. ‘You’ve got a satellite phone?’ she gasped. ‘But . . . how?’
‘Alex,’ William shrugged. ‘We bartered.’
She looked up at him with wide eyes. ‘What did he get in return?’
‘A goat.’
She was silent for a long, drawn-out moment. A phone for a goat. She couldn’t stop a smile from climbing into her eyes as she remembered a whispered conversation in the night, many years ago . . . ‘He always wanted a goat.’
William watched her with an enigmatic smile of his own.
She looked back at the prehistoric phone. ‘You’ll have to show me how to work it,’ she said.
‘You will speak to your father?’
‘I will. But I still don’t know what can be done at this stage. Getting the national park ready for today has been a huge undertaking. Hundreds of people are involved – rangers, ecologists, consultants, lawyers. It’s a juggernaut. Trying to delay it now would be like turning a battleship.’
‘I’ve never seen a battleship,’ he said simply. ‘But all ships and boats – no matter how big – can turn.’
She smiled. ‘Well, that is true.’
‘Get him to listen to you, Tara. Then you can go home.’
There was a long pause down the line; so long, Tara half wondered if they had been disconnected.
‘So let me get this right,’ her father said finally, his
