As a child Michael James Ian Fincken, played on the rolling green hills of Kwazulu Natal in South Africa. He was not aware of the politics of his country, until a time where the child had to leave and join the army in 1985. Instead, he slipped quietly away to sea, on a rusty old cargo ship bound for Hong Kong. There he discovered passion, on the long ocean passages that curved across the circumference of the Earth. The voyages took him to strange and wondrous lands. He met a young nurse back home in Cape Town, they fell in love, married and bought a house in a small fishing village, on the Cape Peninsula.
The house had a garden, and he thought that he would rather have been a farmer, and so he went to school to learn more about growing vegetables. Unbeknownst to him, it was a school of organic agriculture, and what he learned changed his world forever. Mikey Mike learned about the importance of earth worms in the soil. Soon he had Earthworm farms all over his garden, then he joined the Kommetjie Environmental Awareness Group, where they had an educational Permaculture garden. He was in love with the sea, but had fallen in love with the Earth, how to marry the two?
With this big question in his mind, he shipped out to sea again, and found himself as the chief mate on a cargo ship loading 36 thousand metric tones of pristine temperate rain forest, from the Saw Mills of British Columbia. This was in 1994. His ship was just one of five loading lumber alongside the quay, and he knew that when they all sailed, there would be five more ships coming in to take their place. One day whilst loading the big old trees in Vancouver, he took the time to go ashore. He was looking for an environmental group and what he found was Greenpeace in Canada. An environmental group at sea, the perfect match.
There was little Greenpeace could do for the poor trees, that where being piled up high on the decks of his ship. They gave him a book, called ' The Greenpeace Story', but more importantly they gave him an address in the Netherlands, to which he could write. Letters started to flow between Holland and South Africa, and for two years he kept up the correspondence, until he could bare it no more. He flew to Amsterdam, they knew him when he walked through the doors to Greenpeace International, and they new what he was there for. Within a week they sent him off to Vancouver to join the smallest boat Greenpeace had, the Moby Dick. He joined for a Forestry campaign, and the 25th Anniversary of the sailing of the Phyllis Cormack. Now he was in a position to do something about the falling forests.
Mike has sailed with Greenpeace since 1996, except for the four years he lived in the Rocky mountains after his wife had died of cancer. Now he is a Chief Mate, he is a Master Mariner and one day he will make a great Captain.
Comments
Hi Mike, The "Sacred Tomato"is coming aboard tomorrow for a visit. We have been off line for over two weeks now.Hope to see you.
Wá'lalin
Billy
Posted by: Bill Lewis at August 12, 2005 03:08 AM
Hello Mike, this is me saying keep up the good work, and never relent!
