Crewmate remembered
Posted by Andrew via Email at 01:20 PM, September 02, 2004
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| (C) Greenpeace |
There wasn't any dancing when we arrived in Pohnpei. No signing, no feast, no speeches by government officials, but the welcome was the most heartfelt of the tour because this is the home of Hayhow and his family were waiting on the dock.
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Mitch, the eldest uncle, head of the family - sad in the eyes but laughing and friendly. He shook everyone's hand, and offered the family's help. Hayhow's mother sat in the mess, crying, staring at his photo on the wall. Derek, our captain who sailed with Hayhow, telling her, "That is how we remember Hayhow. That picture will always be there on the wall. As long as this ship survives, we will remember him."
It was at Muisne, Ecuador, in 1998. Hayhow was 38 years old, and it was a surprise when his heart gave out. Maybe if he had been someplace with better hospital facilities he could have been saved. It's hard to say. His family certainly feel like he made a willing choice to take the risk.
At the time shrimp farms were (and in fact still are) threatening the watery mangrove forests. With this type of aquaculture, a dam is made to create a pond in the forest. The mangroves are chopped down or die. Chemicals added as part of the process and waste from the shrimp turns the ponds into a toxic soup. Eventually, a pond becomes so toxic that not even the shrimp can survive. So the operation has to constantly keep moving on to new ponds - leaving a wasteland behind.
The local people depend on the fish, which in turn rely on the mangrove habitat. But the shrimp farmers had guns and powerful political connections.
Louis, our chief engineer, tells what he saw that day in Ecuador:
The RW was at anchor at Muisne - a tiny island just off the Northern Ecuadorian coast. Most of the crew were with a huge number of people from the local communities, doing an action against an illegal shrimp farm. The idea was to recover that public land by wrecking the illegal dam so the water would flow again, and then planting hundreds of mangrove trees. Among the crew, was Hayhow who was the onboard medic.
I joined the ship that morning, it was quite empty. At around 10 a.m. I heard some commotion on deck, when we got there it could be easily understood. Hayhow was sick. He was lying on one of our boats that was bringing him back to the ship. Given that I was the only Spanish speaker present at that moment, it was decided that I'd jump in the boat and help take him to the closest hospital.
From the jetty we drove him in a three-wheeled bicycle (the only means of transportation) to the hospital where he was attended. We spent a couple of hours with him, he was quite surprised at how painful it had been (he'd treated people with heart ailments during his professional practice). Hayhow was recovering, but, just when we were trying to coordinate a way to evacuate him to a place where he could be thoroughly treated, he had a second - and fatal - attack.
Hayhow is not only remembered in Muisne, where the new school is named after him, but also July 26th, the day of his death, is now Mangrove International Day - when fishermen, fisherwomen, and local communities demonstrate in defence of the mangroves.
In Pohnpei, Hayhow's younger brother, Hallen, joined the Rainbow Warrior. Hallen had been thinking about working on a Greenpeace ship ever since the Arctic Sunrise stopped in Pohnpei a few years ago. Speaking about his brother Hallen said, "I knew he was working on this ship, so I wanted to work on this ship. I will try my best to work like him, to try to help."
