Short Stories

Saturday, June 6th, 2020 by Uwe Heitkamp Consider the following facts. Due to climate change, it has been raining less and less in the south of Portugal for a number of years, with insufficient rainfall to supply its ten million annual travellers. The current annual rainfall is between 350 and 400 mm. During the last three winters, it has rained so little that the water reservoirs, the seven dams of Odeleite, Beliche, Arade, Silves, Odelouca, Bravura and Santa Clara, are on average only 22 percent full. The dams protrude from the earth and the reservoirs are almost empty. Last October, …

Wednesday, May 27th, 2020 by Uwe Heitkamp Drring. Drring. Drring. Click! This is Costa speaking. How can I help you? Good morning, Mr Costa. This is the press. We’re in trouble. The crisis has caused all of our advertising clients to disappear. What can we do? (…) I’ve read that, in these current times, the press are selling advertising to Costa. And you? Are you buying anything from them? It must be false. No, it’s true. No, no, no! I didn’t know the press could be bought in Portugal. It can’t be so, surely? Or can it? What’s going on? …

Saturday, May 23rd, 2020 by Uwe Heitkamp At a time when the most densely populated cities are slowly returning to public life as normal, here in the countryside we are reflecting on the essentials that we need to survive a crisis: good bread, our own honey, locally produced olive oil, carob flour, the nuts from which peanut butter is made, agricultural products, fresh foods like goat’s cheese and fleur de sel – all locally produced and much needed for a good breakfast, lunch or dinner. Before lunch, I harvest some rocket and endive leaves from the vegetable patch and wash …

Wednesday, 20th May 2020 by Leila Dregger Imagine – yes, I know this calls for a lot of fantasy as it’s highly unlikely to ever happen – but, despite everything, just imagine that a pandemic might put an end to all global trade forever. There would no longer be any cheap mass-produced goods coming from China and the container ships from Asia would no longer dock in our ports. It wouldn’t be just the whales who started to live with less stress. It would be ruinous for banks, and lots of multinationals would start collapsing like dominoes. The shelves in …

Saturday, May 16th, 2020 Today I received a letter from a reader in Tavira. It included the following sentence: Get off Facebook and go into the garden. Thank you! That’s what I’ve been doing since 17 March: I’ve been working in the garden, planting potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, courgettes, onions and aromatic herbs. I live off the food from my vegetable patch. Being able to accept this offer from nature is a beautiful experience. I have to confess, that I belong to those two thirds of the population, a silent majority, who don’t have a Facebook account. As a journalist, it …

Wednesday, May 13th, 2020 by Siddharth Sareen Ruptures intensify contestation and collective efforts advance solidarity. The COVID-19 pandemic and our societal responses matter in ways whose full consequences are currently unforeseeable. Amidst the tragedy, there are countless heroic acts of human care. Many of these are performed away from public view, in contrast to strategic efforts to drain the public purse. Portugal, both as a state and as a society, has shown admirable resolve and fortitude, responding calmly in a spirit characterised by togetherness. I watch all of this unfold from afar, working from home in Bergen, Norway, where our …

Saturday, May 9th, 2020 A reflection by Dina Adão It’s nine in the morning. Sitting in front of the computer, impeccably made up and dressed as if she were going out, my daughter stares at the screen. She pulls a terrible face and mutters some insults. Her books are scattered all over the floor and she stares at her watch, visibly exasperated. The router is not responding. We live in a place in the countryside where only one telecommunications and multimedia company can reach us by cable: Meo. The service, which was never particularly good, only covering half the house …

Wednesday, May 6th, 2020 by Leila Dregger I am now suffering doubly from the crisis: I am in bed with neuritis; I have a fever and I can hardly do anything. But I’m still keeping in touch with people I haven’t seen for a long time. One of them told me something surprising: last year, he went to visit the Kogi people in the north of Colombia. These people live in the mountains and are still quite isolated, continuing to follow their traditions and speaking of being “our big brothers”. The reason for this is that they think they have …

Sunday, May 3rd, 2020 by Alfredo Cunhal Sendim The Commons are also an economic alternative that produces relationships of mutual reciprocity (giving), generosity and solidarity inside (local or global) communities, affording privilege to the value of using rather than trading. It is a collective way of life – and this collective is formed from people, from their creations and from the other human beings who coinhabit the Earth (which is itself a living being). Or, in other words, the Commons are a social and ecological system, a large-scale cultural transformation, resulting from a process grounded in affections, feelings and a …