Zimbabwe
The other evening I dropped into a local Istanbul establishment called the James Joyce. So named establishments can be found in many large cities across the planet, all devoid of writing, but you will be able to find two things; a pint of Guinness and the Premier League live. Arsenal were playing Manchester United. Arsenal at top of table, Man U not far off. I hadn't seen a Premier match the whole season.
Saddled up to the bar, relishing the first sip of the evening's meal, I felt a hand on my shoulder followed by some sun never sets colonial accent asking, “Is this seat available.”
I turned to my right and there stood a smiling fellow indubitably from somewhere on the mother continent. I replied, “That depends who are you supporting?”
He laughed and said, “Manchester.”
I grimaced, “Well, you can sit there anyway.”
Once seated I asked him, “Where you from?”
“New Zealand.”
“That's no Kiwi accent. Originally?”
“Zimbabwe.”
It's funny. All the former empire's colonies are big Premier League fans. Everyone has a team. Over the years, I remember distinctly only one person, a young Tanzanian, who when I asked who his team was smiled and replied, “Why should I support a team of the former oppressors?”
“Fair enough,” I responded and laughed.
Well, I was very happy to watch the match with the Zimbabwean turned Kiwi Doctor. All sport is fundamentally a social experience. As a spectator, it's not really appreciated unless you're watching with others, the more, the better. The Greeks had it right. There's a social element, a shared beauty to all athletics, either as participant or spectator. Over the years, I've watched a good amount of soccer with many Africans, all knowledgeable and great appreciators of the game. The Doctor didn't disappoint nor the match.
Life's coincidences are some of its queerest aspects. Zimbabwe! I had just been thinking of Zimbabwe a few hours before. Two decades ago, I spent a couple weeks in Zimbabwe. I was spending some time in southern Africa visiting as many parks as I could. I looked with a little trepidation at going to Zimbabwe. It was right in the middle of Mugabe's land-reform era, basically a seizing of all the land held by the sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters of the “former oppressors.” A friend, who grew up in Zimbabwe, hooked me up with Beat, a fellow who for years had been running trips into Hwange park.
I traveled by land across the top of Botswana to meet “Beat” in Victoria Falls. Needless to say, Zimbabwe was in flux. The currency had crashed, tourism ceased. Arriving, I checked into a small empty hotel. Sitting alone by the small pool, I sort of stupidly asked the proprietor how things were. He went into his office and came back with Achebe's, Things Fall Apart, handing it to me saying, “Here, read this.” So, I started my Zimbabwean tour poolside, reading one of the great books and thinking well this will be interesting.
Beat arrived next day. He took me to someone on the street to change my dollars as the official rate was official theft. A hundred bucks gave me an overflowing fistful of Zimbabwean dollars. I held it up and Beat said, “Don't worry, it goes fast.” We headed off to Hwange.
As someone who has cherished every minute I've been able to spend in any of the planet’s remaining wild areas (there's an argument to be made there's no truly wild areas left, no place on this planet has not in some way or other been altered by the hand of man), Hwange was beyond sublime.
First, there were no tourists. Outside the occasional South African, we basically had the whole park to ourselves. Secondly, it was the absolute end of the dry season. All the animals were coming to the few remaining waterholes. Beat liked to drive. He thought it was part of the tour-deal. After a couple days I convinced him to just sit at the waterholes. Like the ranger stationed at one shrinking water source observed about the giant bull elephant way off in the distance, “He is coming.” They were all coming.
I learned most herbivores – gazelles, zebras, wildebeests, etc. – are very skittish coming to a waterhole. They take a long time slowly approaching, stopping, checking things out, heading a little closer. Repeat. When they get to the water, they quickly drink and move away. In the dry season, waterholes are essential, but very tough neighborhoods with plenty of lurking predators. So all approach cautiously, except buffalo and elephants. Out grazing the arid lands for two, three, four days, as the elephants get closer and smell the water, the whole herd starts trumpeting and running very fast. In a week, we saw four or five thousand elephants. You can watch elephants all day.
One evening we camped near a waterhole where a pride of eleven lions had claimed temporary residence. We'd been told by a ranger the pride was taking down an elephant, a four or five thousand pound juvenile, every few nights. We saw this stunningly magnificent pride a half-kilometer from the water as we made our way to camp, a half-dozen mature females and various younger cats. The big male stayed out of sight. Sure enough, that evening as we lay in our tent, a herd of elephants came in, soon sounding more agitated than excited. The cacophony went on for over an hour. Every once in awhile Beat would say, “That sounded like a lion.”
The next morning a hundred yards from the water lay a half-consumed juvenile elephant. The only lions visible were two young, just sprouting mane males sitting under a nearby bush intently watching the carcass. It was their job to chase away the jackals, vultures, and any others trying to grab a bite.
It was hard to really believe such places still remained on the planet. From a very young age, my greatest political interest has been conserving the earth's remaining wildlife and wild areas. My first semester in college at the University of Arizona, I was a Wildlife Ecology major. I thought I would spend my life helping conserve the planet's ever shrinking wilderness. But that semester, I had a class that was the most influential of all my school years. It was taught by an old biologist, an avid hunter and outdoorsman. In the US, such people are far and away the greatest conservationists. He taught a simple lesson: the animals can take care of themselves, they just need enough space and giving them enough space was the problem of only one animal — us — that’s what needed to be fixed.
At this brief time in Tucson, I also attended my first political fundraiser. It was for Congressman Mo Udall. He had just sponsored and passed in the House, the “Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act,” two years later it became law. In regards to wilderness, it was far and away the biggest set aside of wilderness in American history. Most amazing, in a time of surging pump prices, it stopped oil and gas drilling on vast tracts of land the oil industry lusted after and still lusts for today. Frankly, it was the most radically right legislation of any kind passed in my life, a virtuous political act when America still had politics.
Soon after, I became actively involved in politics. It's hard to realize, even at times for myself, underneath every political action I've ever taken are the words of that University of Arizona professor, “Give the animals enough room.” I have the greatest respect for any who lived the life I wanted, helping directly conserve what wild they can, basically creating modern arks. The good news is if these arks can conserve enough, at some point when humanity develops or redevelops a less destructive relationship to the greater environment, these arks can all provide the seeds of revitalization.
Back in Istanbul that afternoon before meeting the Doctor, my memory of Zimbabwe was spurred reading a wonderful history book by archaeologist Deborah Barsky, Human Prehistory: Exploring the Past to Understand the Future (thanks Jan!). It's a book gathering together the latest knowledge and thinking on our species' ancient past gleaned from the last few decades of archaeology. It is field that should be required curriculum for every high school across the planet. The book is a profound and encompassing work on our present understanding of homo sapiens early roots. A past essential to understand if we are to meet the challenges of the future.
The theme of Barsky's book is understanding humanity's long, increasingly destructive interaction with the greater environment through our technological development. Barsky writes a concise, acutely penetrating paragraph on this history:
“Today, we persist in our search to invent new ways to manipulate, modify and control animals and environments. Landscapes were (and continue to be) modeled in ways considered optimal for human survival, meaning, reducing species’ variability, for example, in favor of monocultures designed to feed the ever-growing number of human mouths. Indeed, in 2019, a global United Nations-backed assessment reported that at least 1 million animal and plant species were threatened with extinction in the upcoming decades. While it is true that other species (beavers, for example) intervene on or model their environments to better suit their needs, modern humans do so in ways that are harmful to themselves and to other living species of plants and animals.”
Ecologies rich with multitudes of species, that is biologically diverse, are essential to a healthy planet. Humanity's present all encompassing monocultures produced over millennia, most intensely over the last century, are best represented by endless fields of corn, cattle dense ranges, and packed hog factories. These systems are neither healthy or stable. Such unnaturally uniform human engineered ecologies are susceptible to violent instability and instantaneous collapse, unlike the stability and robustness provided by diverse ecological systems. This understanding is barely on the radar of scientists, technologists, the food industry, or the public.
The paragraph continues,
“This difference in niche construction practices constitutes a major alienating factor separating humans from all other life forms. Looking at our actual situation, this discourse is useful because it shows us that our own disregard for Nature can be related to a process that began with the invention of – and eventual reliance on – technology as a means to interact with the outside world. The consequences of this behavioral choice are cumulative, and we are only just beginning to realize the importance of acting responsibly to address the repercussions of our divorce from – and raping of – Earth’s natural balance.”
We need a politics of technology.
Barsky adds,
“Come what may, artificially created human environments are most clearly contrary to adequate natural selection processes because they destroy the delicate balance orchestrated by the unity of interactions of all living and nonliving entities on the planet (ecosystems) and even in the universe. The feedback loop underlines the interconnectedness of all things that can be recognized in today’s world where we are now constantly being reminded that, by pushing the artificial modeling of nonsustainable environments to the brink, we are harmfully affecting both human and nonhuman natural selection processes, finally causing them to convert into negative forces. Thousands of years from the Neolithic Period, our unbridled artificial niche construction has finally resulted in the drastic transformation of natural environments that will be the next generation’s ecological inheritance to which our children and all future generations will fall heir. This fits well with the foreboding principles outlined for demographic growth by T. R. Malthus who argued (as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century) that exponential human population growth in relation to the possibilities for the Earth to nourish them would ultimately lead to disaster unless the process was checked by socially imposed reproductive limits or by war, famine, disease or other catastrophic scenarios.”
Ah Malthus, the bane of every economist, an originator of the “dismal science.” If you take an economics class, they teach you Malthus was wrong. If you take a biology course, you learn Malthus was completely right, fundamental to Darwin's understanding in developing natural selection.
What economists don't get – the list is endless – but in regards to Malthus, humanity's technological capabilities, most especially the last two centuries harnessing of fossil fuels, threw-off the numbers in the Malthusian equation. But make no mistake, for all ecological systems including homo sapiens, Malthus remains solid as gravity.
Barsky concludes,
“Ultimately, we have collectively created over time an abusive, anthropocentric model of the world that has upset the spectacularly complex universal balance built up naturally over millions of years. Inevitably, this will lead us once again to seek a new structural balance that will dictate the fitness of the human species if we are to continue to play a role in the future of the planet Earth.”
Amen.
Well, the match was a beautiful humdinger. Arsenal won with a header in the 89th minute! I felt a little bad for the Doctor, despite his being Man U supporter and all. He rooted hard, but he told me before the start he thought Arsenal was likely to win. At the end he commented, “We played well.” And really, that's the best we can all hope for with pretty much everything. However, the Gunners have a shot at the top for the first time since 2004.
I wash me face
I wash me hands
I wash me Arse-nal