stories, from africa: November 2016

24.11.16

Nurturing Trees

I spent a week or so researching trees for a school mural project. The idea is each class will be assigned a tree to study. They will create leaves, seeds, flowers and fruit on clay rounds. The rounds will become leaves on a Tree of Life wall mural. I am pretty excited by the project because it will be long lasting and is located in the perfect spot- an enclave covered in shade by a massive flamboyant tree and filled with picnic tables where the first graders eat their snack.

Since my Kinshasa days I have been fascinated by the way humans congregate under and around trees. It would make a stunning photo essay. The ways people use trees for leisure, as part of business, for protection and cover from the sun. Trees become holders of things, shelves. They become parts of buildings and grow through walls. Trees exhibit a resilience that is simply admirable.

My moringa trees are an excellent example. There are two miracle trees- useful for everything from medicine to cleaning water-growing on my little patch of dirt I call a yard. They grow faster than we can keep up with, every so often stripping them of their leaves, drying them and using them for tea and all kinds of garnishes. I think the nounou was particularly disturbed by the way they shed their leaves all over the driveway. Every so often she would ask if she could cut them. I obliged as long as we collected the leaves for use. I have noticed that one of the stumps has stopped regrowing- highly unusual as they love nothing more than a good trim. I suspect she treated it with something.

Around the same time, I took a few of the chopped branches and stuck them in the earth, trying to create a little fence around my plants (the children are constantly playing and stepping there and I was trying to keep people out of the area.) In response, the trees have bloomed and now I have four moringa trees. It was that easy. That unplanned. The trees decided to grow despite me (or my nounou.)

In more recent days, the prospect of a new president has me more concerned than ever about the environment. Like most Americans I am reading everything I can, trying to educate and activate. The potential problems are overwhelming. This article, before Trump was even elected, merits a link mostly because of what it doesn't talk about. Perhaps history shows that humans have a tendency towards self-implosion, only to come out better for it on the other side (supposing you are not among the million or so sacrificed in the purge) but history doesn't really show us how the environment will fare.

It may well be that we've done enough damage to alter the earth irrevocably. And if we haven't already, four years with Trump's team will surely set us firmly on that path. Of course, the earth will continue to spin, it's just a question of in what state.

All of this uncertainty brings me back to the trees. Each tree I researched resurrected memories of a relationship. The avocado tree with her branches full of fruit, bending low to offer me her gifts and raising back up again at the end of the cycle, patiently growing again. The star fruit tree at the end of our driveway, offering up its bittersweet fruit for eating, lending her shape to colors for stamped birthday card designs. There were the mango trees, whom I made a portrait series of in all their stages of beauty from birth to decay. And the glorious mountain apple tree who showered me in neon pink carpets as she shed her flowers to bloom forth soft, pale apples. Banana trees and bamboo trees providing sturdy leaves for making art and strong stems for creations of all kinds.

I want to get back to nurturing trees the way they nurtured me. We could all do with nurturing some trees. We are so far from nature we've forgotten our dependence. It's what the water protectors are all about. It's what we all need to be about.

9.11.16

Feeling American

Although I've been working on a tree reflection, a necessary pause for the elections seems acceptable. It's been at least 5 years since I have been in the US. With each passing year I feel further and farther removed. It is more than the passage of time. It is more than internal growth and change. It is more than I am able to explain here. It's enough to say America and I are like unknown cousins at this point.

Which is why I was surprised at my reaction to the news. The News. I wasn't surprised by the news itself, having suspected somewhere in the back corners of my mind that America would unleash this evil on herself. We've come too far from needing to fight for or protect anything. Americans have been taking the easy life for granted for a long time and forgotten what it's like to go without.

So I wasn't surprised at the official word, but I was surprised at my reaction. I thought I wouldn't have any strong response either way. Maybe a small smile and a raised eyebrow with the begrudging thought "Well, she did it," should Hillary have won. Or a shake of my head and a "Those Americans, they've done it now," in the case of an unspeakable win. But neither of those scenarios played out.

Devastation washed over me like a wave. A great tsunami tidal wave. I was reminded of my French colleagues after the Charlie Hebdo shootings. They were visibly saddend. When offering a routine Bonjour, ca va? they answered by shaking their downcast heads and saying how discouraged they were. There was a school wide notice from the administration and a strong sense of national pride and mourning. I was a little in awe of the intensity.

But today, I found it was on my mind. And when colleagues offered a casual how are you? I couldn't refrain from saying "Dare you ask? It's a travesty..." I admit to feeling American, but even more, I feel human. And I am sorrowful for us. I want schools closed for a day of mourning and flags hung at half-mast.

It seems now we will have a chance to find out if all the checks and balances in place to preserve democracy and power heavy rule actually work. Mr. Michael writes about reassuring children about the future by bringing up those democratic processes designed to prevent total control or out-of-control acts. I'm not so sure.

I was reminded of the literature circle I am leading with a tutoring group. We are reading Red Scarf Girl about the Chinese Cultural Revolution. In order to bring about that drastic policy change, Chairman Mao played to the peasants, the young, the barely formed and the uneducated. He set about reversing historic cultural values and turning social conditions on their head. The have-nots and know-nots were suddenly prized while the educated and successful were persecuted. It sounds eerily and terrifyingly similar to what is happening in the US.

While I don't believe the guy was initially gunning for the head role, nor do I believe he took himself seriously (I actually think each outlandish move was a calculated cry for someone to "please undo this mess I've gotten myself into") now that he is there....now that he has thrown the biggest toddler tantrum possible and gotten his dessert without eating dinner, he is only going to continue experimenting with the limits of power. A kid in a candy shop.

There is a chance the next 2 years won't throw the country - and the world- into turmoil. It's completely possible. But there's every chance it could go the other way too. And more important than all of that is the very fact that intolerance, hatred and egoism remain entrenched in the fabric of American communities.

It's a blow for humankind. That's what my devastation was about. Any small hope I'd harbored (and at this point it was pretty small and deeply buried) has been finally extinguished. Humans cannot turn the bright corner, save the planet, stop war, love themselves or each other. We cannot organize collectively to make decisions in the our best interest. And I am not the only one wondering if the antichrist has arrived.

Or maybe this is the doom before the bringer of peace arrives? Maybe that last little flicker of hope isn't completely extinguished after all.

1.11.16

Forest Art

A chance walk through the botanical gardens turned up some mysterious artwork- functional or merely aesthetically pleasing, I can't be sure. But this kind of mystery slightly less disturbing than all of that surrounding the Banco....I think.

A bundle of fronds, neatly packaged

Mystery dwellings

Interesting natural design

Forest spirits

Last weekend we were able to take a small trip to the Banco Forêt, a forest preserve located in the heart of Abidjan. The entrance we used was located just off a busy, 4 lane highway. Our driver, long time resident and fellow teacher, informed us several times that this particular stretch of highway was home to frequent traffic accidents often attributed to the mysterious spirits of the forest.

After meeting our guide, we rode about 3 km down to a central parking area. Here we viewed the first forestry school in West Africa, once the prime center of the area capable of attracting forest guards from all of the neighboring countries. Now, it seemed quiet and deserted.
Our entire afternoon was filled with lush greens and wild earth. It was soul filling. I reminisced about all the places in Congo we'd been able to visit in their savage originality. Abidjan is just overflowing with cement and I haven't concentrated my energy into escaping it.

During our visit, the guide emphasized how well the forest was secured and patrolled. The official word is that things are much improved from "the crisis." (a recurrent and oft-used phrases to describe the war years.) To prove the point, he tells us that the military conducts trainings here and this is supposed to discourage the undesirables. It doesn't stop the stories.

From political concentration camps to this 10 year old account of thieves and spirits to the more recent accounts of smokehouses and human heads, the mystery of the forest cannot be put to sleep. In 2009, the search for Guy-André Kieffer, a French-Canadian journalist, expanded to include Banco- though without results. The forest continues to have such a reputation that in April of 2016, artist Affou Keita is said to have been "surprised" in Banco- suggesting perhaps she was there to do more than just film her latest music video but, in actuality, to take part in ceremonial rituals to avenge those against her. In May of 2016, the discovery of a body with multiple piercings and no identifying information continues to add to the mystery of the site.

While we enjoyed our trip in group, and I joked frequently about returning with a bicycle, the persistent myths have wedged themselves into my psyche. A walk in the botanical gardens, without security, will be much more refreshing.