INFORMATION LINE: THIN 24TH Feb. 2009
……….Health………..Body………. and Earth….Systems………
…………….. What? ............Where ……… Are the Connections? .............
The health of our bodies are closely related to the health of the earth. Our bodies are made from the earth and are supported by her. When soil is not healthy, we are not healthy, when the air we breathe and the water we drink is polluted, we take in the poison and our bodies experiences the results. Because we are closely related to the earth, caring for the health of the earth results in our own better health.
We store and use light energy from the distant sun. Each second the sun converts four million tons of itself into light. Green plants capture this light energy and use it to grow. When we eat and digest vegetable leaves, maize or sweet potatoes, the sun’s energy stored there is transferred to our body systems and becomes part of us.
The iron circulating in our blood today was in the spinach we ate last week, which absorbed it from the soil in the field. Parts of our bones were once rock from the earth’s crust-rocks that were bombarded by wind and rain to become mixed with soil. The water we boil for tea has a strong history. We can trace it backwards from our teapot to the spring or tap, then back to the lake or water table and back to the rain and to the ocean from which is evaporated
Oxygen produced by green plants is drawn into our bodies and fuels our countless activities. In return we exhale carbon dioxide which nourishes the very same green plants. We are constantly taking from earth and giving back to earth. At death our bodies will return to the basic elements from which it was formed and become food for other life forms; in the same way that other life forms died, decayed and formed the soil that supports life from moment to moment.
The well being of our spirit is not separate from the health of our bodies and therefore is also affected by the condition of the environment. We are shaped in many ways by the created world around us as surely as by the characteristics inherited from our families. When we feel threatened by the environment, whether it is neighbours or family or famine or disease, we almost automatically hold our breath, and tighten our muscles. Such fear and about the world around us can make us sick.
We need to feel safe if we are to live a total life. A sense of safety comes when we acknowledge our relationships, both to the earth and to others. We take care of our health practices but also we need to be confident and grateful that the earth supports and maintains us. Because we are able to feel, respond from so much of nature around us, we have a sense the rains are near, or hunger is coming.
We are indeed poor, not completely well, if we lose contact with those dynamic and creative connections and systems at work throughout earth and universe and within every one of our cells. This knowledge and this communications gives us courage in hard times; we realize we are not alone. We are part of a bigger picture and a larger story.
Our elders discovered and set aside places in their midst which felt unique or powerful. It could be a grove of trees, or rocks or spring. The community protected and respected these places. Each person who went there felt a power and had a sense of something bigger than oneself. Sometimes there were restrictions about who was allowed to go there, or activities such as gathering firewood or cutting grass were forbidden. These were places set aside to pray, or offer sacrifice or to hold meetings. The land held us. We cultivated according to the needs we had for the year but also tended for those areas of land that fed our spirit and honoured the spirit.
This is the land where I was born. I don’t know how long we have lived on this land, but as far back as elders can remember. They knew this land that has fed them and held our family through the years. They tended the land and learned from it. This knowledge was passed down to each new crop of children; this is the way you till the soil, this is how to plant, never just one seed but two together, for this is how we live. We do not live alone. We live, grow and die in a community .This land is a blessing .This place holds the bones of our ancestors.
We depend on this land, not only for food to sustain us, but also for our sense of community. We understand that growing food is not a work we do ourselves without the cooperation of the weather, the sun and moon, insects for pollination and fertile soil. We would not eat, when we cultivated, planted, harvested and stored food we realized that we united our physical strength and earth, our skills and experience with other powers and forces in nature. Some of my ancestors shared the same home, the same plot of land. It is sacred for my family.
Peoples of all nationalities, languages and culture are one family. We all need corporate to create a world where each person will have basic needs met, where all feel safe and secure, where hopes and desires for enhancement of life can be actualized for every one; we were given a life and we return some of the life we were given, remaining with only what we need. If we take too much and return nothing enhancing our own lives at the expense of earth herself then the earth and her species suffer and are destroyed.
To harm and take too much from any part of it is ultimately to harm and rob from ourselves. There is a challenge to look beyond self interest, beyond immediate results and to congratulate ourselves when we do. The hope is that we can live with our natural resources without fear. Environmentalists use a metaphor of the earth as a “spaceship” in trying to persuade countries, industries and people to stop wasting and polluting our natural resources. Since we all share life on this planet, they argue person or institution has the right to destroy, waste or use more than a fair share of it’s resources.
Parents should personally teach African culture or any other culture to their children. Unfortunately because of technological advancements and changing lifestyles, this is not possible at the moment, yet the men of power and men with influence, those who command most of the country’s resources and owe so much to their traditions for their own rise do not feel the urgency of saving the catastrophes, including the environment. In this they are failing in their duty to the future generations who will one day point their fingers to their forefathers as their betrayers. The house they are building today for their kith and kin will be left without heirs if the present slide is not arrested in time.
The United Nations cluster in the country is merely a toothless tiger with little power to enforce any policy upon its bickering members. It reacts no better. Researches and educators like us are worried. We are like farmers tendering crops in the middle of a war zone. Everyday the tropical rainforests are disappearing at the rate of 30 acres a minute. Illegal settlements and agriculture are taking place at unprecedented pace. Pollution of the air, soil, water, rivers and oceans are also increasingly alarming. The rich-deep top soil utilized by teeming organisms to create fertility for farmers to grow crops or raise animals are on the down turn. In fact it may be too late to harvest the genetic diversity of the environments since the knowledge is disappearing with the environments. And the future generations will have nothing to inherit.
These facts are hard to explain to the local people, who are starving and sick. They need food now and not tomorrow. When it comes to politics, we can not handle this. It is not within our mandate and priorities, we do not know what to do.
Perhaps if enough people realize how fast our natural resources are being wasted, realistic solutions that benefit the people and save the earth could be adopted.
THIN feels the real pressure to act, to increase knowledge through education, training, communication, research and institutional development - by emphasizing institutional building programs at the national level. Strong institutions through human resource development and research training as a framework for sustainable development, especially when the country is importing food, medicines and technologies. THIN is having a multidisciplinary and a multi-sector approach to ensure that the communities and people have relevant training, knowledge and technology that stick. We are empowering many people to get involved, committed in delivery of goods and services and to contribute to addressing local needs. We need the resources and technical support to improve our institutional capacity and communication strategies. At this point we would like to extend a hand of appreciation to those who have read on our web log; http://dandoracommunity.blogspot.com about our work and our needs, who are willing to support the less visible but vital core activities of our organization. This is a confirmation of their confidence that we are moving in the right direction in addressing not only local but also international important issues. We welcome new supporters from all walks of life all over the world.
We recognize the role of business as a corporate citizen [that supports local communities and credible projects in our country]. Contributions to community livelihood can change their attitudes and motivate them to conserve what they have and what they know. However, there is another fundamental problem with the donor community’s requests regarding fund and resource generation by research and development institution based in developing countries like THIN It has been suggested a good share of the funding requirements should be raised from the local private sector, as do the research institutes in the industrialized countries One major drawback has escaped the attention of the architects of this approach; however,
The industrialized countries have along-standing experience with investing in research and consequently place a high value on it. In the developing countries, there is on one hand virtually no private sector capable or willing to fund ‘research endeavors’ and on the other hand, very minimal appreciation of the values of the assets they use and the people who keep them. They appear ignorant or insensitive to the environmental health and dangers of global warming and its consequences. Indeed of them have charitable giving schemes but these are mostly meant to benefit the elites or themselves or their friends and relatives. The time lag until there is genuine and substantial support to community projects by the private sector in this country is estimated at best 30 years from now. (See our next publication)
There is, therefore no alternative to a continued strong support to community development oriented organizations like THIN. This should be done in the spirit that this will stimulate, support and accelerate the true examples of making developing countries independent.
Give us the means and we will do the job. We trust you will give us a sympathetic and understanding ear to our challenges. History proves that when traditional values and knowledge flourished, the countries were overflowing with wealth, prosperity, peace, literature, music, art and humanity. The concept of preservation of cows and granary, which were deep rooted in the African continents agricultural structure were products of thousands of years of locale-specific wisdom passed down through generations by word of mouth. Understanding how traditional practitioners and providers acquire, store and use information and knowledge and enabling them to do so more effectively in a rapidly changing world is crucial to development and the future. Investigating indigenous knowledge may be a powerful and efficient means of filling gaps in scientific understanding about production systems.
DR. ANDREW CHAPYA
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & CHIEF SCIENTIST
THIN.
* Please see THINs encounter and fundraising experiences in the forthcoming information line of THIN.
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