Stuff got me thinking lately; are there times that you travel across the world and wish that the people spoke your language? Or better still, are there times when people travelled to your world and you wished that they could speak your language?
Don’t get me wrong but let me start by mentioning our dear blood-mates them Chinese. These guys are renown for all the right and wrong reason alike. On one hand they are providing our frail, unsuspecting 3rd world governments with reverberant “aid” that will come back to bite our progeny in the backside. On the other hand they are a dominant producer of American goods, including i-phones. Yet the reference “made in China” sends spinal shivers and goose bumps at the scam of the earth cheap-for-nothing goods. These brothers are known to ingest anything known and unknown, mobile and stationery, alive or dead on the planet! Quite honestly, I find them to have some of the most intolerant habits anywhere I meet them around the world. My intention though is not throwing out the baby with the bath water.
I was having a casual chat with friends in Ouagadougou recently when the intolerance of the short-small-eyed race bludgeoned and took over a very neat conversation. Their pervasive nature and unbridled desire to survive have led them to occupy the most remote areas of the planet, putting them in direct competition with the omnipresent God. I bet you will find these guys at the bottom of the sea, with the newly discovered shark species, if they are not the shark itself. Downside of it though is this, most Chinese I have met never seem to take the time to learn anything about the local people leave alone the local language but they rather transfer a China town in the “smallest” way to these spaces and “colonize”. In fact they only learn enough local language to help you learn their own. This is deplorable!
“First seek to understand then be understood”, is the first principle of “how to make friends and influence people”. Language constitutes many things including words, cultural nuances, way of life, points of view just but to mention a few. One book that exemplifies the simplicity and complexity of language is “The Four Languages of Love”, what you said and what he/she heard. Primarily though, language is an absolute important first step of communication.
Imagine with me for a minute, you have a team of the most exquisite experts on earth, trained in all sorts of skills including engineering, medicine, education, teaching, you name it; and you have to push towards a common goal. How hard would that task be if you didn’t speak the same language? And yes, throw in google translate to juggernaut the task further. In fact, whatever you set yourself to do would be insurmountable!! In the Bible, the last time human beings tried to unite to reach a goal, God scattered them by diffusing their language. He just made them yap in so many different kinds of gab that they could no longer push towards a common goal. That feat was thwarted!
In conservation it is certain that you will work with people of different languages and cultures. In my pursuit of this ever elusive dream of environmental sustainability, I have been privileged to work with different languages speakers other than the ones I have full command of. I have learnt the value of acceptance and being accepted. I have known that in order to understand the ailment of a-people, you have to listen in their language. In order for them to understand you, you have to speak their language.
Conservation many-a-times feels far removed from facets of society. It is almost left as a pursuit of the affluent in society and in many cases crowded with western influence of dominant and sectarian tendencies. The society is impoverished by lack of engagement the conservationists as they exert wholescale alien thinking with total disregard of local and indigenous knowledge. Both extremes provide constrained solutions with very little gains to progress.
In the society today as it has been from beginning of time, human endeavor has depended on natural resources, which has provided society with great gusto to grow and develop from height to height. It is the trees of the tropical forests that have provided the unique lamination boards on the floors and roofs for centuries while keeping the fire burning in the village kitchens. It is the water of the rivers that turn turbines to provide electricity that keep out cities lit and fills the calabashes of the playful children as they walk home to fill their water tanks. It is the lungs of the forests that immaculately breath in carbon dioxide and produces oxygen to support life on earth. It is the intricate cycles and seasons that we know little of, those processes that engulf the day and hide by night, that make each day bearable or less so than the other.
Despite the enormity of the task given to natural resources, we are still unable to unilaterally spur actions towards its protections. Natural resources can only be conserved at a local level by local people which is you and me. We therefore must understand the impacts and what effective conservation means. How the decision you make today about what to eat, what to wear, what to drive or what you buy impacts your life, and that of a million others. However, do you speak environmentalese?
Let me think about it for a moment!
Chrismagero's Blog 