To Have and Have not

Allison and I spent the weekend in Johannesburg (Jo’burg to the locals) at a wedding of some of our friends. It was a nice break from being in Kruger and good to have a little dose of “civilization”. But a little civilization goes a long way. After a little time out of touch, it is actually kind of annoying to be back around the hustle and bustle of a city. A little bit of traffic is more than a little annoying after being sans traffic for even a little while. However, even if it does make me sound like a yuppie, it is nice being able to get a good double espresso.

But the one thing that always leaves a lasting impression on me when I leave Kruger and drive around the South African countryside is the huge gap between the have’s and have-not’s in this country. Is it wider than in the U.S.? Probably not on average with all the billionaire CEO’s we have in the U.S. inflating their company’s stock prices to pad their portfolios while their minimum wage workers struggle to afford health care. But the number of people in abject poverty in South Africa is huge. Contrast that with the shiny Mercedes zipping through Jo’burg and the skyscrapers that are the telltale signs of the moneyed class and you get a huge chasm between the top and bottom of the economic ladder.

One of the things that started me thinking about South Africa and poverty was a conversation I had with one of the wildlife guides here. Mattwell is a black African that grew up not far outside the park boundaries. While we were sitting around one evening just talking about everyday things a weaver (a small bird the size of a sparrow) flew onto the porch. It got disoriented by the porch lights and bounced off the walls a few times before I shooed it back out into the dark night. I turned to Mattwell and remarked about the beautiful plumage of the weavers and he responded “That’s meat”. I gave him a quizzical look and shook my head not understanding. He continued by saying that to people in the village where he grew up that bird would be meat, a meal. A bird no bigger than a house sparrow would be caught for food - I was incredulous. He then listed a litany of animals that people in his village would eat such as genets which are beautiful house cat-sized creatures with leopard-like coats and long tails. It was just one of those soul-crushing moments to realize how poor people must be to eat a sparrow. How can nature withstand the billions of people in such poverty that they are forced to eat monkeys, genets, and songbirds – the microfauna of our forests – for protein? It is hard for us First World citizens to imagine such desperation and desolation. But how do we get someone who eats a sparrow for food to care about the impact that such desperate behavior has on the surrounding ecosystems when those of us that don’t have nearly this level of worry won’t change our behavior to affect the planet in a positive way?

At every turn humanity tries to separate the pieces of nature that make a balanced system - the “balance of nature”. It happens everywhere you look. Abduction of the worlds primary productivity (people must eat, sure, but must we eat so much beef and send so much never-read junk mail that Amazonia disappears), rampant use of water (habitual washing of cars comes to mind), mixing and matching of the worlds species – removing some from here, taking some from there, adding more from wherever. We are the most destructive species, and we might even be the cause of our own extinction which I’m sure would be a novelty in the history of evolution. Yet, we do little about it. Many of us do nothing because we don’t know. Some do nothing in spite of knowing. And few actually do something because we do know and because we know we have to do it. Unfortunately the few that do something must deal with the many that do nothing. For most people who don’t worry about environmental issues like how much soap we put down the drain or how much water we use in a day, the problems of everyday life are much greater than these issues. I don’t mean problems that we may worry about like the monthly on our SUV or that our gym membership is about to expire. What I mean is the problems that don’t allow many people to think about what we are doing to our world - the problems of living or dying. How do I feed my family? Where is my next paycheck coming from? How do I keep my family from dying from the heat or the cold? How can I possibly support this next child my wife is having? These are the problems that are foremost in billions of people’s minds. How can those of us that worry about the former possibly preach to those worrying about the latter about saving the environment? Would I really care if a salamander was going extinct or if sea level might rise in 50 years if I couldn’t feed my family? Probably not. So how do we get people in that situation to care about the world we live in? We try to make their world better. It seems to me that the environmental crisis begins, in part, with social issues. Many people might care a great deal more about the health of our planet if their own problems were less of a burden. Gandhi said the greatest injustice was poverty. If we can help solve this great injustice, we may go a long way towards saving our planet.