number of years ago I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia. I taught English and general science in a school built by the Italians during the occupation. The school was located in the town of Debre Sina about 160 kilometers north of Addis Ababa on the road to Asmara. I was assigned with a young man named Harry. He taught English and social studies. We lived on a mountain at 10,000 feet in a house of mud and sticks with a dung floor and a corrugated tin roof. At night when it rained it was impossible to talk above the clamor. Whenever volunteers got together we talked about our experiences in Africa. It may have been during a conversation at a party of volunteers that I decided to make the trip to Gambella. I vaguely remember photographs of the people who lived in this region of Ethiopia. Someone had recently been there and was telling us about it. What was said had to be yelled above the noise of the party. Photographs accompanied the narrative. A “The intensity of our excitement increased. We watched Tim get the spell. The constant sound of rushing Other Peace Corps volunteers had come to Gambella by Land Rover. There were muddy water. The brown liquid swirled he was nearly to citi The Baro River was wide and swift — and muddy. One day we stood on its bank and contemplated swimming. six of us, four men and two women. All young. Early 20’s. We stood on the bank and watched the there. One moment Eh repeat the game. A growing number of natives watched all this with great interest. The game became hypnotic. The the sandbar ... Suddenly Tim wasn’t AO holding hands with two of them and the others are crowded close. At the market Tim bartered for a pair of white shorts so he could swim in the Baro River. closer and closer to and increased its speed around two large rocks. One rock was across from us in the middle of the river. The other rock was a hundred yards or more down- heat. The humidity. The brown water. Hypnotic. Each cycle of the game deepened water was like the white noise of sensory deprivation. Our casual conversations became strangely disembodied. The natives watching us with interest shimmered on the shore. We were out there. In the sun. Ona rock. Hypnotic. Suddenly, the trance was broken when someone suggested that we swim to a sandbar. We were all together and resting on the upstream rock before beginning another the sandbar and stream from the first. The heat and the the very next instant humidity encouraged us into the water. The current was strong and it was difficult to swim. We devised a game. ride downstream in the current. We liked the idea. It was time to change the game. The sandbar was upstream. I silently wondered if I could make it. Tim volunteered to go first. He was probably the strongest swimmer. Six feet, he was gone. First, each of us in turn fought our way one hundred and eighty pounds. Completely vanished.” through the fast water to the upstream rock. Rest. Then, one by one, we lowered ourselves into the rapidly into the water and swam hard and made a diagonal toward the sandbar by swimming for a point far upstream beyond it. Those of flowing river and body surfed to the us on the rock cheered and shouted our downstream rock. The water accelerated when it divided to pass around the rock. encouragement as he slowly veered in the It wasn’t easy to pull ourselves from the can do it. Nice job, you’re almost there... current. Most of us had bloody arms because we didn’t want to be swept The intensity of our excitement increased. We watched Tim get closer and closer to the sandbar. We wanted him to by Dr. Lyall Crawford, WSC assistant professor of communication farther down the river. People already hc He dove direction of the sandbar. .. come on, Tim, you Blundering Unawares: make it. We wanted him to pull himself from the water and stand on the sandbar, exhausted, smiling, and waving for us to join him. Man’s inability to comprehend his world Tim inched his way against the current toward the sandbar. Finally, he was ableto stop swimming and drop his feet. All of us on the rock let out a hoot as he began to swing his body with powerful strides he human race is unaware of the world it lives in, an unawareness that creates problems for people themselves and for the world they ignorantly destroy, said a WSC every other place. Only man is so ignorant about the world and about his own culture,” said Dr. L. Kay Gillespie, chairman of theWeber State sociology department. Whether the issues be environmental, inner cities, poverty, illiteracy or any of a Suddenly, Tim wasn’t there. One moment he was nearly to the sandbar and the very issues, nor, thousand other ills, most people have little or no understanding of the real an ever in fact, do they care to. Instead, they continue on their blind path, creating next instant he was gone. Completely vanished. It seemed like he took a lightening-fast backflip into the water. Just before Tim disappeared I thought I increasing number of problems as they go. And when man finally realizes the negative results of his actions his efforts to make things right usually backfire. “We blindly stumble on, and society gets worse and worse,” Dr. Gillespie said. saw his face go into a bunch of 0’s. His eyes made o’s. His mouth made an O. A big O. O’s, but no sound. We were stunned. We stood paralyzed by our total absorption in what had happened. We It’s not that Dr. Gillespie is a doom and gloom sayer, he said. It’s just that he doesn’t think people have the ability to put aside the blinders and really see life as it is. “We have all these great plans for changing the world. But the truth of the matter is that when man intervenes we seem to mess things up,” he said. For example, a few years back the alligators began disappearing from the Florida marshlands. Florida passed a new law prohibiting the killing of alligators. The farmers, however, had been the ones killing the beasts in the first place and were now forced to weren’t comprehending what we witnessed. No one moved. No one spoke. When Tim vanished I became fully focused in the present. professor of sociology. “It’s naive to think that the same rules that apply where we live apply to against the rapidly flowing river. The water was just below his chest. use, and find other sources of income. So they drained the marsh lands for agricultural the result was that the alligators began disappearing even faster. to know want don’t we and reality know don’t We us. around “We're naive to what’s it, because to know it is to deal with the negative,” he said. Nothing else existed. The eternal now. All my perceptions were heightened. The roar of the river was overwhelming. In this state, for this American culture says that all problems eventually have a happy ending. But that fairy-tale assumption is not based in reality, he said. = “The world is going to go to hell, and, if you take the Christian ethic, it is programmed moment, I was the Baro River. Tim’s right arm raised from the river. It stayed suspended and motionless for what to go to hell,” he said. seemed a long time. His hand appeared to quiver ever so slightly before disappearing Dr. Gillespie is not sure who has the answers—he certainly doesn’t, he said. But he the does recommend that people seriously consider their own actions which make solution problems worse, while avoiding the tendency to start in with some ill-advised once again beneath the surface of the water. Still, no one moved or made a sound. I was the first to say - crocodile. There was some hesitation about leavimg = that will create more problems than it solves. “We must get away from the culture that says we know all and can solve all. We can’t. eae surrounded by these children. I am on the rock would help others coming in. On the downstream rock we rested again and talked casually until we were all together. Then we would battle our way to the river’s edge, walk upstream along the bank, and FS remember a photograph of me ie. ate The flight to Gambella was rough: An Ethiopian Airlines DC-3 flying from Adedis off the high central plateau down to the lush jungled lowlands of southeastern Ethiopia. At times, the two engines of the airplane strained against the squirrely winds and, at times, the airplane itself and those of us in it seemed singularly precarious. I met Tim, another Peace Corps volunteer, for the first time on this flight. He too was travelling.alone. He had recently trained at UCLA, where my training took place, and he had been in Ethiopia for only a short time. It was hot and humid in Gambella. Our first day there Tim and I went to the market. Children followed us. We had a good time going through elaborate mimes to communicate with them. I Se the rock. One of the women was especially uneasy. Ralph offered to help her. It occurred to me that the Baro River was the safest it had been all afternoon. Now the natives on the shore made more sense to me. They had come to watch the crazy foreigners swim in the river with the crocodile. This incident occurred because we were unaware of our surroundings, we were not in touch with the wild. We were, instead, a group of Peace Corps volunteers from the United States transplanted in Africa. Later, I learned that some of us had been told about the crocodile. How it was the only one that had not been driven downstream away from the village. How every year it typically killed one or two people — usually old women washing clothes or young children playing near the water’s edge. But the information didn’t make sense to those who were told. A crocodile was more likely to be a cartoon character than a threat to human life. A crocodile in the river where we played our games seemed out of context and incompatible with white, middle-class experience. Quite obviously, however, we were the ones who were out of context. In this case it was Tim who paid the price for this ignorance that is also arrogance. Too often society is blind to the tragic consequences that affect both itself and the earth. We can neither afford to ignore our place in nature nor think we live apart from the wild. |