Many people know that the trees near our home in Yakima, WA are one of the top reasons I wanted to buy that particular house. I couldn't imagine owning a house in a place that lacked mature trees. The Zambian villages in which we stayed during our pre-service training were lacking many big trees and I was missing the comfort that large trees provide for me. Some people prefer a Starbucks on every corner, I prefer a tree on every corner. So I was very excited to see the large number of trees in our village when we arrived. Not only for their aesthetic value, but because of the learning opportunity they provided for me as I described in my post about finding the perfect trees for a particular use, but also the joy of taking a bush walk into the woods to find the materials I need for building things nearly as easily as one walks through Home Depot but at much less cost (ZERO!). This joy is shared by Zambians who live in my village, but in a way that seems unaware that it may not always be like this. For them, finding these resources has always been possible and they do not seem to realize that continued use of the resources in the same way will eventually make their village look a lot like those villages that Gina and I stayed in during our training. Take this for example:
One of my jobs in the village is to help people survey an area so that they can build a fish pond there. This involves using about 13 pieces of wood to mark various points on the ground to delineate boundaries as well as information on how much dirt to dig or pile at a certain spot. I've done this a lot and it always starts with a search for trees of the right diameter and length to chop down and use as a survey stake. Often times the fish farmer who is chopping these trees down will find the right size for a stake but it happens to be attached to a much larger tree. Down comes the whole tree while only 20% of the tree gets used for the stake, while the remainder is left to rot. I ask the farmer what else he or she could use the remainder of the tree for such as firewood, stakes for other purposes, or building material, but the usual response is that there are plenty of trees around so it is not worth the work to get the job done of finding the stakes we need for this project AND for other projects. For better or for worse, the fish farmers usually have a one-track mind.
Some time ago I helped a woman survey an area for a pond, but after we had already cut the stakes we found out that the area was not suitable for a fish pond. The woman abandoned the area and we resolved to search for a new area another day. The stakes unfortunately were not valuable enough for the woman to carry home for another purpose. I returned another day with the pair of brothers that often help me on these surveys, Ryvas and Ryford. The area we were going to survey was known to me and I believed it to be a good spot, so we cut down the trees and collected our stakes. During the collection, I noticed some other tree that were recently felled for some other purpose and pointed out that it could be used for about three stakes. Ryford said that it is not fresh and proceeded to look for more trees. I reminded him that these stakes are temporary and don't have to be fresh, so he grudgingly checked out the tree and cut two stakes from it. Trying to teach conservation of trees here is like trying to get money from villagers to fix a borehole! The motivation does not seem to be understood. We all went to the location of the area to survey for a fish pond, but shortly after starting we realized that there was too much water in the soil and so it would be difficult to keep the pond from leaking. The fish farmer knew of another place to try and I said okay, let's collect these stakes and go check it out. The two brothers and the fish farmer all agreed that it was not worth carrying the stakes all the way to the new location and would be easier just to cut new stakes there. "How far is it?" I asked. "About 2 kilometers" the farmer said. Zambians typically carry firewood at least that far on a daily basis, so I did not understand the logic of leaving behind these perfectly good stakes and avoiding the chore of chopping more trees down, just so we could avoid carrying something that is not typically considered difficult to carry. I explained that in America if you want to build something you can not simply go into the woods and start collecting your lumber. It costs money. They were shocked to hear this, though they were familiar with the concept because they know people in Lusaka (the "big" city in Zambia) typically have to do this because there are not enough trees there anymore for people to use. I also reminded them that even in relatively smaller villages, like where Gina and I did our training, people have to travel very far to find enough trees to use for the construction purposes, or else pay for wood like people in Lusaka do. Even after reminding Ryford how he had a difficult time finding the stakes required for a tippy-tap to use at the workshop we went to together back in April, and hinting that his village was doomed to the same lack of resources if he and others continued to disregard the value of the trees they were using, I could not convince them to carry the stakes. So we went to the next location and after I checked it to make sure it would be a good place, we chopped down what was to be the third set of stakes for one fish pond.
This encounter reminded me how similarly many Americans think about their resources. It seems to me that in America as it is in Zambia people seem to have the mentality that as long as it is not an immediate problem, conservation of resources is too much of an inconvenience to act upon. I am not sure how to go about it yet, but if there is one thing I want to leave behind with the villagers, it is knowledge of the consequences of blatant waste of their trees.
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