Sahara Wind
The environmentalist came awake with a shock. He used not to wake with such a start. While the research trip lasted, he would have to do without coffee. He wondered whether he would turn out to be another Ben Gunn or Thoreau. The latter must have had some provisions − perhaps even tea and coffee? Other than coffee, Ja’en Ja’en missed lunch, too. He had been munching kurna and sucking aduwa as he went along. The fruits had smartened his tongue and palate. He saw the folly of coming out on a scientific expedition (albeit a short one) without taking some provisions along. The fat of the land either stayed out of reach (birds scattered at his approach) or deprived him of his appetite (the two fruits). He was putting his life on the line in his pursuit of a lasting solution to the problem of environmental degradation in Kano, northern Nigeria.
Ja’en wore jeans and sneakers and kept on the lookout for snakes. His woollen hair absorbed the heat and saved his scalp from getting sunburnt. But his feet felt on fire. The sneakers were poor conductors of heat; yet they afforded the best protection against snake bites. Without wasting time, he began work on the farm where he had spent the night. He noted its size and the number and species of trees in it before taking a sample of their girth size. He likewise recorded the trees marking off farm boundaries. He scooped some sand and studied its structure and composition. All the crop offal from the last harvest had been uprooted and burned. The smell of burning lingering in the air would be cleared by the first heavy rainfall. The researcher walked about farm-plots bordered off by Dichrostachys cinerea, Moringa oloifera and Commifora africana.
Ja’en thought of Chico Mendez, the Brazilian environmental campaigner, who lost his life to powerful interests bent on destroying the entire Latin American eco-system, and of Karen Silkwood, who lost her life in her pursuit of the whole truth before crying wolf. The two fallen hero and heroine acted on behalf of everyone, including people who would rather think that they were only remotely affected by such catastrophic disasters as the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island nuclear melt-downs and the Australian forest fires. He remembered the abandoned villages of the Niger Republic taken over by the advancing sands of the Sahara.
As he retraced his footsteps at nightfall back to the basecamp, he saw the need to suppress individualism in favour of communal choice, to work for the common good, rather than the triumph of the individual will. On the following day, he embarked on a careful study of a large area of vegetation between bush and farmland. Trees grew wildly and in family clusters from wild seeds. Of the trees he examined here, Acacia seyal adapted best to the poor soil. They were either useful as sources of fruit (Balanites aegyptica and Diospyros mespliformis); medicine (Guiera senegalensis) or artisanship (Acacia nilotica containing tannin used in the tanning industry). These trees were few and scattered all over the field of research; their sorry condition extinguished the cheer in which he came out this morning to continue with his project. The scientist could only identify Pilostigma thoningii and Anogeissus leiocarpus, which were smaller than those on shrubland and much thinner than all the farmland trees. The few instances of Acacia albida and Parkia bigbolosa had perished due to neglect, disturbance and draught stress. These trees had dehydrated completely while still young; the little rain that had fallen and the manure cattle, sheep and goats had dropped as they foraged under the trees for leaves and pods had not been of much help in averting the catastrophe. Only exotic eucalyptus and neem were spared from the largescale devastation.
Ja’en stepped out of the demarcated, government-reserved area solely planted with a single exotic tree per plot of land and went deep into the open bush where he soon came upon trees of great diversity. Acacia ataxacantha merely defined the character of the vegetation for being forbiddingly thorny; Sclerocaya birrea produced perishable exotic fruit; Acacia polyacantha produced the gum used in making ink. But Combretum molle and Terminalia glauscens ended up as firewood.
The researcher was shocked that he had at long last stepped on the fringes of a vast energy resource centre that the logger considered his piece of pegged ground. It confirmed his hypothesis that some elements were conspiring to pave the way for the speedy envelopment of the entire region by the bogie of the fire of the Sahara Desert. Yet, he did not have enough evidence and needed to go further afield and collect more data before the rains began to fall. This research expedition afforded him the chance to work with just notebook and pen, flash-light, temperature gauge and measuring tape. Fear of loneliness would lack the power to disengage his mind from contemplating the beauty in golden grass; in the emerald shoots and ripe fruits adorning the thinning population of trees; in the emblazonry of its aviary and in the waning primitivism of its classification as bush.