We have to adapt or die

Holidays can be incredibly therapeutic. They are as curative as they are restorative. Every once in a while it is advisable to let one’s hair down, or, if you are as bald as Bishop Lazi, to just simply unwind.

TAKING a break usually means different things to different people, and for the Bishop it invariably means making that idyllic trip to the village – far from the madding and twitting looneys of the city; and far from the toxicity, greed, hate, filth and vulgarity of city life.

There is undoubtedly something enchantingly life-giving about rustic village life, which makes one saner, calmer and wiser.

It is really difficult to put a finger on it. It must be the refreshingly clean water or the occasionally unpolluted soothing breeze.

Or it might be the honesty, purity and magnanimity of hardworking rural folk.

Argh, well, whatever it is, it really makes holidays unforgettable.

Anywhere and everywhere, eating and drinking are always the hallmark of festivities.

In the village, those who take holidays as an excuse for gluttony and bingeing can eat and drink to their heart’s content, and it doesn’t depend on how big or deep one’s pocket is, as is so often the case in the city.

In fact, it doesn’t take much to prepare the sought-after and venerated wise waters, whose ingredients, mainly millet ( zviyo), are simply raided from the granary before the seven-day brewing process.

Succulent grounded corn — which is referred to as samp and often substituted for rice — is equally inexpensive.

And so, too, is the roadrunner chicken — that is if you manage to catch it first. Kikikiki.

You would need to have chased down an ill-fated roadrunner to know how much of a taxing task it is.

It is no different from a typical steeplechase: one would have to take innumerable laps, often in zig-zag fashion, around the yard, occasionally jumping over or prodding into thickets to account for the fleeting fowl.

The secret is not to outrun it — for it is rare to outrun a roadrunner — but to tire it before making the final swoop.

However, this is all there is to having a remarkably sumptuous meal on the menu.

It is different in the city, where one has to pay a huge price for everything.

If you want food, you pay; and if you want a beverage, especially a beer, you pay dearly.

Pestilence

Sadly, the romantic side of rural life is slowly melting under an unforgiving and sweltering sun, which is turning grazing fields into desolate, parched wastelands, and changing rivers and streams into lifeless, meandering sandbags.

Livestock — cattle, sheep, chicken and turkeys — are dying, except for the stubborn donkeys and all-weather goats.

Apparently, donkeys have replaced cattle as draught power, and the thieves have taken notice, as donkey rustling now markedly outstrips cattle rustling in some communities. It is shocking.

But the blazing sun is also taking a toll on the fledgling maize crop, which by late last week had been turned into spiky ashen-green twigs.

And this unwanted phenomenon, coming as it does hardly a year after another sunscorched unproductive summer cropping season — regarded by the United Nations as the most parched since 1981 — is making rural folk increasingly edgy, anxious and worried. They are all searching for answers. Sometimes crisis is hallucinogenic: it makes imaginations run wild.

The Bishop heard many outlandish explanations as to why the heavens have become stingy with the life-giving rains.

Some blame our toxic politics, while others blame the disregard for traditional rituals, rites and practices that were ostensibly used in deference to the gods.

The explanations are as many as they are varied, but unsurprisingly, as in any case of tragedy and pestilence, the conclusion is always the same: that God or the gods are angry.

Even the hoary old men and women in Bishop Lazi’s village seem to opine the same.

This explanation by the elders got the Bishop thinking about what Elihu told an afflicted Job and his three elderly friends when they were debating that age-old riddle of why misfortune, tragedies and disasters often visit a people, and in this case Job, whose fortune and health had taken a turn for the worse.

“I thought, ‘age ought to speak, advancing years will convey wisdom.’ There is, you see, a spirit residing in humanity, the breadth of God conferring intelligence. Great age does not give wisdom, nor seniority fair judgement,” reasoned Elihu (Job 32:7-9).

However, they all believed that sin is the cause of both misfortune and affliction.

Humanity, of whatever religion and persuasion, always believe that God is the giver of rains.

During his lamentations, in his hour of greatest need, Job also expresses the same.

“Will no one bring back to me the months that have gone, and the days when God was my guardian, when his lamp shone over my head, and his light was my guide in darkness?” he said, adding: “Shall I ever see my days of harvest again when God protected my tent; when Shaddai still dwelt with me, and my children were around me; when my feet were bathed in milk, and streams of oil poured from rocks?” (Job 29: 1– 6).

Job 36: 27-31 continues: “It is he (God) who makes the raindrops small and pulverises the rain into mist. And the clouds then pour this out, sending it streaming down on the human race. By these means, he sustains the peoples, giving them plenty to eat.”

Hope and Faith

But in the village, explanations and views are not outrightly dismissed; rather, they are winnowed and sieved, which guarantees that the most compelling and preponderant views – which are the building blocks of knowledge and wisdom — carry the day.

Well, Bishop Lazi doesn’t believe that science and religion are diametrically opposed.

This explains why we also have scientists who are believers and non-believers.

And using empiricism, they have been able to flag the new reality of climate change.

Seasons are no longer as predictable as they used to be.

Throughout the ages, human beings have learnt to adapt — and that is why they survived.

God handily gave us the intelligence and wisdom to survive.

One lesson we learn from history is that species become extinct by failing to adjust or evolve to their changing circumstances and environment.

This is why Government’s plan to put 200 hectares in every district under irrigation has to be religiously and maniacally followed through to guarantee food security, at least at national level.

And we have to go back to the basics by routinely and regularly dipping our livestock to prevent tick-borne diseases such as theileriosis, which have decimated our national herd.

Eons ago, villagers knew fully well that skipping a dipping session — even once — was an unpardonable sin.

We really have a lot to do.

Seasons and climate changes, as they have so often done over centuries, but human beings have so often tapped their ingenuity and resourcefulness to survive.

Most importantly, technology, faith and hope will carry the day.

Countries such as Israel and Algeria have shown the way in growing both food crops and cash crops from perennially parched lands. It is within the realm of human capability. We do not need to endlessly lament. We need to adapt or we will die. Bishop out!