In 2002 I worked for the Department of Water Affairs and
Forestry (DWAF). That was the year of the Earth Summit or the World Summit on
Sustainable Development, an initiative trying to build international consensus
and action to push back “the worldwide conditions that pose severe threats to
the sustainable development of our people…” It was at this Summit where I met a
most unusual man.
Like many government departments, DWAF had set up an exhibit
to display their work in widening access to potable water, sanitation and other
development-focussed projects such as the planting of indigenous trees. As a
member of the communication section of DWAF, we took turns being on hand at the
exhibit for any questions that conference visitors might have, handing out
brochures, CDs and tap water fed through a water cooler. At the time, Joburg
water was rated as the third highest quality in the world.
Enter the Earth Walker
On one of my shifts, a guy ambled into the exhibit with a rough,
two metre staff in his hand that he was using as a walking stick. With his
dishevelled hair, unkempt clothes and scraggly beard, he looked sort of like a
Moses or Noah figure. As he came into my personal space, I stepped back a bit.
He stank. I got the distinct impression that this guy had been sleeping on the
streets for a good few days.
“Can I help you?” I asked as I took another solid step
backward. “Paul Coleman,” he beamed back. “They also call me The Earth Walker.”
I picked up a distinct British accent but none of this was able to dilute any
of my scepticism. Earth Walker? Who the hell is that? “Uhuh, and you would like
to speak to…” “… Minister Ronnie Kasrils says that I can rest here a bit,” he
completed my sentence for me. “We are sharing a public platform tonight.” I
knew that Ronnie Kasrils was unorthodox, but this one had me intrigued.
Brilliance in simplicity
He then began to explain to me that for the last Earth
Summit in Rio de Janeiro, in 1992, he walked from Canada through the United
States through Mexico to Brazil on the Save the Amazon Walk. All along his
route, as people discovered why he was walking, he would ask them to plant
trees. On his journey, he met very interesting people who shared their stories
with him. It was on this epic walk that he met the Man Who Planted Water in
Mexico.
Apparently, Mexico has similar water challenges to South
Africa. Like SA, they have a few big rivers that flow throughout the year from
which they can dam and develop hydro-electric power but the vast majority only
flows during the rainy season. For the rest of the year these rivers dry up and
place the poorer communities in such areas in dire straits. In one of these
villages, outside of Mexico City, the Earth Walker met a retired engineer. Alex
was an octogenarian who had a brilliant but simple idea.
His concept was to build a series of small dam walls along a
kilometre length of the small local river that dries up for much of the year.
The idea was not so much to create an actual dam but rather, like a beaver
might do, it was to slow down the flow of the river serving several functions:
1.
A slower river means that the community can use
the water to irrigate the farmlands.
2.
Clothes could be washed more easily in the
river.
3.
Children can now swim in it.
4.
Silt will gather and can be used to enrich the
agricultural land.
5.
The river is filtered from pollutants with every
dam wall it flows over as well as through the holes in the wall that are
covered with rocks and twigs.
6.
Because the river is now slowed down, it will
flow for longer during the year.
7.
Then when the river finally dries up, one can
dig a well at the dam wall or place a water pump as the wall would have help
feed the underground water system.
Government says No!
When Alex proposed this to the Mexican government, they
rejected his idea. He even volunteered to fund the dams himself but the
authorities would not budge. Governments generally have bought into the idea of
big dams. This means working with the bigger rivers, using large acres of land
so that water can be sold to municipalities or hydro-electric schemes can be
established. In the biggest project of this nature, the 3 Gorges Dam in China,
it meant the displacement of over a million people, billions of World Bank
dollars. This dam is so massive that it has an effect on slowing the earth’s
rotation (ever so slightly) and shifting the position of the poles by two
centimetres!
So Alex took it upon himself to organise the building of
seventeen dams for the one kilometre stretch. This the government could not
tolerate so they broke down all the structures. Alex then had them rebuilt. The
authorities smashed the walls once again. Alex had them rebuilt. When the
government came to smash the walls once more they warned Alex, “Rebuild this
once more and we will put you in jail.”
I’m eighty seven years old, I told them. I only want to bring water to
the community, send me to jail. But they didn't send me to jail, because by now
the people understood what I was trying to do and they'd get into a lot of
trouble, so I rebuilt the dam.
The monopoly of knowledge
I reflected on this story once before. I had developed a
PowerPoint from what I remembered of the story and presented it in a course on
improving communications. It is this presentation that I came across recently
in the search for a good input at the Rasooli Centre last 22 November 2013, ten
years after I spoke to Paul Coleman, the Earth Walker. On reflection, and
looking at the story with fresh eyes, I now see some really interesting
insights in this story that could well be a metaphor for life.
There are the obvious insights. The one is that governments
don’t always know best. They are often looking for the big solutions and do not
factor in the minor (and often more critical) details. People’s interests are
only taken on board when communities make it impossible for government to
ignore them. Left to their own devices, governments can (and have) made
extravagant mistakes. But this is also a story of how communities should make
interventions for their own wellbeing. Communities know best about their own
development priorities and needs.
More importantly, I think that this is a fascinating
metaphor of how our modern society monopolises knowledge and information. Today,
knowledge is specialised and gathered into large dams in their various
industries with their own sets of specialists that act as gatekeepers. These
specialised areas are not readily available for the ordinary person in the
street and are expensive to acquire whether in book form or to study. One sees
this in medicine, in business information and even in religion.
We create universities with their various departments,
involved in their own areas of research. Libraries and resource centres fill up
on a daily basis from the various dissertations and theses and papers that are
written and presented at conferences. It’s not to say that these are not
necessary and crucial for improving our understanding (in broader terms) of
modern life and its challenges… The truth is that often these repositories,
these dams of knowledge, are just for the academically-minded and remain out of
reach of others, inaccessible, untranslated.
In religion, the clergy are the gatekeepers in institutions
where knowledge is made scarce through denying access and rulings are made as
to what is legitimate religious knowledge and information and what is not.
Again, knowledge is then dammed up in institutions and structures with limited
entry. Here we create apostates, heretics and outsiders of others who threaten
our hold on the artificially constructed mega-dams. In this sense, science and
religion are much the same.
Planting the Water
Yet, this has not gone unchallenged. There have been many Who
Have Planted Water. Perhaps books are the original holes in big dam walls
allowing access to anyone who could master literacy. The internet is the modern
attempt to hit holes in these walls and make information available to those who
have access to modern technology such as computers, the internet and smart
phones.
But now there is a glut of information flowing, largely
unfiltered through cyberspace. There is a big need for people-centred mediums
(individuals and organisations) to act as the agents for slowing down and
consequent filtering (or sense-making) of these streams of often raw data.
I think every individual is a potential “dam wall” or acts
as a filter, a slowing down of information or wisdom past on down the
generations from time immemorial. We do this when we recount stories from our
parents, from others, from our communities. We have the real ability to slow down
the river of experience and insights just enough for others to benefit, to
enjoy, to use the knowledge, the technology that is the legacy of civilization.
The world is in trouble
In a world where the spectre of ecological disaster looms
large, I think the relevance of this metaphor is so apt. It speaks to
individuals and communities becoming agents for change where they find
themselves. It speaks about positive and creative change. It talks about making
interventions and ourselves becoming the channels, the mediums of transformation.
Yes, there is a need for governments to commit to policy
changes, changing the philosophy of profits before people. There is a need for
governments to make wiser choices for energy, for agriculture and for water
resources. But these often seem insurmountable and out of reach of ordinary
people. We need to slow the message down, translate it into people’s lives and
empower them in the process so that communities own the change.
Interestingly, the Arabic word for the beneficent force and spiritual
energy is barakah. Originally this word meant to tie the leg of the camel so
that it does not run off in a sandstorm. In other words, if your wealth or
sustenance has barakah it will not run through your fingers like water. It will
stay, it will be of benefit as if planted. Sufi circles or circles of
remembrance imitate this concept of the river dam to slow down and plant the
barakah which is the flow of grace from the Eternal Source.
In the original encounter with the Man Who Planted Water,
Neil Coleman tells Alex, after seeing the outcomes of his very simple idea, that
“I’m going to turn you into a fairytale and I'll tell everyone the story.” I
hope that this piece contributes to that promise.
