[5 mins reading time]

Chi Ka: Earth Transformed

Once upon a time, there was a storyteller and sometime trickster called Eshu. He was so famed, so adored by people all over, some thought he had to be a god.

Eshu was always strolling along, in the middle of the path.

One day he was wearing his four-coloured hat, it had the colours of the world.

He came to some fine farmland where he had heard there often were conflicts, just arguments over how to see the world yet often flaring up. Some farmers wanted to do this thing with mixed crops to push and pull the insect pests and predators; others thought they ought to stay with monocultures.

Eshu walked on the dusty path between two farms, partly in the shade of mimosa and other shrubs. It was the season for hoeing fields of yam.
It had been a hot and uncomfortable morning, and the two farmers argued on the way home.

“Who was that strange fellow with the white hat?”

“A tall stranger, wearing a red hat!”

White-red, red-white, they became cross with each other, as they walked.

By the time they came to the village square, they were shouting and shaking heads, and a crowd gathered at the place right where wrestlers and boxers used to meet. It had been market day, and there were still stalls and visitors from far.

In the shaded avenues, on the paths and ways, hawker and seller still sat at stalls, woodworkers sharpened chisels, there was money-changer and basket-maker, all the men of iron and bronze in one district, their bellows made from goat-skin, for firing up the charcoal. There was brightly-patterned saddlecloth, and all kinds of rein and bridle ornament, carpenters busy with rough blocks, turning them to hoe and handle. Some carved holy plaques, spade-shaped and then they inked sacred characters with bamboo pen dipped in ash and gum.

There was, too, the smell of the rotting fish and acrid woodsmoke, a calabash of rancid butter, all a greasy mess of flies, the taste in the air of pepper and perfume from clove and herb, and wholesome onions, and the sour smell of civet cat, and dung trodden in the sand.

By now two farmers were bunching hands into fists, then drawing knives. Now the crowd of men and boys and women carrying their children were shouting too. Their wives and the headman were at a loss.

This was the problem in those days. No one had any easy answers.

Yet from the back, came the ringing of a bell.

Well now, this was the trickster Eshu, and his deep voice rolled and resounded. He wore a necklace of cowrie shells.

He had crossed seven rivers and three motorways, walked along dark forest paths, over slopes scorched since the last rains. He carried a goatskin bag with magic things inside, a drinking horn, a machete and snuff. His left eyelid twitched when he saw something from the future.

He had passed hushed villages where women sent their voices over compound walls, where their children once played under the moon at night.

The people fell silent as he spoke.

“Both of you are right, for there never is one sole truthful view of the world. Your vows of fruitful friendship should have been strong enough, yet now you want to fight.”

“Stop, look again at my hat.”

The market people turned, nodded to one another. The two farmers looked down at their feet. Eshu took some cowries, and passed them to the women and children.

A drum began to beat, and a group of twenty men, maybe thirty, each dressed in white robes came out of one of the alleys.

They began to dance. They had come to the desert market, the crossing place of all the continent. More drums began beating, wind instruments were played, and the men began to chant.

The wall of people now clapped and stamped, the red dust rose and the sun once again became bright as blood.

Later and after long hours, as the sun lost its venom, the animals tethered, and the shadows advanced and in the gathering dusk fruit bats swooped from the overhanging trees.

It was later said by many, Eshu did help us heal ourselves.

So we owe him sacrifice.

Now the people began to look with all their eyes.

Jules Pretty

Commentary

Traditional markets were for thousands of years places for storytellers and for the exchange of ideas.

These speak to a great contemporary hope: that story will help create the agency to address contemporary climate and nature crises.

By the pale glow of dawn, the muezzin inside the city gates stirs sleepers from far and wide. Before long laden-donkeys trot on converging paths, bullocks carry men with plaited hair past fields high with ripening millet. Women balance baskets on their heads, pause to share news beneath a grand roadside baobab.

It is a market, so of course you can buy or trade pink kola nuts, potash slabs from the great lake, much shrunken these days, dry dates and scarlet pepper, long gourds polished and carved with ornamental stripes and snakes. There are boxes of matches, bangles from the east, paper money from the north, the grisly wares of a smiling magic man, by his side a sitting desert hare.

Today, action for climate and nature somehow should become experiential. Through our own actions, the beliefs of people change. Transitions to regenerative economies and cultures will require transformations of both thinking and action.

Evidence is now showing that public opinion in richer countries is changing fast. The proportion of the public believing climate change is both happening and caused by human action has stepped up in the past ten years: in China, Germany, UK and USA from the 40%-60% range to 60%-75% ranges. In other countries (Ireland, Italy, Norway, Poland), some 60%-80% of people already believe climate change is caused by human activity.
Once there is belief, then actions may follow faster.

This is where we face a dilemma. There is great urgency, yet individuals and countries are unlikely to make full transitions to fossil-fuel-free ways in large leaps. It will be tactically astute to support multiple paths and different choices for individuals, households and businesses. Good ideas and technologies can fail when they appear to be imposed on people.

Story says this: go through the door. Take at least a first step.

This bronze bell was fired and fashioned by a blacksmith at one of the greatest markets of the Sahara desert, on the outskirts of Maiduguri. They were alchemists, tuning bits of rubble into bronze.

They knew all about transformations.