A Man of Nature

Of course I'm back now. And of course, now that I'm back, I'm also back in class. One class I'm taking, which is really cool, is the "reflection course" for the Global Poverty Minor. So what does that mean? Well one of the big problems in the "development world", as in all groups that are working to alleviate poverty, is that there is never looking back. In so doing, it has been noted that many groups continue to make the same dumb mistakes they've been making since their inception. Basically, without proper reflection we can never make sense of the things we've experienced; things which are often powerful, life-changing interactions with people and places. If we don't make sense of the feelings and significance of those interactions then will will be doomed to never grow. As my professor puts it, "we use reflection to help us to think differently- or in greater depth and complexity- about things that have happened".

So... this is where we begin. I will be posting here my "Reflection" writing assignments after I turn them in for grading. I'll be sure to include the prompt as well so yall can have some idea as to what issue I'm addressing. Here we go:

Prompt: "In this first reflection assignment, I would like you to select a specific, charged event related to your practice experience and reflect on this event. Do your best to reflect deeply into what happened, how you were feeling at the time, how others might have been feeling, and potentially different ways of viewing the event. Remember that a central part of these exercises is to encourage you to identify important/impactful moments through reflection so that you can develop new ways of approaching your practice experience and understanding how you have been affected by it. Put another way, we use reflection to help us to think differently- or in greater depth and complexity- about things that have happened. Along these lines, you should approach your reflections as a way to "explore events or themes, not as a forum for you to write about something that you have already 'figured out'."

A Man of Nature

For my project it was important for me to interview people involved in food production on Mo’orea across a broad spectrum. At one end of the spectrum there are large scale, modern, industrialized farmers, involved in intensive production, while at the other extreme there are small scale, subsistence farmers, primarily concerned with feeding themselves. On the 27^th of July, I toured the small family farm (faha’pu in Tahitian) of a man named Ascion who has been involved in subsistence agriculture since he can remember. After exploring his faha’pu and talking in depth about different planting techniques I sat down with Ascion to conduct a semi-structured interview. I had prepared a few questions, but I also anticipated, and hoped, that the conversation would flow naturally to a myriad of other topics, for which my questions would merely open the door. The interview passed much as I hoped it and by the end Ascion and I felt both exhausted and satisfied.

One moment in our interview stuck out more than any. I anxiously came to a question, which I worried could be slightly inflammatory, and I asked Ascion, “Who owns this land?” Ascion hesitated; his old eyes scanned my face. Before he answered, it was clear that he knew there would be a lot of explaining to do. I, a westerner, have a very different concept of land use rights than a man of his upbringing, and he knew this well. Finally, he answered the question, “Jimmy”. Jimmy, a neighbor of mine, and a small time fisherman, had inherited this land from his father who had inherited it from his father. That was as far back as Ascion could reckon. The next obvious follow-up question I posed was, “Jimmy doesn’t mind that you stay on his land?” Having already established that Ascion had no income, it was clear that he was not paying rent. This was exactly the question Ascion had hoped I’d ask, or so I gauged from his long, slow, and deliberate response. In essence, he said that because he was a man of the land, a Maohi man, Jimmy would never think to ask him for rent. Yes, Jimmy is welcome to eat the food that Ascion grows, but so is everybody else. Ascion tells me that along with language, religion, music, and food, the concept of land ownership is yet another imported idea. Before the French, everybody used to live like Ascion. Just then it began to dawn on me that I was in conference with a living fossil: a man of a dying breed. It’s not until now that the full weight of that moment is upon me. He told me that he is a man of the land, a man of nature. He then went on to describe how his connection with the land shapes and informs his world. Like all old men, he concluded by complaining about the youth, saying that the lack of connection to the land was precisely the problem with the youth of today: “They don’t know when they’ve taken too much because they don’t know how to listen to the earth”. That statement has kept my head spinning since I heard it. Could this be the root of all environmental problems? Isn’t it likely that all of humanity lived, at one time, more or less in the fashion of Ascion? And if so, haven’t most of us also lost our connection to the earth? How can the residents of Sao Paulo, Los Angeles, Shanghai, or Berkeley ever hope restore that connection, should we care to?

Since my return to the states I find myself observing people and wondering what their connection to the earth may be. Did the small shrivel faced woman, sifting through the garbage in search of recyclables run through the hills of China and sleep on the floor of a bamboo hut built by her father when she was a child? Will the young punks tagging up the back of the Muni bus ever know the life cycle of the animals they eat? Will the Sierra Club member, born and raised in urban sprawl, who spends a total of 7 days of each year in the wilderness, ever understand the effect the moon has on the thousand of mating animals surrounding him? Then of course, there’s me…