Several years ago, many communities in rural Africa held big parties  to celebrate successful  harvests. The parties were followed by a couple of rest days, as a deserved break from tedious farm work.

 

 Besides constituting a self-congratulatory affair, the parties also  availed villagers a seasonal chance  for consolidating  community camaraderie.

 

Joy was not manifested solely by eating, drinking ,  singing and dancing, but in the certainty that, after a specific period, in specific cycles, the celebrants would assemble for successive celebrations . This is because weather patterns were consistent; and as such, the time for planting seeds, tending them, ripening, and harvesting, were known in advance.

A computer-like  precision prevailed and the margin of error was  slight.  Rainfall, and therefore the fertility of farmland,  were  so reliable that in some settings, traders and farmers entered into  selling-and-buying agreements for crops that were at the germinating stage.

Hostile, and erratically changing weather patterns, have disrupted those trends. Farmers engage in farm work  dutifully because it is their lifeblood, but now, unlike in the past, their fingers are crossed. For rain, which may have been late in materializing, may not pour in sufficient  quantities to facilitate proper growth of seeds or seedlings.

The process may  start off well and excite a farmer who may, however,  be reduced to a nervous wreck after a few weeks, when it rains torrentially,  and ensuing floods damage the crops. Another scenario is for unscheduled fierce sunshine to  scorch otherwise healthy crops to nothingness. Pastoralists are similarly  hit and even pauperized when drought decimates their animals; and the livelihoods of fishermen are disrupted by dwindling fish stocks.

Farmers, pastoralists, and others for whom land is the major source of  food and income generation,  look on  virtually helplessly. That is part of the panic and frustration-inducing  climate change crisis that is global in essence, but hits poor countries hardest, because the capabilities of individuals and  their governments to prevent or mitigate the  fury of nature’s forces is low.

Tanzania is one of those countries, and therefore places much premium on the two-week United Nations Convention on Climate Change talks scheduled to start in Durban, South Africa, tomorrow. It is instructive that, as a curtain raiser to that important event, a meeting drawing representatives of communities of farmers, pastoralists and hunters from a few Mainland regions and Zanzibar, sketched  climate change pictures in their respective localities, at a meeting held in Dar es Salaam last week,  under the auspices of the UN.

A common thread run through their presentations, highlights of which included:  disruption of farming seasons;  drought-induced food shortages and death of livestock;  conflicts triggered by wrangles over water sources and access to pasture;  and disappearance of  plants with medicinal properties.

In Tanzania’s case    and its case isn’t peculiar –   knowledge of, or information on climate change is by and large low. Wananchi hear or read about the phenomenon in media outlets, usually related to warnings issued at international meetings. 

There’s a  crying need for sensitization campaigns to be launched and sustained, to neutralize  the misconception that climate change represents divine wrath,  and  hammer home the message that,  we are our own enemies through carelessness, greed and lack of vision .  Indiscriminate  tree felling is a familiar example, whose consequences, such as inviting desert conditions and tampering with water sources, are dire.

An earnest attack on  selfishness-based cynicism must similarly be undertaken, for  the current generation is bothered about today’s benefits and spare  little or no thought to the welfare  and joy of  successive ones. 

The challenge , overall,  is to convert  from  being  destroyers to conservers.