Re: Regarding Africa

Gentlemen, gentlemen -- du calme!

	Please do not exagerate the import of my remarks about Africans and
nature - which were no more than a conversational aside. This is not to
say that they can not stand up to scrutiny ... if you insist.

	Mr. Wentner - I cannot agree with you more concerning the varied reasons
for settlement (though I note you are speaking of locational patterns
while I was referring to sedentarization. Never mind.) But no, there is
no hidden subtext! On the contrary, I, too, tend to assume that attitudes
to (and certainly impact on) nature are more benign, the further one goes
from "industrial  civilization." And there's  something to that, despite
"smashed-heads" and so on. In fact, I once  wrote a treatise on same,
entitled "Defense of the Primitive,"  
(on issues suggested by the late  Stanley Diamond's work). And in the
course of discussing this, with my most esteemed neighbor and colleague
at the Univ. of Port Harcourt (Nigeria), Robin Horton, he took issue with
such assumptions, and noted all sorts of smashing and uprooting to which
some local peoples were prone (among whom he had lived, married, etc. 
for some thirty years +).  This made me more cautious. 

	On a less theoretical level -- and here I am responding more to the
truculent Mr. Blaut --  I have a great deal of  experience with
ambivalence (if not hostility) about trees, drawn from my everyday
African life. In Sierra Leone, I lived at the university on Mt. Aureol,
beautiful wooded hills above Freetown that were "Crown lands," not
protected by anyone in particular, and which, despite well-meaning
regulations to the contrary, were being gradually thinned out by
poachers. I often went out to stop people from chopping trees right near
the house. Given the governmental collapse and civil war of the past few
years, I imagine much of it has gone (charcoal manufacturing is a major
factor, as well as firewood for sale or use). Of course, there are good
economic reasons - including local poverty and high kerosene prices - for
all this. But the fact remains that few tears are shed for trees.

	As the national economy began its sharp decline in the 1980s, a friend
started a (large-scale) charcoal business (to supplement his wretched
university salary), using wood from the great mangrove swamps along the
coast. When I chided him for clearing so much wood like that, he said
that there was no need to worry -- there was so much of it! Well - in a
sense he was right. But eventually, it is "famous last words" ... you
can't believe it, but what seems like an inexhaustible resource suddenly
begins to be scarce. This is not yet true of mangroves, as far as I know
(though there are problems of displacement by imported species of
vegetation, in the Niger Delta). But it is true of the West African
forests in general - both those near the (rapidly growing) savannah
(subject to drought, clearing for farms, etc.) and the more dense
tropical areas that are also being more intensively logged and/or farmed.
[I also once studied a road project in Guinea -- and became aware that a
major downside to extending the rural road network would be the increased
demand for wood it would bring. One came across trucks parked in groups,
waiting to form  illicit convoys towards Conakry at night, loaded with
wood going mainly to the charcoal makers; also to the urban consumer
market itself). 

	In Port Harcourt, on the Delta, the University campus was carved out of
the farmlands of local villages; some parts were still farmed, by
agreement, some were no longer supposed to be. Needless to say, there
were struggles...over trees. Especially to protect some last but
beautiful little patches of old forest, where clearing and burning was
still going on. Another need for trees was for shade; much had been
needlessly cut down, in building the campus. I happened to get put on the
Grounds and Gardens Committee, and  pressed for replanting, to protect
both buildings and parking lots. It was an uphill battle. [Trees? Mere
hiding places for snakes!] In fact, there were complaints about my own
house, considered to be overgrown! And Mr. Blaut will be pleased to hear
that when I left, the next tenant... burned my entire yard!
Poetic justice, no doubt!

	As regards the recent settlement of the West African forests: there were
no doubt some paleolithic populations, but many of the forest peoples of
today often moved to their present sites only some centuries ago -- as
attested by their own legends of origin as well as other evidence.  It is
well-known that corn and various root crops from the New World were a
factor here, creating a much improved food supply for forest-dwellers.  

	"The forest is not a challenge"?! Mr Blaut, I think you have no idea. 
The struggle with the primary forests, especially  -- the struggle of
horticulturalists equipped only with machette and hoe --  should not be
underestimated. Let me take you to an upland rice farm in Sierra Leone,
in December, the season for clearing and burning, and you will see how
the struggle still goes on. Nor shopuld one underestimate the real danger
that the forests  represented (unlike today, when virtually all the game
is gone). This is well known and well-remembered by anyone who lives
there, and still reflected in traditional African housing styles as well
as many representations of the forest, and regulations regarding its
entry, propitiation,  and use. 

	 As for ritual danger -- symbolic representation of the forest as a
place that is untamed, the home of supernatural forces, often malevolent
-- again, this is enormously well-documented in the anthropological
literature (and I will not bore you with more accounts from everday
life). You might consult Frederick Lamp, curator of African art at the
Baltimore Museum of Art, who I believe has done work on just this point. 

	"Small groups that use things and then move on"? What is the problem
there? This was the near-universal human adaptation until the spread of
sedentary agriculture some 5000 years ago. That groups might "relocate
when resources become scarce" is also quite routine -- though certainly
this option became less feasible as population densities built up. But I,
too, am cautious about Nyerere's remarks. What was the context for those
passages? Was he perhaps expressing the ambivalence of  the progressive 
nationalist leader in face of  some hard-to-control hunting and gathering
groups (which Tanzania, rather exceptionally, still did have)? Groups
perhaps reluctant to be (perhaps forcibly) settled into one or another 
of his Ujamaa Villages?  Subtexts indeed! 

	Sorry for this overlong reply. Must be the mindset!     Cheers. kpm