Environment

                                    CARING FOR THE EARTH

                                                                        By: Nwabuisi JohnPaul

I did not like idea of travelling to the village to visit my grandparents. Not because I did not want to see them but because of the enormous work waiting for me in the village. There was nothing I could do as my mom would always send me to the village at the end of the year. She wanted me to learn the Igbo Language. But all her efforts were wasted as I still find it difficult to speak Igbo.

While in the village my routine would be farm, church and house. A typical day on the farm had me cutting grasses and using them as manure for our trees. It was not a small farm, so you can imagine the workload for me. My grandparents would complain that I was extremely lazy. They usually shared stories of how they would wake up so early to fetch water from the stream two miles away from home and still come back to clean the house and then prepare for school. This never sounded reasonable to me.

My grandparents planted food stuffs like vegetables; melon, okra, tomatoes, maize and cassava. Maize was processed into pap; cassava was processed into garri and palm fruits processed into palm oil. Fruits like cucumber, pineapples, water melon were also planted, and whenever we slaughtered pigs their blood were not wasted but boiled and used to feed the piglets. The meat was consumed by us as the local soup prepared by my grand-mom was scattered and garnished with meat. The dungs of the pigs were used as fertilizers on our farm lands as every year a portion of land is left bare to regain its nutrients.

Our compound had no borehole but just two reservoirs which we used throughout the year. I had learned to manage water. Scraps and leftovers of our meals were collated and given to our pigs. The harvested fruits and foods were used in preparing our meals, and we made sure there was continuity in our cassava farm as we planted new stems every year. Through these processes, sustainability was established.

Our earth is dying because of our mismanagement of the earth. This includes indiscriminate burning of refuse; bad waste disposal, littering of our environment with papers, wasting of water, etc. We know what we are guilty of. Sustainability becomes very important and culture of a sustainable behavior in our ecology includes our rejuvenation of the earth by less boreholes, planting of trees, management of energy, water, minimization of food wastage, and production of our own food by farming. Unconsciously my grandparents imbued in me an attitude and a behavior of sustainability.

Let us daily re-examine ourselves and our attitude towards creation. It is usually said that when you offend God and you ask for forgiveness, God forgives, when you offend man, man forgives sometimes, but when you offend nature, nature does not forgive. It comes to take back its own share.