Tag Archive : Climate change

/ Climate change

Goodbye Botswana

2019-02-13 | Botswana | 1 Comment

The Okavanga Delta

It is difficult to comprehend the amount of open spaces in Botswana – the country is the size of France, but France has almost 30 times as many citizens. So much space everywhere.

The Khalihari Desert covers a large part of the country. Together with the Okavanga Delta and Chobe National Park it attracts a lot of tourists – but it is by far the most expensive country I have visited. The parks are covered with air strips where tourists are flown in to stay in luxury lodges. Some cost several thousands of dollars for one night (one night!). A bit out of my league.

Endangered wild dog

The wild life is amazing. Even with my budget I managed to se a lot of animals – even some I haven’t met before, like the pack of wild dogs and the python I met in Moremei Game Reserve. Botswana has thousands of elephants which causes a lot of tension with the local farmers.

Elephants will take down trees, fences and crops on their way. The number of elephants is so high it is a problem. If there is not enough food for them in the parks, they will migrate and ruin farmland. Even though I love elephants I see the problem – some places in the Moremei Game Reserve looked like a graveyard for trees due to the elephants taking most of the trees down or eating the bark of them.

An elephant passed by

Climate changes also has an impact in Botswana. The country is very dry, but I visited during the rainy season and it hardly rained. Newman, my guide in the Okavanga Delta told me the water level should be 2 meters higher at this time of year.

Like in the other countries I have visited the population is growing despite the fact Botswana has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world (estimated 25% of the adult population). More youngsters get an education. But unfortunately, there isn’t enough jobs and unemployment is high even though Botswana is a success story in Africa with high economic growth rates.

Religion plays a vital role in Botswana. Most of the population is christian, but the traditional beliefs still exist including witchcraft. Being a non-believer can be challenging since they are considered to be devil worshippers and without ethics and moral.

There is no humanist organisation in Botswana – not yet. There is a small group of friends, non-believers, who wants to create a humanist organisation.

I met a couple of them while visiting and at this point, they are focusing on being formally registered. Next steps are to make humanist more visible, basically showing the public humanists are good people through charity work.

Like other humanists in this part of the world their biggest challenge is the lack of funding. I hope they succeed.

Some facts:

Botswana (Denmark)

Population:   2.3 mio. (5.8 mio.)

Area:   582.000 km2 (43.000 km2)

Density: 4/km2 (133/km2)

Life expectancy: 63 years (80 years)

Church – Dar es Salaam

What I have realised during my journey is how much religion and, in most countries, also tribes influence everything. Which religion you belong to, which tribe you are a part of influences you everyday life, what school you go to, which job you get, who you can do business with, who you marry, who you vote for.

If you belong to the majority religion and/or tribe you will be better off in many countries. This means it is not the best qualified who gets the job og gets elected, it might not even be the best qualified within your tribe – it all depends on connections and where you belong.

It is also well known that corruption is widespread. Some are trying to fight it, but it is difficult to get rid of and changes are slow.

On top of this people are ready to give all their money to the churches instead of paying for their children’s education, they are ready to pray instead or in addition of relying on doctors to cure diseases. Many people are poor, but they are still willing to give their last dime to their priest.

Kigali, Rwanda

I’ve seen many beautiful buildings while travelling but it is churches, schools and public buildings not peoples houses. Many houses are old, worn down and especially rural areas huts. Think about the amount of money the churches receive from people who could be spending them on improving their own lives.

Especially Pentecostal churches (in Danish ‘Pinsebevægelsen’) is growing in numbers, receiving enormous amounts of money from their followers. So, the priests get rich. Some of them have private jets, big mansions, expensive cars – some of them are con artists and people still donate money to them. People are convinced that god will take care of them if they keep praying and believe enough.

Supported by christian missionaries some priests preach people should get many children – even though they cannot support them or pay their education (education is not free in most countries). The churches are also against contraception and family planning – supported by donator countries like the US, who has a policy of not supporting organisations where abortion is included as a possibility when they are advising families.

This means HIV infected and the population is growing in number in countries where contraception’s are not promoted. The infrastructure, educational system and the labour market cannot keep up with the growth of the population – many young people gets a college degree but there are no jobs for them.  Unemployment rates are high amongst the youth, so many would of cause want to travel abroad to find a proper job. And climate changes are not doing anything good either. It seems like being so religious work against solving a lot of the problems here. The African countries have not been christian for a long time – only a few hundred years. I’m wondering if that’s the reason they are so conservative and extremely religious. And maybe their belief will loosen in the coming generations, I don’t know. The question is whether or not it will be in time for them to be able to solve the challenges they face, and where their belief stands in the way of the best solutions.

Cradle of humankind

2019-01-21 | Tanzania | No Comments

Ngorongoro Crater

I visited the Ngorongoro crater yesterday not far from the place where scientist have found evidence of continuous presence of human for the last 2 million years – 2 million years! Here where two tectonic plates met and formed the rift valley many millions of years ago is the cradle of humankind. This is where hominoids were born and later developed into homo sapiens.

Watching the huge number of elephants, wilder beasts, zebras, antelopes on the plain grassing while lions and hyenas are watching ready to hunt. The Masai are still living in this area, integrated with the wild life – risking the life of their cattle and themselves. It makes you wonder how life might looked here a million years ago, how did humans survive.

It is appealing to believe that life has been unchanged here for thousands and thousands of years. But this is not the case. The Masai migrated here from Sudan only a few hundred years ago. The plains and the savanna are not untouched by human hand – herders have been living on this land for a long time, their cattle have shaped the landscape, integrated with the wild life.

I live in a country with a history of humans being of only a few thousand years. As Danes we are normally proud of our height, light skin and blue eyes. In reality the first humans in the Nordics – the hunter-gatherers – were short, had dark skin and grey eyes.

The genes for the light skin and blue eyes (a genetic mistake) came from Spain some thousand years ago and migrated to the North. Then 5.000 years ago, the Yamnaya’s from the northern part of Caucasus migrated to the Nordics – they were tall and had light skin. The Scandinavian look then developed – due to migrants, even though we off course all are migrants from the rift valley.

Homo sapiens one of the most successful animals on earth, unless we succeed in destroying the planet making it impossible for us to live here. We have migrated to all corners of the planet where it is possible to live (and in some cases not possible to live).

Climate changes is also visible here – the wet and dry seasons are getting out of balance. It’s raining during the dry season, and not raining in the wet season.

This area – where we were born – will be one of the first area where it will be impossible for humans to live. Humans will be forced to migrate – again – to find a place to survive. Unfortunately, we would have destroyed all the magnificent animals living here… so beautiful to watch.