dam, the consequences

i just returned from 5 weeks vacation in france, because i'm a spoiled bitch.

after bringing the swiss miss up to europe for some inspections, i caught the train to lyon and settled into a friend's flat for a month of intensive french courses.

every morning, sitting in the kitchen's sunshine, eating a warm flaky pain au chocolat, drinking steaming masala tea, asking myself why in the hell i would ever want to go back to work. then walking across town to class, smiling at all the beautiful french girls wrapped up in scarves like springtime christmas presents. mostly they stared straight ahead, indifferent to the legendary american aviator in their midst, much like their spanish sisters before them. another time, another place. but nevertheless the sight still made me glad in my loins.

people have been living at the confluence of the saône and rhône rivers since roman times, and the town has an incredibly rich history hiding in the winding cobblestone streets. it's also close to the alps and côte d'azur, without being wicked expensive. i took advantage of this.

one weekend we went hiking and rock climbing near nice.



camped at an organic farm and had a simple and delicious dinner of crusty chewy baguettes, alpine cheeses, and sauteed vegetables that were in the ground only an hour earlier. obviously accompanied by copious amounts of local wine. all while sitting next to a broiling woodstove in the rainy pensive alps.


the french, for the most part, care a great deal more about what they eat and drink than americans do. cheeses, crepes, cakes, wine, bread, salads... everything is fresh, crafted with care, and shared with love. it's not the genetically-modified flavor-enhanced hormone-injected reconstituted emulsified sprayed-on texture high-fat low-fiber low-vitamin nutritionally-bankrupt corporate combination of unpronounceable bullshit ingredients that we love to stuff in our fat faces.

france is not valhalla. of course they have problems in the country. what society doesn't? but i would say that the french overall enjoy life more: food, friends, family. they are not resigned worker drones that put up with 2 weeks of vacation per year and come in on saturday when their bosses ask them to.

i spent every afternoon and evening on the banks of the rhône, watching clouds drift by, observing people milling about, listening to the hippies play guitars in the grass. the dark waters still flow silently, captive to the endless steady pull of gravity. that original orchestral movement towards the sea.


i loved lyon, and i will go back soon.


******


a few years ago, my sister spent a summer volunteering in an orphanage in tanzania. this month she returned to visit her kids for a few weeks there. i was headed back to the continent to go back to work, so we met up in uganda for a few days of touring around. of course i took her rafting down the nile, on one of the world's greatest stretches of big flushy whitewater.




a new dam has washed out the legendary upper rapids like silverback, jaws, and ribcage, but it's still an incredible trip. lots of class 4 and 5 water guarantees the raft will spill you out to fend for yourself; utterly reliant on a lifejacket to keep afloat in the powerful currents. and with the ever-present boatman bullshit that knows no nationality, rapids get hyped up during the approach:

"i don't want to think about what happened last time through the ugly sisters."

"we'll be holding on at the back and screaming like bastards through nile special."

"the bad place will make you hope for the existence of an afterlife."

boatmen love wild rivers. they also hate dams, probably more than anyone else in the world.

like any human intervention in nature, dams irrevocably alter ecosystems. they cut off fish runs, severely damage a river's health, and drive many species to extinction (let alone drowning everything unfortunate enough to live below the new waterline).

social impacts will be felt as well: by turning the victoria nile into a sewage pond, a top source of employment and income in the region is eliminated. and for what? power generation. for mining companies. for air conditioners to run all day when no one is home. so we can watch reality on tv instead of living it outside.



is it even possible to measure what is lost when a river is dammed? the enormity of every living thing contained, drowned, in a watery grave? how long will ghostly trees reach up from the muddy floor sediments? quiet protests entombed in the bogs, heard by no one. one great concrete kidney stone halting the natural, cyclical, cleansing flow of water. it turns a thriving ecosystem into a hydroelectric cemetery. now we can illuminate our glowing rectangles, and read all about the ancient wild nile on wikipedia.

but any true, personal, honest-to-gawd knowledge is lost in the depths of a stagnant mosquito pond. because we fail to save the rivers, they fail to save us. it's too late to grab a paddle and find a line; stare into the void and accelerate into surrender. screaming your lungs out and getting your guts scrubbed clean with nile river water. washed blameless from the inside out.


i never got the chance to see glen canyon, but those who did claim it was even more beautiful than grand canyon.


now, not a trace remains of those magical musical waters that flowed for hundreds of thousands of years...


******


we headed back to entebbe on saturday, the day of the predicted apocalypse. trying to get back in time for a last supper of indian food and nile specials, just like jesus had. traffic in the capital, kampala, was brutal as usual. riots over escalating fuel and food prices, as well as the arrest of peacefully dissenting presidential candidate kizza besigye led to some creative detours before we could gain the main road home. another country drowning in a political cesspool of greed and corruption.

when a government constructs social and financial cream traps for a presidents' personal skimming, the whole country suffers. and hence, your countrymen starve while you fly around in your G4 and live like king daddy ding-a-ling in one of your many palaces. when are people gonna have enough of this shit?

there is a book, written in 1986, that sits in many libraries. it is titled what is africa's problem?

inside, a single damning line:

"the problem of africa in general and uganda in particular is not the people but leaders who want to overstay in power."

the author is yoweri museveni, president of uganda for the past 25 years. read your own book, dammit. and do something about the horrendously congested roads in your capital city. son.

as it turned out, g-d also was stuck in kampala traffic, and didn't show for judgment day. or maybe the kool-aid drinkers overlooked this small detail in the book of mark: "no one knows the hour or the day, not even the angels in heaven, nor the son, but only the father."

you, mr. harold camping! yes, you, 89 year-old crazytown resident and end times preacher man: read your own book! dammit!

6 pm local time came and went quietly in uganda, as it did throughout our blue planet. not even a faint tremor of the promised earthquakes; not a single twitching ripple in the ol' bottle o' beer. this worked out nicely with my personal agenda, as i was able to give sizzle the full tour: entebbe's botanical gardens, my favorite beachside pizzeria, and of course cold tasty refreshing adult beverages with my drunken pilot friends at red rooster.

the shit-show known as life *somehow* continues for another season. brought to you by any number of artificially-flavored corn-derivative snacks. i'm lovin' it.


we walked by my old house. the big mango tree is gone. cut down for firewood to melt tar to patch holes in the asphalt driveway. i wanted to puke.

they *could have* sold the mangoes to pay for firewood. had i been there when it happened, i would have volunteered to buy firewood myself to save it. how did anyone possibly think that cutting down a healthy fruit tree was a good idea? people are so f-ing dumb.

there's no question which species is the most powerful on the planet today, but i wonder which truly merits their place in the sun?

gone are the sweet juicy treasures that would fall in my lap on those lazy sunday afternoons. manna from heaven; glorious life here and now.

gone is the cool spray of shade from the sturdy old giving tree on a sweltering day.

gone are the branches where i would wrap straps around to string up my hammock; laying, swaying, weighing the world's madness and watching the clouds drift through waxy green leaves. thinking through all the twisted trivial things that entered my brain; many of those moments escaped filtering and would eventually wind up as free-ranging chicken-scratching scribbles: my blog.

i guess there really is no stopping the machine. where are you, edward abbey? we need you now more than ever.


******


on the sizzo's last night in town, lightning struck the house at 5 am. i happened to be awake, listening to the pouring rain and looking out the window as the bolt hit. you could smell the searing white-hot zap! at the same time you saw, heard, and felt it. an impressive reminder of who is still in control. a patient display by mother nature, hinting at how one day she will erase all our efforts to subjugate her.

dams will silt out and turn into waterfalls before failing entirely. from a discarded mango pit, a tiny sprout will gather momentum: new roots cracking through concrete, brilliant green vines shooting towards the sun. the earth reclaiming itself from an inconsequential temporary transient human infection.


damn, i wish i could be there to see it.