It All Started In Africa, by Dexter K. Oliver, will be published soon in regular columns he contributes to in Arizona newspapers. He writes about the danger of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act“, which gives the wealthiest 1% even more tax breaks and less regulation, adds to our unpayable national debt, takes away health care from millions of our neighbors, and peddles off public lands in Utah and Nevada. He explains why our legislators need to know NOW that this not-so-beautiful bill should NOT be passed.
Oliver believes his message is much too important to wait on publishing schedules, and I absolutely agree – so I’m sharing it with you right now, with his permission.
It All Started In Africa
by Dexter K. Oliver“I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in.
Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?”
Sand County Almanac – Aldo Leopold
Only when we have completely lost our innate ties with the earth will we be a dead species. We might not yet be extinct then but will have deliberately set our own course and be heading for that outcome. Deservedly so, one might argue, because as Waylon Jennings sang to us, at one time, “We had it all.”
Geologists inform us of the slow breakup 200 million years ago of the super continent, Pangaea, when continental drift of the planet’s tectonic plates caused the land masses we recognize today. Africa is the oldest of these independent continents and Africa, according to the readily provable scientific data from anthropologists and paleontologists, is indeed the cradle of all humanity. It was there, in the jungles, forests, and savannahs that hominids evolved, developed, and thrived before migrating around the globe. Our original ancestors, the hunters and gatherers, lived lightly upon the land and were one with it.
In the relative blink of a geological eye, modern Homo sapiens in what are considered the most advanced civilizations now find themselves harboring an existential malaise. With ever- increasing velocity, we appear to be trying to deny the biological building blocks that were formed by our pre-historical immersion in the natural world. The steadily increasing numbers of people who visit our national parks attest to the atavistic need for relief from plastic, asphalt, concrete, glass, steel, noise, and hordes of our own kind. Only the wildlands and open spaces can provide this.
I have never set foot on what explorer Henry Stanley called “the Dark Continent” although I have seen its northern coast – Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt – from a Navy warship. But I knew two people who spent considerable time in what author Joseph Conrad called, “The Heart of Darkness” in the northeast area of the Congo River basin. Bill Bridges was a family friend and co-worker of my father’s at the Bronx Zoo and Colin Turnbull was an anthropologist who worked for my father at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC during the 1960s. They both found the native peoples who lived in those primordial equatorial forests uniquely attuned to their unspoiled environments.
Bridges was there collecting animals for the zoo but he took the time to interact with the native peoples and get their take on life in such a setting. He brought me back a spear that had been used to hunt game, primarily antelope, or protect the bearer from leopard attacks. On another trip he visited the Mbuti pygmies in the Ituri forest and returned with one of their bows and bush pig quiver full of poison arrows for me. Turnbull would later live with these same diminutive human beings and educate the world about them in his subsequent books, “The Forest People” and “Wayward Servants.”
Living off the land entails not only vegetable matter but the protein provided from meat. The semi-nomadic Mbuti utilized net hunting, where game is driven and entangled; spear hunting, which took big dangerous quarry like the forest buffalo and elephant; and archery. A single 4.5’ tall man with an iron-tipped spear against a 6 ton elephant bespeaks immense bravery and skill. Birds and monkeys were shot from trees with blunt or poison arrows, respectively. Only meat from leopards, which occasionally ate people, was not eaten as it smacked too much of cannibalism.
One of the common poisons for their arrows was obtained from a flowery vine of the genus Strophanthus. Seeds and roots were crushed together, mixed with saliva to form a paste and applied to tips of wooden arrows not much larger than long knitting needles. The fire-hardened ends have small notched barbs to keep the arrow in the prey longer and often rudimentary fletching made from leaves. To test the effectiveness of a new batch of poison a hunter would nick his forearm with a knife to allow a trickle of blood to escape. The coated arrow point was applied to the stream of blood and if the poison “walks up the arm” and causes a tingling sensation the blood is immediately wiped off and the concoction deemed effective. The meat from around a wound inflicted by such an arrow is discarded and heat from cooking fires renders the rest of the meat edible without adverse effects.
The Mbuti pygmies have lived in the Ituri fastness for over 2,000 years but face ever- increasing pressure from modernization and deforestation. Their days of wending through the forest darkness singing their joyful songs of praise for an environment that nurtured and provided for them are threatened. We feel the need to impose our own societal norms, bloody religions, fears, and self-induced psychoses on anyone so unabashedly still in tune with their natural surroundings. That pollution, disease, fouled waters, toxic air, poverty, and over-population always follow means nothing to us. We cannot help wanting to exploit their way of life and elemental habitat.
As if to prove this compulsion, in our own country, MAGA politicians are once again trying to divest all current Americans of their birthright concerning public lands. Donald J. Trump (DJT) has his fingerprints all over what he named the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” working its way through Congress. On top of giving the wealthiest 1% even more tax breaks and less regulation, adding to our unpayable national debt, and taking away health care from millions of our neighbors, they are once again sneakily trying to peddle off public lands in Utah and Nevada. This of course would open the flood gates for ALL such territories to eventually be sold to and abused by the highest bidders. Some of DJT’s authoritarian cronies from Qatar or Saudi Arabia perhaps. As always, follow the money.
Look at a map of the USA showing public lands held in trust by the federal government and it is easy to see that the eastern half of the country is sadly lacking such holdings. Only a combination of outlandish greed on the part of politicians and developers and the complacency on the part of a somnolent populace would allow such national treasures to be squandered so a very few could make a quick buck.
Slaves can’t control what goes on around them; we are not quite there yet. Call or email your representatives in Washington, D.C. and tell them this whole bill is an immense rip-off, a slow form of suicide, and should never be passed. Getting people to vote against their own interests is a con game. Our spirits’ need for wild places, even if just knowing they are still there, came with us all the way out of Africa.
The necessary natural resources for our continued excessive existence, like wisdom, are finite; just as the human capacities for greed and corruption, like ignorance, seem to be infinite. There is a reason why Elon Musk wants to move his family to Mars and why so many Americans feel the need to drug themselves silly and enrich brutal cartels.
Dexter K. Oliver is a freelance writer, wildlife field biologist, and observer of the human condition from Duncan, AZ. His latest book is, “#13 A Baker’s Dozen: An Eclectic Anthology”
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Photos by author Dexter Oliver:
- The Mbuti pygmies and other African natives used spears, bows, and poisoned arrows like these from the author’s collection to procure food for their clans.
- Hardwood carvings depicting African natives, given to the author by Michael Lerner: business man, big game hunter and fisherman, and old African hand.
- The author’s vintage 7’ African spear (with unique float) from the northeast Congo region, used for hunting and protection from big cats.
