Deforestation

Beautiful forests filled my minds’ eye, carpets of green, thick, lush carpets. Green landscapes, beautiful landscapes. I’ve now seen the landscapes and the landscapes are leprous, the landscapes are gangrenous, sloughing. Once lush hills are now adolescent chins; a few sparse boughs in the ground. Everything is slashed, Mordor like, everything is burned. Too many people, too many mouths, slash burn, eat, slash, burn, burn. In ones minds’ eye we view West Africa as wild, the forests intact with a few sparse villages. We see images in the media of logging, we see images of deforestation…we mutter to our partner, “that’s terrible”. We may even think “if they don’t stop that soon there will be nothing left”, then we change channels to big brother 7 and forget. There are no more vast tracks of forest in West Africa, No more… None. I have now been there, I have now seen it. They are gone already, simply patches remain; Isolated little islands of fresh in the chaos. The reasons are many fold, no blame can be made…People need to eat, people need resources, slash burn eat, slash burn burn. The minds eye is myopic.