Reverance

A potential dam. The cave where prospective chiefs are brought to be received by massive pythons. The site where chiefs are crowned.  The ceremony to kick off construction keeps getting postponed by forces outside human control (eg flash flooding at the site).

A road. Trees, reportedly inhabited by spirits, that refuse to be chopped down. The man who tried, died.

Today I heard some stories at the office about conflicts between development projects (roads, dams, etc) and local populations, from a researcher who's just come back from the field. The theme is when local traditions, sacred places, ancestors, and spirits are not acknowledged and treated with respect, bad things happen (including mysterious deaths). The researcher (a man from northern Uganda) said he has always heard about these kinds of things but has always discounted them. After the stories he's heard, he's not sure he should.

ln practical terms it doesn't matter where you are or what you call it--superstition, tradition, backward beliefs, witchcraft, spirituality--it seeks to maintain reverence for everything that we don't and can't fully understand (and that's a lot), and necessitates that in our eagerness to impose our understanding of things on the world we leave space for respecting places, resources, and people. And space to learn (and preserve) what we don't yet understand, before it is lost to us. Space for us to attend to more than our immediate physical needs/desires. To maintain our sense of wonder and awe and recognise that our place in this vast universe is really small.

There is always more to learn. We shouldn't discount something just because it doesn't appear to be scientific or because it doesn't fit into the model we learned. In the US people used to believe that chicken soup was good for a cold. Then we thought we got smart and labeled that a "old wives tale." Then we decided to actually research it, and guess what? Chicken soup is good for a cold. Just because it's ancient knowledge that wasn't informed by modern day physics and biology and textbooks, doesn't mean it's not valid.

Slow down. Look. Listen. Proceed with caution. Because as I always say, good intentions are not good enough. There are lots of great benefits to roads and dams, but that doesn't mean there are only benefits, or that those benefits mean anyone can just plop them down anywhere at any time.

(P.S. This doesn't just apply to development or to government, it applies to you. It's up to you to figure out how.... Slow down. Look. Listen. What can you learn today?)