Mar and Álvaro are two environmental scientists with an unshakeable belief in the power of storytelling to underline the sense of cultural identity to a grouping of African nomads, and to teach adults and children alike about their forgotten history, both of the land they inhabit and the animals that used to roam freely across it. When science fails to connect, they argue, storytelling can better engage the feelings and emotions of listeners and audiences.
Together they visit the indigenous Daasanach clan in Turkana, Kenya, whose tribes people have been greatly affected by drought, which means that their cattle must roam farther afield in search of grassland. Back in 1974 the area was lush, at least as shown in archive, and large beasts roamed freely. What’s more, the Daasanach clan also engage in bloody internecine disputes with the neighbouring Gabra tribe.
These tribal wars have a led to a scarcity of work for the villagers, one of whom is Job who is eager to join with Mar and Álvaro on their campaign of enlightenment.
But very soon within the film, the scientists encounter an unforeseen problem. One of the reasons for the virtual non-existence of large animals in Turkana is the intervention of the tribes people themselves. During the sacred Dimi ceremony, undertaken in honour of first-born daughters, Álvaro counts 85 new leopard skins adorning the bodies of the celebrants. This fact renders the scientist distraught and he therefore faces a dilemma, one which is amplified by his seeing beggars, drunks and illegal barterers in the village during the celebration. The place was noisy, but the “real noise” was in his head, Álvaro points out.
And as if to disenchant the scientist even more, Daasanach elder Lokomeri points out that he and other villagers would habitually “poach and kill also for fun.”
Director Iiris Härmä was there, of course, with her camera to record the whole event. “That’s why they [the scientists] were really shocked to see all those animals [in the form of leopard skins] they have been trying to protect, or have been calculating and following,” she stresses. “They have put in these camera traps to count, to make research on how many are really left. And that’s why it was so shocking for them to understand that this tribe…they don’t value the life of these animals. They value the skin.”
While Härmä was not ultimately surprised that the tribes folk responded the way they did when viewed through this ecological prism, she readily concedes that she had initially observed them them through rose-tinted glasses. “When I went there, I thought that these people live in the place which is called the ‘cradle of humankind.’ And their stories become our past, our common past,” says the director, who was also a student of ethnology herself. “I thought, like many people can think, that they have some hidden knowledge or something [on] how to live in balance with nature. This is the idealism, this is the romanticizing of indigenous people, that we think that these people who are so dependent on nature, that they have some something more than what we have already lost.”
Härmä also points out how, like the majority of citizens on the planet, the Daasanach folk weren’t familiar with every animal, bird and plant in their vicinity. If they didn’t couldn’t use it they would disregard it, the director argues. “These people, they are interested in nature in terms of how they can survive…If your life is too difficult, you don’t have the energy to think about nature. You think how you survive. And I wanted to show that they have enough other challenges than thinking about extinction of animals.”
These “challenges” are indeed significant. The skirmishes with the rival Gabra tribe often end with death among the combatants. At one point a cloud of locusts descends upon the land, and the ravages of climate change-induced drought continually endanger the very future of the tribe and its people.
As Álvaro points out: “Those who have contributed least to climate change are those who are most vulnerable to these changes. And this is all happening in the ‘cradle of humankind,’ where life originated, where we all came from, [all of] which crystallizes where we are going and where humanity is heading.”
One of the key aims of Mar and Álvaro in the film is to source the stories and return to the village to present them in a book. Ok, at the presentation ceremony the villagers turn up late, and the meeting isn’t overly subscribed, but the occasion is nevertheless joyous and used to re-emphasise the necessity for good stewardship over the environment. New father Job also makes a speech to beseech the tribe to drop the customs associated with the Dimi celebration.
“I really wanted to bring hope,” director Härmä explains of her upbeat ending. “My belief is that only [with] hope can people make little changes. We have nothing else left…[Hope] comes from cross cultural dialogue. We learn from each other and also [through] education and sensitizing people. And then at some point, somebody takes action on it. So that’s where hope lies. And that’s the message I wanted to bring.”
