Look at what they made mothers do!

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... and why it has to be stolen!

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Look What They Made Mothers
Do!

I was just starting to do this piece when Moonwolf
dropped me a line to point out my Chevron misspell in the caption to my post. I
am grateful to him since this informed my desire to change the caption
altogether. Reflecting on that caption convinced me it lacked truthful essence.
I say this because it conceals, in my view, the real reasons for the kind of
frustration that brought about that type of reaction. I was convinced that the
general impression was bound to be one akin to female suicide bombers storming
some oil facility in Nigeria (again, my thanks to Moonwolf for pointing out the
complete lack of reference to the story’s origin. I am doing my best to get a
handle on things here, I can assure you). Why was the protest violent and why
mothers? My feeling was it did these mothers a great injustice to portray them
as violent without some due reflection on what caused such unease.

The people of the Niger Delta are not a violent
people. They love life just about as much as the next guy. They are basically
coastal dwellers who extract their livelihoods from the sea and rivers that
adorn their geography. This area in Nigeria, comprises of three states
in the main; Rivers, Cross-Rivers and Delta states. And as their names imply,
their land and geography are carved up by tributaries and rivers that feed into
the Atlantic Ocean. Their primary occupation
and devotion is fishing and the main modes of transportation are speed boats
and canoes. They are creek dwellers who invest in the products of their land, rivers
and the sea. Their habitat plays host to some of the most luscious and rare vegetation
in the world, comparable only perhaps to the Amazon. They dwell on an
exceptionally fruitful and high-yielding land, spilling with green nutrients
and protein. For centuries, they have lived off the joy of their land and made
good. They have cultivated a deep respect for this magnificent land that bears
them the gift of life and promise. In turn, they have put up gods and shrines
to glorify it and build their cultures around and about it. They have become by
this virtue a deeply traditional people.

It is the tranquility of this most verdant habitat
that big business and technology has gone to. Tearing away at this most
magnificent fauna and florae with claws of steel and polluting its pristine
atmosphere with gas flares and hydrocarbons; gas flares that turn their nights
into day and hydrocarbons that suffocate its prized foliage. The oil companies
come, not to reciprocate the goodness of their hosts but to take their
hospitality for granted and instigate their own home governments against them. They
come bearing Greek gifts and jobs that defile the dignity of man. They offer
daily pittances as a price to be paid for the complete ruination of a treasured
way of life. They poison their rivers, source of water, nutrition and good
health, spilling miles of black tar that cakes the joy of their life into
unproductive clogs; hectares and hectares of prime produce-yielding land strewn
to irrecoverable waste. They poison their entire being for a pittance and then
extract from their soil immeasurable sustenance that leaves their own livelihood
ravaged and wasted. And they come, knowing exactly what it is they intend to do
to a people.

And so it is, that mothers sit home all day waiting
for the yields from the farm, waiting for those priceless bits of vegetation
and protein that nourish their tender ones. It used to be that they waited for
a basketful of gifts their land bears but today, since the advent of big
business on their soil, even a fistful of some remnants is a trophy on the
creeks. And they all know it is for the sake of big business that their infants
die. They know it is why they are afflicted with strange illnesses and diseases.
They know the reason why their rivers flow with the color of death. They understand
why the blueness of their skies has turned grey. They see the plague and curse
big business has brought upon their land and knows it leads nowhere but to a
slow death; the gift of a Midas torch that turned into their Achilles heel. Isn’t
it so sad? My good friend, Jordan, speaks about the value of oil in very
measured terms. It is everything technology insists we live by. It is the cars
we drive, the medications we take, the homes we build and paint, the credit
cards we bear, the planes we fly and the food we eat. Our optic fibers, ICs,
electronics and computers; it is the good life! And how else can it be but for
mothers to want to chase these corporate hooligans off their land that it may
heal and be made whole again. Just look at what they made mothers do!