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Permaculture and the Western Syndrome

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For tens of thousands of years intact peoples from around the world have been intricately woven into the fabric of the landscape that nourishes them. Culture itself has sprung from the land through the people’s relationship with all that sustains them. This is not as esoteric as it sounds…

Imagine a group of people who live in a particular watershed with a distinct mix and availability of flora and fauna, weather patterns, sun angles, sound resonance, distance to other bio-regions, etc. Everyday necessity would be provided for by these and other more subtle structures and influences that would provide unique implements for survival, foods, hunting practices, shelters, musical instruments, honoring

practices, ceremonies and stories. These peoples have known the origins stories of all that give them life, this in turn became the foundation of true, intact culture where the land would express itself very tangibly through the people.

Then came, what one of my elders have called, the Western Syndrome. For thousands of years there has been a syndrome (We call it a SYNDROME because the definition of the word describes it perfectly; syn•drome n, a group of things or events that form a recognizable pattern, especially of something undesirable) that has moved around the earth consuming intact cultures by replacing our rooted stories with distant tales and a commerce that carries no responsibility for the land that sustains it. And now, the story of broken-hearted people who have no origins place who move continually west to flee their oppressors only to find they have become the oppressor themselves of the intact peoples they encounter in their flight. This story has repeated itself in untold ways for millennia and it runs deep in most of our blood and bone as it plays itself out in our daily lives and worldviews around the world. This syndrome is not just carried or transmitted by one particular grouping of people defined by race, creed, or color but has affected and been purported by us all and continues to do so.

In my Permaculture education and design work in the West African country of Liberia, I have found myself often in a face-off with the Western Syndrome in its quest to cull life from communities to gain a profit, mostly for large western corporations. I soon found that one of my roles as a permaculture educator coming from the so-called “developed” world was to dispel the myth that the “western world” only leads to a glorious future. In Liberia, many of the people, young and old, will adopt nearly anything “western” as a personal sign of status and progressiveness. Where I was first confronted with the reality of this is when I went to visit one of the student’s midwifery clinics, which was close to where I was facilitating a permaculture design course.

When I arrived at the clinic, which was well made of mud bricks and palm thatching, there were women, some pregnant, others with babies and children all about on benches, playing, sitting next to a cooking fire, and others were weaving baskets as they they shared stories, laughed and tended to the little ones. One particular woman was walking about with a spray can pumping away to keep the spray mist constant on all the leaves of the plants that were all about. My curiosity hoped it was a compost tea she was using to fertigate the plants, yet my intuition knew differently, so I went to see what the magic concoction was that was so necessary to spray around this clinic for women and children. It was DDT. I was shocked. As I read the label on the can she was re-supplying her sprayer with, it only had the warning, “fatal if swallowed” and the name of an American Chemical Company. My heart sank in the dark reality of standing face to face with the Western Syndrome.

I asked the woman who was spraying the DDT, what her reasons for spraying were, and if she knew about the repercussions of using this biocide. She replied, “We have to use it to kill the bugger-bug which destroys our crops. They have got so bad since the war that we have no choice but to use most of the few dollars we make to buy this chemical or we lose our food.” She also shared that she knew it would make her sick if she drank the chemical, but nothing else.

Later that day in our Permaculture Design class, consisting of 25 students, some of whom were respected elders in their community, others who were barely adults, and all who are from a wide range of backgrounds in education, traditions, tribes, languages, and beliefs, I asked them, “what is this bugger-bug?” It was as if I had incited the devil itself as the translator shared in the common tribal language my question. Everyone stirred, some even grew fiery red in the face as they explained how the losses of their crops from this little beast could mean the difference between life and death for whole families and communities. They also shared how they were told that they should spray to kill mosquitoes that bring them malaria. When I asked them about the DDT they used, they spoke to it as a type of savior, yet a costly one for people who on average make $2 a day for 8-10 hours of hard labor. None of them knew anything of the long-term travesties that are caused by this chemical and why it is illegal to use in most “western” countries in the world including the country of origin of the spray found at the midwifery clinic – that being the USA.

I spent some time gathering some information about DDT to better inform them and myself of the chronic effects of this toxic substance. I shared the gamut of research that detailed how DDT is an endocrine disruptor and has other chronic effects on the nervous system, kidneys, liver, the reproductive and immune system, it is a carcinogen that contributes to cancer and is one of the nine persistent organic pollutants, which more importantly for the midwifery clinic, accumulates most intensively in mammals in the mother’s milk. Needless to say, they were horrified.

When everyone began to settle down a bit, one elder asked the very important and relevant question, “So what else can we do about the Bugger-Bug if we don’t use DDT?” I certainly did not have the answers, as often I don’t when it comes to regional knowledge of place. So in full Permaculture style, I replied, “Let’s go ask the Bugger-Bug?” So right then and there, with very quizzical looks abounding, we all got up from our makeshift classroom and went out into the adjoining landscape to ask the bugger-bug what can we do to survive together.

We all walked into a recently cleared area of rainforest where the debris had been burned-off and the land was laid bare and exposed except for patches of mono-cropped maize and cassava. The bugger-bug abounded, busily gathering leaf material from the crops and bringing it back to their growing mound in the middle of the clear-cut. We found that their mounds were rich in detritus and bird manures and seedlings of the native forest were sprouting all around it. Their growing mound looked like a miniature forest mountain, rich in diversity and nutrients.

We then left the middle of the clear-cut and went to the edge of this mono-cropped farm where the forest and the maize intermingled and to everyone’s surprise, the bugger-bug was significantly less prevalent and the damage to the crop was minimal. In-fact, anywhere we went that had diversity of plant species with a mulch layer on the ground there was minimal damage by the bugger-bug.

We finally ventured deeper into the forest to observe how the bugger-lived there in a natural setting and found that they were so diminished in numbers within the forest that we had a difficult time finding any damage at all from them on the understory plants. They seemed to only be feasting on the leaf drop from the canopy trees and had significantly less numbers than in the clear-cut areas.

In true detective fashion we then assembled our observations and clues that we gathered and low and behold, a story of true forest stewardship emerged. Our little bugger-bug was a “keystone” pioneer in the forest regeneration process. It seemed that this termite would live peacefully in the forest until the time where a complete devastation of the forest occurred, then it would spring into action to assist the forest in rebuilding its structure. Its numbers would increase and then they would search out plants, especially unhealthy stands of plants, to begin its soil building, mound-raising process. As their mounds grew from their efficient gathering, they would soon be the highest point in the landscape where birds of all sorts would perch. Thanks to the birds, their mounds were seeded with myriad types of plant life and from there, the forest would regenerate outward in concentric ring-like patterns.

The spell of the bugger-bug had been broken. We excitedly went back into class where we applied our new learning into the design of a food growing system that incorporated diversity in both annuals and perennials, layering in both space and time, and deep mulching that is most analogous to the structure of a natural forest. We then began building our demonstration farm using these practices learned from our bugger-bug teacher. One elder shared with me while pointing to their 150-foot high ancestral tree, “I will give thanks to these little bugs for I know without them we would not have our forests.”

At the very root of Permaculture is the knowing that we must live in integrity with the world which sustains us.

The Western Syndrome cunningly distorts our ability to take responsibility for our lives through the many faces of globalization and often leaves us barren of integrity whether we are aware of it or not. The bugger-bug story illustrates that with our work as Permaculture teachers and designers, we have a duty to honestly read the pattern languages around us and incorporate them into the conscious design of how we live in support of that which gives life.

Warren Brush is a certified Permaculture designer and educator as well as a mentor and storyteller. He has worked for over 20 years in inspiring people of all ages to discover, nurture and express their inherent gifts while living in a sustainable manner. He is co-founder of Quail Springs Learning Oasis & Permaculture Farm (a few of their offerings

include: Permaculture Design Certification courses for Youth called Sustainable Vocations, PDC for Adults and

Sustainable Aid Courses among many other offerings), Wilderness Youth Project, Mentoring for Peace, and Trees for Children. He works extensively in Permaculture education and sustainable systems design in North America and in Africa through his design firm, True Nature Design. He can be reached through email at w (at) quailsprings.org or by calling his office at 805-886-7239.

Untying

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