What's a cow without legs?

Answer- Ground beef!

Our gift- a cow! We watched him go from mooing to collapsing. In a span
of four hours it went from being a pet to being our food.

It was our forth day in Zambia. We spent three days just to to Chama, Zambia after already spending fifty hours in travel to Lusaka alone. A village other Zambian’s rarely go to and even fewer foreigners venture too. Our presence brought about an air of excitement in the village and a sense of celebration. After breakfast our first morning, we were began our journey over to the church where we were teaching at and no sooner had we started then were we stopped.

The village, church and youth had given us, the three Azungu's (white people) a cow, a pig and a chicken! After accepting and ‘re-gifting’ our gifts we were led to meet the cow. The cow was a sense of pride and the elders wanted us to see the cow. Not only did they make us see the cow and touch it, they proceeded to kill it in front of us. My mind reeled from the killing of the cow. It was not humane (I’ll spare those details!), but is there really a humane way to kill anything?

After four intense hours of teaching, singing, shakes hands and turning down marriage proposals it was time for lunch! Take a stab at what we were served for lunch. Besides the local shema and encabagi we also had cow liver. The cow we had to meet, touch and then watch as it was killed. No later then ten minutes into lunch I was crying. We had to eat what was just killed.

Cow!

These days I do not eat beef on my own- it must be served to me. To say I am a bit traumatized is, well, a bit of an understatement. Just maybe my distaste of cows isn’t such a bad thing. After digging into this cow thing a bit more and watching Food Inc., it turns out that cows are not the best thing for our environment. Cows alone produce more then one thirds of the carbon dioxide produced today along with many other harmful fumes. Now this effect combined with the corn shortage from this summer we have a bigger problem on our hands.

How would our environment be today if each American consumed less beef? According to the USDA, Americans’ consumed 61 pounds of beef in 2009. Imagine the sustainability we could obtain with this reduction. Just how could we convince American’s to reduce this habit? 

Quack quack!

 At the age of four, Julian saw his first family of
ducks! 

‘What is that?’ I heard a Julian squeal. As I whipped around to see what the problem was I couldn’t help but laugh. In a split second I went from shear panic thinking something was wrong to dissolving into a fit of giggles as the four year old I was in charge of pointed incredulously at a family of ducks. It was only two weeks into the summer and my job and my eyes had been pried open to the nature-deprived kids that were filling the halls of schools these days. Julian, then four, and Noah, then eighteen months, were my sole focus for the next eleven weeks and it became my mission to get them to appreciate nature.

Within just a few days of being with them I learned quickly how much they did not know about nature. As a result each day in between morning snack and lunch we took a walk through the neighborhood. The first week Julian complained and had to be bribed to get out of the house. It wasn’t fun. I had to come up with a plan and quickly to make sure this time was kept special, scared and educational. It was then that Julian noticed the trash that littered the streets and we began picking up trash each on our walks.

Julian at the age of four, learned the importance of being
a responsible citizen. This is just one day of trash off of
one street! 

Two weeks after this began Julian learned where the hands had to be on the clock so that we could go outside on that special walk. Through picking up trash he not only learned about being a responsible citizen, but he was able to witness many creatures in nature and together we were learning and exploring.

Last week as we walked the boardwalk, I was bored and flat out just didn’t want to be there and it was then I remembered sweet Julian. How his hatred for nature turned into something he delighted and took peace in. Just as he was learning his sense of place, I have to relearn my sense of place in southwest Florida.

Where we find our sense of place defines who we are. If we find it in a store our sense of place is items. If we find it in nature our sense of place is everywhere. It’s free. We are able to appreciate all of life because we find our meaning in sustains us in every way- food, materials, entertain, transportation, etc.

With this realization came the reality that children are not finding this today. If they are not connecting with nature today then where are they placing their sense of place? How are you encouraging that?  

Tree houses.. Those still exist?

My family!

Growing up, I was an active kid. For what ever reason, my parents always kicked me outside to play. After reading Louv's The Last Child in the Woods I immensely became grateful for what my parents 'forced' me to do. A few days after our class discussion on ADHD in relation to playing outside I got a call from my sister. My sister, who is 2 years my senior, called to tell me her professors had recommended her to see an educational psychologist. Immediately her words caught my attention and I dropped everything to listen to her. She had spent a day in testing for educational disabilities and at the age of twenty-three she was first diagnosed with ADHD. At first I was skeptical- she had done just fine all through school and had even managed to score a spot in one of the most rigorous nursing programs in the country. After seventeen years of formal schooling how was it that she was just now diagnosed?

Chelsea, my sister, getting ready for clinical days. 

After talking to her for a while about life, school and her study habits I could not help but think- are the increased rigorous academic programs contributing to an elevated diagnosis of ADHD. Her program a traditionally twenty-seven month program condensed into an eighteen consecutive month program. Her life consists of studying, attending clinical days and little sleep and as result of this she has little time to properly take care of herself- fastfood, little exercising and even less time spent outside.

The rate of 13-18 year olds being diagnosed with ADHD has
sky rocketed in the past few years. 

So are these intense study programs causing an increased diagnosis of ADHD and other educational disorders in the older students populations? It only makes me wonder. Are we driving students to mental breaking points in education. Is our increased focus on trying to be better then all else driving us to develop horrible habits? Louv mentioned in his book a theory that some children are just better able to adapt in today's world. Is that really what happens?

While I do not fully agree that being outside all the time will solve the ADHD problems, I do believe the lack of being outside is contributing to the increased rate of ADHD. With more time in school, lectures, studying and the increased pressure of being involved in EVERYTHING are we driving kids to a breaking point by making them focus on academics all the time?

Lessons from Africa for Americans!

Aldo Leopold's, The Land Ethic, absolutely enthralled me. Spending my summer in Africa, I was exposed to a new way of living- in every way possible. Coming back into America and subsequently being thrown in Colloquium three days later has intensified how much I see the need for a change in the way I chose to live- the way we chose to live in America.

Teaching farmers a sustainable way to clear land. Zambia

While much of the reading we had with The Land Ethic caught my attention, the section on The Land Pyramid made me think back to my time in Africa. In this section, Leopold talks about how the biotic pyramid is misunderstood within the context of conservation education.

Biotic Pyramid

This biotic pyramid is complex web of lines and levels, mixing and turning but yet it some how manages to maintain and support the Earth. One thing depends on another and another and another. When one part of the biotic pyramid goes missing, the whole chain is thrown off and the chain struggles. It can either attempt to adapt or it will fail all together. So what does this all mean? And how in the world does this connect to Africa?

Well, when you see the Earth, the cycles, the processes in terms of the biotic pyramid it means that life has to start somewhere. That somewhere is the soil we stand on, the ground we walk over daily. Soil is not simply soil- it is the start of the food chain, the foundation of the energy chain. During my time in both Malawi and Zambia we were given the opportunity to teach a program called Farming God's Way. It is a conservation farming method taught to all to help improve crop yields. (Most farmers us the slash-and-burn technique which ruins the land and significantly decreases the crop yield.) I specialized in teaching the management portion of the program and in this section, I was able to teach the simple concepts of the biotic pyramid- how everything in life God has created to rely on one another.

Farming God's Way training in Nsaru, Malawi 

You see, being an American and now reading Leopold's essay puts me into the hypocrite category- big time. I preached about how we should use every part of the land in a sustainable way. I said we in America do that. We use the land to in an honorable and land sustaining way, but we don't. Both as African's and American's we use the land in a way that takes away from it, ways that disrupt the biotic pyramid. I am deeply convicted about my misrepresentation of how I saw the use of resources in America.

So how is it that we use the Earth in a sustainable, God honoring manner? And, even more is the question of how many American's think that our conservation methods are good? If we are a product of our environment have created a correct environment about sustainability?