Natural disasters and human dignity

On Wednesday of last week, Green Screen: The Environmental Film Festival 2018 kicked off at IMAX. Given our recent flooding, the feature film Anote’s Ark, seemed a fitting start to a festival that also focuses this year on our seas and rivers.

Kiribati is a country in Micronesia in the central Pacific Ocean where rising sea levels threaten the lives of the estimated 100,000 inhabitants. Anote’s Ark explored the effects of climate change on this small island through the stories of real people and the voice of Kiribati’s President Anote Tong whose desperate search to find a new home for his people began during his time in office and continues even after his departure.

As I write this, I look up, staring around the room that I am in as I search for the right words for the next sentence that I was about to write. My eyes fall on a whiteboard on the wall to my right and a sentence, written in red marker, pops out, "We are borne astride the grave." Simple yet profound, an invitation to contemplate the now simply because each day while we live, we also move closer to the grave. It is what I may term one of those serendipitous moments. The words there fit my current focus of contemplation. It is as if by pure fate, that I should be sitting in this room, writing at this very moment while outside yet another bout of rain soaks the already waterlogged land. I say this, because I had been thinking about the flooding days before I actually began writing about it. I had been trying to piece together my thoughts on it. I had also been hit by a sudden spate of boredom and wondered to myself ‘"how could I be so bored, when so many people were reeling from a disaster that would take many of them months and perhaps a year or more to recover from?" Boredom is a luxury in this case but it often forces me to take the day, moment by moment. And so, as I sit in this room, listening to the rain outside, my mind drifts, aiming to settle into simplifying the thoughts that bombard my mind as I flesh out how I really felt about the floods.

The sound of the rain helps because in a merging of moments the feeling comes to the surface. I can imagine, even in a sense, feel the fear of those who have only recently cleared their homes of damaged furniture and appliances, people whose homes wear water marks up to six feet up their living rooms and bedroom walls. I am wondering what they are thinking every time there is a clap of thunder or the sound of rain on rooftops. It takes only one experience to turn the comfort of rain on a galvanized roof into something horrifying.

While the experience isn’t mine, I have however known the fear of uncertainty, the deep pain of loss and it is only from that experience that I somewhat feel the fear and discomfort of the recent flood victims. While it is easy for insurance companies and others to capitalise on the recent flooding to offer coverage for material possessions, the emotional trauma is also one that needs consideration. The flooding wasn’t just about material loss.

In this context I cannot help but think of disasters – personal, natural – as metaphorical travels. Traumas such as our recent flooding, a completely unexpected event, challenge our concept of home. They challenge our understanding of what it means ‘to be settled.’ And it is not unlike many other traumatic experiences like deaths or heartbreak. They all shake our foundations, forcing us to come face to face with our human dignity. People who for instance never wore second-hand clothes are now forced to accept the generous offer of someone else’s clothing. While yes, some may have the means to rebuild and replace, in the aftermath of a natural disaster the sense of displacement is real for most individuals. It tells us that in one instant, everything that we thought we knew about ourselves, about our space, can be shaken.

As I looked at Anote’s Ark, the threat of an island under water, I could see our reality too. Climate change isn’t fiction anymore. It isn’t some projected, abstract idea. It is an actual event that not only threatens the physical space that we reside in, but also our spiritual balance. Perhaps the recent flooding was a timely reminder for us to begin re-examining the way in which we treat this space that we call home, our relationship with the land and each other even as we consider whether we are sufficiently prepared as a nation, to deal with the possibility of a more serious natural disaster.