Together with Leonardo Viteri, a representative of the indigenous  peoples from the Amazonian region in Ecuador, we traveled to Rome where we were planning to join a camp of international solidarity organized in the framework of the Walking University.

Leonardo had been invited to Europe by SOS Deserts. I arranged for him a serie of meetings with NGOs in Belgium, France and Italy. This was his first time on the continent and quite an interesting experience. When he heard that a group of people called The Tribe had walked thousands of kilometers all through Europe to support the struggle of indigenous and aboriginal people, visiting them was his top priority. He met them first in Ceuta together with a representative of SOS Deserts who had come from Dakar. However he wanted to meet them again in a less formal context. 

We traveled to Italy and spend some days with our people on the camp that hadbeen set up into the Monti della Tolfa (see Chapter 6). I really enjoyed sharing with Leonardo these days in the forest. He loved those people because they had carried out what he saw as an exploit - 6,000 km on foot. Moreover none of them had made it for personal glory. It was only to support the cause of indigenous people. Somehow for Leonardo we were the same people. 

Things like this had often happened on our camps: indigenous and native people felt deeply at home during their visits. Other people like Francis Mazière, a well known French anthropologist, or Michel Gonzales, a journalist of France Inter, had experience the same feeling too. It can be that there is no rational explanation. It just worked as if we knew each other from before.

In the case of Leonardo, it was even more clear. Some months later he asked us to organize a visit to the camp for his sister and a group of indigenous leaders from Ecuador, Peru and Surinam. We host them for a short period and helped them get to Geneva where they had to take part in the UN session on Indigenous Peoples. Helping those people was just as natural as to take care of ourselves. 

For most of us, who had voluntarily made the choice of a simple life in the service of the more marginalized and excluded people of the world, I think it was the most rewarding gift to be considered as brothers and sisters by other indigenous people. Those traveling to Europe were often willing to visit us. I remember that in Paris we for instance hosted a group of forty kids of the Attikamek Nation.  They wanted to spend a night over in our gwams - something they could not do in Canada. 

The course of history brings sometimes strange feelings. It was amazing to learn that Canadian aboriginal people could not anymore live the "old ways" and have to come in Europe to experience them. It was not a long time before we experienced ourselves with the repression of the civilized world who sees tribal life as one of the most subversive acts of resistance. 
 
 

When the Walking University launched the Mediterraneo Verde campaign in 1988, I was in charge of the administration and networking. In the same time I was getting ready to implement a preparatory mission in West Africa on behalf of the African Ministerial Conference of Environment Ministers (AMCEN). This was the beginning of collaborative efforts between the university and UNEP in the framework of the Pilot Village Program of the Cairo Action Plan, for which a formal agreement of understanding was eventually signed in 1990 as an idependent group of experts. 

I flew to Burkina Faso in the beginning of 1989. The country was in a period of political turmoil. President Sankara had been assassinated a year or more before. There was still a great deal of tension in the capital city of Ouagadougou. I did not feel too comfortable at the beginning as my first contacts with Burkina  Faso had been established in 1986 when I collaborated in Brussels and Rome with some members of Sankara's staff  who had been jailed under the new government and excluded from any institutional duty. Finally I managed quite well and the mission was successful.

Under Thomas Sankara, Burkina Faso had made the fight against desertification, corruption and poverty a priority. It had become a symbol of African renewal in the eyes of the world. Agroecology, which combines tradition and modernity in agriculture, had been adopted as a national policy. An ad-hoc committee against desertification, who had drafted a national action plan, had been set up. Local initiatives at the grassroots and village level were strongly supported.

Although this was my first visit to West Africa, I readily felt home. Maybe this was due to my previous work with the African community in France and Belgium. During our mission in Burkina Faso, in only three weeks, much work was done. The local staff put at our disposal by the different ministries was fantastic and we collected much material and many contacts. Riel Huaorani would come some months later to launch the planting tree campaign with the support of the Ministry of Environment. 

We had a great time with farmers in remoted areas where the desert is at the village doors. Local people are using traditional methods like the zai technique to keep their gardens growing. And it works perfectly. There is still a deep connection between people and the land. We could neither escape the ritual called the “water of the traveler” nor the griot's show. This was not folklore but part of a genuine local tradition of hospitality.

The strongest experience was when we visited a small village up North. During a "circle of speech" - a kind of village assembly where everyboddy has the opportunity to speak while a "talking stick" is turning around - a old man started to tell the story of how life had changed in the village. We did not tape his talk but it sounded like this. " First of all, we have to remember that the tree under which we are speaking today is not just a tree: here are kept the spirits of our ancestors and everything we say is recorded forever. When I was a child, the whole area around us was green. Gardens were feeding our people and nobody was left with an empty stomach. Here in the center of the village there was a spring. Women did not have the necessity to be away from home and from the children in order to get water. There was enough wood for cooking, and there was much joy and happiness.”

“One day things began to change. More and more of our youg men left the village looking for jobs in Ivory Coast, Mali or Senegal. Some went even to Europe. It had become almost impossible to live only from the land.” What followed was the story of how those people who had emigrated were coming back with new ideas about cities growing bigger with a lot of cars and traffic and many people working to possess gadgets and toys.

The old man proceeded. “ With time many of them did not return. The land was abandoned. But after all there is nothing you can do against it. I think we should just let those people experience life and all that technological society. One day they will understand and return to the land and their family. I know already many of them would exchange such a no-good life anytime for coming back to the village. We are maybe poorer than before, but we are still one tribe. The sun rises up every morning. There is hope. ”

“ Enrolled with the French troops, I fought a war that was not mine. I know what happens up there in Europe. You possess many things and it overcomes even our imagination. You have big cities, big cars, and many of you think they can rule the world.”

After a minute of silence, he went on on the issue of desertification. “I know that in your country people have money on their bank accounts. However desert has invaded their mind and soul. Even their heart is drying for loneliness. You have large forest areas but you have forgotten the ways that connect human beings to the brotherhood of life. Here we live in poverty but still we try to teach our children that under these sandy rocks trees are only sleeping. You should always remember we belong to the land.”

To conclude, he brought our attention to the following. ” People like you who came here to share their hopes and ideas are always welcome. The color of the skin doesn't matter. What matters is the color of the heart. You have come here to listen to us. You can come any time and there will be always a room for you. But still, there is much work to be done in Europe. There, people like you are very needed. Moreover, you can do some work of transformation we can not do for you.” The message could not be more clear

Before leaving the village we had to visit the old man's hut. We got two chickens and some bottles of beer. Although we felt a bit uncomfortable with it we could not refuse his gift. Because we did not eat meat and did not drink alcohol either, we made the driver and his family very happy that evening.
 

Of course, there could be so much to say about the process of desertification. The main point is that when people do not care anymore for the land, desert comes. There are many reasons for that. They can be either social, cultural, economical, ecological and/or political. Desertification is a human tragedy, not a problem you only solve with technology and money. It needs love,  attention and personal care.
 

Between 1988 and 1990, I traveled several times to Burkina Faso. I also visited Niger where I remember we had nice talks about animism and islamism with the Prime Minister. For him, the spirit in which we wanted to work in his country was seen as important as the work to be done. But of course I was much more concerned with was happening at the grassroots. 

If we believe in the scenario which puts the origin of Homo sapiens somewhere in Africa, we should have more concern for the continent. We are maybe all Africans after all. Too often the media inform us that the future of Africa is  political chaos, poverty, corruption, civil wars and environmental bankruptcy without telling us what are the real causes. For sure, most of them are not in Africa. 

And if we want to help Africa, it is clear that it is not by imposing our notion of development. That kind of development normally serves only to enlarge the already saturated markets of the industrialized world. Africa has become the orphan child of the "global village". Still people have hope and there is the "beat", something that keep people on the track. When writing those lines I feel ashamed that too often we miss the opportunity to really know people and their ways - something good we could learn.

It's not only a question of knowledge. It's a question of attitude. I agree with Robert Vachon when he writes: " The fundamental problem that we Westerners face in seeing and presenting other peoples and other cultures under a more positive and intercultural light stems from our unconscious anthropological assumptions: our social evolutionism, homocentrism, pan-economism and civilism, rationalism, legalism, individualism, globalism, technologism, and saviorism" (Interculture, Spring/April '85).

I think we need to approach Africa with a very open perspective and critical attitude towards our own culture. Nations don’t have to develop, according to our understanding, but they should be free to realize themselves. Our future depends not our ability to open a dialogue with all of them, and especially with the oldest ones. 

In a letter addressed to the magazine Planète in 1952, the French anthropologist Francis Mazière wrote: “ It's now time to decide if we consider the primordial/primal/ primitive cultures as lower stages of evolution according to our dialectics or if the most advanced scientific works are not looking for truths that have been kept in the parable of these people of very ancient cultures. The most important question facing us, is wether it's still possible to attempt a dialogue between ourselves and them. "

The wise old man in Burkina Faso was right. There is still a long road to go ahead.