17. Understanding death: the Matobo experience

Death is often regarded as a singular once-off event. The end of life. Like birth, it is one of the most important “events” in the journey of life itself. It marks the other end of birth. The final stage. As it is at the opposite side of birth it also creates very much the opposite emotions to birth - both for the individual who experiences it and the people who are “left behind”. (That euphemism actually says a lot more beneath the surface. In essence it means that death is after all not the final stage but that death actually allows the individual into the next phase…to leave others behind, the deceased is moving on, elsewhere!)

Most, if not all religions in the world, suggest in some or other way that there is life beyond the dark curtain of initial death. We either “go to heaven” or come back as another human or component of life, perhaps wiser and better equipped than before, ever improving as individuals. (An interesting thought to evolutionists… how do the reincarnates contribute to increasing vigor or value of the species?)

Being with Matobo, and seeing its processes and transitions and the flow of life in many different forms and mutations, death becomes more of a continuous process rather than a single event, often challenging my understanding or perception of death, which was primarily formed as part of my Christian upbringing. Death as the end of life becomes a little more muddled when one looks at nature and how death is manifested in other beings. 

While I may have seen many dead trees, the actual death of a tree may take many years to complete, a slow process that reduces the elaborate branches to mere wood, which remains a wooden skeleton for decades, as if it created its own tombstone, the final tribute to many years and cycles of life and death itself. 

In the case of deciduous trees, large parts of the tree die off each year, the bark and leaves peel off and fall to the ground and they are incorporated in the soil beneath the tree, turned into nutrient-harboring compost which the plant may absorb in an absurd form of auto-cannibalism (which is a completely different subject - lets contain our focus to death!).  Trees, or at least, parts of trees die off every year, something higher organisms such as humans and other mammals do not experience. The skin is said to be the largest organ of the human, and therefore snakes and other reptiles who lose their skins each year, shedding it to sport an entirely new fresh skin, therefore also suffer some limited form of an annual death cycle!

Like the tree, that grows new leaves all the time, or in annual bursts every spring, colonies of termites and bees, may grow new individuals who can not survive on their own, and therefore form part of what is often referred to as a single organism, the colony. The “castes” represent different organs - the breeders are likened to the reproductive organs, and those growing mushrooms from lignin and other plant material are said to be the gastrointestinal system of the larger being etc. Here the death of an individual is nothing more than shedding an epithelial cell or two in the digestive tract of the larger organism. So, how do we define death in this case where the death of an individual is simply an unimportant process of recycling as fresh beings contribute to the larger whole?

While an individual tree may experience many years of cyclic deaths or deaths of smaller parts of itself, some vegetatively reproducing plants, like certain grasses, may actually never really die! The clones or new shoots grow from parent material and although seen as “new youngsters” they are actually the parent plant itself, at least genetically. While other parts of the plant, other clones may die off, the actual individual may end up as many individuals and while some of these may die, the actual plant survives many deaths! The original remains intact and alive in many places all at once! Bizarre.

My beloved lichens may undergo a similar process, though it is even more complex, considering the fact that they are made up of two species merged into one morphological being that grows clonally for many thousands of years, separating from itself and creating “new” colonies (yeah, not even individuals, cause the individual is made of at least two species!!!). So for them, and we may not be able to fathom it, death as we know and understand it - may actually never come! Great, is it not?!

What would be catastrophic is the death of an entire species, extinction, the ultimate death. That would constitute the passing of what could be a critical component of the complex system. As long as the deaths are countered by births and clones and seeds emerge to replace adults with young then its all ok. But too many deaths of critical components may lead to the death or collapse of the entire system as we know it. Meta death, if there is such a thing!

Incredible as nature is, this has happened many times before, and may happen again. We can only hope that a new order may emerge from what is left and evolve to initiate another revolution of evolution around the axis of life itself.

16. Matopos' Birth

I have not written about Matopos for a while - there were other things happening in my mind and heart. But I have been there many, many more times and have found myself thinking about the birth of Matopos. How was Matopos born? Did anyone witness that great event? It must have been a wild and torturous time for the earth to bring forth such a place, to nurse it through puberty and allow it to mature and cool down and settle here in the heart of Zimbabwe.

Of births, I have seen many. As a young child I sat watching my father’s fish tank, waiting the whole night for a guppy to give birth! (Yes, some fish do give birth to live fish/fingerlings.) I have disturbed many chickens, every few minutes, to see whether another chick has hatched. I even took an egg to school in my pocket once to make sure I didn't miss that wonderful moment when a wet lump of bloody down and pink flesh stands up to be a chick – proud and willing to take on the whole coop’s roosters! Similarly, I have watched and helped my dog, Tanya, give birth to a basketful of pups. I saw a giraffe being born once and even saw a shriveled little rhino taking its first steps in Zululand, still wet and unsure about this whole new world. I attended the births of two of my sons…much more dramatic and painful and filled with emotion, both of pain and suffering and ecstatic jubilance once we counted the toes and fingers and a nurse or pediatrician had given us the thumbs-up! 

All of these events have a component of time attached to them. For the rhino it must have been a long, long wait, while for Papa’s guppies it was almost as frequent as the lunar cycles but still, each time, caused a stir in the household. New life is precious. Always.

When I marvel over Matopos, I can only imagine the pain and suffering it required to bring a place like this into being. The clouds must have built up into a tremendous storm, with great winds sweeping the empty grassy plains, with not much to make a traveler pause his passage. Then, like the first cracks of my precious batch of ostrich eggs, but at a massive scale, the earth may have ruptured, and I imagine some watery, rich soils oozing from this first sign of new life. For days and days, like my baby ostrich, this new world may have been eking its way to the surface, slowly breaking through the inner layers of ancient earth forced from behind and below by the eagerness of lava desperate to reach the outside world; just like the first of Tanya’s pups, always the strongest, most inquisitive and proudest of the litter. (I always cried when the first pup was sold!)

I imagine the earth opening and the first of Matopos’s great and immense ghommos and dwalas emerging from the inner earth, wrapped in smoldering red blood that rolled off the sides into what we see today as the smaller boulders and rocks surrounding the base of these grandiose granite hills. Some would simply work their way out, sliding into a new place of existence with great ease and dignity, while the smaller ones would be voided into piles of rocks as if by some ghastly beast. Yet others would be flung by ancient pneumatic forces deep into the birth-night, brightening up the sky like fireworks announcing some great event. Cluttered rocks and the earth's rubble would be swept into unimaginable configurations in bursts of energy, anger and relief. The noise must have been incredible when the earth opened up and spat out Matopos. The whistling of earth's gaseous excrement must have pierced through the sky like a million steam trains, leaving great fires in their wake, ignited by sparks as rocks were hurled through the sky!

I would not be surprised if a few moons, smaller planets, meteors and other inquisitive extra terrestrial marvels came to witness it… because it must have been an event of great significance. It was certainly the birthplace of an international conservation significance! Perhaps the geomorphologists – physicists and geochemists or those who study the birth of geographic entities – may be able to put a time or period or even an epoch on this event, but I suspect it took a long, long time. It is, after all, a large place, perhaps not big in geological terms but, nevertheless, a milestone in the evolution of the earth.

Once those first cracks became evident the great herds most probably scattered, not to return for many, many generations. Or not until the place calmed down and it was cleaned up and sterilized like a theatre after the difficult birth of breached twins or a hasty caesarian to save the life of a newborn. Here the process had to take care of itself, over time. The universal healer, time. 

Last week a friend a pointed out an elephant shrew slowly making his way out into the last of the summer rays to heat himself before his rocky tavern cooled down. I can see in my mind how the larger herds, having not heard any further commotion beyond the horizon for many a decade, like our little shrew, slowly snuck back, like the animals of the veldt emerge after the thunder rolls away in the distance. They came back, followed by their hunters in little bands of prehistoric people who slowly wandered through this fledgling landscape like the first visitors to a newly-established museum. Here they settled, some demarcating their territories with song or dung piles, while our early brothers and sisters painted the inside of their caves with elegant figures of what they saw on the outside. The chaos subsided and Matopos grew into a boisterous infant, not unlike the clumsy pachyderms that frequent this place now, then into a young person blooming with her own young and fertile as the veldt itself. 

As is the way with nature, the landscape today resembles the peaceful scene I encountered one night when I could not resist the urge. I managed to sneak past a vigilant nurse, and took a glimpse of my tranquil wife nursing a newborn son. I remember the pain and angst of a new mother, but that scene of great tenderness, love, devotion and complete serenity will always persist. Like Matobo.