'Wallace Stegner wrote forty-seven years ago that “Something will have
gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be
destroyed,” and something else will go out of us if the resourcefulness,
rootedness, and richness of rural culture disappears.'
- Rebecca Solnit
What rural resourcefulness are you observing in Senegal? She uses rootedness in a positive light, but perhaps that's a rose-colored view on what others would describe as trapped or immoveable?
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ReplyDeleteRural resourcefullness is king. It seems the rural tried to transpose itself in the context of urban and what ensued was simply madness, not surprisingly. It feels as if Dakar went to sleep a village and woke up a city, rubbed its eyes, and said "what the hell just happened"? My mom commented that people drive like they are herding sheep, and I think there's truth to it.
ReplyDeleteA quote for a quote? In reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, she said "Culture does not make people. People make culture". Rootedness is good and important, but roots are still living things, they're growing and they're changing and they die. We can only really know our lives from our experiences, which could extend for 100 years or so, if we're lucky. The rest of it, where our parents come from, or what this place was like before, we just hear about. I think we're so fast to make roots and to preserve and revere them, but if you look beyond our human scope, there have already been so many kinds of roots in that same spot, and they were all different. To have roots is perfectly natural, and fundamental. To have something in life that is unchanging is so sure and attractive. But what is that, really?
Wallace Stegner was a wise man, and Rebecca Solnit a wise woman.
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