‘The traffic is dangerous in Kenya,’ Iris says. ‘The
police are better at enforcing the rules now, but young drivers are
over-confident and the cars are fast and the roads are bad. Pedestrians and cyclists are unprotected. But
Africa is booming. They used to say Africa’s a sinking continent. That is not
true anymore. It is a rising continent. Of course, there are costs but know,
Africa is coming.’
Within an hour we
reach the Rift Valley. We park at the edge. Iris wants to negotiate about a piece
of cloth in a tourist stall.
I walk away to get
a free view at the valley. It is the widening trench between the main African
Plate and the Nubian or Somali Plate at the eastern side. The plates are slowly
drifting from each other. It's not that I can see that. I have to believe the
scientists who study tectonic plates.
I stare
contemplatively at the valley deep below and the slopes at the other side. Many
think that the eastern plate, where I stand, lost its dense forest cover after
the rift was formed and that the hominids living here had to survive in more
varied landscapes. This forced adjustment might have been the start of
humanity.
‘Had enough
reflections, Pete?’ Iris, without cloth, calls from before the stall. ‘Let’s go
for a drink.’ We find a small terrace. I sit with a view at the valley.
‘Now,’ she says,
‘you still have to tell me what we can learn from simple tribal life.’
‘Did you hear
about situational awareness? It’s what our ancestors had and some people are
now rediscovering. In the far past they were constantly alert, always aware of
details in their natural environment, with all their senses and energy
frequencies relating to nature. For them it was a matter of life or death to
stay in contact with the environment. We have largely lost this capacity of
reacting to subtle influences that prevents more serious diseases and
injuries.’
‘I think I
recognize that. But go on.’
‘When you are
aware of the environment with all your senses and energy frequencies, you will also
be aware of what happens in yourself, with all your senses and frequencies. You
can immediately react to coming up disturbances of your system.’
‘How did we lose
that capacity?’
‘It’s the power of
imagination. As it kept growing we could think more about others, elsewhere and
past and future. That gave us not only better technologies and but also larger,
more complex societies. You find that in tribal, nomadic, agricultural and
industrial societies.'
'I know,' says
Iris.
'To run social
complexity,' I say, 'we developed hierarchy and the oppression of one by the
other. It was again the power of imagination that made us able to internalize
social oppression: we came to oppress unconsciously many natural inclinations
within ourselves. We increasingly ignored signs of danger, hunger, pain,
discomfort and injury on the one hand and signs of saturation, fulfillment and
pleasure at the other.’
‘Wait a minute. I
have to digest this. The evolution in a nutshell. Something. Look,’ Iris says
pointing at the other side of the Rift, ‘there is a child herding a cow. And a
car is coming on that road.’
I watch - giving
Iris time to reflect. My temperament wants to go on but I’ve learned to slow
down or stop, by trial and error. The cow in the distance seems to be an obstacle
on the road. The car, anyway, reduces speed. The moving dust cloud that follows
is shrinking.
‘So, then, Pete,
do you mean if we imagine things we are thinking?’ Iris says.
‘Well, for sure it
is brain activity. And it has grown so much that it overrules our subtle noticing
of bodily signals,’ I say. ’Yet, deep down, our situational awareness may be
alive in us.’
‘Perhaps the discharge cycle is also still hidden in
us,’ Iris says.
‘Discharge cycle?’
‘Yes, among animal biologists it is known that when an
animal is out of danger, it takes time to discharge the tensions. You see it
sweat, tremble, shake or breathe deeply. The nervous system comes back to where
it was before the danger. We call that the discharge cycle. The animal does not
oppress its inclination to recover its inner balance immediately.’
‘That must be what Peter Levine uses in “somatic
experience”, his trauma healing approach. He brings traumatized people back into
the old bodily experience of their trauma. The body then takes over and
completes what was left unprocessed. Fantastic.’
‘Does it happen just
like that?’
‘Well, no. It
takes many sessions to make it work.’
