‘Storms to persist’ the headlines said for Human Rights Day 2024. I looked outside and confirmed that the weatherman was indeed correct about the bleak outlook for today. The first day of the school holidays was just a normal workday for me as a freelancer.
There had been a lot of questions about my rights floating around my brain that week. A potential prospector has been scuttling around our beloved part of Oribi Gorge.
The notice cited lithium, and a few other things, that a big yellow demarcated area on the map is assuming might be under the ground. As if we needed yet another hard thing in our lives after losing a beloved brother recently.
Grief must wait apparently for community objections to said prospectors and lots of research about the area that we don’t have time to fit into already full schedules.
Three noisy boys running around and asking for food isn’t a great environment to be reading complicated 158-page documents about mining and laws and stuff is it?
“Pay attention to the details, brain.”
If I missed something about a loophole or water use license, would we lose our home in a few years’ time?
What about the animals and birds and plants? What about the endangered oribi I admired in our little field of baby macadamia trees last month?
Will those trees bear fruit in five years as they should, or will the dust from an open-cast lithium mine have ended their prospects?
It’s dramatic, I know. But that’s how it feels. Storms persist. They leave for a while, but there’s always another one. That’s life.
What a privilege seven years in Oribi Gorge has been. I pray there will be 70 more, with children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren too.
We are born and we die, but in between is so much life to live and so much wonder to experience.
Right then, on the rainy day during which our country was celebrating human rights, it felt hard to get on board with hope and freedom.
Still, the Samangos were calling in the forest just 50 metres away to remind me that I didn’t get to feel sorry for myself in bed that day or any other day that would come after it.
Miners may come. Precious species may go extinct. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed.
But today is the day to get up and be human about it and to hope. It’s our right and our joy to live each day to its fullest.
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