Souls on fire
As a professional ecologist, Simon Mmakasa could have led an easier life – perhaps in a government ministry in Daressalam. But he insisted on staying in northeastern Tanzania, near Kilimanjaro, to fight the destruction of forests in his home region, the Pare mountains. “God gave us this paradise,” he liked to say, “and we are destroying it out of ignorance, greed, and hunger.”
Had he stayed in the capital – or been a European with expensive antimalarials in his luggage – Simon Mmakasa might be alive today.
Delegates to the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December are no longer predicting that effective solutions or binding agreements will emerge. But for Simon Mmakas, climate change was not a question of gas concentrations in the atmosphere. His objective was simply to save the forest and with it, the ecological basis for human life in the region.
The Danes have a word for highly motivated activists: “Ildsjæler,” souls on fire – like Simon Mmakas. A Zeitenspiegel team met him in October, 2008 on assignment for Bread for the World. We rcently learned only recently that he died in May, 2009, aged 56.