MY GRANDMOTHER

THE GREAT ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATOR

Joseph C. Oonyu

Department of Sceince, Technical and Vocational Education, DSTVE

Makerere University, P.O Box 7062, Kampala, Uganda
Tel: +256-41-532924
This article is in the form of a story of the dialogue that occurred between the author and his
grandmother when the former went to say goodbye to his family on his way to Canada for Ph.D.
studies in Environmental Education (EE).

The paper points to the challenges that EE in the less Industrialized societies face, particularly how
to integrate Western and indigenous environmental knowledge. Very often, the epistemologies and
wisdom of indigenous people, including their ways of organizing environmental knowledge are
given little attention.

I went to say goodbye to my family in the countryside just two days prior to my
departure. That evening, I gazed out of the window of my house, basking in the
beautiful bright rays. I was greeted by the beautiful song of the African pied
kingfisher. The melody permeated the surrounding green country. I suddenly felt a
strong attachment to this place. Like she had many times before, my grandma asked
me to join her in her usual evening walks into the surrounding gardens. During these
walks, she would show her children various plants and animals and explain their
numerous uses. She would also tell her children stories of their ancestors. On this
walk, she showed me several medicinal herbs and insisted that I pick and chew them.
She said I would be able to associate the taste with the plant species. I wondered
how she could name all those plants. I did not even know a third of what she knew
despite my master’s degree from a reputable university. As she told me a story about
the environment, I realized, like the rising sun at dawn, that here was a great
environmental educator.

Then my grandma asked me the most difficult question that I have lately been
confronted with. She asked me what I was going to study so far away in Canada? I
tried to define, or rather to explain, my anticipated studies in Environment
Management/Education to her. She listened for a whole, but her look made it
apparent that she was not convinced.

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Again her shrill voice rang out. “You mean you are going to study humans, plants,
animals, and where they live?” I realized my explanation was far from satisfactory.
After a long pause, she went on to ask, “Will you be studying our connections to the
mother earth that gives us life and to the spirits of your grandparents long buried in
this land?”

As I attempted to respond to this one, she waved me to stop. “My child,” she went
on, “to me, the most significant things that you should study are those that I have
been asking you. If you can teach this to your children, my spirit will be happy in
the next world. Your whole life, including spiritual well-being and God’s creatures,
are interwoven and cannot be separated from mother earth. When we allow this to
happen, our lives become adversely affected. See what has happened to those trees
that used to be in your grandpa’s land. Why has firewood become scare? Why is
our harvest of millet, peas, sesame, and beans less than in the past? Why are the
hunters and fishermen bringing less wild meat and fish today? Why are the children
riddled with diseases? Why are the water holes drying up?” Why are floods and
landslides becoming the order of the day?” Why has the rainfall pattern become
unpredictable”? My grandma implied that we were now experiencing an ecological
crisis; or what we now call “Climate change” that was being manifested in several
ways: floods, landslides, changing rainfall patters, drought and famine as a result of
our actions on the environment.

I was not prepared for this powerful, environmental lecture from grandma. She was
even a better instructor (“professor?”) than the many I had seen. Wave after wave
of thought came to my mind. I thought of the many articles written to environmental
literacy. I began to appreciate the fact that the indigenous people in less
industrialized countries were much more environmentally literate before the onset
of modernisation. Modernization had drastically changed their ways of living, yet,
very little has been done to integrate indigenous and Western environmental
knowledge.

In the course of modernization, indigenous knowledge has often been lost because
it is considered irrelevant to new situations. This lack of relevancy probably explains
why traditional environmental knowledge is not only devalued by educational
institutions, but is also largely overlooked in environmental literature. If we are to
save our environment, we need to embrace the epistemologies of wisdom of people

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from less industrialized countries, including ways of organizing environmental
knowledge.

Grandma’s voice brought me back from my reverie. “My son, you must know the
land of our ancestors, the beliefs of our people, what they value and your role in all
these. You must also know the functions of the various plants and animals in this
world. In this way you will be able to appreciate the role of each of them. This in
turn will motivate you to do something to preserve our precious mother earth.”

I could not but help admire the literacy of this frail looking woman. Within these
few sentences, she had explained the basic goal of Environmental Education (EE)
for developing people who are aware of and concerned about the environment and
who have the knowledge, skills, attitudes, motivations, and commitment to work
individually or collectively towards solutions to the current problems and prevention
of new ones.

As I lay on my bed that night unable to fall asleep, I wondered if there was any
justification for my journey to Canada. My grandma was so literate that, without
any university education, she knew the instructional goals of EE; The attainment of
a sound ecological foundation, greater awareness of issues and values, investigation
and evaluation, and the action skills training and application.

By the time I woke up in the morning, I resolved that, on my return to Uganda, I

would work with such great environmental educators as my grandma. I would
particularly like to document some aspects of their environmental knowledge and
their ways of organizing it. I now realize that viable solutions to the environmental
problems in my country can only come about when education at all levels is suitably
modified to enable the indigenous and modern knowledge to become
complementary. In this way, everybody will be involved in conserving the
environment.

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