00:02:58.720jahawai strives to portray the beauty power and vulnerability of wild environments through his
00:03:11.260work which has taken him around the world his current focus is on telling african wildlife
00:03:16.820stories from the perspectives of the local communities highlighting african storytelling
00:03:22.200In 2019, Bertolli was awarded a Vulcan Visiting World Filmmaker Scholarship from Jackson Wild Summit, and was also the co-host of the annual Grand Teton Awards.
00:03:48.480Thank you for having me on the show. I'm incredibly happy to be here.
00:03:53.320So to start off, in the Western imagination, we often think about Kenya as the quintessential representation of Africa.
00:04:02.220We picture open savannas, golden light, and picturesque herds of elephants, wildebeest, and lions.
00:04:09.080But this fixed image obscures Kenya's many dimensions.
00:04:13.060I admit that I've never given so much thought to the endless world that awaits beyond Kenya's shorelines.
00:04:20.400So to begin our conversation, can you share a little bit about the sheer diversity of Kenya's marine and coastal ecosystems,
00:04:27.500as well as the rich social and cultural histories that have been birthed by these waters?
00:04:32.480You know, that's an incredibly interesting observation, because also growing up in Kenya,
00:04:38.040you know, I was incredibly privileged to spend a lot of my time on the coast.
00:04:43.060We had a little beach house in this wild part of the southern coast of Kenya called Wa.
00:04:50.480And, you know, in between, I spent most of my schooling in Nairobi, but we would get there and it was completely wild.
00:04:59.040And I used to spend all my time, you know, as a child exploring.
00:05:04.420And sort of going back to Nairobi as you grew up, you know, you kind of forget that Kenya has this incredible coastline
00:05:12.680because you get caught up in our other side which is an incredibly immense and beautiful
00:05:18.500terrestrial wildlife scene and so I spent part of my youth in music but when I came in to actually
00:05:25.400film and photography I did spend a lot of time working out of the Masai Mara and the Samburu
00:05:30.700and even in Tanzania focusing on terrestrial wildlife and everything that we get to know I
00:05:39.300I mean, my speciality was filming cheetahs.
00:05:42.620I've done a lot of time with cheetahs and also I've done a lot of time with lions.
00:05:45.940But the more I thought about it and the more I felt about it is that I was hearing stories
00:05:51.860and what I remember growing up and seeing our coastline.
00:05:54.760Kenya has an incredible little coastline, about 536 kilometers long.
00:06:02.120But we have incredible fringing reefs.
00:06:05.160we've got dolphins we've got turtles we've got humpback whale migration which not many people
00:06:13.640know about and for me what was the most interesting thing was that no one talks about our coastline
00:06:21.300you know everyone who comes to kenya comes for the safari experience but
00:06:26.560our coastline is never really spoken about and in that happening there's no talk about
00:06:34.780conserving our coastline because it's never really in the same sort of vein of conservation
00:06:39.500as you have in terrestrial wildlife and that's what really brought me into trying to highlight
00:06:46.100the coastal environment of Kenya. I'd like to orient listeners to your film
00:06:51.720Bahari Yeto which means our ocean in Swahili and tells the story of the ocean from an elder
00:06:58.740Swahili fisherman who has lived alongside the changing seascape and has experienced its impact
00:07:04.600firsthand and this plot line already greatly differs from so many mainstream films on our
00:07:13.260changing world that are incredibly data-driven but this distinction feels important especially
00:07:19.080for coastal communities who are often relegated to statistics on dwindling fish species or
00:07:25.240rising sea levels so i'm wondering what is the status of kenya's seafaring culture
00:07:30.800and how have you seen storytelling be a conduit for rekindling intergenerational custodianship
00:07:37.020and earth and ocean renewal amidst climate change so with this film we're really hoping
00:07:43.620basically to work on those levels we never actually set out to make a film that was based
00:07:51.680on Swahili's storytelling you know the ocean changes literally a few years ago we'd heard
00:07:57.280about this incredible story of the increase of humpback whales off the Kenyan coast and it's a
00:08:03.960story that not many people knew and it's sort of linked in with a few of our colleagues who are
00:08:07.760working in southern Africa and we realized that the east African migration of humpback whales
00:08:14.700had gone from nearly extinct to what we learned last year was over 30,000 individuals
00:08:22.060and from that we had more and more year on year we had more and more humpback whales
00:08:29.120coming to kenya and their migration to carbon breed so we had set out to make this film on
00:08:35.860humpback whales but part of what we wanted to do was make sure it was socially relevant
00:08:40.800and culturally relevant and as much as you know science can give you answers and give you data
00:08:47.940we thought that yes the scientists have been studying this for only so many years
00:08:54.160but if we want to really understand how long these humpback whales have been coming to kenya
00:08:59.320we need to talk to the local communities and the fishing communities that have lived off this
00:09:04.440coastline because they will have the evidence and they will have the stories of how often these
00:09:11.360whales have been coming and through that journey we did find incredible anecdotal stories about
00:09:17.960humpback whales but what we really found and what happened a lot with especially the elder fishermen
00:09:23.000we were interviewing was that there were other issues they preferred to talk about
00:09:28.120so we'd be there trying to say okay we would like to talk about humpback whales so like okay yes we
00:09:33.900see them every now and again but this is what's happening off our ocean it's getting a lot harder
00:09:40.600to find fish we are seeing a lot more people who are not from our local community who are fishing
00:09:46.800badly you know we are seeing destructive fishing methods we're seeing coral beach we're seeing all
00:09:53.700this stuff and we're seeing a lot more pollution and when we started to hear all these stories we
00:10:00.600realized that actually our story about humpback whales was actually not relevant to the community
00:10:05.620we wanted to actually make these films for and actually what was really going on in the ocean
00:10:10.840and we had people first basically telling us that as an older generation we're afraid that
00:10:18.360the younger generation that's coming don't understand just how badly the ocean has changed
00:10:24.500and once you're sort of told that from the perspective of elders in the village you
00:10:32.080realize that okay we came into this wanting to do a humpback whale film but actually there's a much
00:10:38.260bigger story here and there's a story that's coming from the community from these people who
00:10:44.020you know you're interacting with and it's a much more powerful story that needs to be told
00:10:48.740because it's echoing around the world and we need the younger generation our generation you know
00:10:56.400to be able to understand that the ocean environment we're working with at the moment
00:11:01.960is not a healthy one and therefore it shouldn't be considered as the status quo so that's kind of
00:11:09.600how our film ended up where it is now in the film the fisherman mourns that the ocean is dying and
00:11:18.700we know that fish stocks in coral reefs along the coast of eastern africa have been overfished
00:11:24.840I was reading that 70% of the species are below sustainable levels, but information on ocean health seems to be just incredibly scattered and contradictory.
00:11:37.020For example, some cite small-scale artisanal fishers as being the main contributors behind exploitation.
00:11:45.160But I also imagine that artisanal fishers can be a part of the solution.
00:11:51.320So I'd like to ask, what are the driving factors that are causing habitat degradation over fishing and pollution along the coast?
00:12:03.520On one stage, and I think probably the biggest stage that we need to talk about, is that a lot of East African countries have given fishing rights to certain countries.
00:12:16.340And those fishing boats never really dock and actually say how much fish they've caught in those areas.
00:12:26.040So data in terms of our fisheries, in terms of international boats operating in our waters, never really comes through.
00:12:34.700And what that means is that a boat that's maybe a Chinese or Vietnamese or Spanish can fish in our waters.
00:12:43.140But I mean, I remember a few years ago, we had 22 different licensed boats swimming in our waters and only four docked in Mombasa to declare their catch.
00:12:53.120Most of them docked in Seychelles, but, you know, it's not our jurisdiction.
00:12:57.840So what that means is we don't have a true figure of what's being taken out of our waters from an international fishing perspective.
00:13:07.320Now, from a local perspective, it's kind of easier to figure out what's happening.
00:13:12.560But it's a lot easier also to point your finger at your local artisanal fisherman to say you are depleting the reefs and you're depleting this and that because we're not seeing these kind of fish.
00:13:25.580But often in that case, they're being pushed to actually target those fish species that are left because that's what's left.
00:13:34.900So that's one level of it because it's a very multidimensional kind of issue that we're dealing with.
00:13:42.560Because also, within specific areas and sort of the work we've been doing in the Lama Archipelago, there was kind of local knowledge in terms of we fish here like this, we fish there like this, we do this, that, the other.
00:14:00.240Now, you can have a fishing crew that comes from still Kenya's waters, from Kenya, from a couple hundred kilometers down the coast, who will come to fish in our waters.
00:14:09.480but because we don't have any real Coast Guard or fisheries management
00:14:15.660that will actually go out to the fishing grounds.
00:14:19.480So you have fishing crews coming in with very destructive fishing methods.
00:14:22.880We've got ring netting and drag netting.
00:14:25.920And for them, it's a different issue because they're not doing it
00:14:39.260but a local from Lamo and a local from Malindi and they're doing different things and how do you
00:14:46.040manage that so on one scale we have a level that all our fisheries kind of the main massive fishing
00:14:54.640that's going on is not really being recorded and our local artisanal fishermen are being
00:15:01.280blamed for it but in that level there's also a blame level that's you're coming into our waters
00:15:07.900doing this and doing that and it's all about management and how you can actually understand
00:15:13.300what's being caught and it's a very tricky tricky thing the biggest thing so talking to you from the
00:15:19.760Lama Archipelago at the moment we're right up on the Somali border and what was an incredible
00:15:26.180little thing which I really do love to talk about is so there was piracy off Somalia
00:15:32.100and we are right up there and that is the confluence of of you know two big times
00:15:38.720all the big fishery boats in terms of your chinese or thai or spanish all those big boats
00:15:46.240didn't come around this area for the years that the pirates were active which meant that our
00:15:52.480little part of the coastline had an incredible breather zone for our fisheries because there
00:15:57.540were no fishing boats that came up we went from 26 to four licensed fishing vessels off of kenya
00:16:03.240and i think that's a pretty incredible thing because our fisheries came back within a couple
00:16:09.120of years the main point i'm trying to sort of say is that our fisheries have an incredible
00:16:14.400resilience to come back if they're given the opportunity to and the right management
00:16:19.560Mm-hmm. This reminds me of the conversation I had with Shannon Service about her film Ghost Fleet with these boats that never would dock. And yeah, just the unaccountability of how many fish were being taken and the illegality of it all. So thank you for sharing that.
00:16:43.680Now, Kenya witnesses the simultaneous migration of both wildebeest and humpback whales, known as the twin migrations.
00:16:51.660But I'd especially like to talk about the migration patterns and status of humpback whales who stop in the waters off of Kenya amidst their journey from the Antarctic to equatorial waters.
00:17:02.480Can you share with us a little bit about this journey and how deeply embedded they are in coastal folklore and whether or not their migration patterns are significantly changing?
00:17:12.820So this has been something I've been focusing on for a while.
00:17:17.840Now, until I started this whole idea of doing a humpback whale film off of Kenya,
00:17:22.460I hadn't really researched that much into what this meant.
00:17:27.160And for a lot of people, when you talk about a humpback whale migration in Kenya,
00:17:31.940they don't quite believe, you know, it's like, it's not a known thing.
00:17:35.900And it's only very recently in the last couple of years that, you know,
00:17:39.460we've finally had sort of proper research happening and there's been you know people
00:17:43.420talking about it but one of the things I learned on this whole journey of discovery and going to
00:17:49.380South Africa is that off of Durban in South Africa there was one of the biggest whaling
00:17:55.900stations ever and towards the late 70s I think they had literally decimated the East African
00:18:03.800humpback route that there was very few whales that used to migrate up and they in fact stopped
00:18:12.060the whole humpback sort of fishery because they couldn't find the whales and then that went on to
00:18:19.560the moratorium of whaling and now it's kind of a couple years down the line so when they did this
00:18:26.160survey at the end at the end of the 70s they had basically thought there was about 300 to 500
00:18:33.200humpback whales left on our migratory route last year a study came out which was pioneered in
00:18:39.280south africa showed that our our route is up to pretty much over 30 000 humpback whales
00:18:46.240so with the moratorium on whaling we've literally allowed this incredible
00:18:53.560sort of bloom in a marine species that was was here and it's fantastic in terms of you know and
00:19:04.160year on year and when we decided to go out to make a film on humpback girls we kind of saw that year
00:19:08.260on year we were getting incredible numbers and we're going to now it's not about whether we find0.92
00:19:13.380the humpbacks it's about the conditions and last year was an abnormal year and we had what's called
00:19:20.420the indian ocean dipole which is very similar to el nino and we in our entire filming month we
00:19:26.780didn't film them because they they weren't here but it's not to say it's a bad thing because
00:19:31.720south africa had the most incredible year in terms of humpback whale sightings
00:19:35.440and we went out to to try and research all these stories but what we realized is that actually
00:19:43.700there weren't these stories in the culture of the swelies in terms of really deep and meaningful
00:19:50.160stories of humpback whales and even in the generations we were dealing with they didn't
00:19:55.460have these stories because you know we were working off a time when humpback whales were incredibly rare
00:20:00.080but we moved to the Lama Archipelago and we were talking to a lot of fishermen here and you know
00:20:06.320they're like oh yeah yeah we we do there's a certain time of year we actually see them when
00:20:10.180they're here and they're actually quite harmless apart from the fact that they jump a lot but you
00:20:15.800know they're they're very gentle creatures and that was the beauty in terms of what we were
00:20:21.600looking for is you know there's this connection of they're not a threat and that's it's a seasonal
00:20:28.620thing and you know it could be a remembrance of old culture
00:22:13.800Globally, Kenya is known for its terrestrial wildlife, but these kin have been declining
00:22:37.080steadily. Between 1977 and 2016, populations from all major species in Kenya declined by nearly 70%.
00:22:46.880So I'm curious about what is driving this ongoing decline, but more specifically, I'd really like
00:22:54.520to talk about what the future of wildlife looks like amidst ongoing development, or how development
00:23:00.900is impacting wildlife in places like Kenya, where the government is investing in sizable and
00:23:06.500extensive infrastructure projects that would create networks of roads, dams, and power lines
00:23:11.780across the wildlife areas. And I want to recognize, of course, that this is no black and white topic.
00:23:17.720It's very much enmeshed in the reality of social and economic welfare, as well as the realms of
00:23:23.620political objectives and foreign interest. But can you speak to the current status of wildlife
00:23:29.020conservation in Kenya and whether or not development plays a role in declining population numbers?
00:23:34.280so basically kenya is on the path of a developing country and infrastructurally and with certain
00:23:42.500development goals and economic goals where we're trying to move forward now kenya is in a very
00:23:49.760interesting space because we're also considered to be at the forefront of wildlife conservation
00:23:55.940and wildlife and people are very interlinked here to a certain degree outside of sort of
00:24:03.240our main cities but what we're seeing is this sort of balance of is this good for the economy
00:24:10.820or is this good for environment and unfortunately the way it's being played out is is a very black
00:24:18.200and white way it's either one or the other and it's not that there's the huge gray scale in
00:24:22.840between and what's beautiful about kenya though is that you have an incredible amount of people
00:24:30.660who work in the grayscale and who cannot accept that it's basically one or the other
00:24:37.280and to end up calling out governments and this and that you know we're supposed to be
00:24:41.980at the forefront of you know terrestrial conservation and this and that and so Kenya
00:24:46.860should be pioneering the way in sort of conserving wildlife but at the same time there's a disconnect
00:24:53.620between government agencies and what's actually being implemented on the ground so we're literally
00:24:59.580in a i don't know i think the best way to say it is that we are kind of in a milkshake because a
00:25:06.200lot is being talked about and a lot is at the forefront and you know we are actually talking
00:25:11.180about how do you balance economic value of your wildlife areas compared to the potential economic
00:25:19.060growth of communities and do those two need to be separate or can they be the same can they be
00:25:26.020interlinked and can you save your community like can you save your environment and uplift your
00:25:30.880community at the same time we're currently on a big fight with Nairobi National Park in Nairobi
00:25:36.860because it's the only national park in a capital city in the world and they want to do a whole
00:25:42.220bunch of development but surely you know we've got a lot of stakeholders involved talking about
00:25:47.740how do we conserve this as an actual wild place and still meet our goals for development and this
00:25:55.140and that and what i think is often overlooked and which is incredibly important that we forget is
00:26:01.300that wild places wild heritage in our wild areas should be part of a new vision of the future
00:26:08.240because we often overlook how important they are to human well-being you get out into a park
00:26:16.960and all of a sudden you feel kind of relaxed like you could have had a really bad day and you sort
00:26:24.400drive out into a national park and you feel good and we need to start looking at these
00:26:30.880kind of human needs in terms of economically it may not make sense but what we've learned
00:26:39.220in this last pandemic and everything economics doesn't make sense anyway and therefore that
00:26:44.520shouldn't be what should be the riding factor of what we base everything off as humans are people
00:26:50.280of literally now i've spent a lot of time researching origins of humanity and where
00:26:56.240we've come from and our base as people is not about economics it's about feeling it's about
00:27:06.160feeling home it's about culture it's about the feeling a sense of worth and a sense of belonging
00:27:11.440and more and more people are understanding that parks give us that and we need those places and
00:27:19.440And, you know, the big financial people don't want us to talk about this, but it is we need to be more connected to nature.
00:27:28.700And Nairobi is an incredibly interesting sort of case study because we have a national park in the capital city.
00:27:35.840And through this whole pandemic, people are starting to realize that actually our park is more important than the new big skyscraper or the new restaurant or the new fancy lounge bar.
00:27:47.160because that's what makes us feel home and that's hugely important yes
00:27:54.900well because the history of wildlife conservation and tourism throughout all of africa really
00:28:01.660is an incredibly unjust one i imagine that a decent amount of the population in kenya0.52
00:28:08.700must view conservation as a somewhat exploitative industry that largely benefits
00:28:14.120wealthy landowners and tourists alike so I'm wondering if you could talk about how your work
00:28:20.620is rooting wildlife and conservation efforts in local communities especially in regards to marine
00:28:26.180conservation and your organization East African Ocean Explorers what are current attitudes on
00:28:33.000conservation and how are you working to prove that conservation can strengthen community lands
00:28:38.360wildlife and ancestral and cultural heritage so you've literally just hit the nail on the head
00:28:44.820one of the biggest issues we're facing conservation and wildlife filmmaking in africa is kind of seen
00:28:53.220as a colonial vestige because it's not representative of what's really happening
00:29:00.640and it's not representative of people on the ground and and it's so tricky because you know
00:29:06.820I know a lot of people who work in conservation and, you know, we can talk about sort of the
00:29:13.180black and white divide, but I know a lot of people who have grown up in Kenya and are Kenyans and
00:29:18.240they may be white or black in the mix of things. And they are doing incredible work. Now in Kenya,
00:29:26.120I think what is important to differentiate it is that it's not a black and white divide so much so
00:29:32.120that it is a financial divide and and there's there's relics of colonialism and also when it
00:29:40.080comes to wildlife filmmaking there's huge relics of colonialism but the goal is there but not quite
00:29:47.100so when we talk about sort of wildlife filmmaking in the bush and this and that and the other
00:29:54.940we are often trying to portray a view of what we think is a pristine environment and what we've been
00:30:03.600taught as a pristine environment and the danger of wildlife filmmaking is that if you run with
00:30:10.060those lines which a lot of big broadcasters have you're perpetuating this theory that
00:30:16.180wildlife and humanity and the cultures that live in these areas are different
00:30:21.560are two different stories but they're the same and often with a lot of modern wildlife filmmaking
00:30:30.440and retrogressive wildlife filmmaking is trying to separate the two but it's not the case
00:30:36.600you know people have lived in these areas of wildlife and have interacted and those are the
00:30:43.020real stories we need to be talking about because conservation has never really been about oh it's
00:30:49.720been focused too much about wildlife and not enough about people because unless the people
00:30:55.020around the areas that you're trying to conserve are happy with what you're doing you're not going
00:30:59.840to conserve that environment and unless you understand the history and the stories and
00:31:06.640the knowledge that those communities around those wild areas have how can you possibly conserve it
00:31:14.180you know we can come in with our thoughts of knowledge that we know and we've studied and
00:31:20.920well so theoretically this must work but you have communities that have lived with these wild
00:31:26.860animals and lived in environments for centuries and they'll be like well
00:31:31.120actually no from our perspective this is actually what works
00:31:34.600we need to listen more to the cultures that have lived with these animals
00:31:40.380but it's the generation that could be lost which is the elder generation because the younger
00:31:46.360generation don't have that knowledge and we're at the state when especially this is what we're
00:31:51.980trying to do is we need to record that old knowledge because people lived in harmony for
00:31:58.560hundreds of thousands of years before we even got here
00:32:01.100so from a i i know i went a bit far but from a local perspective you know we are trying to do
00:32:11.120it in a sense that you need to bring in it's not you're bringing in knowledge you're rediscovering
00:32:16.580local knowledge of how people used to manage these environments and it's a knowledge that
00:32:22.000the young generation may not have but it's a lot easier to tell them well this is how it used to be
00:32:27.900when it's knowledge that came from their community which was how they used to do it
00:32:32.200and that is the knowledge that is at a threat to being lost in terms of how the world is moving
00:32:40.500because a lot of people in communities don't quite realize that that old knowledge and that
00:32:46.400knowledge from the elders is actually a lot more valuable than even new science and new science
00:32:52.660could learn from that yes so it has to be collaborative in terms of we need to understand
00:32:59.860what the elders knew and from the older generation combine it with what we need now what we know now
00:33:05.240with our new technology we need to meet in the middle and combine the two because one side can
00:33:11.580learn from the other and that goes both ways yes thank you so much for speaking to that
00:33:19.600Now, typically, conservation is understood as a large-scale and often foreign initiative that is completely divorced from the community.
00:33:30.520But this approach, luckily, is losing momentum, even amidst a time when we desperately need to be protecting the last vestiges of land and life.
00:33:39.460But I think capital C conservation is on the way out because it's been so deeply rooted in the individual.
00:33:47.060So I'd like to now talk about locally managed marine areas and community-based conservation.
00:33:55.200How effective is community-based conservation and how does it prevent the sort of colonial land grabs that have otherwise been so dominant in global conservation?
00:34:04.780community-based conservation is the the way forward but it's community-based conservation
00:34:12.400understanding that all parties involved understand all the aspects of what you're doing
00:34:17.320now what we've lost along the way and what we're trying to rediscover is that
00:34:24.380there was an optimum time for us when there was a certain amount of people who could do this and
00:34:29.920this and this and we knew how sustainable it was and it was fight we're over that and times are
00:34:35.820moving forward and we're also in a very strange time where it's not really about conservation
00:34:41.740conservation can be about money and organizations are all sort of bullying for funding and in that
00:34:49.320bullying for funding they kind of lose focus on where they should be focusing on which is the
00:34:54.560community which kind of knows what they should be doing yet you want to sort of put in a sort of new
00:35:01.040marine predictor area this that the other because you're bullying for funding
00:35:04.820so before we had these big bullish organizations that really wanted to dictate to local communities
00:35:12.060how they should be conserving their own environments rather than listening to local
00:35:17.720communities who could tell you how they could conserve those local environments because they've
00:35:22.240been doing it one stage now another level is that now those local communities have generations that
00:35:28.720are coming through that also have lost that knowledge so when we're talking about community
00:35:34.020conservation and making sure that the community understands it you need to make sure you're
00:35:38.420getting that the knowledge of the elders who have it you need to make sure that you're kind of also
00:35:45.680incorporating that with modern science and also science of folklore of these communities which
00:35:55.600often correlate incredibly well you know when you sort of look at these old sweli cultures they had
00:36:02.560places they wouldn't fish at these times of the airspace if they would this that you know they
00:36:06.820had if you look at it scientifically they had no take zones they had you know seasonal fishing
00:36:12.240times so it's once you realize that modern science and traditional knowledge actually
00:36:17.980correlate and work together then it's about bringing that into sort of the new generation
00:36:24.560to realize because often you know people think that oh my generation my my culture this is
00:36:31.120backwards but it's not we have huge knowledge in africa we have huge knowledge around the world
00:36:37.460about our environments because those as people interacting with their environments you have
00:36:42.040known it for a long time but often what happened was that knowledge was never appreciated
00:36:48.140and now it needs to be because it actually correlates with what modern science actually says
00:36:53.860and so you need to be able to bridge the gap between modern science and traditional knowledge
00:37:00.480bring that together and understand that it's actually basically the same and then that's
00:37:06.780where you can create a management plan of what you are trying to do because no one wants to
00:37:12.960completely destroy their environment that they survive off and once you understand that
00:37:19.360then we can hopefully get communities working together whether it's a scientific community
00:37:24.780and a local cultural community and yes there's certain cases where they really want to exploit
00:37:30.980it and that's a whole other story and we're going after sort of the baddies in international
00:37:36.140fisheries but from a local level from a community level in the cultural level
00:37:40.160people need to realize that they're all fighting the same fight and if we can all figure out how
00:37:45.400to share resources and not just try and fight for resources because we're trying to prove the same
00:37:52.400thing but on different budgets if we can all put all that in the same budget we'd figure that out a lot quicker
00:38:36.140I'm thinking back to your work with Bahari Yato and the eternal wisdom that is all around us.
00:39:05.700How did you first become enamored with ancient rock gongs and what is awakened when we revitalize
00:39:11.340instruments and rhythms that are potentially tens of thousands of years old? How has this
00:39:16.620creative endeavor guided you? The whole rock gong project is just happened by chance. When I was
00:39:24.740younger, before I started my film and photography, I was a DJ and I worked a lot in music production
00:39:30.640and then sort of went into a musical film and then I completely left it and a couple of years
00:39:37.160ago we happened to be in the Moro Copies in Tanzania in the Serengeti and a very well-known
00:39:44.580rock gong and sort of played this instrument and it's like wow this sounds incredible
00:39:49.040but what really captivated me around that was you know we went from that rock gong to not thinking
00:39:58.140about it to a few days later being with the Hadzabe which are basically our human root
00:40:02.880and finding another one the most incredible one
00:40:08.360and it's sort of it's been the realization that the complexity that we give ourselves in terms of
00:40:18.320who we are as humans has been around for centuries not even centuries millennia we are
00:40:25.060are talking about a couple of thousand years and the kind of conversation that's burned off that
00:40:35.260is that we believe and it's it's a conversation that's happening now it's so easy for us to other
00:40:42.060everyone else that is not like us but what is like us so you know i i as a
00:40:51.180pretty stark sort of comparison my mother is black my father was white and brown in terms
00:41:00.900of genetic variance to change from skin color to skin color doesn't take a very long time
00:41:06.620and we have now started to trace and through a bunch of genetic variances and this and that
00:41:12.240we can realize that blonde hair blue eyes wasn't that long ago we basically all and we've traced
00:41:19.920it genetically came from africa when we realize that something as easy as skin color that we
00:41:28.700used to judge each other can change on two or three generations that is in a one human lifetime
00:41:35.840i think we're kind of looking at the wrong thing in terms of what separates us
00:41:43.500humanity all comes from africa that we have proof our genetic epicenter is africa we're all africans
00:41:54.060the offshoots of neanderthal danesovan all of that came from the african continent
00:42:00.820so surely if we stop looking at these minority traits that differentiate us
00:42:09.800and if people knew 98 percent of human genetic variance happens on the african continent
00:42:18.520that means two percent of the variance of the entire human race wasn't racism is actually not
00:42:27.220there's no such thing as race then two percent of the entire human species
00:42:31.220makes up the rest of the world everything we've used to differentiate ourselves
00:42:39.020skin color language is that the other is meaningless because we all came from the same root
00:42:45.820and we are all people we're all human beings
00:42:50.920once and i think that's what the first rock project is is what we're really trying to do is
00:42:59.300because we are tracing instruments and artwork and things you know things that we would consider
00:43:06.760human music artwork beliefs all of this we can we're trying to hopefully trace this before we
00:43:15.740had our genetic variants and in terms of skin color all these silly things we used to differentiate
00:43:22.660ourselves once people realized that we were capable of incredible music incredible artwork
00:43:30.660incredible beading long before we had a change in skin color or hair or whatever which whatever
00:43:37.360we the silly things we use and i hope that makes people realize that humanity is humanity
00:43:43.040everything we've used to differentiate ourselves is actually meaningless because we all came from
00:43:49.860the same root and that root was before we had anything to try and differentiate ourselves off
00:43:58.060so someone who went to you know the north and had to develop you know lighter skin and blue eyes to
00:44:07.340handle that climate is exactly the same as the same person who stayed in africa who kept their
00:44:13.920black skin we've become too involved in the little differences rather than looking at the big picture
00:44:24.140Because the big picture, and when you look at genetics, when you look at the human history, when you look at artwork and beadwork and the human mind and how creative the human mind is, that all happened well before any of the things we use to differentiate ourselves.
00:44:41.820once people realize that i hope and i hopefully truly believe that people realize that it's not
00:44:50.500about the color of your skin or where you're from or who you are it's about your mind because the
00:44:55.360human mind developed well before anything that we used to differentiate ourselves now
00:45:03.020thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on that and it was really beautiful and now
00:45:14.460before we close jahwe i'm wanting to just open the floor to you and you know ask if there's
00:45:23.360anything else that's on your mind on your heart i know we're going through some really turbulent
00:45:29.200times that seem to only speed up in this moment of our history. And so I just want to be able to
00:45:37.920give you the floor to speak to whatever else you want to bring into this conversation.
00:45:44.080Thank you, Anna. Just to kind of reiterate what I was talking about,
00:45:50.800it's humanity is a point in time on our world and when you kind of look back at our
00:45:59.760our history our evolution we're in a rapidly changing environment and what we all need to
00:46:07.020realize is that whether you come from a different background or this or that to the other we we tend
00:46:14.360to look at things in an incredibly short-sighted way but life is much bigger and the way things go
00:46:22.020is much bigger i mean with everything that's happened recently i mean the last couple of
00:46:27.700weeks we're kind of like looking back at 100 years and saying those people were wrong but that's
00:46:31.940the mindset is changing and we're an incredibly powerful point in our human lives and i and i
00:46:39.600would hate for us to miss this point to realize that we all need to sit down and study our
00:46:47.240genetics we need to sit down and study and to realize that the entire theory of race is wrong
00:46:54.460and that human genetics we are all the same we can trace it we are all part of a big mishmash
00:47:02.280of you know evolution that's going on i don't know i mean i wouldn't even say evolution because
00:47:07.560some people may be handed by that but we're all people the minute you can sit down and talk to
00:47:12.560someone who you've never sort of spoken to before we are the same we all have the same minds we all
00:47:21.540have the same heritage we're all based off about 2000 people who came off Turkana a couple hundred
00:47:27.320thousand years ago and when you sort of break back the barriers that divide us the story the
00:47:34.660person the humanity that the you know that little feeling that sort of gives you that you know when
00:47:41.620you really like someone you're like i really like that person that is universal that is something
00:47:46.760that connects us all and when we're going back further than when we had a different skin color
00:47:54.680and all that those are all our ancestors every single human being on this world comes from those
00:48:03.580people hundreds of thousands of years ago so we can fight we can scream we can kick we can do
00:48:09.060whatever we want and we can be stupid about it but stop think we all came from the same people0.87
00:48:16.060we came from the same people that gave us enough time to have adaptations to our environments we0.93
00:48:23.260talk about adaptations to environments and animals like oh they've adapted to environments
00:48:28.360and this then there's you know we did the same thing but it doesn't mean we're not from the same
00:48:33.340stock so let's stop being superficial let's stop looking at one of the most insignificant changes
00:48:40.620in terms of the human genome which is your skin color and realize we're all the same people
00:48:46.440capable of love capable of hate capable of everything but we come from the same soul
00:48:53.560well thank you so much shahoe for spending this time with us it was such a beautiful conversation
00:49:02.440and we went so many places and i appreciate you following these threads with me and um yeah i
00:49:11.400hope that we get to meet sometime again in the future and until then please keep up this really
00:49:20.560important work that you're doing thank you for having me um if i have time can i have one last
00:49:26.540anecdote oh please yes take us away um so i've spent a lot of time with adzabi in
00:49:34.000tanzania and they are considered our human origin and a few of them have sort of been taken out and
00:49:43.560been they've studied and you know shown the western kind of world and I've gone back home
00:49:50.200and the one thing that was the most incredible thing that they'd ever told me is that you know
00:49:56.580you guys you've made life so complicated you don't laugh you don't love you don't enjoy
00:50:03.140your you know everything has become an issue and by spending time with them they literally wake up
00:50:10.460and laugh you're hungry you go out and hunt or you know someone gathers a tuber they're the most
00:50:17.600happy people in the world and these are the people we run around studying as you know our
00:50:22.840genetic epicenter life is to be lived in the moment and i know our lives are not it's very
00:50:30.500easy for me to say this sort of sitting in the island of kenya but we've made our lives difficult
00:50:37.120but we need to sort of reconnect with who we are properly and I think this virus is helping us do
00:50:45.120it but there's a big step into sort of realizing what we are and who we are as a species and I
00:50:52.140think everyone needs to sort of think about that what makes you really happy yeah beautiful thank
00:51:00.220you thanks for listening to another episode of for the wild podcast i'm audio producer andrew
00:51:12.240stores the music you heard today was from jahawi bertoli i'd like to thank our host and founder
00:51:18.680ayana young as well as the rest of our podcast production team francesca glassbell carter lou
00:51:24.920McElroy, Erica Ekrem, and Melanie Younger.