Beyond an hour of darkness

By Marifi Jara

QUELIMANE, Mozambique–“Why is the night so dark?” asks a young boy.

“So that we can see the stars,” replies a wise old man.

Those are lines I will always remember from Dreams, the last masterpiece of legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa (he was also the film writer and it is actually based on his own dreams). I’m not sure how verbatim my quotes are though, so please forgive me, because I saw the movie about two decades ago in Film Theory class (oh how I loved that class under the Fr. Nick Cruz, SJ! But not to get excited now because that’s another story).

That scene is in the ‘Village of the Watermills’, the last of eight short films that make up Dreams, which I remember to be quite an overwhelming visual feast, both inspiring and haunting. A magical realism sort of treat. Among other themes, the movie largely touches on the environment, its destruction and protection.

So I was thinking of that scene which has so moved me because it’s Earth Hour again on March 26.

In previous years, hundreds of millions of people around the world, including in little corners of Pangasinan, participated in the event by turning off all their lights for one hour in recognition of the need for us intelligent, greedy humans to be more prudent in how we use our natural resources and protect our home planet earth. This year, Earth Hour is expanding “Beyond the Hour” by asking people to promise to do more than just sacrificing a whole hour in darkness.

“This year, Earth Hour asks people to commit to an action, big or small, that they will sustain for the future of our planet,” organizers said in a statement issued in Singapore.

So instead of just an hour of environmental consciousness every year, we are being called to make changes in our lifestyle that will make Mother Earth smile.  (Check out www.earthhour.org/beyondthehour). For individuals and families, how about we start with actions that will minimize the garbage that we produce? For our local government units, how about concrete steps in improving the management of trash in the communities? For the urbanized areas, it is needless to say that waste management is crucial (think Smokey Mountain). In the outskirts of the province, people continue to bury, burn or simply pile up their trash in open spaces. This has got to change. Sooner or later, our trash is going to be the ruin of us.

And incidentally, another one of the short films in Dreams, titled ‘Mt. Fuji in Red’, is a portrayal of Armageddon with nuclear plants exploding and fire everywhere. During the Earth Hour (or now even), let’s send good thoughts to Japan, especially for the survivors of the very unfortunate triple-whammy of an earthquake, tsunami and the resulting nuclear plant blasts. In the dark, anywhere we are, we can all look up to the same evening sky and the same stars and make a wish for all those who are suffering from both natural and human-influenced calamities. At the same time we can make a promise too to the stars that we will do our tiny bit as good residents of our planet.

Many writers, travellers and romantics have raved about the African sky, of how the myriad of stars seen from hereabouts seem to be so much more than from other spots on earth. The technical explanation must partly be that this is the poorest continent and still has the most areas where there is limited or totally no access to electricity and the air pollution produced by industries is the least. But really there is no “African sky”. We can have the same star-filled sky every night in our corner of the earth if we choose to.

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