The Rising Waters of Injustice by Harrison Epstein

Reflections on Chinua Achebe's quote:
"People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that's the time to do something about it, not when it's around your neck"

In Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart, a small African tribe is faced with a group of British colonists and missionaries whose goal is to 'convert' the people. Things begin innocently enough, with them building a church in a dangerous land and preaching what the natives consider to be nonsense. Over time the missionaries gain followers and grow larger until it has many of the elders of the tribe worried. Eventually the newcomers gain a large enough following to impose rules and laws on the African natives and press their beliefs into the foundation of the society, changing even the most basic beliefs to their own through harsh treatment. One man, Okonkwo, sees the injustice his people are suffering and tries to convince the other elders in the tribe to take action, but to no avail. His people do little to nothing until it becomes too late to repel the invaders, and their entire culture is shifted to that of the British, with very little of their own culture remaining. Okonkwo's last ditch effort to return ways to normal is greeted by failure and in his despair he kills himself at the end of the novel. This story has a heavy relation the Achebe's quote about the rising waters; if you wait until the forces of injustice are too powerful to do something, there is very little hope in stopping it. This idea is even shown in history.     

In 1968 Francisco Macias Nguema was 'elected' president of Guinea and over the next 10 years shut down all school in the country and executed 80,000 people in a population of only 300,000, people he considered to be a threat because they were educated. In 1975, Pathat Lao and his followers overthrew the government Laos and subsequently executed 1/4 of the population, they were people who 'did not agree' with his ways. In 1939 Adolf Hitler and the Nazis invaded Poland and the country was captured in less than 5 weeks and over the next 6 years, over 11 million people were murdered throughout Europe. As a whole, the human race has developed a bad habit of acting on problems when it is too late to be effective. Many people see the rise of injustice and do nothing, thinking they have no power in such a large world, or simply because it can put their lives at risk. While self preservation is obviously important, there comes a point where the conflict is unavoidable and people must act in order to prevent horrible events from happening. The sad truth is that many people see injustice happening and think it does not effect them and hide behind their closed doors. Martin Neimoller, a pastor, addressed this idea in his famous poem about the Holocaust:

"First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me"

The point of this is that you can't sit idly by as bad things happen because it is not effecting you, or as the waters rise because from people like Achebe in literature and others like Neimoller in history alike we see that "Idleness is the beginning of all vice" (Franz Kafka) and that idleness in the face of injustice, leads to the oppression of the innocent.


More on the problems with idleness
https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/bystander-effect

and some pictures to illustrate the idea of idleness in crisis





And a drawing to illustrate Achebe's quote 

A Recollection of the Voyage in Africa by Harrison Epstein

It was damp. It was hot, sticky, muggy, buggy, but mostly it was damp. My hair was stuck to my head, my shirt clung to my back like some sort of strange suctioned sheet.

We walked for two and a half days before we reached the cave that we had been looking for, we called it Beest Mond Grot or the Beast’s Mouth cave as the protruding rocks at the entrance to the cavern appeared ready to clamp down on unsuspecting prey that wandered through, and the vines that wrapped around it seemed to twitch on its own like a cat’s hair when frightened. Samuel began to shout about how rich he was going to be, and sprinted toward the mouth of the cave where already the glimmer of rubies was visible, unfortunately he only made it a few steps before his screams of joy turned to terror as his feet and legs were engulfed by a hidden pit of quicksand surrounding the cave and his struggling only made him sink quickly to his death.

With our small company now slightly smaller, and an air of gloom surrounding us, we moved to a safe distance, where the cave was in sight but the quicksand would not be stumbled upon in the darkness of night, and set up camp. I didn’t sleep that night, I am not sure anyone did for more than a few short minutes, between the thoughts of the previous day and shrieks of the night, one could barely close their eyes.

Lewis noticed them first, these dark shadows peering out from behind the brush, their eyes wide with a mixture of terror and curiosity. It seemed the natives had finally come to visit. It quickly became clear that they had no intention of violence but their sharp machetes gave it away that they could fight if needed. Lewis began rambling off his rather small vocabulary of one of the more common African languages and gestured around wildly; it seemed we had gotten lucky and the natives appeared to at least comprehend that we were miners and could not enter the cave without assistance, nor had we anything to trade with them or other tribes if we could not secure any rubies. An older looking man barked an order that no one understood and three of the other natives darted off to the cave and quickly leaped around the quicksand until they reached the mouth of the cave. It appeared our group had found a way to get what we needed.

This went on for a while, the natives coming by every morning with fruit and nuts, or occasionally some horned, forest creature, and every night with a small portion of rubies. However a problem became evident, we were not getting enough of the valuable gems to pay for the expenses of travel. The natives saw no reason to bring more that a small amount of this rock to us because all we ‘needed’ it for was trade for the food. The only reason they brought it at all was because Lewis insisted we give them something for the food and help. Our attempts to gain more of the resource were not successful and thus we turned to more drastic measures.

The violence began on a small scale, with yelling and threatening with guns, but after a number of weeks, we would tie some of their people up or cut them with the bayonets on our guns. While they honored their values and brought us food, they stopped assisting with hunting and the rubies they gathered were in poorer quality but higher quantity. It was as if out violent nature was tarnishing the pure sheen of the gems.

The year dragged on as time meandered by, and with it came the deaths of two other company members. Phillippe was bit by a spider while searching for berries, and we only found him because his smell carried far enough from where the berries grew to the camp. Lewis perished when he attempted one too many times to order the chief of the tribe to gather more food and minerals. With Lewis dead we had no means of communication and the situation only deteriorated further. On the twelfth month, we had little food and were constantly fending off attacks, we almost ran out of ammo in fact.

As one might imagine, leaving the camp was a day we all looked forward too, but when the day came there was no laughing, we walked through the bloodstained brush to get back to the river that connected to the ocean. The forest was no longer filled with joyful birds as they had been scared off or eaten long ago. The shine in the cave had gone and it appeared a vast chasm. It seemed that even the flowers had wilted with all the cigar smoke. The remaining native tribe members were weak from disease of suffering injuries, the land had suffered.

But we were profitable.