Darwin\'s Nightmare Ultimately, the Story

¶ … Darwin's Nightmare

Ultimately, the story of any region in terms of human history comes down to the history of the different individuals who occupy the region. This is what struck me the most about the film Darwin's Nightmare; whatever the larger forces at work seemed to be, in reality the causes and effects of all of the various situations that the documentary records are concerned with individuals who allow -- or who cannot stop -- these things from happening. From the Russian pilots to the Tanzanian prostitutes that "keep them company" to the peasants forced to survive on half-rotten fried fish heads, these are the individuals that are important to this area of Africa, and these are the individuals who must deal with the situation. A lot of the scholarship we have looked at seems to downplay the individual and human aspects of the issues facing the African continent, which seems to be an extension of the underlying cause of many of the problems that the people of that continent have been facing for the several centuries of European involvement there, and which they continue to face today.

Recognizing the basic humanity of the people in Africa would have forestalled many of the problems now facing the people and the region. Even the introduction of the Nile perch into Lake Victoria is something that would probably have not occurred in a Western country for fear of the same or similar results. That is, in an area/region/population considered "important" by Westerners, a strange predatory animal would probably not have been introduced to a fragile ecosystem upon which a large population of people living in poverty depended. This is more of the same ethnocentrism that was at work with the early missionary efforts in Africa, only now any and all pretense of the missionaries' altruistic motives has been completely done away with in favor of the pure pursuit of profits and the growth of commerce.

Money is, of course, the primary driving factor in all of the human relationships that are shown in this film. The prostitutes' connection to money should be fairly obvious, as is the idea that the fish are being picked up and shipped for a profit from the large conglomerates outside Africa. In this way, the film clearly shows how intimately economics and politics are tied together. Even the money from the European Union and the World Bank wasn't arriving in this area -- which has been quite poor and destitute for many decades, if not for centuries -- until after it was realized that there was profit to be made from the fish in the lake. The fact that this trade also fuels and funds the delivery of arms to the region, which perpetuates the war and therefore the poverty and depravity of the people living in the area as well. Nothing happens in Tanzania, this film suggests (upholding the general logic upon which our modern system of capitalism can be seen to operate), without money behind it to make it worthwhile for the major players in the area -- namely, not the actual people of Tanzania.