My story is called “The Indian Sandwich,” which is actually a mistake from auto-typing, because Google could not understand my accent. (I just let it stay, because it was funny to me.) So yeah, growing up in the Global South looks very different. Oftentimes around us are the slums—the basthis, the sewers—the nalas, but it definitely isn’t the same everywhere. And maybe I can show you another side.

Living in the middle class can be a sandwich between different spaces. You don’t know what you are and where you are, because you can look at things, you can look at people, but you can’t get it. You can’t touch it. You can’t afford it. And that’s what living in India, for me, feels like. I know I’m part of the larger universe, the Global South. But when you look at our greenhouse gas emissions, our per capita expenditure, our baseline poverty rates, you see something entirely different. When you’re stuck in that middle place where you do not have money, but you also do not live on the streets, you don’t know whether you need therapy or just a good friend to talk to.

Although I feel very proud to be homegrown—as in, I’m connected with my family, I’m still in the place I love to be—there will always be things which, for anyone, pull you out of yourself. And here in India, perhaps the struggles are harder, but when you take a longer view, everything is still connected. There are different lenses through which to see everything: there’s a lot of privilege in my language when I call myself Indian and not a Bharatiya. And the land that I am living in is not just my own: there are countless bloodsheds that our people have done to ourselves, and there are also people who have committed violence against us. And I want to practice compassion and kindness to others, to myself, because, in the long view, we are all the same.

In this process of equalizing, I ask myself a lot of questions. “What is fair? Who is it fair to? Who am I playing at? What language am I using? What has been taken away?” I started asking these questions when I was six, when I was eight, when my grandmother would tell me stories. (I see a lot of my people and my friends feeling empty, but maybe this is why we are sticking to our grandparents, to our culture.) My origins are in Bengal, and I wasn’t always proud of that. When my grandparents used to talk about Bengal, they didn’t used to say “the East” and “the West,” because they didn’t want that reality—the fact that a partition happened: somebody came, took something from us, and we are different. The fact that my cousins who live in the East Side are from a different nation, and we are not the same, even though they still call it desh.

All I can think about in relation to this are the songs, the stories, and the poems that my grandmother has remembered since she was in the first grade. It honestly feels like I am living in her memories. Because I don’t know what she’s talking about when she says that, in my hometown, there’s a place called Nau Lakha—which means “nine million,” and refers to nine million trees in that spot at one time. Because when I was younger, there was nothing there. When I was six or seven, my river was already a sewer, and I did not understand why there was a Hanuman temple beside it. By contrast, in my grandmother’s stories, there were plays, and fairs, and you would go into the jungle, and the tiger would randomly come ransack your home, and you would have to run into the basement to hide. This was not my reality, but I desperately wanted to live in it. Even though it sounded scary, it felt so much more connected.

I think, no matter where I go, I always come back to this remembered space, to these dreams. It is not just me that lives through me: it is all the different people I have met, who are no longer with me. It’s the club my best friend and I started at twelve years old, when she asked, “Hey you like horses, right? When you go for a horse ride, why is it so dirty? Have you ever thought about that?” And, honestly, I had not. I just took the garbage as my reality. But that question sparked something inside of us. I am part of a generation that was born inside this movement—since I was little, the cloud has grown as I have grown, and it has engulfed my hometown.

My town used to be this dirty place, like what you think of when we say “Global South” and “the poor,” and when we talk about the parts of India that are dirty. But it’s now going to be the cleanest city in India for the eighth time in a row! And that change wouldn’t have been possible if we relied only on policies and officials. It was possible because of my friends, my community, everybody when we understood that this city is ours. Nobody else is going to come here and take care of it for us. Our movement was able to see not just that the river was a sewer, but that flowers grew around it. And in the sixth grade, my friend told me that you can eat those flowers, as a little pakora—and that solidified something in me. This thing that we used to call a weed, that we used to pluck out because it was unnecessary, was actually purposeful. I couldn’t see that purpose, initially, but the minute I thought, “Ooh, this is tasty,” it had value for me.

That shift did a lot in my head—it’s a change that I still carry with me, as I try to stay alive purposefully. And something about my hometown brings all of this together—the company of all the different people who have changed me over the years, and my grandmother’s poems about nature. Knowingly or unknowingly, I owe those stories, and those people, everything.

My name is Amara. I’m from Lagos, Nigeria, and I’ve basically lived here my entire life. And I don’t think there is ever just one reason that any of us get into climate activism or become interested in caring for our earth, but one thing that feels true for me is that I’ve always been a curious kid. I’ve always been the one to want to learn the name of every plant I see. I would cut samples, or pull them up (which is probably not the best for the environment) and stick them in my room, trying to get them to grow myself.

I always wanted to know how to preserve life, because I grew up in a major city—one of the most populous cities in the world. I never had the opportunity to go out whenever I felt like it and hike a mountain or surf in the ocean. I don’t drive past trees every day. I never really got to see a proper rainforest until I was 13, and that was when I traveled to the US over one of my yearly summer trips. I think that trip was the first time I absolutely knew. For the first time, I was able to see something that I never really had access to before. I poured myself into it—I spent the entire day just lying in the grass outside and playing with my younger cousins under the shade of trees. I was like, “is this what life really is?”

And that same year, when I was 13, when I came back to Lagos, my entire house got flooded. We had to pack our bags and relocate into the safe lodge of my Godmother’s house until our house got back to habitable conditions. These floods we’ve been having are recurring, and they displace so many people, destroy homes and communities. And no one knows what to do about it. Because I grew up in a city where there’s so many more things to be worried about than climate change—there’s poverty, there’s corruption, there’s crime, there’s kidnappings. Something that isn’t as tangible or relatable was not discussed when I was younger. So I was confused about why our house flooded—how did that happen? I felt vulnerable. I was scared. I was like, “How do we know it’s not gonna happen again, even if we rebuild? We can’t keep living like this.”

So I took it upon myself to find out exactly why the floods are happening and to learn how to protect people against them. And I used this knowledge. I told my parents, and they told other people, and they were like, “Amara, you need to find a way to help everyone else know, too.” Because we had the money to rebuild. I’m privileged in the fact that I still have a roof over my head. But what about the people who don’t?

So I tried to find a way to raise awareness, and that’s really how I got into the whole climate space, by trying to educate people, to let people know—so that they aren’t as vulnerable. Right now, I’m focusing on raising awareness about the crisis and empowering other people to make a change in their environment, their actions. I’m trying to help people see how much nature does for us, and how we’re vulnerable to her because we haven’t treated her well.

I’m here to tell you a story—my story. I come from a city nicknamed “the bride of the sea.” The sea is everywhere to me. My childhood was by the sea. My first love was by the sea. Even my sad moments were by the sea. I’ve cried to the sea many times. 

But my relationship with the sea started during fishing trips with my grandmother. We would sit on the tip of the pier, and I would eagerly wait for the next catch. She would teach me her little techniques and tricks for fishing, and after a good day, I would take a dip in the sea. I would feel it engulfing me, containing me. “I’m here. I’m with you. I love you,” it would say.

And then, as the years went by and I grew older, the weather grew harsher. In the winter, the rain and the sea would flood my streets, affecting the lives of many. I was so confused: why was this happening? Even then, it wasn’t until my friend confided to me that he had attempted to take his own life by drowning himself in the sea that I was filled with despair and sadness.

I decided to confront the sea: “Why are you doing this? Why are you hurting us?” 

As the waves crashed loudly, I could hear a distant cry from the sea. “I’m hurting. I’m dying. Help me!”

That’s when I decided to play a role and take action. I decided to pursue environmental health and pursue a career in tackling the climate crisis by fighting for the health of the people and giving voice to the voiceless. And from policy paper to policy paper and from one conference to another, I’ve learned that what seems to be a battle against climate change is actually a battle against each other.

The years pass by. On my way to the next climate conference, I see an ad: “Be the first in 2085 to see the Library of Alexandria underwater. Book now for only 300k!”

Suddenly, I just freeze. I stare blankly at the ad. Flashbacks of my memories with the sea. My childhood, my life, my home. What was once Alexander the Great’s dream now becomes a collective dream of all its people.

I hope you can hear me well. 
This is a story about how I became a climate justice activist. 
Yeah. Here we go. 

I first heard about climate change in 2019, when the IPCC said that we have twelve years to limit climate change. Since then, I have experienced climate anxiety, and I am worried about the future of my thirteen nephews, who are threatened by the climate crisis. 

I have thirteen nephews. They are very funny. Their smiles are very sweet. My nephews are the reason I became a climate justice activist. My nephews have the right to live a decent life. They have the right to a healthy environment. They have the right to live on a livable Earth. 

I don’t want to see my nephews’ sweet smiles disappear because of the climate crisis. Every time I hear the news of the climate crisis, I immediately feel sad, because I have thirteen nephews who are threatened by the climate crisis. The people of my country, Indonesia, are part of the Most Affected Peoples and Areas.

I worry all the time, because the climate crisis threatens our lives. I’m furious with world leaders who let us face heatwaves, droughts, pandemics, flooding, extreme rains, and ecological disasters every day. And I’m very angry with the corporations that have endangered the future of my thirteen nephews. 

Thank you.

That was it.

She had pronounced precisely, perfectly what I had failed to for eighteen years. With that single word she captured its raw beauty: the birds in their sweet symphony. The quiet, enigmatic rustling of leaves. The majestic army of trees, standing tall and unblinking, whether rain or shine. When she said that word I felt its light, sylvan charm rush through me, filling me whole.

She called my home a paradise.

Oh, paradise. She would not know that this magic spell would disappear in a few months.​

Nor would I.

Like a cancer patient, the forest was losing its hair far too quickly. Chunk by chunk the branches fell, with me scrambling to salvage as much as I could. For the first time in eighteen years, I could see through the leaves and branches outside my window. The never-ending patch of green was gone. Pallidly the trunks swayed in the wind, trying to stand tall. What was initially a thick and thriving piece of nature was now reduced to rows of balding, leafless, skinny sticks.

I remember the queasy, stomach-churning horror in me as I watched the squeaky cranes inch closer to the swathe of trees. Slowly they bent down, dug their claws into the ground, and yanked—the tree fell down, not with a single thud but with uncanny similarity to the beat of a million breaking bones. I heard my heart slam to the ground. The death of a tree. I felt like reporting it to the police. (In fact, I did report it to the police.)

I couldn’t take my eyes off the scene—it was that kind of horrific, grotesque thing that you just need to take one last look at. You know something horrific is happening, and you don’t want to hide from it. you want to be exposed to the bare truth of it, you want to feel every inch of it, you want to truly know it before it’s gone. The monotone growl of the machine. The indifferent, repetitive actions: claw, pull, throw. CLAW, PULL, THROW. I watched them struggle with one particularly stubborn tree. First beaten to the ground, it pounced back to life, then beaten again, it forced itself upright once more. What perseverance! Finally, the machine gave up, easily dug a circle around the plant, tore open the piece of ground, and flung the tree over. The breath in the tree died as it wobbled to stillness. Futile perseverance.

I jerked the window shut so I would not hear the sound of death. I pulled the curtain so I would not see. I forced myself to focus on my upcoming exams. For weeks, I made sure I only came home past sunset, so everything was dark, and I could continue kidding myself the trees were still there.

In Singapore, where everything operates with an uncanny efficiency, it’s difficult to build memories in a place that will last, and find a sense of connection to a place. I was lucky to have known and loved a forest, at least for a while, in my life. I remember, when I was sixteen, my teacher asked the class:

“How many of you are satisfied with the greenery in your residential area?”

I shot my hand up in the air proudly. Then, glancing around my class of forty, I was stunned to realize that only one other person raised her hand.​

I’ve always stayed in Bedok, but today I don’t recognize it anymore. Where home was once a place of solace and calm, today it terrifies me greatly that almost every week I see an alien appendage stuck somewhere.

“Save Semakau,” they tell us cheerily, referring to our only landfill, which is rapidly running out of space, while digging out our fine floor tiles to trash.

“Reduce, reuse, recycle!” they nod eagerly, while furiously uprooting our landscapes, replacing them with some more stolen sand. 

“Turn off your lights,” they warn us sternly, while decorating our apartment blocks with TV screens, blind to its invasive lurid artificial light that is more threatening than inviting. 

The absurdity of it makes me want to shout, “Stop!” It makes me want to scream. I’m sick of seeing my home, my memories, my childhood, bought away with dollars and cents. Forcing us to be complicit in delusional development, and to lead lifestyles that no planet can sustain.

I have come here to tell you a story of a river called the Colne.

But the story starts somewhere else. It starts maybe in a lake called Uddebosjön, or maybe in Kinda Kanal. We don’t quite know where it starts. What we do know is that it starts with a young girl who absolutely loves swimming outdoors: in a lake, a river, a canal, it doesn’t matter. She happily spends hours in the water.

The girl grows older. And the older she gets, the more aware she becomes of the world around her. This makes her feel heavy, not light like she feels in the water. But the more time goes on, the more time she spends not in the water—and the heavier things become. It isn’t just that she feels heavy—she feels like she is separate from her body, and she stops doing the things she enjoys.

But even so, life carries on: some bad things happen to her, and some good things happen to her. And at some point, the girl, now a woman, found herself living next to a river called the Colne. It wasn’t like any other river she’d met. It was tidal, constantly changing, ebbing and flowing. The tide would come in, bringing the water from the ocean, and the tide would go out, revealing glistening mud flats. She started visiting the river more and more often. She felt drawn to it. Like it was a friend.

And she swam in it, as well. She swam for the first time in a long time. The water was cold and constantly moving, and she felt the sense of lightness again, like… Not like everything she worried about was just gone, in a big flood. More like everything, including the dread, the anxiety, and grief, all of them were still there, but they were lighter, and they had space to float around. Like she didn’t have to keep them in place.

And the contact between her skin and the cold water, those exact points where her body ended and the rest of the world began also made it so clear to her that her body was part of her. It was never separate. And she was never separate from the world, either. When she moved, the water moved. It was that simple.

One day, a man told her “Phah! you’re brave swimming here! I wouldn’t put my head under water if I were you.” And he told her about a sewage outlet a couple of miles upriver. “If the wind is in the right direction, you can smell it,” he said.

She hadn’t noticed that smell before, but now she did, and getting in the water didn’t feel quite so appealing. And at some point—I can’t say exactly when—she stopped swimming altogether. She would just sit, watching the tide come and go.

One day, however, when the tide is high, she takes off her shoes, and her socks, and rolls up her trousers and puts her feet in the water. And then she feels it. That contact with everything else. But it isn’t just contact with the water—it’s contact with the sun on the back of her neck, with the gulls laughing around her.

She thinks about the people and the places she loves, and the feeling is almost too much. And for what feels like no real reason at all, she thinks, “Maybe we’ll be OK.” She looks out at the river again, thanks it and walks home.

In a nutshell, my story is about how the land, environment, and weather connect us to certain traditional and cultural practices here in Zambia. In the southern central part of Africa is a landlocked country called Zambia, a peaceful nation with more than 72 tribes. Zambia is divided into ten provinces, and some of these provinces are named after their geographic relation to the capital city, Lusaka. Mine is called Western Province, because it is on the western side of the country.

This province is well known for a tradition called the Kuomboka Ceremony, which happens annually because of the rains. The word “Kuomboka” simply means “coming out of the water,” signifying what happens during the ceremony: the king moves from the lower, flooded side of the plain to the upper side during the rainy season using a mighty boat called the Nalikwanda. The scenery of this colorful event is canoes and water in the floodplain; that already tells you a little bit about how the people of the land are connected to water.

I spent much of my childhood and teenage years in Western Province and was accustomed to the traditions and culture of the land. In a typical Zambian setup, a village is made up of different households comprising children and their parents—mostly mother, father, auntie or uncle. As a child, I was lucky to be in a household headed by my mom and my dad, and we used to do a lot of fishing.

Fishing is a part of our culture: it’s a way of knowing that we are in a land with an abundance of water. And there are different types of traditional fishing methods. In this story, I will share one type of traditional fishing mostly practiced by women and children using traditional fishing baskets. This type of fishing is common when the land is flooded, and it is practiced in the shallow, fresh water, which has a lot of fish. As children, we used to go out with our aunties, our moms, and our sisters in the afternoon. Our job as kids was to carry the calabashes and buckets where we put the fish we caught. We could not even carry the traditional fishing baskets because they were so big: like one or two meters in length!

What you do with those baskets is you go out into the shallow water. You immerse your fishing basket there, and then you move away about three to five meters away, and then you start disturbing the water and the grasses to push the fish in the direction of the basket. And when you reach for the basket and lift it out of the water, there are fish inside! Then you pick the fish out and put them into a calabash or a bucket. I used to enjoy this practice of fishing, because it was more than just an activity: it was such a happy experience. It was fun. You laugh as a family. You chat as a group. When you catch a big fish, and it tries to escape, then you start smiling and laughing. In other instances, dogs will accompany you as well, and will be walking by the riverbanks. It was a wonderful community experience that brought families together.

One day when we went fishing, I noticed that after just the first basket immersion, the people said, “Let’s go home!” and we went back. This kept happening, and at first, I didn’t understand. Eventually, however, I asked why. And I learned that, in our tradition, whenever your first catch is either a catfish or a tadpole, an eel or a very small fish (or if your first basket is completely empty), your day is jinxed, and you will have a very bad catch that day. So to avoid a bad catch, and a waste of time, families will decide not to continue fishing and will just head home. For us kids, this was not funny: to be looking forward to a great day of fishing, only to be told, “Let’s go home! We will come back another day!”

This tradition is still being practiced today, although some people have stopped. And although I was not originally a fan of this practice, because it deprived me of the joy of fishing, now that I have grown up, I have come to really cherish and enjoy it. This act connects us to the land and the fish and water, and it conserves the fish indirectly: when you return the small fish into the river and go back home, you allow those fish to grow and breed.

So today, I’m proud of this tradition, and I no longer mind hearing the words, “Let’s go home—we will come back another day!”

I’m sure many fellow activists get the question: when did it start? What inspired your passion? And I think like many, for me the answer to this question is not that straightforward, because it is often not just one moment or occurrence. I didn’t just wake up one morning and think, “OK, right—I’m gonna be an activist!”

At the end of the day, I believe a passion as deep as this is born from love… and regardless of everything else that is going on in the world, there is so much to love on this little blue planet of ours. So, the story I want to share with you really is a love story: a love story for our planet, for our shared humanity, and for our future.

It is written in the form of two poems that I have published in my book, Dear Earth, and they describe an experience I had here in South Africa. I would like to share those with you now.

FINDING A PIECE OF PARADISE

Today was beautiful. Magical.
We hiked to three magnificent waterfalls in a desolate mountain valley.
It was a hot, long walk but worth every step.

The burning sun rested over us.
The wind stroked the hair on our skin.
We walked over hills and rocks.
Up and down.

The valley was covered in green vegetation.
Warm winds drifted past us as we reached higher altitudes.
Sweat and salt.
The first gushing waterfall greeted us from afar.

The cold water lingered on our hot skin.
The taste of freedom.
Every droplet reviving us.

The second waterfall drew us into a different world.
Steep cliffs on either side as we walked into the narrowing gorge.
Insects and birds chirping.
Dark, nutrient-rich soil.
Slippery stones.
Lush greenery.
Bat nests hanging on the dark walls.
Frogs jumping ahead of us on the slippery stones.
An untouched world.
An untethered being.

We dissolved into its beauty.
In awe. Speechless.
Grateful.

Our last waterfall was a deep pond of cool water.
A calm bubbling farewell from the valley.
The sun set as we made our way back over the mountains.
I stopped to watch the last sunrays disappear behind the peaks.
Bathing everything in golden light.

LOSING PARADISE

The next day it caught flames.
The fire took down our little paradise.
It burned to ashes.

Never will it be the same.
We were the last ones to admire all the beauty before it crumbled away.
Every shrub and plant I saw no longer exists.
Every frog I saw had its breath taken away.
Every cricket that sang for us sings no longer.

The green mountain peaks saw the sun for the last time that evening.
This was my home. Nature is home.
I am nature. We are nature. And we are burning.

My heart is so sore.
My body is shaking.
My piece of home is burning.

Part of me wants to hide away from all this pain and all these problems.
But I am writing and speaking about what hurts and makes me sad
Because this is something we must share and learn from.

Fire is no toy.
Cigarettes kill.
Wildfires spread within seconds.

Our home is burning and with it, part of us burns.
It is our responsibility to act.
To do as much as possible to protect our home.

Recently, I went back to the valley. It is blooming again. It is not the same, but nature has recovered. Nature can heal. We only need to give it the space and the love to do so. Our stories in this world might sometimes be of fires and floods, but they are also about love and hope, and collectively, we have the power to let the latter dominate. To let love and hope blossom.

Thank you for listening to this little story from the tip of Africa.

I grew up in the village, and I used to watch my father going to the farms with baskets of maize and grains to plant. When it was raining, we enjoyed watering our crops. My mother used to sell most of the harvest in town until, one bad season, we had little to no rain at all. It was really bad. It was really crazy. 

My father was stressed out, and he said it was caused by the impacts of climate change, of extreme weather conditions. It was very hurtful: we had little or no rain at all, and the climate variability affected the ability of our crops to grow. It was very hard for them to respond to the changes in weather.

Being raised in the Maasai land of conservationists, who depend on agriculture both for their own livelihoods and for the pastures where they feed their herds, it was a really tough time. Extreme weather, no food to sell, no pastures. The sun was hitting constantly. We had no rain. I felt that the plants were crying, and the land was really crying. 

That’s when I began my advocacy. I spoke for the voiceless, because the land couldn’t speak. The rivers couldn’t speak. I started small, in my learning institutions, at school and in my community. I became so passionate, educating people and advocating for the planting of trees: I’m trying to build resilience for climate variabilities. 

Right now, conditions are clearly not yet perfect, but we are doing the best we have to store and use the little rain we have, and to utilize every resource of the environment. Little by little, small advocacies.

(The piece starts in full light.)

Hi, my name is Ethan, and I grew up in the theater.

For ten years, I lived in a sanctuary on top of a mountain, kept away from the rest of civilization, where I was expected to focus only on my craft.

Change lights.

(Lights in the room go off, with only the speaker’s face illuminated.)

The stage was my world. I started as an actor, from Greek tragedies to Shakespeare, all the way to contemporary performances—you name it. With a few other artists, we explored all the different theater vocabularies and broke them down to form our own laws of creation. We devised entirely new realities, all with their own laws of physics, of language, and of being.

Once, during a play we were doing, the power went out, and the stage went pitch black. So we decided to light some candles. Even though we could barely see the performers’ faces, we heard their voices, with just enough movement to see the emotion behind them. We did the entire play in the dark, with the storytellers creating a truly memorable experience, in conditions they had never rehearsed. The theater, our tiny little world, bowed down to whatever means we chose to command time and space.

Change lights.

(The dark room grows a little brighter.)

As we all became young adults, our world began to expand. Some left for college, some moved away, and some left the theater practice altogether. As I moved out into the world and into the busy cities, all that I was accustomed to cracked wide open, and I had to work with different people who practice different systems—whether that still be in the theater, or in education, or in political and climate activist groups.

I was introduced to a world that had no time to sit down and exhaust creative needs. A fast-paced world that needed to get things done now. I felt powerless in a world I could not compose. A world that had no time to listen. The sun did not follow my cues, nor could I call forth a gust of wind to simulate a storm, or have a prop-maker make more trees, or stop the floods from entering the city. It just doesn’t work that way. For the first time in my life, I bowed down to the systems that had been put in place years before my birth and the natural laws of the earth that cannot be moved or stopped.

Well how, then, can I make a difference?

(The room goes fully black.)

Change lights. Change lights. Change lights. Lights? Lights?

Well. What I’ve learned is: in a reality filled with chaos that darkens our view, with technology that overcomplicates things, with leaders who refuse to listen, I found hope in remembering simpler times.

(A candle is lit.)

A candle and storytellers to get us through this blackout. When all else fails, our voices are the very foundations of which to rebuild and continue creating our world.

(The candle is blown out.)

Thank you.