When did the issue of climate change become personal for you?
Enit’ayanfe: It became personal for me because it affects me, definitely. I live in a world where the ozone layer has peeled off. I feel the sun differently now. Many people are feeling the same way, without understanding why things changed, until certain things happened first and caused a strong awakening.
In my case, a tragedy felt via someone else’s story first made me realize that we were in deep problems. The first time in my life that I felt the horror deeply was when I saw the effects of climate issues in Warri through the girl’s eyes, the girl whose story I told.
It was in secondary school. We were in JSS3. Listening to her story unified us in a common loss. There were also other instances I experienced the implications of climate change. It was during my undergraduate moments in the university. And it was a very remote encounter. I was sitting in the Common Room, watching a movie, when a guy sitting next to me unwrapped a bubble gum and threw the foil on the floor. A woman had just mopped that floor and it was shiny and, somehow, the appearance of that litter prickled me between the shoulders. I imagined that single nylon piece becoming two, three, more, many, swelling into a zombie assault of refuse that could never be contained, and I blurted to him: “Pick it up.”
Nostalgia has a strong presence in in your story. Could this sense of nostalgia be of loss or hope?
Enit’ayanfe: It is of both. I wrote the creative nonfiction from the perspective of a real-life person: my classmate from secondary school. She had lost someone dear, owing to climate change crises in her locality. I feel strongly; I don’t know if this is because I am a writer, but I feel strongly, so much that other people’s grief can easily become something I almost own. So I wrote that entry with a burdening emptiness on my mind.
Though you have mentioned common loss and feeling the impact of global warming personally, could there be perhaps more reasons why you were inspired or compelled to tell this story?
Enit’ayanfe: While writing, I also thought of many other victims of climate change, people whose stories I had not heard, people whose stories were probably too heavy to slip into words. It was a heavy moment but it was also one speckled with hope. Hope, that if I could tell a story from my teenage past, in a time I so cannot forget, maybe more stories can be unearthed. Stories of people’s struggles against an environment that turns against them. And then, because these tragic, yearning accounts will be many and there is strength in number and in persistence, maybe someone somewhere in power will finally hear the people and we can all put forth our hands to heal our environment.
Additionally, like I said, I have an unforgettable memory from my teenage years. It was an experience seen through my classmate’s eyes. She came from Rivers state to have her education in Mayflower School, Ikenne. She was a boarding student. She was a vivacious girl before JSS3, when she suddenly became a long shadow of herself. I couldn’t ignore the change in the air around her. It was like watching a green earth die and lose its color. I accosted her one afternoon in an uncrowded spot on the school premises, and probed her for what happened. She told me about how someone close to her was killed in a riot that broke out at a pro-climate control rally in Warri. The story stayed with me, like blood transfusion. And when I heard about the “The Green We Left Behind” project, I knew that was the story I had to tell.
As an artist, how are you able to to merge beauty in language with such a dire theme on climate change?
Enit’ayanfe: In the circle of writers, my colleagues (is that an appropriate term?) have always accused me, jocularly, of propaganda writing. They would say to me, “You are always trying to say something. Can’t you just write for its sheer beauty?” Inasmuch as this bantering stings me, I know they are right from that angle. I truly find it unfair to myself to narrow my flair down to just politics. I believe in “art not just for art’s sake” as much as I accept that a story can simply attract interest just for its aesthetics. Yet this story I was supposed to write was supposed to “say something,” something specific in fact. Grief is a beautiful thing – there is a certain indefinable grace in loss, in anger, in despair – and the category clearly stated that it was creative nonfiction, so I said to myself: “You can tell this story, not just tell it but use language in such a way that the inherent pain as well as the inherent beauty in all of it can be fully appreciated.
I also mused on the power words carry when they are not too pedestrian. So I allowed myself to explore, unfettered, the beauty of symbolism and imagery in my entry. I dwelled on visual definition, using different colors at various points in the plot to drive the theme(s) home. I found it rather poetic. The liberal use of this literary device inspired the title I later settled for per the story: paint it in the color they can see.
As you release this story, your story to the world, what is your wish or hope for the story?
Enit’ayanfe: My hope is that it reaches not just the ears of solution providers in the world, but also their hearts, so that they won’t rest until efficient measures to curb these disasters are taken and properly utilized. My wish is that, because of the changes this story should incite, people no longer have to die, agonize or suffer some loss over climate problems anywhere in the world. In other words, I think it is simple. But we must not see it as simplistic, or something merely for one individual. It is something
we must all be involved in. The greenhouse effect is the major thing that needs to be severely checked. From studies, this effect sits on the precipice of what people do – or fail to do. The chief of them all is how humans dispose of waste. How humans manage waste. In my own way, I intend to continue educating the public on safe environmental hygiene and how the wrong attitude toward it puts us in latent perils. Burying waste rather than burning them is one smart, if uncommon way to avoid harmful landfills and incineration that pollute the air, especially with toxic gases like methane. I intend to suggest this and drive it into activity if I get a platform, or in whatever platform I can create.
Apart from writing, how else do you intend to contribute towards the curbing of global warming?
Enit’ayanfe: I could advocate, more pressingly, that we turn our gaze away from fossil fuels (coal-burning power plants). They emit the largest carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to Natural Resources Defense Council. Therefore, I intend to discourage public investors from investing in this industrial coal production. And how do I go about this? I could write a petition to party leaders and candidates to let them know that my vote and my friends’ votes rest on their stance on global warming, on whether they would support and sustain feasible climate-saving alternatives, like investing in biofuels, solar, hydroelectric and wind energies. I would also encourage my friends in other countries to do the same, so we can achieve global solutions.
Also, I intend to raise a platform that will also educate people about the dangers of intensive farming. People can farm, should farm, really. However, there should be a sort of control over how plant protection products are used and fertilizers, too, which are notorious for producing nitrous oxide emissions. I can be part of the research groups that focus on less inimical substances that can be used to grow crops.
Further, we also need to stop cutting down our forests. Trees help to regulate the density of poisonous gases in the air by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They also retain water and enhance biodiversity. Without enough trees in our world, the toxic carbon floating around is flung back into the air to wreak havoc. So we need more trees, even if it takes planting new ones.
On a final note, I know we are building infrastructure and communities, and that we need space for these. Neverrheless, we need to be careful so that progress does not push us backward. With our seemingly small but unrelenting efforts, we can all be potent climate warriors. Together, we can.
Biography
Enit’ayanfe Ayosojumi Akinsanya was born in his mother’s hometown, Ijebu-Ife, and raised in Sagamu, Ogun State, Nigeria, in 1994. He is the author of a short-story collection, “How to Catch a Story That Doesn’t Exist,” published in 2021. A graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University, he bagged a House of Levite “The Ready Writers” Fellowship in 2016 as an undergraduate. His full-length fiction was a finalist for the National GTB Dusty Manuscript Prize for Fiction in 2018 – among about 10,000 entries. His fictional works have appeared in The Shallow Tales Review, Brittle Paper and Fiery Scribes Review. His essays and interviews have appeared in various top blogs and newsrooms within Africa. Enit’ayanfe is passionate about the kind of humanity that transcends borders. He has a savior in solitude, pure Afro-centric music and, sometimes, foreign pop and R & B. He is crazy about four things: family, books, ice-cream and Jesus (not necessarily in that order). He currently lives in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria.
