Take your sandals off your feet,
for the place where you stand is holy ground.
The Bible
Acts 7:33
We live on the edge of the Table Mountain National Park. Mountains and ocean nearby and of course the wildlife that inhabit those spaces. Here where I am we mostly just get to see the baboons when we go to the Cape Point National Park. But some time ago that suddenly changed.
One of the troops is known as the Glencairn troop. There has been some upheaval in that troop resulting in a small troop of 5 hiving off and roaming across our valley. Crossing from the mountain behind us to those on the other side of the valley. This meant extra work for and extra input from the local baboon watch because the valley is inhabited by humans. The baboons move around in the day to forage for food and in the late afternoon they move towards a sleeping space.
We have some fruit trees in our garden and the loquat tree by our kitchen was laden with ripe fruit so of course this small group arrived one lunch time and for the next 4 days. It was a special time for us. We could watch the baboons eating and interacting, the youngsters played with wild abandon, romping up and down the tree, leaping from tree to tree. They ate the last of the loquats and the baboon watch had begun to push/herd them back towards the main troop.
When the message group is alerted that the baboons were moving towards our neighbourhood, we would make sure our dogs were indoors and that our doors and windows were closed. It is problematic if baboons go indoors, and very problematic if that becomes a habitual behaviour. Let me stress though that these animals are not predatory, nor aggressive. We live a stone’s throw from the wilderness. That wilderness has always been the home of the baboons. Humans have encroached, have insisted that their lives be unaffected by the very wilderness which makes this a special place, a beautiful place to live.
We were unprepared to hear that the city’s baboon joint task force had decided to designate the alpha male of the small roaming troop a raiding baboon and had duly euthanised him. There was upset and shock and sadness. There is of course no simple solution. For myself I wish that we as humans would not so easily assume that our rights and our comfort trumps that of the wilderness. Then I look around and I see that we treat other humans in just that same way.
And recently I have begun to understand that we are actually, absolutely connected, you to me and us to all of it out there. We sort of get it when we think of climate change and ecology. But listen, we are connected. When atrocities are committed in Palestine, in Sudan or back during the holocaust, we are all part of it. The baboons are part of it and of us. When I am rude to someone I briefly meet, I hurt that person, and I bring that hurt into the whole.
It is hard, maybe impossible to care about all of it. But we have bits of it right under our noses, right at our doors. And some causes are laid on our hearts. What we do and say and think matters, matters to us and to the world we create every day by how we live in it.
So it is not hard to understand where God’s body is,
it is everywhere and everything.
Mary Oliver
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