The Gardens of Their Dreams
Subtitle: Desertification and Culture in World History
Publisher: Zed Books
Published: August 18, 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 424
ISBN-13: 9781856497992
Subjects: Cultural studies; Environmental impact of natural disasters & phenomena; Human geography; World history; Nature; History: World; History; Nature / Field Guide Books; General; Natural Resources; History / General; Desertification; Human ecology; Social aspects
Other titles: Different Visions of Love: Partnership and Dominator Values in Christian History
First sentence: My first inspiration for this book came from meeting a group of women in Kenya. “Mama” Benedetta Ndolo leads a village women’s group in the Iveti hills of Machakos district. From the top of the hill in her village you can see for miles to the northwest, over the dusty countryside stretching towards Somalia. She and her friends taught me what is probably the main lesson this book can offer: whatever land you have, take care of it.


For a whole afternoon Mama Ndolo took me all around her village, showing off her group’s various accomplishments. We toured the hill-slopes terraced by village work-parties. We examined cement rain-water jars, paid for one at a time by funds from the women’s group garden. Then we looked at the many small nurseries of fruit-tree seedlings. Towards evening we went to her house, and there I saw what impressed me most. It was Mama Ndolo’s latrine, out her back door, through her grove of banana trees.


I went there just as darkness was falling. The valley was deep in shadow, with orange sunbeams still streaming over the hilltop, lighting the wisps of cloud overhead. Mama Ndolo’s outhouse had no roof; only reed walls, covered with morning glory and passion fruit vines in full flower. Squatting inside, I watched as the stars winked on, and the moon appeared above the trees. A roof on that latrine would have been a disaster. Instead of a private flower-garden planetarium, it would have been a dark little cell with flies buzzing inside. But the best thing about the latrine was the sound of the wind in the trees.


Three years before, Mama Ndolo’s friends started planting tree nurseries of mango, eucalyptus, and other seedlings. Years before, at the UN Conference on Desertification in Nairobi, several African governments had proposed planting two great belts of forest, one across North Africa and the other south of the expanding Sahara. After the conference, most governments did little about it. Perhaps they were under pressure to cut spending and pay on their loans. In Kenya the government advocated tree planting, but it was the village women who were most concerned to save the land beneath their feet. Nobody paid these women, or counted the cost of their reforestation efforts. The trees were their pay. And now the new forests of Mama Ndolo’s village stood nearly 12 feet tall. When you sat in the latrine, you could hear the breeze sifting through a whole hillside of young trees. It was a sound like whispering, or the purring of cats, as if the trees had moods and were sighing their happiness. They seemed full of confidence, as if sure that Mama Ndolo’s women are here, and this place will never become desert.
Description: The Gardens of Their Dreams is a unique and important book. It contains fascinating information about our past from an array of cultures and world regions. It verifies the connection between a history of violence and domination on the one hand, and environmental degradation and desertification on the other. It has direct implications for our time and the choices we must make if we, and the generations still to come, are to have a better future. I congratulate Brian Griffith for this accomplishment.

--- Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice & the Blade, Sacred Pleasure, Sacred Pleasure, The Power of Partnership, The Real Wealth of Nations
Table of contents: title: <P>1. Introduction: The Cultural Effects of Desertification</P>  <P>2. The End of the Green Sahara</P>  <P>3. Women’s Place in the Desert</P> 	 <P>4. The Devil’s Environment</P>	 <P>5. Warlords and the Politics of Scarcity</P> 	 <P>6. Tribes Without Nature in Common</P>  <P>7. Desertification and Culture in Ancient Egypt</P> 	 <P>8. South Asia’s Desert and Forest Heritage</P> 	 <P>9. The Impact of Desiccation on China</P> 		 <P>10. Two Legged Locusts and Desert Saints in North Africa</P>  		 <P>11. Ancient Europe’s Encounter with Desert Civilizations</P> 		 <P>12. The Age of Desert Civilization in Europe</P> 	<P>13. From the Book of Desert Wisdom to the Book of Nature</P> 	 <P>14: The Dominator Backlash in Modern Europe</P> 		 <P>15. This Place Will Never Become Desert</P>