Last Monday I went to a creative co-working session in Berlin to write my blog. A young Asian woman sat next to me at our table, coughing away. I was irritated that she’d come to the co-working session being sick, risking the other participants catching her cough, including me. In the break, the session leader, Rachel Marsden, went up to her to greet her and asked her where she was from. Her name was Wendy and she’d just arrived in Berlin from Australia three days ago. Rachel and Wendy went on to talk about the bushfires. Back in Australia, Wendy’d woken up in her flat with her bed covered in soot. “I’d left the window open. This is probably where I got my cough”, she said. I felt ashamed at my pettiness.
I don’t normally watch the news or read about the daily disasters going on in the world. But these bushfires really disturbed me. And sitting next to Wendy, they had, in part, become real to me. She had escaped. Here, in Berlin, she was safe. We were all safe, breathing the tolerable metropolis air, sitting in a cafe, working on a proposal, a story or editing a video. But there were millions of people and animals still out there, dying and suffering, the survivors finding it hard to breathe.
I thought of the drought over the past two years in Brandenburg, the area around Berlin where I live. The desiccation of trees, the visible decline of the water levels in the lakes and streams, the forest fires. I and my neighbours live directly adjacent to a forest. It’s 15 metres between the forest and my bedroom. I realised I was so disturbed by the Australian bushfires because they were closer to home than I’d allowed myself to imagine. What would it be like to see this forest burning, maybe losing my home? Or having to stay locked inside, in fear of breathing toxic air? My cat, Mr T, screaming 24/7 in protest and running up the walls? What would we do then?
In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald I read that “Bushfires produce particulate-matter pollution – airborne particles that are small enough to enter and damage human lung tissue.” And not just human lung tissue, animal lung tissue as well. Being part of the community of living beings, we all need clean air. “What we’re finding now is that air pollution tends to affect all parts of the body… There is increasing evidence around air pollution and neurological conditions, for example Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s.” The article goes on.
I don’t know why I’m writing this, since I have nothing to offer to save or help the people and animals in Australia or to create clean air in the world. Maybe it is just to say I wish I did.