Is that a Gun in your pocket....

OR A SNUB-NOSED IRRAWADDY DOLPHIN?


I saw a wonderful thing today. I saw something that re-enforced my belief in the power of the story!

There I was, bored, doing my ADDH exercises (extreme telly channel hopping), when my finger became suddenly cataleptic, my subconscious had found something intriguing.

It was a programme on the Animal Channel, Action Planet I think and it was half way through, but I got a little bit of info from the bar at the bottom of the screen so I stuck around to see what would happen.

My patience was rewarded.

The programme was about a team of people trying to bring the snub-nosed river dolphins back into the conscious awareness of the villagers around the river, in a bid to save this most endangered species.

There was a bit about the team not getting on – well humans do that – and some bickering, which was really not that attractive from an ambassadorial perspective.

But the main part was the fact they were in Cambodia, they did not really speak the language and their mission was to raise the awareness of the plight of the dolphins and make the villagers realise what they were about to lose.

How did they do it?

They did not preach at them. They did not shout and scream at them. They did not plead with them.
They put on a spectacle; they acted out a story, the legend of the snub-nose dolphins and how they came to be.

The surprise that the team got was the turnout for their ‘play’.

In a place with no television, radio or telephones the amount of people that turned up for this ‘entertainment’ was outstanding!

The risk was that they were using a very old and venerated tale and the older villagers would judge these foreigners on how they interpreted it.

Not only did they have the villagers in the audience, but all the local schools in the area closed for the morning so the children could attend and the local Buddhist monks were also a part of the audience.

It went down a treat, the children loved it, the monks seemed amused by the whole thing and the elders of the villages smiled kindly – all applauded at the end.

What’s the big deal? None of these people spoke the others language, there was a smattering of Cambodian during the play but that was really the only spoken words in the whole thing. By gesture and mime the story unfolded to an audience entranced and enraptured by the events taking place before them.

But the story, the story got through to them, to a new generation that now when they see the dolphins in the rivers remember the legend being told to them; of how the dolphins came to be and their connection with the villagers themselves and how sad would it be to lose that connection.

Keeping these thoughts in the minds of the villagers it is more likely they will think of the dolphins – and things may change..