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Finally, the last animals that were not intoxicated by the oil in the sea or in the rivers departed for new
countries and new lands were they would feel more protected.
At this moment, the children began to look around.
Adults were too busy at the time making money or taking care of their household to really notice the
changes around them. So, in the company of the few adults that really felt concerned, we met in the
mosque and began to talk about all what was happening in our valley.
We divided into groups and we decided to go around the neighborhood to have an estimation of the
situation. How bad was the situation? Each group traveled around its part of the country and began to
notice.
The first group saw that the beautiful and luxurious forests we used to have had been cut down bit
by bit. For every tree people had cut, plants and animal life were reduced to their minimum. They noticed
dead animals on the ground of the forest, and nobody thought about planting trees back at the place where
they had disappeared.
On the contrary, they saw fields and fields of corn and wheat. No wonder it was impossible to find millet
or pomegranates anymore! We began to think that we would never see anymore of those multicolored
fields where all kinds of food were growing.
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The second group noticed that the wood cut from the forest was used to build new houses. These
houses were not built to last long; they served the occasional tenants and were destroyed a few years later.
Not only that, but the wood used for the foundations of other houses was discarded after it had served its
purpose. People also bought furniture from the rarest trees we had in the forest. These trees were hundred
of years old! And woodpeckers had their nests in it as well as their stocks of nut they dug with their beaks
during summer! These woodpeckers used to quarrel with the squirrels all winter long and kids liked to see
them arguing around the nuts stuck into the tree or sometimes play games together.
Now, a hundred of logs were carried away every day! How many animal and plant houses were destroyed
each day in order to build human homes? Children were too sad to make calculations!
The last group wandered around the town and saw that in many years the landscape had really changed. To
make sure of what they saw, they went to the public library and got old pictures of the area. What was their
surprise when they recognized old playgrounds turned upside down and log cabins squeezed between
bulldozers! Instead stood more and more factories, and with factories, more and more skyscrapers. The
population had doubled since a few years, actually since they were children, but they had never really
bothered to look around as long as they had enough to eat and a place to sleep.
Well! Not anymore it seemed.
When me met again all together at the mosque, this is the decision we took: we had to seek the
advice of grown ups. So we went to see our parents. But our parents were too busy calling people on the
phone or writing letters to their colleagues, or typing or traveling from conferences to meetings.
We refused to get discouraged, so we went to see the oldest people in the town. Surely they would have
time for us, and they would be wiser than our parents since they had lived longer! So we went to see them,
but they were always complaining of being tired or they would tell memories of the past. Some were still
actives, but when we went to see them in their gardens, we saw that they were using chemical pesticides
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