29 dec

Frank Westerman is a fascinating dutch journalist. He studied cultural anthropology. He wrote books about the deserted northern part of the Netherlands that I read, but do not remember that much about. And a book about Ararat, the mountain in turkey where Noah was supposed to have landed. Do not remember too much about that either, except that it was a captivating story. Westerman is not the one to debunk a story, he is fascinated by man’s ability to make sense out of nonsense and neglect evidence to the contrary of what seems to be helpful for the moment.
His latest book is about the Valley of Death in Cameroon. After an explosion in 1986 thousands of people and animals died in a hidden part of Cameroon.
Westerman divides his story up in three parts. He starts with the myth-killers, which are the geologists trying to find an explanation for a big cloud of CO2, a purer cloud of air – if I remember it right – that spread through the valleys and killed most of life there – ants, cows, humans, they all died.
The most sensible explanation is that there is a lot of gas hidden under a few lakes that are caused by volcanic eruptions. Some scientists think it is necessary to have a new eruption from a volcano to cause trouble, others – the winners – think the eruption of gas can be caused spontaneously or being caused by something simple as a little breeze.
This is the boring stuff according to Westerman. He spends a hundred pages or something about the myth-bringers, which are really the priests that spread Christianity throughout Cameroon.
But the most fascinating group is the mythmakers. There is no geological explanation for the eruption, it was not the will of God – which most of the missionaries also did not believe – but it was so sudden, so intense an experience, so dramatic, that it had to be caused by something that is as dramatic as the result. Israelis testing a neutron bomb, the president of the country trying to get rid of a part of his country and people he didn’t like
The cultural anthropologist in Westerman really likes these last stories, and it is fascinating to realize that mankind is always interested in the conspiracy theory, above a rational explanation (or even the irrational (religious) ones).
The most important message of the book is that science is not as powerful as one would imagine, meaning the science that is based on obvious, neutral, observations and written down in mathematical models of undisputed truth.
But then there is the science of observing the extraordinary, the idiosyncrious, the unique experience of every single human being.
Focusing on that kind of behaviour makes making conclusions almost impossible. The exception becomes the rule. But then again, it is a way of addressing reality that is much more in accordance with human experience.
Fascinating reading, again. Hope that having written about it makes me remember the details of this book a little bit longer.