Make Bongo-flavoured noise for nature, peace and freedom 

We need some noise in life. Even the holy book gets it. The bible encourages us to make both music and noise – holy noise and holy music.

“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.” The psalms extol. Worship is potentially noisy. The holy spirit and judgmental onlookers in church and neighbourhood tend to sometimes measure the temperature of one’s spirituality using the thermometer of noise.

Never mind that Jesus himself frowned upon judging others even if his father, the Abrahamic God, anointed an entire lineage of Levites as judges for generations. Noise we must now articulate, assess and analyse in Op-Eds and other elite media after it recently got a Bongo flavour endorsement from the deposed Gabon leader.

Even though noise pollution such as from bars, worship centres and torture facilities is illegal, Bongo noise is unique and invites intellectual  treatment. Once Bongo-flavoured, it as an answer to military coupes, we had to turn the pages of this interesting book called noise in spite of the fact that it is banned in some laws and spaces.

Rarely does a powerful elite from ruling families like Bongo’s cast noise in liberation lingo. They spend their entire lives castigating us as diversionary, problematic, unpatriotic and subversive. Such bedeviling of noise is often used against people seeking liberty, space, freedom and other necessities from the parents, leaders, politicians, administrators and other signposts of the status quo. Yet noise, like music, its more honourable, artistic and much-loved opposite, is a tool for liberation.

It also lends itself to political and social causes. For all the prejudice against it, noise is not homogenous and some of it is developmental. It is the developmental noise that we christen: ululations, public relations, marketing, advocacy, persuasion and prayers. What we sometimes call music is nothing more than noise. Music to my ears may be noise to others who do not share my brand of interests, values, culture, beliefs or opinions.

Did you know that some careers including journalism, activism and law depend on varying versions of noise- making? More than careers, life and death can hinge on whether noise is made. The success of a policy, a coup or a campaign can hang in balance or succeed depending on whether some people make noise or the quality and depth of nose.

When you are jailed, disappeared or being tortured by an oppressor, you desire few things like people making noise for your liberty, innocence and dignity. To that end, social media is a great platform for useful noise. That is why African dictators switch it off during cosmetic elections which they rig and deny political opponents and civil society space to trumpet alternatives.

A helpless and pleading Ali Bongo Ondimba was shown in a chair on August 29, 2023 begging friends around the world to make some noise. He wanted political noise, human rights noise and civil society noise he and like late father will have preoccupied himself with denying Gabonese in their entire tenure.

The noise for freedom, human rights, nature and environment often dismissed by tyrants in power is an exemplar of freedom of expression and a vehicle of people power. Such noise is worth one’s ears especially when still in power. It is too late when you are detained by ill health and the military junta in a cold, lonely chair unsure of your fate.

Some people have a tendency of dismissing people whose work inconveniences them like civil society, activists, satirists, human rights defenders, dissenters, critics and rivals as noisemakers. The term noisemakers is intended to discredit both the message and the messenger.

It is a de-campaigning trick in the bag of those who disagree with one’s work or opinion to label it noise and the proponent as a noisemaker. Yet, not all noise is pollution. Some noise is joyful, liberating, celebratory and helps in building spiritual, social, marital, and economic harmony, happiness and progress.

So, make some noise, as Bongo begs us – his friends. Make some noise really so that we can stop the climate emergency that is the greatest threat to life on earth. Make some noise to stop the polluters of our environment. Make some noise so that forests which supply us with food, medicine, wildlife shelter, hunting grounds, recreational opportunities, crafts, spiritual sites, educational opportunities, shelter from floods, air purification, life-giving oxygen, dollars and other benefits are protected from land speculators, deforesters, land grabbers and business that place profits above people and nature.

Make some green noise for the sake of our wetlands which are yielding to the destruction of profit-mad industrialists and subsistence farmers and unplanned urbanization that fail to value the kidneys of the planet. Make noise for wetlands, lakes and rivers loud enough to scare away destroyers fronting hotels, factories and houses.

Shout for the quality of the air against fatal pollutants. Raise your voice against globe-heating fossil fuels for the sake of a livable future and planet earth that has no substitute. Make some noise for nature so that we can stop the triple planetary crisis of pollution, biodiversity loss and the climate emergency.

We were once beaten as schoolchildren for making noise in class. Nature will beat and kill us or our children if we do not make enough noise to save it.

The author is CEO, Environment Shield