By Maureen Smith (Cameroon)

      Recently I hitched a ride with a colleague on an out-of-town trip, hoping to persuade him that we should carpool more to help combat global warming. After the small talk, I spoke of my worries that Americans produce 25 percent of the greenhouse gases but that global warming will reek greatest havoc for people in developing countries. Then I searched his face for signs of shock, or even mild concern.  He sat silently, apparently unfazed, with his poker face staring at the road, his calm hands clasping the steering wheel of his mini-van. We hit a dead end.  Not in the highway, but in our conversation. As we zoomed through cornfields under a setting sun, I heard only the lonely rhythm of tires rolling across cracks in the blacktop. And I wondered to myself if there was anything I could say to make my colleague care about predicted changes in climate. Maybe he felt preached to, bored, or skeptical. I changed the subject.
     The next time I spoke to a friend about global warming, I brought it up in a much different way. I spoke about  Albertine, my very close friend who grows millet in the Sahel Desert of Northern Cameroon. Together, this young widow and her children have survived increasing droughts and decreasing millet yields. She's lost several children, has tried to make money by selling millet wine and sewing. But life just keeps getting harder for her. If global warming trends continue, she and others will feel the effects, with increasing threats to public health, food supply and environmental conditions.
My American friend expressed alarm and asked about ways we could prevent global warming.  I felt heartened and wondered why she reacted so differently than  my colleague. She had never lived in, or even visited, a developing country. But the reasons for her concern were not that mysterious. My American friend knew I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon years ago, and had heard me talk about Albertine many times.
     No matter how much we cut our individual and household energy consumption, combating global warming will take the effort of more than just a few of us. It's easy to get discouraged with threats to federal funding for renewable energy, and the seeming apathy of some people. But what can we do to convince others, particularly friends, family members and acquaintances who have never traveled in developing countries, to make changes?  We have to convince them to care.
     Each of us has stories to tell about friends we made, people we cared about in host countries while we worked as volunteers. Other Americans need to hear our stories to bring them one step closer to places that seem so far removed.   Even in news stories, journalists use "anecdotal leads" to illustrate a real-life, personal example of  how one or several people are affected by a news development. The stories are meant to reach out and touch you. They tell about the human elements of news. The trick is to get readers emotionally involved enough to read further.  Then, knowing  the numbers will mean more.
     I left newspaper journalism several years ago, discouraged by a growing lack of international coverage, particularly about Africa. I decided to write a book, hoping to tell the stories about the kindness people showed me while I lived in Cameroon. I wanted to try and understand, and explain, how people who have so little can give so much, and what they might teach us about doing the same.
     Despite drought and famine, the death of her mother and a miscarriage just before my last visit, my friend Albertine dug a latrine, built a fence around her mud hut, bought new dishes and made meals of fish and chicken for me while I stayed in her mud hut.  "If you are rich, you give guests beef," she told me. "If you are not especially rich, you give them goat or sheep. If you are poor, you feed them chicken or fish."
     On one afternoon, Albertine worked on brewing her millet beer, and said little as her friends questioned me about the price of airfare, and asked if $1,600 was a small amount for an American. Most Africans could never touch that amount of money, they said. What none realized was that many Africans would never cause the same release of greenhouse gas during a lifetime as I did during that plane trip. They didn't know the reasons for the changing weather or increasing droughts.
     Albertine and other subsistence farmers least deserve to suffer the effects of global warming. But Albertine doesn't sit around complaining. In her last letter, she wrote of plans to grow lots of millet during the rainy season, and reminded me that she doesn't "stay with her hands crossed." But she remembers a time when her parents' crops yielded more, and the family even had extra harvest to trade for livestock.
     Memories of Albertine remind me to be vigilant about saving energy. My partner and I installed insulation and energy-efficient windows in our duplex. And we buy used goods (from thrift stores) or locally produced products (from co-ops, farmer's markets) that we hope save on fuel burned in shipping and manufacturing. But I still want to persuade others to care enough to change old habits and follow these examples.
     We, former volunteers, must speak on behalf of the people who will be most affected by global warming. Few even know about it, and fewer have power to change American habits. We must convince other Americans to care. Each of us needs to keep telling stories about friends we met in our host countries, reminding other Americans that they are only one link away from these human examples in a chain of friendships that stretches around the world.


Maureen M. Smith,  a former reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, is currently writing a memoir, tentatively titled, "My African Sister," about  friendships with several women in Cameroon.