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antagonisms that highlight the Solega’s highly empathic attitude towards the f orest’s
other inhabitants.
Solega people clearly regard many forest animals as undergoing the same tasks
and facing the same challenges as they themselves undergo and face in their daily
lives. After all, animals are born, get sick, grow old and die in much the same way
as humans do. Having themselves experienced the hunger brought on by unfavour-
able climatic conditions, or through the local extinction of food plants, the Solega
are quick to recognise the plight of other forest creatures who are forced to venture
ever closer, and more frequently, to human settlements and fi elds, simply to fi nd
suitable grazing. Seeing their forest paths overgrown with an impassable wall of
thorny Lantana , they understand that it must be equally diffi cult for the forest’s
larger animals to migrate to fresh pastures or breeding grounds. Keenly missing the
heady scent of once-common fragrant blossoms, they fi nd it unsurprising that fewer
beehives have been seen in recent years. And as they watch their immediate sur-
roundings being smothered under a deceptively lush monoculture, they realise that
the forest itself is dying, slowly choking to death.
6 Signs and Relationships