By fiifi DZANSI

I’m fortunate to stay at the outskirts of town. The scenery is breathtaking. In the mornings, a thin translucent fog spreads a thin sheet over hills and trees all around.

Dew trickles down leaves, roofs and everything like honey on a comb. The air is brisk and smells fresh. Birds of all kinds sing hallelujah.

Just a couple of kilometres away – right opposite my home office window is a hill. Meticulously, a quarry company is raising this natural resource to the ground. This company produces all sorts of quarry products for building and construction projects. It’s a legit company with all the papers.

Work goes on 24 hours each day of the week. We hear the humming and squealing of heavy-duty machines all the time. And from time to time, they set explosives under the rocks. A man roams the neighbourhood shouting ‘away, away, away to alert us. Then a siren goes off. Time to brace oneself for a massive, ear-wrecking boom!

First, we feel the earth crawl under our feet before the thunder. Our buildings vibrate like a giant mobile phone and bounce like football.

Gradually, though, the pretty hill is losing all its glamour. Many companies are undertaking several projects, like mining, logging, sand-winning and the like – depleting the environment.

We are not planting new trees to replace the fallen. We can’t erect mountains, neither can we replace the sand or rivers we ruined.

In the end, we’ll wake up to find our buildings only clinging on to brown and dusty earth. No plants, water sources or hills. This we see in apocalyptic movies.

There’s a hefty price to pay for our actions.

If we’re in haste to make money at all costs just to satisfy our mundane pleasures, and without thinking of the consequences, we may end up destroying our own future.