Best of Dew drops -Hello Nairobi River

Hello Nairobi River,

How are you? I have come to speak with you because I have been observing you and am impressed by the transformation that has taken place on your person in the recent past. First, receive greetings from your brother who’s in upcountry. He says he is fine but surprisingly, your fortunes seem to have swapped in the recent past. Whereas he has been dwindling in stature due to these economic activities going on all around him, you seem to have found back your mojo and is doing quite all right.

No, no! They do not have sewers and factory wastes to dump in your poor brother in the reserves. In fact, he is dying not of excess baggage like you were but rather, the lack of it.

Do you see that 18 wheeler laboring round the round-about? Where do you suppose that timber it is groaning under came from? The supermarket? You are funny. It came from some trees and that is what is killing your brother and your other siblings. Let me explain.

There is something called a forest. It is a congregation of a lot of trees, millions of them growing in a large area. I’m not going into the details of how these trees influence rain and its formation. All I will tell you is that they are an integral part in the cycle. The lesser tree cover an area has, the lesser the rainfall. Rivers, including your self, originate in most cases, from these forests. Places with no trees are called deserts and they have very little or no rainfall for very long periods of time.

It so happens that as humans, we need timber to sate our developmental needs. All these constructions that you see around require a timber at one place or the other. The folks upcountry also need to eat cooked food and they haven’t got LPGs or electric cookers like the guys in the city. They get their fuel from the forest.

This means that we have been consuming our forests faster than they are able to rejuvenate. What? There are a lot of trees around? Did you know that Kenya has one of the lowest forest cover, at only 2%? Yes, and that is going fast. It is worrying. A lot of your siblings have either died out or turned seasonal. Your brother, the one who sends me with greetings was once a massive force, scaring the hell out of even the toughest village swimmer when in full bloom. When I visited him last, it was the middle of the rainy season and yet the goats were drinking from the middle, the waters up to their knees. Pathetic, that’s what he now is.

I do not see anything that you guys can do. I guess you will have to wait as we kill you all and then we will also die out. I do not understand us too, dear river. We seem to have some serious knack for self destruction within us and the most scaring bit is that we do have the ability.

I will leave you now Dear River and hope that your kind fortunes spread to all your relatives around the country.

Best of Dewdrops -Another Call

Another Call

Dear Lord oh ye Father to this boy Jesus, I come to You with my appeal because You are the only One who listens. My name is Kenya. K-E-N-Y-A. Yes Sir, those are my offspring You saw there winning all those medals and I am mighty proud of them. The Ethiopians? They were beginning to really get into my nerves but it seems my babies found a way around them eventually. Anyways, I am calling on you because I am one heck of a worried nation.

It is true that there are countries with worse problems than I but that’s them. I will speak of my own because my children are suffering so.

First, there is this inflation thing. It now stands at about 15 point something percent and though I have no friggin idea how they arrive at that, I know exactly what it means, a real hole-burner in Kenyans pockets. The other week, I was reflecting and thought that the people of this land must be getting stronger on account that ten years ago, it took two men to carry a thousand shillings worth of groceries but now a kid can do it. I have since quit reflections.

Besides inflation, fuel prices have been stubborn in the three digits and experts say this could be the major contributor to the inflation thing. Do not get me wrong Sir; I do not like fossil fuels. They choke the air out of my breath, burn holes in Ozone, devastate marine life when they spill and do a host of other damage to the atmosphere. But still, my children have become so addicted to them and it bleeds my core to see them suffer so.

Now, another very basic commodity has joined the ranks of the exorbitant and rare commodities –sugar. This is the sweet stuff that they put in tea and a swarm of other eatables. It’s true that it causes a lot of problem to their bodies but what is life without sugar? I do not understand the shortage of the commodity seeing that I have not refused to grow them cane.

Then there is the IDP problem. Yes Sir, those guys who were kicked from their homes in the infamous election of 07. Some are still in tents four years down the line and everyone seems to have forgotten them.

I am certain you are aware of the drought in the North Eastern parts of me. Very bad situation there. You cannot blame me for the deaths Sir, I do not make rains and neither do I love being roasted by Your bullying sun. Do You have an idea how painful those cracks are? I know You gave people the best brains of all my offspring so that they can counter such disasters but why should we punish the small man for the big man’s inefficiencies?

There are a lot of other issues that I would pray for your intervention, like flashfloods, amnesia, unemployed and disillusioned youth, tax evasion and a myriad of other issues. What I will ask earnestly however, is that you guide these children of mine so that they maneuver through and past the complexities of the -12 elections safely.

Favourite Quote…

“I’ll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell…Their heart’s in the right place but their head’s a thoroughly inefficient organ.” -W Somerset Maugham

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