Encounters

The walk down Sanawari road, across Spaghetti Junction, which is where the road crosses the Moshi – Nairobi highway, and on down what is these days called, East African Community Boulevard, along to the roundabout used to be an adventure. Most often dry and dusty, with busy people coming and going to the market, or on some mission or other. Noise and smells of a vibrant town. Expats are commonplace and little notice is taken of them unless they catch the eye of stall-holder, who will smile and welcome them with a, ‘Karibu’. Younger children will whisper a brief, ‘Sika.’ Which is barely audible, but it’s their way of giving the respectful greeting, ‘Shikamoo.’ If you give the equally respectful, ‘Marahaba’, their countenance lights up.

Not far from our gate, Mama Titi will want to chat. Her name is in reference to her enormous breasts, which are barely hidden by the shingles she habitually wore. She was challenging me to keep eye contact, which most usually I did.

Still not yet on Sanawari road, Boke, a four-year-old girl would be outside to say, ‘Hello.’ She was a regular at our water tap with her mother, a friendly young woman whose husband was a safari driver. Early on I had given Boke a tennis ball, which began a warm salutary friendship.

A few steps past Boke’s house there was the Bike man, William. Most unusually he was working outside on bicycles. He had a few that he hired to locals and he also repaired bikes for customers who owned their own. William was always busy and liked to practice his English with me. Sometimes I would see him in town buying bike parts, and if I was carrying a load of any kind, he would put it on his bike and I would pick it up as I passed on my way home.

On to the Sanawari road where it is much busier because the road climbs up the hill where it is heavily populated. Most of the stall-holders knew me because I had been there for so long, and they would welcome me knowing I was unlikely to buy, but we still greeted each other. About halfway down, there was a short man who only sold sweet potatoes – kumera, in New Zealand lingo. Most of the stall-holders sold a range but not this man. Except for pears that occasionally came down from Lushoto. I always bought my kumera from this guy. I suspect he had birth defects, his eyes were not quite right, he had a foot that didn’t work properly and he was a little stooped. Nevertheless he always wore a smile.

There was always a word to be had with the butcher. I had already passed a couple of butchers but this was my guy. His stall was a concrete block, small hut open to the dust and flies because he had no refrigeration. He had a block that was an old tree stump that he covered it with a fresh cardboard carton each day. He used to buy in a side of beef a day and a few innards. Ox liver, tripe (green with grass stain) and various tubes. He chopped the meat with a bush-knife-cum-machete because he needed to sell the bone as a portion of the meat. I didn’t like chips of bone with my steak or stew, so I paid extra to get meat only. I also bought liver and innards because ‘our’ kids liked them – of course we shared the liver.

Bazili’s mother had a stall she shared with some other women, selling vegetables. The women spent more time talking than selling I think, and their wares were not the quality of the main market, but were perfectly good. They had everything we needed from potatoes to dryish green peas, beans and peppers, rice too. They were a happy lot who insisted on giving bonus veges and correct change, although they usually had to run off to other stall-holders to get it.   

Across the highway and sitting outside the Mount Meru Hospital was a small grandmother with a child of perhaps three. On the other hand maybe she was the mother. She sold bananas to people going to visit patients in the hospital or passers-by. Sometime I would buy a banana, but there was nowhere to biff the skin. Nobody thought anything of dropping rubbish wherever they were, but if I did, I would feel a bit guilty. But the thing about this grandmother, on Saturdays she ‘became’ blind and moved down to the roundabout to beg! I suppose most of the regulars knew what she was up to, and she would smile unashamedly at the folk she recognised.  

There was a woman in the busy part of the main street who obviously had a problem. She pretended to be busy, walking at a smart pace with a stone or a matchbox and placing it somewhere randomly. Then she would rush off and quickly return and inspect it. She would decide it was in the wrong place and hurriedly move it, taking it somewhere else to repeat the whole exercise. She did no harm and nobody laughed at her, she was just left alone to do her thing.

There is always a drama! One day out of an office block a young man came running, ‘Mwizi – thief!’  Came the call from behind him. Thieves can be treated harshly, so this fellow thought he would hide in a culvert pipe. He only just fitted! He did not heed the calls to come out, so the chasers lit a fire at each end. He did not survive.

Most time it doesn’t pay to watch the dramas unfold because they can be upsetting, but encounters with most people are pleasant and rewarding. I've come to the conclusion that wherever you go, people are people.

Dealing to Terrorism

A newsreader saying, ‘another terror event in London,’ underrates the awful and cowardly atrocity meted out to the victims and to their families. For the families, in the moment it’s a little hollow to assure them that we all stand with them, because in their homes and throughout their future there is an unfillable gap. Even so, from afar I too offer my condolences, which again is a hollow expression albeit with modest sincerity.

We all know terrorism is used as a tool to inflict random unease among civilized people for gains that are at the very least, obscure. Terrorism will never defeat but as we have seen it achieves its purpose by crating chaos, unease as well as a huge cost, monetary and nuisance in security and prevention. But those entrusted with the honourable task of security and protection have an unenviable task because the rats they protect us from can slip through the smallest of holes.

So as well as offering condolences to the terror-bereaved, let’s put on our collective thinking caps and offer some ideas to the powers-that-be in the hope it might make a difference. Revenge is first instinct and maybe feels good, but it reduces us to the level of the perpetrator, keeping the cycle rolling. And anyway most of them self-destruct in one way or another, so to whom can any revenge be targeted? Think-tanking methods of preventing terrorism likely crosses some of the boundaries of political correctness, but maybe the pendulum has swung too far in that direction anyway.

It would be interesting to know what happens to the carcass of a dead terrorist. Most probably it is returned to the family. The present bunch of terrorists happen to be radical Islamists, so it is reasonable to assume their families, parents perhaps, are likely to follow Islam too. Therefore the carcass will be dealt with in the Islam way, with the underlying possibility of glorifying whoever the carcass happened to be. Thus encouraging others to carry out similar acts. So wouldn’t it be logical to deny them that right! Granted there is the possibility that the carcass’s family are humble, innocent people and had no input to the radicalism. The price for them is therefore may be high, but the cycle has to stop somehow! There is also merit in publicly de-personifying a dead terrorist, hence the term, ‘carcass’. They seem to like their names portrayed in the media.

The perpetrators sure enough are radicalised Islamists, but their indoctrinators, the lice on the goat, are politically motivated using religion as a means to an end.  They are shadowy, covert, and difficult to track down. They target people who have been disadvantaged in some way, who are bristling with resentment and so are readily radicalised. These string-pullers believe that a cowering civilian population will somehow force political change. It is difficult to know even what is meant by that, other than the obvious, USA and its allies’ policies. And at least in the short term that’s not going to change. So do we have an impasse? The battleground may well be on the internet.

As always understanding another’s point of view only comes when you’re in their shoes. But most of us are not, so we wonder, where’s the sense? We see killing, hatred, the destruction of historical sites and atrocities. But didn’t Islam have a worthy past? The Great Mosque of Damascus, the Umayyad Mosque, or the Great Mosque of Cordoba, all are great and beautiful works. Islam contributed hugely in the fields of chemistry, astronomy, botany, cartography, medicine and more. What a comparison to today!

We all know there’s no logic behind terrorism! But here’s the thing, they call out in the name of their religion! All religions have their deity, revered because he or she is recognised in that particular religion as the Creator, so isn’t it logical that destruction and killing is actually destroying their Creator’s good work? So is it not time for preachers, even scholars, to shoulder their responsibility and preach that there was no glory in suicide? That killing, destroying lives and wreaking havoc is indeed sinful!

It is the fallen victims who should be glorified! They are martyrs against the terrorist cause! Those maimed, their families and the families of the martyred will need ongoing support, financial, moral and counselling. Not just in the short term. At an appropriate time all victims should be encouraged and assisted to write their victim statements, not only about what happened, but also how they feel and how it has impacted them. If you like historical records. Sometime in the future there will be change, because change is the one constant. When that time comes victims or even victims’ descendants should have the opportunity to publicly read aloud those statements.

Maybe this is all a tip-toe approach, even unworkable, but right-thinking people need to get on with their lives without the threat of violence and mayhem. Solutions are out there. Ideas should be welcome. Of course there are other approaches, perhaps hobnail boot approaches!  

Paulownia - A Tribute

Paulownia tomentosa has the lofty common name Empress Tree (of China) and throughout the Orient, its timber is much appreciated and valued. And just as a random fact, the ancients used its seedpods as packing for their china exports – old fashioned polystyrene balls! Anyway - Unfortunately, my best specimen was damaged buy a severe wind, so for safety’s sake, I had to cut it down. I was sad at the thought, but it was the pragmatic thing to do because, despite what we might hope, ‘everything has its day’.

I bought this treeless property fifty years ago (almost to the day) and have slowly vegetated the area over the years with perhaps thousands of trees, most of which I have personally propagated. A few have been given to me and others might have come from the nursery but most were from seed I sowed or cutting I made. Each tree has a story of some sort, for example, the very first, a Poplar androscoggin, was a metre long branch I cut from an adult tree and stuck it in a wet patch of ground. Today three people struggle to touch hands around its trunk.

The Paulownia came from seed that I was collecting on behalf of the Forest Service in the botanic gardens, I just saved a few seed to sow home for my own use. At the time it was a trendy thing, with a promise of huge demand and huge profits and it turned out to be a huge let-down, typical of niche trends. To achieve a nice, straight stem, the tree is cut down to ground level each winter for the first two years and the third season, a long, straight stem about three metres tall is produced. ‘Rogering’ was the term we used.

The blue foxglove-like flowers are fragrant, a fragrance I enjoy. I’m not sure everyone likes the smell, which I guess is all in the nose of the sniffer! The leaves are large and perhaps leathery-cum-hairy, the text books says they were palatable to livestock. My sheep have no interest in them whatever. On a sunny day, especially in the spring when the flowers were out, it was a favourite pastime of mine to sit facing towards the Northwest and be content, at peace with the world. There are always the calls of the birds and they were always company but suddenly silence would reign and then there would be the occasional ‘plop’ of a flower falling to the ground. In a good year, there would be a circular fragrant carpet of blue around me. Stunning!

No matter who you are or what you do, rich or poor, stupid or sane, there are time when Mr. A creeps into your head. Anxiety, stress, worry, call it what you will, is an affliction to the human spirit. Perhaps it is a self-affliction or something that exists only in your head or perhaps it is a matter of fearing fear itself. Whatever it is, my personal coping strategy is to imagine being in my safe and comfortable place – familiar too. For me that place is under the Paulownia tree facing to the Northwest.

I don’t physically go there when I’m anxious or stressed, I use my imagination. For example in the early ‘80’s I was in charge of harvesting trees during a recession in the timber industry. The contractors were cranking out logs, filling the skid-sites but they weren’t moving. After six weeks, the logs are beyond redemption. For me sleep would not come unless I imagined that I was sitting under my Paulownia. Then I slept like a log – pun intentional.

I can wax lyrical about the good times I had in Africa, but there were pressures. One maggot brained individual who should have known better, tried to halt funding for our project, so I ended up self-funding it for six months before it was sorted. The risk was enormous because I wasn’t sure that funding would ever come through and my workers were depending on me for their livelihood. Imagining my safe, comfortable place helped me through the stress and to win the battle.

Each year for twenty five years I was in charge of controlled burn-offs of areas of up to two hundred hectares. The safely of men and machinery and the value of the adjacent forest resource was the stuff of sleepless nights. But imagining I there on my fragrant carpet of blue allowed me to sleep and be alert on the light-up day.

I recommend the strategy to everyone. Yeah, I know, few people have a Paulownia to sit under but everyone can select or even make up a safe, comfortable place. Maybe from a story read or movie watched. A figment of the imagination or somewhere visited. The imagination is a wonderful thing to stimulate. During bad times, of few stressless moments are more valuable than a gold watch!

But my Paulownia will coppice again, a rebirth if you like. But the really cool thing is that I squared the trunk with my chainsaw, cut it in half and have shared it between two woodworking mates of mine. They will create enduring pieces that will give pleasure in entirely different ways. And I still have my imagination.