I was born on 30/may/1972 in one of the remotest parts of the world .At the age of 7 years I attended school. The earliest memories I have is that of poverty, drought and famine. Food was never enough. Hunger is one of the greatest enemies of humanity. Am saying this from experience. A hungry child will not listen to what the teacher is teaching but will be thinking of the next meal and how he will fight over it with his or her siblings! That was life for me. My community depends on wood carving, agriculture and livestock.The rains where not reliable and therefore we could loose the whole crop. Livestock were more reliable but due to scarcity of land we could not keep enough stock.
As a child growing up I promised myself that I will work hard in school and change the situation in our society.Education is the key that is what my teachers and parents told me. Well things did work out that way. With four brothers we had to share the available resources and were only enough to make each one of us just learn the basics and give way to the others.Now without enough education to join the civil service or any other meaningful employment my world collapsed. I had no choice but to join the community in its frustrations. I did not set my eyes on a television set until I was 20 years!!!!! yes 20 years!!!!!that is also the time I visited the big city which is over hundred miles from our village!!!
Well I joined the one meal a day circle but with a determination to lift myself from the slavery of poverty and want. I tried to raise livestock giving some to my needy villagers to keep for the sake of milk.That is something we do in our community as a way of helping one another. If I have extra cow I can give it to a needy neighbor who keeps it for milk in return .Let me not bore you much. Let me cut the long story short. This act was my Waterloo.
By 2005 the effects of climate change had worsened the situation in our community .Farming had become unreliable so livestock was more better. We were encouraged to plant trees to improve the weather.Now I said; this is the chance I missed. I can assist My community that way. I organized my family and every thing I had and started planting trees.....5000 trees planted in 2005 Then disaster struck!!!!
The rains failed. We witnessed our worst drought and famine in our records. The trouble really started in 2007.I spent the last four months of the year in bed, suffering from what doctors said was arthritis.Yes for 93 days I did not live the bed!! I could neither walk nor stand and there are no flash toilets in this part of the world.You can imagine the situation. At the close of the year elections were held in our country. The parties could not agree on the winner there was blood shed. For 2 months property and lives were lost of magnitude value. When eventually calm returned food production had been disrupted which led to high food prices.Remember the rains had failed in many parts of the country including my area.The food baskets of the country were the worst hit by the tribal fighting. The drought which had started at the end of 2007 continued through 2008 and into 2009.
No words can explain the pain we went through. Dear friend I repeat there are no words, no language can explain the situation ........we suffered. We lost the livestock......the trees weathered.......there was no source of income....as I told you before our other source of income is wood carving that we sell to tourists but which tourists will visit a country at war??? We lost our lifetime savings and labor.......
I lost faith in everything....... I was not sure if I should belief in God or not ......I turned to alcohol. Slowly I was throwing my live away...........I wanted to commit suicide .......wanted to end the whole damn life......but wait..... I had family that depended on me........friends had deserted me but my family...so if I were to commit suicide who will take care of my family???
then something happened...........
.I discovered INTERNET and my life changed.
The first time I touched a computer was three years ago august 2007!!! before could familiarize myself with it I fell sick and the whole chapter was forgotten...Now with nothing to do I became my own teacher with the Internet as my guide.Then I learn that global warming and climate change was not a village affair but a universal one.....I learned that this was not the act of God but man. ....I learned that if not controlled it can even cause more destruction.
Therefore with the past behind me, without any bitterness or regrets, I choose to devout my lifetime to planting trees. As I go about the duty to my family and self education.I hope I will recover the wasted years and do my duty to humanity.
As I said before one of our greatest challenges in our community is poor rainfall. I have decided to embark on those spices of trees that are drought resistance but unfortunately some of them are slow in growing,this AM trying to graft with other fast growing to get the best of both. The other problem here is lack of income. Here people are selling the few available trees as fuel .The worst part of it is that a 500 year old tree can sell for 5 dollars.Therefore as we embark on planting trees we must also embark on fighting poverty. Global warming, climate change and poverty must be fought together.......bye for now.......I must go out and look for my next meal.....then when mama is preparing the meal I will plant a tree for every one of us .....good day..........!
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