waiting for rain

It has not rained for six months now. The rain season usually starts at the beginning of October.Am fearing for the worst, you see the memory of the big drought is still very fresh in my mind. Everybody in the community is scared.......although we have known drought and famine as part of our lives, we are not yet  strong  enough to undergo another drought. The previous was devastating and we were hoping that we will have a break to replace the livestock and the trees we lost. Have those people in the big cities not stopped polluting the environment? Brothers it is we who suffer the most for your mistakes. You know when rains fail you can afford to buy food from the other side of the world but we lack money.You told us to plant trees so that rain can come and we did that. Now we have been watering those trees for the last six months and now we have no more water. I hear you have i pod and it is a powerful phone please use it to call the rain and tell it  to come quickly before we loose our trees and livestock. While we wait for rain,  please buy our woodcarvings so that we can afford the next meal.
Brothers and sisters in the big cities please remember us and help us plant trees so that rain can come. You know we are a hard working people so when rain come we will plant  a billion trees, good crops and get good harvests which we will share with you. We will sell our fat animals to you and the best fruit. So help us by buying our woodcarvings and beads. Also sent us your old computers to show our children to learn like your children. For now we are going to pray for rain still waiting to hear from you...............bye  bye...!!!

my story

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..........!

bridging the digital divide

Am a graduate; first class honors from the great university of hard knocks! I have learned never to expect so much from life and humanity.I have walked the journey of life with the odds against me.Today i look back to my life as a series of broken dreams missed opportunities and wasted chances but have no regrets. I have missed out on formal education or whatever you call it. Unfortunately this is the yardstick the world uses to judge our IQ with. Even more frustrating I have missed out on information technology!!!!If you were born in rural Africa a half a century ago you will know what I mean.I touched a computer for the first time at the age of 35years!!!!!!!!!!and to this day I have not laid my hands on a laptop!!!!!!!!! Enough of that; our world is crumpling down.Hunger, diseases ,drought, or is it climate change?? Well you out there may not know what Am talking of but to those of us whose daily survival depends on weather its painful.When you have to watch your crops that are your only means of survival dry up because of lack of rain...or loose you livestock........I hope now you are beginning to get my point.Am uneducated get that message and see how you can tell it to the world .am still struggling between feeding my family and learning your language .if you find it a bother to tell the world our story please live it but one day I will know enough English to tell them.Meanwhile plant some trees, use public transport, don't leave the tap running, switch off the lights for though you may afford it there are no enough resources for all of us in this world and tomorrow even money may not be able to buy you some of the resources.

saving man from himself

Everyday we live without a care in this world. Air is free, water is available, fuel and gas are affordable, everything else is in the supermarket......!....Yes,the only thing we care about is money ....! With money we can afford the world...!!?? But pause !                                                                                                                                            It took the world millions of years to make the fuel and gas we use in a day!!!!The iron and steel we use in our buildings took millions of years to form!!!! We were not there when the formation process was happening,but today six billion of us are competing competing for the same resources!This population has been created in the last hundred years and is surviving on resources that took billion years to create                                                My millionaire  friend it can take one minute for one matchstick to burn one million dollars yet we boast money can afford  everything.When the bowels of earth are exhausted will we go to sleep and wait for a million years for our gas stations to fill????? Come out men and women of goodwill its now or never!!!!                  And what is that i hear about ozone layer and carbon???? You mean we cannot plant trees??                      

equality

Who said people are equal?They are not, they were not and will never be equal! It even failed in the garden of Eden! But wait a minute! life is too short to play around with.I have wasted 38years on earth and I must pay with a billion trees!!!!!!!!!!! yes a billion trees.............I will tell you the whole story.....but for now let me go out and look for my daily bread ...its hard in this part of the world.Goodnight.