Dona nobis pacem: Peace comes dropping slow

I have taken a quote from WB Yeats "Peace come dropping slow" completely out of context, but I was reminded of those words when I read the story of Samuel Mwangi who was caught up in the violence in Kenya two years ago.  He fled his home and is still in a refugee camp with his family.  Before the violence he had a five-acre farm and could have been considered prosperous in that area of the Rift Valley.  Now, two years later, he has managed to find work as a caretaker on a farm, and as a labourer.  He doesn't dare return to his home because his land has gone and he's afraid of being attacked again.

He is hoping that he may be given new land and he would be happy with that, no matter what sort of land it is.  "The most important thing is security".

He says being an international displaced person is like being in jail.  For Samuel and his family, peace is indeed dropping slowly.



"We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life."
- A. J. Muste

"Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict - alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence."
- Dorothy Thompson

"Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures."
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"Peace is costly but it is worth the expense"
- African Proverb

Sisal

From Business Daily.

In 1972 the sisal research station in Thika, Kenya, closed because prices for sisal had dropped considerably as everyone turned to the plastic bag as a cheap replacement. Nowadays, with the environmental impact of plastic bags being so well known, the sisal industry should be recovering.

Unfortunately it hasn't yet, but there are signs that prices are rising. In a more recent article there are reports that sisal and burlap bags are becoming fashionable. The Kenyan government has banned the use of thin plastic bags which should help the recovery.

I went out to buy myself what I thought was a sisal bag, but has turned out to be a jute one.

When I looked at it more closely, I was dismayed to see what I think is a plastic lining, but after a visit to the Jute Expo site, I have to believe it is biodegradable. Other jute bags are available from Canby, and sisal ones from One World Projects.

Cooking in the sun

I can remember when I was young in Africa, my mother cooking meringues in the sun in the garden. I can't recall the precise technique used to prevent them being eaten by assorted animal life, but there didn't seem to be any specific equipment involved.

Solar cooking has since developed quite a long way and Solar Cookers International have trained people (mostly women) how to construct and use simple solar cookers which not only cook food while retaining essential nutrients, but can also be used to pasteurise water.

A project in Kenya is providing women with an income from making and selling the cookers. Some also sell cakes they have cooked in their own solar cooker, while others use them in restaurants. Further benefits have been an almost 50% reduction in the number of cases of diarrhoea, a 40% saving in the use of wood for fuel, and a subsequent saving of time taken to obtain and carry the wood.

Tropical Legumes Project

Legumes are the third largest family of plants, and many species among them are very nutritious and/or improve the quality of soil. However they haven’t so far received a great deal of attention to increase yields and help smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.

Soybeans

ICRISTAT, the International Crops Research Institute for Semi Arid Tropics are conducting a research and development project to improve the productivity of legumes. This will be funded for three years by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and will act in partnership with the Program for African Seed Systems to ensure the availability of the seeds to African farmers.

Peanuts

Legumes are rich in protein and minerals and sometimes referred to as "poor man’s meat". They hold great promise for fighting hunger, increasing income and improving soil fertility.

Black eyed beans

The research is being carried out in 14 different countries in Africa, as well as in Asia.

Water hyacinth

It sounds lovely and the flowers look lovely, but it can be a pest, as many people in tropical and sub-tropical areas will know. It can grow extremely rapidly to form mats which may be as much as two metres thick.

It has caused a problem in 2005 on Lake Victoria in both Kenya and Uganda. It was controlled using mechanical and biological means, with a 90% success. Given that it spreads quickly and also floats around, it's not surprising that it once again is causing a problem.
The problems it causes are:

• Hindering water transport
• Clogging various water supply systems
• Harbouring various diseases
• Causing water to evaporate nearly twice as quickly through transpiration
• Impeding fishing
• Unbalancing the ecosystem and reducing biodiversity.

Possible solutions:

• Biological control using a variety of insects and fungi. This method can take a long time to have an effect.
• Chemical control but this may harm the environment.
• Physical control by removing the weed - only suitable for small areas

Another approach altogether is to find a use for the plant. Possibilities, some realised, some still being investigated:

• Paper - the fibre needs to be blended with waste paper or jute to produce a reasonable quality (Bangladesh, Philippines, Indonesia, and India)
• Fibreboard - for general purposes indoors, and a bituminised version for roofing is being investigated (Bangladesh)
• Yarn and rope (Bangladesh)
• Basket work (Philippines)
• Charcoal briquetting - under investigation (Kenya)
• Biogas production - under investigation (Bangladesh)
• Water purification
• Animal fodder (China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand)
• Fertiliser (Sri Lanka)
• Fish feed - Chinese carp, tilapia, silver carp, and silver dollar fish will all eat water hyacinth.

If a commercial use can be found for the weed, then perhaps it can be kept under control on Lake Victoria. With so many potential uses, surely it's just a matter of time.
Sources: IRIN and PracticalAction

A very recent (January 2016) TED talk by Achenyo Idachaba covers some of the issues and offers one solution.  Achenyo Idachaba is the founder of MitiMeth, a social enterprise which aims to transform the ecological problem into enployment and products in Nigeria.

Problems with water again

On the first day of this month I posted about the fact that some places have too little while others have to much.

In the slightly less than three weeks since, there have been numerous instances.

• Families stranded after river floods in western Kenya
• NEPAL: Flood victims face disease, food shortages
• BANGLADESH: Government says flood conditions stabilising
• COTE D'IVOIRE: Floods wipe out water source for hundreds of people
• SUDAN: One million people may be affected by floods
• LIBERIA: Sea destroys homes in coastal communities

And in Mauritania, where they had been praying for rain, it started on 7 August and now we hear that the subsequent flooding has produced health and sanitation problems.

In spite of the floods in western Kenya, there are also worries about the falling levels of rivers, according to IRIN. Experts believe that the cause of it is deforestation which allows the soil to be eroded so that it can no longer hold rainwater which would seep into the rivers. Instead it just evaporates, or causes flash floods. The good news is that careful management, planting 4 kilometres of trees and monitoring usage, has started to have an effect and river levels are rising again.

There are similar concerns about deforestation in Burkina Faso where a campaign to replant started on 4 August. So far 3,500 trees have been planted. The report is in French.

Back to Kenya again, to listen to a doctor in Denver, Dr Pius Kamau, who grew up in Kenya. He gives an account of how his family's small coffee plantation has dried up and failed. Interesting the contrast he draws between Starbucks springing up on every corner while his mother couldn't make ends meet on her farm producing coffee beans. And he comes full circle when he wonders how much African wildlife or how many African tribesmen are killed by his lifestyle now.

Mosquito nets again

Photo: Laudes Martial Mbon/IRIN

Following on from my previous post about the distribution of insecticide-treated nets to families with small children in Kanya, there is a report that in the Congo 300,000 nets have been distributed by train.

UNICEF and the Congolese government hired the train to reach some of the more remote areas with limited medical facilities. In the Congo, malaria is the main cause of death in children under five, is a leading cause of poor school attendance and also accounts for around 50% of hospital admissions.

The nets are to be distributed to any child under six years old or any woman attending a pre-natal clinic. An additional 200,000 nets are to be donated by the USA.

In Kenya, in the areas where they have been distributing treated nets since 2004, they have reported a 44% drop in the number of malaria related deaths. 13.4 million nets have been given out so far and the plan is to widen the distribution to everyone in a targeted area, although pregnant women and under-fives remain the priority.

These are long-lasting nets with the insecticide treatment designed to last for the lifetime of the net. Conventionally treated nets have to be regularly re-treated.

Til taught by pain, men really know not what good water is worth

Water has featured greatly in the news recently. Too much of it in some places: UK, Pakistan, China, Nepal, Sudan, but not enough in others: Lesotho, Swaziland, Djibouti, and today we hear that the president of Mauritania has asked for national prayers to ensure the rainy season starts soon and provides enough rain.

Countries that have neither too much nor too little have other problems with it.

In Kenya, there is a worry that the Anopheles mosquito, which spreads malaria, will become adapted to living in polluted water and invade previously relatively malaria-free areas like Nairobi. Malaria is now the most common disease in Kibera, one of Nairobi’s slums.

Again in Nairobi, in another slum, there have been demonstrations protesting over cuts in the water supply. There had been cuts for five days in an effort to stop illegal connections to the mains.

In Jordan hundreds of people have been taken to hospital with severe diarrhoea caused by a parasite in the water supply. The parasite, Cryptosporidium, is resistant to traditional water treatment.

In Senegal a water channel running through the centre of Dakar, the capital, has become an open sewer. People, not realising it was intended as a recreation area nor understanding the implications of polluting the water, have dumped rubbish in it, so much so that the water has become stagnant in places allowing mosquitoes to breed.

It’s not surprising then that organisations such as WaterAid exist, whose vision is of a world where everyone has access to safe water and sanitation.

When you read about people being delighted that they can go three times a day to collect clean water from a hand pump, you realise we sometimes need to take a moment to understand how much most of us take safe water for granted, whereas for large parts of the world it is a luxury.

Knitting for survival

From The Standard, Kenya

Esther was born in a Nairobi slum, the eldest of five children. When her father died when she was seven, her mother took the family back to the rural area they had come from so that she could set up a vegetable selling business.

Then Esther’s mother died leaving the children to fend for themselves. Esther and her siblings took jobs at the weekends and in school holidays, and as soon as Esther had taken her exams in 2001, at the end of her primary education, she left school.

Determined to earn enough to look after her younger siblings, she accepted an offer of employment back in Nairobi but discovered that she wouldn’t be paid. She left, moved in with a relative and found out about the knitting project.

Lillian was also born in a Nairobi slum. Her parents died within a year of each other and at 14 she found herself head of the family, the eldest of the three siblings. Although they were taken in by an aunt, Lillian had to drop out of secondary school because the fees were too much for her aunt who had three children of her own.

She was helping with her aunt’s business when one day she heard about a place where girls meet and learn to knit.

The scheme is an initiative of the Mathare Mothers’ Development Centre (MMDC). It has eight knitting machines on which it trains girls to knit baby clothes and sweaters. The girls can then sell whatever they produce, marketing their wares being one of their main problems.

Although they have free use of the machines, they have to pay for their materials, for maintenance and repair, and contribute to the rental for the premises. Nevertheless the girls are able to send money home for their siblings’ education and to try to save up for machines of their own.

The MMDC leader, Anne Mbuthia, says that the training programme has had to be put on hold. They have only eight machines and up to a hundred girls wanting to be trained.