Safari Notes

I can not think of any other living creature that is as awesome to look at and yet so gentle, majestic and noble as elephants . I have seen African elephants at close range many times, and yet, I am awed and have to stare and gawk at these incredible creatures whenever I see them. I quote from the movie White Hunter Black Heart : I've never seen one before, outside the circus or the zoo. They're so majestic. So indestructible. They're part of the earth. They make us feel like perverse little creatures from another planet. Without any dignity. Makes one believe in God. In the miracle of creation. Fantastic. They're part of a world that no longer exists, Hod. Feeling of unconquerable time. How true. Facts about elephants , are amazing. Elephants are incredibly social creatures who have lasting memories, and can communicate over long distances through low range sound waves ; they can cry, play, have incredible memories, and can even laugh ; and they grieve at a loss of a s

On the idyllic island of Moheli , the Comoro Islands , a Chinese medical team from Guangzhou University has got involved in a project - to eradicate malaria. Malaria , which, each year, infects hundreds of millions of people around the world, especially in Africa , causes an estimated a million deaths every year; mostly in tropical Africa. The project hasn't received much support from WHO , and and many in the public health community still believe malaria can not be wiped ou t . But the Chinese medical team believes Malaria can be eradicated; if it can be eradicated on the island of Moheli, then, indeed it can be eradicated in other parts of the world. At the same time, the WHO admits that : the world's best hope for a cure to malaria is emerging from China, which is developing a range of highly effective medicines that include a derivative of a traditional herb, qing hao-su or artemisinin. The new treatments combine artemisinin, an extremely powerful anti-malarial agent

Every day is Earth Day. ~ Author Unknown I conceive that the land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living, and countless numbers are still unborn. ~ A Chieftain from Nigeria We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. ~ Native American Proverb Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. ~ Chief Seattle, 1855 Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money. ~ Cree Indian Proverb What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? ~ Henry David Thoreau Celebrate !

I read the report and have watched CNN"s revealed on Wangari Mathai , twice. Some of what Wangari said: "In any society, if there is no regulation, if there is no control, you will always get greedy and selfish people who are prepared to take the economy very far for their own selfish ends." "People get leaders they deserve," she continued. "So if they are getting leaders in Africa that are not caring about us, it's because they let them." "If we want a responsible leadership, the African people have to rise up and demand that kind of leadership from their leaders." "We see time and time again that the ruling elite are the least concerned about the poor and not only use the poor to argue their case, but when the money is available they're not paying attention to the issues that would make a difference in the lives of the poor people." Watch the very interesting and absorbing video on Wangari Mathai - here .

It's very shocking and extremely disturbing that, there are some people who deny that there was Genocide in Rwanda ; there are those who have been trying hard to spread lies and propaganda and twist real facts and the truth about the Rwandan genocide; there are those who deny that , it took meticulous planning - resulting in about 800,000 Tutsis and some Hutus, systematically being brutally butchered, in Rwanda, in 1994: .........thousands of children butchered individually, by machete. And the massacres at hundreds of churches, mostly Catholic churches at that. Not to mention the systematic gang rapes of Tutsi women and girls which led the international tribunal to define rape as an act of genocide when part of an extermination campaign. The genocide, while it coincided with the civil war and was clearly driven by the politics around the conflict, was mostly carried out by civilians against civilians far from the front. There was no "other side". There were the murde

After what happened last year after the elections , and considering the very difficult conditions that people in Kibera live in - there's some good news: Kenyan designers have built a cooker that uses the trash as fuel to feed the poor, provide hot water and destroy toxic waste, as well as curbing the destruction of woodlands. In another part of Kibera, a group of 35 youths have developed a farm on a former rubbish dump, feeding themselves and selling cucumbers, pumpkins and tomatoes. Read more about the cooker here , here , here ; and about the farm on the rubbish dump here , here and here .

At nights, most of Africa is dark, but wherever you are, if you use artificially generated light - join and turn off your lights for Earth Hour . Starting in New Zealand's remote Chatham Islands, thousands of cities, towns, and landmarks around the world will start to go dark for Earth Hour on Saturday evening. Up to a billion people worldwide are expected to participate in this global voluntary blackout by switching off their lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. local time. The movement, sponsored by the conservation nonprofit WWF, is designed as a symbolic gesture in support of action against global warming . Read more from the National Geographic .