Safari Notes

Rarely do I read any thing about Kibera, as encouraging and elating as this article from The Standard . Here are some excerpts: Having a kitchen garden in the city is a preserve of residents in leafy suburbs. But what previously could only be a fantasy for slum dwellers has become a reality for Ms Mariam Abdala, a Kibera resident. This is how it works: Seedlings are planted on the sides of earth-filled sacks that are placed besides doorsteps, on verandas or even rooftops. One bag can support up to 30 seedlings. Many families in Kibera have adopted this mode of farming, perhaps setting precedent for a green revolution in Africa. The ‘hanging gardens’ of Kibera account for several acres of land. Residents refer to them as gunia gardens. And just like Israel’s agricultural magic, residents are zealously turning the slum green. At a time when food prices have soared, many residents in the largest slums in Africa can harvest vegetables at their doorsteps. Even schools have picked up the ide...

Some, like the British scientist James Lovelock - who formulated the Gaia theory , believe that the World is over populated and over crowded: "It is not simply too much carbon dioxide in the air . . . ," he writes in The Vanishing Face of Gaia ,"......the root cause is too many people, their pets, and their livestock -- more than the Earth can carry. No voluntary human act can reduce our numbers fast enough even to slow climate change." He goes on in an interview with the New Scientist : I'm an optimistic pessimist. I think it's wrong to assume we'll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happene...

This just in from WWF : Marine turtles are a globally important species, but the number of turtles has plummeted and some populations are now on the brink of extinction. These gentle creatures of the sea swim great distances and come to land only to nest. They play a critical role in keeping marine ecosystems healthy; the same ecosystems which sustain our fisheries and tourism industries that provide food and livelihoods for millions of people. According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, Leatherbacks and Hawksbills are listed as Critically Endangered, while Green turtles are Endangered and Olive ridleys are categorised as Vulnerable. Four out of the 7 species of marine turtles land and lay their eggs on beaches in Malaysia; Leatherbacks, Hawksbills, Olive Ridleys and Green turtles. They face many threats, including the practice of consuming turtle eggs, becoming accidentally caught in fishing gear, pollution and the illegal trade of turtles and their parts. But key to all thi...

This photo which was probably taken at Kasai Occidental, the Democratic Republic of Congo - might seem fun and interesting to some, but it shows how merciless, cruel and indifferent We can be to our fellow creatures. All leading religions are against cruelty to animals. Much has been said about our relation to other creatures here on Earth and our treatment of them, by many thinkers, philosophers and writers: " The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them, that's the essence of inhumanity ." - George Bernard Shaw, Irish Playwright and Essayist " We have enslaved the rest of animal creation and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form ." - William Ralph Inge, British Author " Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living ...

At a news conference after the G8 summit, Mr. Barack Obama said that when his father came to the United States in the the late 1950s, his home country of Kenya had an economy as large as that of South Korea - per capita. But today Kenya remains impoverished - with a GDP of about 21 billion dollars, and is politically unstable, while South Korea has become an economic powerhouse , with a GDP of about 900 billion dollars. “There had been some talk about the legacies of colonialism and other policies by wealthier nations, and without in any way diminishing that history, the point I made was that the South Korean government, working with the private sector and civil society, was able to create a set of institutions that provided transparency and accountability and efficiency that allowed for extraordinary economic progress, and that there was no reason why African countries could not do the same.” Having deep Kenyan roots and being much closer to Kenya than any to other African country, ...

In a report released this past week end by a research group based in Britain - the Happy Planet Index , which seeks countries with the happiest and most content people - the Central Latin American nation of Costa Rica comes on top. According to the research group, Costa Ricans report the highest life satisfaction in the world, have the second-highest average life expectancy of the Americas .......... and have an ecological footprint that means that the country only narrowly fails to achieve the goal of ‘one-planet living’: consuming its fair share of the Earth’s natural resources . It should be noted too, that: Costa Rica ranks high in many other International Rankings . For decades Costa Rica has stood out for its stability and has benefited from the most developed welfare system in the region. It has no standing army, and its citizens enjoy one of the highest life expectancy levels in the Western hemisphere and better living standards than their war-torn neighbours . More than any o...

I don't think so. I very much hope not so. The latest reports say the oil discoveries in Uganda are unquestionably the largest onshore discovery made in sub-Saharan Africa in at least 20 years, possibly ever . And that one might safely consider production in the order of 150,000 barrels a day over a period of 15, 20 or even up to 25 years. In terms of comparison.......Uganda (would) in the top 50 of oil producers in the world . And this is a report by Al Jazeera on the Ugandan oil: As exploration and work still continues in the oil fields, so much hope and expectations are being put by Ugandans on the oil discovery. As I said before , the focus now is on how Uganda can both benefit from oil and at the same time take care of its magical, natural wonders. The problem: most of the oil so far discovered in Uganda are in the very environmentally sensitive, Lake Albert region . The priority is that: Uganda, with oil, manages to take care and protect its real wealth : its land, its wat...