Born a Sufferer! Live a Conqueror! Die a Victor!

PART ONE: 

Thanks and ululations fill the village. The sun has yet another responsibility to accomplish. You have passed the first transformation headed to the next. The well kept palace with a 24 hour CCTV surveillance has been destroyed! First few months and many days in the new world prove difficult. Thickly woven materials around your body replace the comfortable warm placenta. The lactic liquid suckled and soft food supplements day-to-day meals in a while. Toothless and weak jaws cannot manage tender foods. To your mum you are the raw clay that can undergo pottery to produce the most envied product on earth. She will do exactly that.

PART TWO:
There you grow strong. Feet fidgeting, as you gallop porridge from the green plastic cup. A fully engaging battle between the molar teeth and that bone an indication of strong jaws. In the oversize 'marbolo' T-shirt off to the stream carrying a 5-litre 'elianto' container. The best swimmer in the river across your shamba after an entourage of collecting firewood.

PART THREE:
Soon you will be headed to nursery school because your right hand can go through the head to touch your left ear. In bare foot, you walk for km to school and back. On your back the white school bag, a product of an abandoned DAP fertilizer sack. The chilly mornings and rain seasons a great enemy to your lice infested feet. Your next colleague gives a consolation that your feet are at least better. His perfectly produce a broccoli picture! Somebody accidentally steps on his fingers and the bell ringer has free time around- the painful cry sets the whole school into attention.

Sometimes a cup of water sees you through the night because the hard working woman's food basket is empty. She missed menial work today. This compels you to have numerous stops on your way to school picking sugar cane twigs to please the roaring stomach. Depending on the season, half-eaten guavas and loquats fallen along the way serve the purpose. Your neighbor's slasher misses you by an inch on trying to sneak into his passion fruit shamba. It is not your fault to get into the mess. The hungry stomach needs to feed. That is so daring!

The peaceful hen's hatchery journey cut short after three days as the eggs must be sold to pay your activity fee balance. Your fully decorated uniform alienates you from the smart colleagues. The patches represent almost all favourite colours of Kenyan tribes. Very active in extracurricular activities and of course the best in the curricular world.

Over the December holidays you to pretend the best geographer in map reading. Up the highlands, down the valleys and across the streams you will visit almost all relatives aiming to get textbooks, story books and topmarks.'Remember your cousin was promoted to class eight, so tomorrow you have to go for his class seven books,' your mum speaks in full composure. There you go across the hills to accomplish the task. You get lost in some instances but thank God you manage. I guess you would have used GPS to ease your work if it were today.

PART FOUR:
The so difficult and trying moments help you build the bridge to higher heights with hopes that tomorrow will be a brighter day. All through secondary with life reluctant to improve financially, socially. . .still traumatizing moments. Sharp sun rays penetrating the thatched roof gaps create a sigh of relief every morning.Your cherished matress is that skin from the family cow that was poisoned by the jealous-for-notning neighbour. Since then no few coins from milk. It was the only cow left after a series of dead of calfs and their lovely mothers. You very well know who did it! He has no apparent reason for this cow genocide. In fact he started with the dogs and chicken. The chicken your grandma gave to you when you visited her last christmas! God forbid!

The prayers, songs, homilies from clergymen, bible sharing with friends keep you going.The persistent guy as always you achieve academically. Your are headed into great heights; to conquer the unconquerable, achieve the unachievable and accomplish the dream in great honour of the Almighty!

PART FIVE: 
There you find yourself in campus. That 'life is up there' phrase a very great driving force and inspirational day in day out. Social, religious and political shocks too hard to absorb. Financial life another hell on earth! Back from the mess/mabatini, your roommate is feasting on chicken/chipo, hamburger. . .anything delicious, expensive and hard to get. Colleagues outings the order of the day. I guess your best outing is that visit to your long lost distant relative of yours at Kibera. What a reunion! Once in a while you will get friends. Others genuine and others with ill intentions. Your wit manages to filter them out.

Running and panting across the street to repair your friends laptop. It crashed in your hands when you were typing that 'must type' assigment. The lecturer is a no nonsence person. He will take ages to get back the assignment marks. Worse of all, he will make sure your transcript has achieved the equality rule of accommodating the disabled; and for that reason, he will give you an undeserved 'D'! You are the chief consultant on the class timetable, assignment deadlines and postponed classes.You have been very humble through campus life excelling in all helpful fields.

You have proved your critiques wrong. Those who always had you in the news for all wrong reasons. They said you cheated in your final exams to book a place in that institution. You wonder why your transcript can't prove them right. You are on long holiday for a few months, they say the in disciplined guy has been expelled from campus. You greet the old men in a salute because you are in a hurry, they confirm their fears on how spoilt campus people look down upon them. As one philosopher once put it that that you may not be able to stop people from having a bad perception about you but you can keep them from being right about it, you endeavor to apply that.Trying to suggest an improved way of looking into things, the child is getting beyond boundaries. Culture and traditions do not allow such practices. They insist that what they found there forefathers practicing will always be right. Surely, even quaint traditions? Out of date farming methods? Unsustainability? It is very ironical that the very people are feeling on the upgrade that their clan has learned children.
* * *
Some think education is just but an accolade to make you famous. Education is beyond that! It empowers people. Education is a poison to poverty, laziness, social evils, foolishness. It opens golden gates to development, prosperity, sustainability, fair and equitable sharing of resources. Thanks to the Almighty that most people are getting these facts in their fingertips.
* * *

Powers to read empower the young guy. You are back to the village to transform acquired knowledge into someting useful. Those project proposals go through as expected. Some development enemies are still against your project implementation. With cooperation from most people, you succeed in setting the community water project that has helped in irrigation and domestic uses. The community is producing surplus agricultural products for sale regionally. The underway village electrification will ensure that no family will be suffering to get paraffin in their lanterns. Your schooling siblings, cousins and neighbours will be studying to saturation because lighting is no longer a problem. Your grandfather will be listening to his favourite local radio station all through. Dry cells era will be a history.

You decide to partly fund that neighbor's child through high school. Don't forget he is the very person who was a nuisance during your childhood and schooling days. Those chicken and cows he poisoned! You never held a grudge. This brings a great reconciliation between the two families. Surely, what can't you do? You are really confirming the power of education to those development enemies. With that spirit, everything will be a dream come true. The SUFFERING child has transformed into a CONQUERING intellect, and will indeed, die VICTOR!

I don’t want to be Famous

I don't want to be famous because am LEARNED; 

I want to be famous because I can TRANSFORM the knowledge into something useful. 

I don't want to be famous because am RICH;
I want to famous because I use my wealth to INVEST in people!

I don't want to be famous because am ABROAD;
I want to be famous because I REMEMBER my family and my country!

I don't want to be famous because I am STRONG;
I want to be famous because I can use my energy CONSTRUCTIVELY!

I don't want to be famous because am a PREACHER;
I want to be famous because my ministry ACCOMMODATES all sorts of people!

I don't to be famous because am SAVED;
I want to be famous because people can see a SECOND CHRIST in me!

I don't want to be famous because I am a LEADER;
I want to be famous because am able to BRING UP another leader!

I don't want to be famous because am an ORATOR;
I want to be famous because my speeches are VIABLE!

I don't want to be famous because am a CRITIQUE;
I want to be famous because I NEVER CEASE to criticize!

I don't want to be famous because am INFLUENTIAL;
I want to be famous because I have POSITIVE influence!

I don't to be famous because I have a TALENT;
I want to be famous because I can use my talent to IDENTIFY talent in other people.

I don't want to be famous because I am FAMOUS;
I want to be famous because I know the MEANING of being famous! 

WHY GREEN

In my childhood days,
I thought green is just but a colour.
I enjoyed adding modifications to it.
Green, greener, greenest or even greenish.
Nothing beyond that!

Maybe I was too young
To comprehend its full meaning
Because hearing, spelling, writing, speaking,
And drawing with a green pen or chalk
Was by itself greening!

Going green?
Which is this place called green?
Why not blue or brown?
Let me consult my phone
And get to learn.

It is a specific section
Of environmental and economic intersection,
Encouraging human well being and social pomotion
Yet reducing environmetal degredation
And balancing the ecological equation.

Talks of the sustainability pillars,
Arable between social and environment,
Viable between environment and economic,
Equitable between economic and social.

This developing mother land,
Full of agricultural potential.
Has incorporated modern methods
Some friendly some unfrienly
Main  aim to boost
Present foood security,
Reduce poverty,
And curb mortality
Without considering posterity.

Amzing Indian Ocean
Across the coastal borders.
Whose water is unfit for use
But for products you will never re fuse
Crabs, prawns, dolphin, carageenin. . .
They are seeking marine protection.

We have gone in for water polltion,
Promoting sedimantation,
Eutrophication,
Deforestation. . .
Remember only 3% is fit for consumption.

CSR working out better.
Organizing environmental marathons, walks and talks.
Afforestation an order of the day
To protect catchment areas
And achieve the 10% goal!

Solar street lights
Strategic garbage sites,
Proper drainage and sanitation,
Green building construction,
Recreational parks,
And urban forestry
Are all dreams for my green city
Trickling all the to the municipality.

Unsighrty dumping sites
With oppotunity lots.
Enegry potential from methane,
Fertilizer production
To ensure waste reduction
And recycling at different locations.

We should take it into roads.
Seeking electric car subsidies.
Perahps it will be a new regime
Of a pollution minimum.

I like our National heritage
From the wild to those in the cage
Attracting tourists of any age
Who are never in sabotage.
Twende tujivinajari!

Let us embrace framework and modelling,
Enabling incentives
To capture green investors' eyes
Finance projects. . .
And all will be green, greener, greenest!

REFERENCES:
1. UNEP website ( The Green Economy Report),
2. UNSCD (Rio +20 Summit Report),
3. Daily Nation (19th, October 2012- Sprays and Fertilizers put future crops at risk),
4. Wikipedia.

The Satoyama

Nature is one of the most inseparable aspects when it comes to human life. It is through nature that we get our live moving; talk of the air that we breathe, water for various uses, and land. Therefore, it calls for utmost care of these three basic components of our environment. This is the reason why I want to talk about the “Satoyama,” one of the most practical ways that address natural resource management in an efficient and effective manner in Japan.

Various definitions have been coined to define “Satoyama.” The word itself is a derivation of two words, i.e. “Sato,” which is a Japanese name for a village, and “Yama,” a Japanese name for people. Yokohari and Bolthouse (2011) define the Satoyama as a holistic interlink of various units such as settlements, forests, rice paddies, agricultural fields, grasslands, and woodlands, in one place. Satoyama can also refer to a landscape that consists of managed community woodlands and forests (Yokohari & Bolthouse, 2011; Takeuchi et al., 2003). According to Tsuchiyaa, Okurob, and Takeuchi (2013), Satoyama is a perfect woodland management system. Notably, all these definitions have incorporated the aspect of communities acting in a coordinated manner to manage nature for a common benefit. Therefore, a Satoyama can be simply defined as a system where there is perfect co-existence between people and nature.

Although the Satoyama is mostly practiced in Japan, there is an ongoing interest from all over the world owing to its benefits. Indeed, such trends confirm that Satoyama might be the future management system for human-ecological systems worldwide (Indrawana, Yabeb, Nomurac, & Harrison, 2014). In a Satoyama, people interact with nature in various ways with an aim of getting the maximum from nature and at the same time, ensuring that nature’s status or condition remains intact.

Through proper management, a Satoyama can ensure harvest of various products such as timber and other non-timber products like charcoal, mushrooms, wild vegetables and wild foods. A Satoyama also has grasslands for feeding of livestock, constructions materials especially for thatching houses, and sometime beddings and fertilizer. Rice paddies and other agricultural field in a Satoyama ensure that there is sufficient food supply for the people that live in it. Specifically, the grasslands and woodlands in a Satoyama act as habitats thus increasing the biodiversity levels. This means that with a Satoyama, one creates almost a perfect society where nature and humans interact for each other’s benefit.

I believe that having or living in a Satoyama is a dream that most of us could like to accomplish. Breathing fresh air, feeling the presence of nature in the proximity of your homestead, and most importantly, being plenty supply of foods from the Satoyama! It is high time that we embraced such systems for the sake of our current lives and a sustainable future.

References

Indrawana, M., Yabeb,M., Nomurac, H., Harrison, H. (2014). Deconstructing satoyama- socio-ecological landscape in Japan. Ecological Engineering, 64, 77–84.      

Takeuchi, K., et al. (2003). Satoyama: Traditional rural landscape of Japan. Springer, Tokyo.

Tsuchiyaa. K., Okurob, T., Takeuchib, K. (2013). Combined effects of conservation policy and co-management alter the understory vegetation of urban woodlands: Case study in the Tama Hills area, Japan. Landscape and Urban Planning, 110, 87–98.

Yokohari, M., Bolthouse, J. (2011). Keepit alive,don’tfreeze it: Conceptual perspectiveonthe conservationof continuously evolving satoyama landscapes. Landsc. Ecol. Eng., 7, 207–216.

            

The Possibility of Green Cities

When we hear of the word “green,” we always think of nature; i.e. forests, grasslands, botanical gardens, orchards. On the other hand, the word “cities” keeps us oriented to a scenario of an artificial system that replaces nature; i.e. full-range infrastructure that includes buildings, roads, industrial and sports areas. That brings the question of how these two words (green and city) can exist in one place. It is truly possible to have nature deeply ingrained in a system full of anthropogenic activities! This is possible in various ways.

Specifically, there needs to be policies and laws that guide the planning of cities. This will ensure an organized system of carrying out activities the city. For instance, Japan has an Urban Planning Law that was set up in 1968 and this has had a great positive impact in relation to having green cities in Japan (Tsuchiyaa, Okurob, Takeuchi, 2013). Indeed, one cannot miss to include the word “green” when defining any Japanese city. This Urban Planning Law divides the city into two major areas; the first one referred to as the Urbanization Promotion Areas and the second one called Urbanization Control Areas. In this case, Urbanization Promotion Areas refer to those areas that can be freely used for urban development purposes such as construction of buildings and roads. On the other hand, there is no urban development that is allowed in Urbanization Control Areas. Practical examples of Urban Control Areas are parks and they the best when it comes to conservation of woodlands areas in cities (Tsuchiyaa et al., 2013). This means that some section of the city will remain intact and free from any form anthropogenic activity thus maintaining the nature, while another section will give way for infrastructural development thus a city.

It becomes a big challenge to have green cities in most countries because there are no urban planning policies established. Equally, there might be the policies but the implementation is not done because of either poor governance, lack of funds and expertise or, absence all these factors.  A closer look at Nairobi city (Kenya) displays some form of an existing urban planning law, which is not strictly implemented. Nairobi city has numerous parks, with some such as Uhuru Park and Central Park, located just a stone-throw form the CBD. Despite evidence of some routine maintenance of these parks, it is disheartening that some have been totally ignored. One of such is the Nairobi City Park, that used to be famous for its scenic sites that attracted an aura of events like wedding receptions and recreational activities. However, credit has to be given to some efforts shown in protecting some of the Nairobi City green areas like Arboretum and Karura Forest that within which the Unite Nation Environment Program (UNEP) is located. Unfortunately, these efforts are not good enough because the rest of the green areas have been encroached by people leading to mushrooming of estates and other human activities. Indeed, this proves Luck, Smallbone, and O’Brien’s (2009) findings that, human activities negatively affect green areas in urban areas.  With continued encroachment, we may soon lose all green areas in the city. This calls for urgent actions from the respective authorities and agencies to tackle the issue.

Conclusively, it is possible to have green cities in not only formulation of working urban planning policies, but also their actual implementation. This will ensure environmental sustainability thus posterity. Indeed, green cities are inevitable in the current world where global warming and climate change effects keep on worsening each day!

References

Luck, G. W., Smallbone, L. T., & O’Brien, R. (2009). Socio-economics and vegetation change in urban ecosystems: Patterns in space and time. Ecosystems, 12, 604–620.

Tsuchiyaa. K., Okurob, T., Takeuchib, K. (2013). Combined effects of conservation policy and co-management alter the understory vegetation of urban woodlands: Case study in the Tama Hills area, Japan. Landscape and Urban Planning, 110, 87–98.