A Christmas Carol, Part 1

Sambo started reading:

“A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice.

It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Crap!”

“At this festive season of the year, Uncle, ” said the gentleman

“It is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessities; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, Uncle.”

“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge.

“ I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population”.

Scrooge went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.

Ebenezer Scrooge

Sambo stopped, for a minute, and looked at Zole.

She was seated at the green couch, lovingly rubbing her baby bump. She was very fond of doing this, and took smiled her charming Nubian smile whenever she did so. Feeling Sambo’s stare, she looked at him and shot:

“I don’t get it Sambo, who is this Scrooge guy, and who is his nephew?”

Sambo, liked such questions. He was fond of explaining things and learning along the way too. It was partially how he had come to speak all the languages he could. He touched the scars on his forehead, his gaar, as if counting them one by one. Then, he responded:

“This Dickensian story is a classic tale of redemption, how a man can redeem himself of his sins. In our case, however, Scrooge is not just a man. No, Zole, Scrooge is the government. And he is sleeping on his job.

And his nephew, those are the well-meaning citizens. As for the poor, they are the many Kenyans in need of food and jobs. These are the basic necessities and comforts of life we all desire…

…These Christmas festivities they are talking about, that’s agricultural research. While everyone else, other governments are in a festive mood and investing in it, our government would rather sleep, Zole.”

Zole resumed patting the bump and asked him to carry on. She was listening, she said.

He moved away from the bookshelf and sat at his brown couch.

“Only one thing Sambo, how can a person such as Scrooge be redeemed?”

He took a deep breath before answering:

“As you know Zole, I like the Japanese people. They have this wonderful saying that, ‘Unless an idiot dies, he won’t be cured'”

She responded:

“I guess that is what must happen to Scrooge then. I remember what you told me about the ghastly ghosts of Gedi Ruins“.

“Yes, Zole, only death will redeem him. Let me tell you something about the 3 ghosts that come afterward”:

He then flipped a couple of pages, and resumed his reading:

When Scrooge awoke, it was so dark. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside. Scrooge, still half asleep, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them:

It was a strange figure—like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man, dwarved to child-like proportions. Its head was flaming, and its body looked like a candle stick.

“Who, and what are you?” Scrooge demanded.
“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
“Long Past?” inquired Scrooge:

“No. Your past.”

The Ghost of Christmas Past & its Extinguisher Cap.

At this point, Sambo stopped reading and looked at Zole. She stared right back, intent on hearing what he had to say next:

“You see Zole, we come from somewhere. Scrooge has not always been as anti-Christmas festivities as he is today. That ghost, will take him to a past in which Christmas still meant something to him. To a past where the agricultural R&D meant more.”

She beckoned him to read on:

“Rise! and walk with me!”, the Ghost of Christmas Past said to Ebenezer Scrooge.

“I am a mortal,” Scrooge responded, “and liable to fall.”

“Worry not, for I am with you,”

As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood upon an open country road, with fields on either hand.

“Good Heaven!” said Scrooge, clasping his hands together, as he looked about him. “I was bred in this place. I was a boy here!”

They stood in front of a gate labeled: “Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization”.

They walked within the compound and then the the Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door and asked Scrooge if he knew it. “l Know it!” said Scrooge. “I was fed and watered it myself. In return, it educated, and fed, and clothed me!”

They went in.

Note: In the 80s KALRO was still known as Kenya Agricultural Research Institutute (KARI).

The sight of an old man in a lab coat and sitting behind a grey microscope stirred Scrooge. He cried in great excitement:
“Why, it’s old Agro Researcher! Bless his heart; it’s Researcher alive again!”

The Old Researcher stood up, and went towards a chart which indicated all the varieties of crops they had isolated at the center. He, then, went towards an old CRT screen and switched it on. In it, between continuously moving horizontal lines, were pictures of smiling farmers in the then productive cotton and sugar industries. The economy was growing.

He switched it off.

Then, he waltzed back to near his microscope and opened a folder whose cover was written: The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. It was dated sometime in the 1980s. The Kenyan population was around 20 million. The funding for agricultural research, extension and promotion as a portion of the national budget was around 11%.

That was quite respectable compared to the less than 5% it presently is, against a population fast approaching 50 million.

“Spirit!” said Scrooge, “show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me?”

“Spirit!” said Scrooge in a broken voice, “remove me from this place.” “I told you these were shadows of the things that have been,” said the Ghost.

“That they are what they are, do not blame me!” “Remove me!” Scrooge exclaimed, “I cannot bear it!”

“Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!”
In the struggle, Scrooge observed that the Ghost had an extinguisher cap. By sudden action, he grabbed and pressed it down upon its head with all his force.

The ghost was vanquished, and Scrooge fell back into a deep slumber.

Scrooge extinguishes the Ghost of Christmas Past.

Sambo stopped reading. He was now sweating, as if the ghost in the book was haunting him too. Then, he started speaking to Zole:

“Dementia! Selective amnesia! Scrooge is willfully extinguishing the past. He does not want to look back at what our agricultural research once was. He does not want to explain himself as to why these industries have collapsed. And, dear Zole, that is the Christmas as KALRO alone. I haven’t touched JKUAT and Egerton”.

Zole, turned her face towards him and asked:

“What about the Ghosts of Christmas Present and Christmas Future?”

He closed the book, stood up, and took her hand again. Then, he led her back to the balcony:

“It is too late for that now, let’s go watch the Christmas lights first, shall we?”

The Man from Kakuma

“Ooh Sambo, can you believe it? It’s Christmas already!”

Zole stated, as the two of them stood side by side on the balcony of their house. It was almost midnight and the full moon reminded Sambo of that day Death sent Nagini to pick him up. It now seemed like a very distant past, a memory to be forgotten.

But how could he?

The things that Death and Dementia had shown him in those journeys were too traumatic to be forgotten. They had to be acted upon. And this was coming from a man who had his fair share of bad memories he always wanted to suppress.

But these were not among them. There had to be solid, tangible agendas on how to resurrect the agricultural industry. He saw the danger that lay ahead if that was not done. And here he was, thinking of his second agenda.

“Sambo dear, kindly elaborate, You had told me that Agenda 2 was research and development”. She started.

“Yes I did, sweet Zole, and I will tell you in a moment!”

He took her hand and led her back inside the house. It was warmer here. The radio had long stopped playing the songs that scored his ideas. After she sat down, he went to the bookshelf and bent. He started moving his fingers between the books.

Sambo is a very tall young man.

His father was a Nuer who came into Kenya to escape the civil war in the then Sudan. His mother is a Burundian Tutsi who came into the country under similar circumstances. They met at the Kakuma refugee camp in mid-1994. He was 20 and tall. She was 18 and taller.

A shared trauma joined them together. Both had experienced the deaths of all their immediate family members. They also somewhat shared a culture. They were both from some of the proudest long-horned cattle-rearing communities on the continent.

They would talk about the cows their families once possessed. What the names of their favorite cows were. They cried and laughed in each other’s arms, reminiscing about their homelands. As the ghost of Egdar Allan Poe said, they loved with a love that was more than love.

On 24th December 1996, Sambo Lera was born.

His parents came from the tribes with some of the tallest people on the continent. He naturally, inherited this and was well over 6 feet tall by his 15th birthday. That was 2011. That was the year Nilotic South Sudan finally won its independence struggle from the Arab North.

It was also the year that his father took him back home for his long-overdue scarification ceremony. The rite of passage that year was unlike any other, for it coincided with the birth of a nation.

His ancestral land was finally free, so they say. The 3-striped flag indicated its birth into nationhood. The 6 parallel lines, the gaar, on his forehead, indicated his birth into adulthood.

Sambo

Sambo Lera has never been to Burundi. All he knows about his other homeland are the stories told to him by his mother. The only thing that closely links him to the land of his mother is his name.

His mother named him Sambolera in honor of the song by her compatriot, diva Khadja Nin. It is said that the nurse who did the entry did not hear it correctly and instead wrote it down as ‘Sambo Lera’. And that way, it stuck. At the refugee camp, everyone knew his as Sambo

To Sambo, Kenya has always been his home.

This is where he had born. This is where he had grown up. This is where he has been schooled and socialized. He was particularly gifted with languages.

Apart from speaking his native Kirundi and Nuer, he was fluent in the national Kiswahili and English. On top of this, he could converse in Turkana, Kisomali and Dinka. He fiddled with some Arabic, learnt from the Muslim Somalis.

Coupled with his sharp wits, and huge frame, Sambo easily stood out among his peers. This caught the eye of aid workers. That is how they were able to organize for him a scholarship that landed him at Upper Hill Secondary School in Nairobi.

He was there on a basketball scholarship.

That was in the year 2009.

It was his first time in the city, and he loved it. For someone who until then had known nothing other than the tents and tents and tents that dotted Kakuma, this was a breath of fresh air.

He enjoyed his time in school and would spend days sharing his experiences with his parents and younger sister whenever he went back to the camp for holidays. His grades were also up, and generally, life was good.

Soon after Sambo’s scarification and the independence, his father started making plans on how to move the family to South Sudan. In his view, there were more opportunities there compared to living in the refugee camp.

His mother saw the sense in this too, and in August 2012, he bid them farewell.

He was on holiday from school and helped them pack their few belongings. he hugged his small sister, Usha, and said goodbye. His mother gave him the bearded necklace he always had on, and said goodbye. His father ran his hands over his gaar, and said goodbye.

That was the last time he saw them, forever.

Sambo completed his high school studies in December 2012. Thereafter, he was employed by the aid agency as an untrained teacher at the camp. It was a great time, and he was able to save some money, but not enough to fund his travel back to South Sudan.

Nine months later, he was accepted into the University of Nairobi on a scholarship funded by the same aid agency. He enjoyed his first semester, running from September to December of that year. On December 14th, 2013, he was readying his bags for the long journey to Juba. He was excited at the thought of seeing his family once again.

Then, just as he was heading to the bus station the next day, a notification popped up on the screen of his Ideos Phone. Another civil war had broken in his ancestral land. This time it was not between a united Nilotic South against an Arab North.

It was between a divided Nilotic South.

The Dinka and Nuer were at war.

Sambo tried calling home, but no one answered. He waited for a day and called again. Nothing. He waited for another two and called. Nothing. He tried some three days later. Nothing. The line was dead.

So was his family.

He only learned of this weeks later after heading back to the Kakuma Refugee Camp. Through the aid workers, he discovered that his family had been gunned down in their Juba home. The house was burnt to the ground. By their fellow Nilotic countrymen. Such is life.

These are memories that Sambo always tried to suppress. Just like his past criminal life, he hated thinking about it. But how could he not? Right now, he was focused on Zole and his unborn child. He was more focused on the future following his journeys with Death and Dementia.

He was more focused on locating the book he needed to explain his second agenda on how to pump life into a dead or dying agricultural industry. After some ten minutes of searching, he finally located it.

He stood upright, showing his wife the book.

“Here it is Zole, let me sing you a Christmas Carol!”

In his hands, he held Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’.

The Kakuma Refugee Camp.

The Great Farmer King, Part 1

“Nakamua ka farmer saa zingine ka Kidiss

Kanyari mbegu pesa ngapi nipande family tree?

Haujaskia the best things in life are free..?”

The tune playing on the radio had switched from Damian and Nas’ “Patience” to the gritty Sheng’ raps of King Kaka. Zole, still standing, stared at it and started speaking:

“No Sambo, that’s not it. I know you’d like to see the Promised Land, Sambo. But, have some Patience, won’t you? Please press for me the next button”.

Without speaking, Sambo turned around and moved the green-covered book from his left hand to the right one. Then, slowly, he pressed next:

” Sijawai get comfortable

Hii sio kitambi nimestomach issues

My prayer tu ilikuwa niweze kugrow up

Hawakutunyunyuzia maji basi hatuwezi komaa

All along wametushow sisi ni others, sisi ni etc

Na huyu politicians ni mjinga, ndani ya SUV anajificha aje?

Ile panya inauma ikipuliza si imepatikana

Actually sisi ndio wajinga aje?

Na kura bado tutapiga aje ?”

Sambo’s body started shaking, he clenched left wrist into a tight first. The right one tightly squeezed the green-covered book he was carrying. Zole moved towards him, and placed her right hand on his shoulder and pat-pat-patted it.

“I know Sambo, I know you are angry. I know what stomaching issues feels and looks like. Those malnourished kids with their drum-like stomachs always portray it. They are just round enough to look perfect on those posters seeking donations”.

What ‘stomaching’ issues looks like.

She stopped patting him and stood akimbo, starting to shake in anger too. Now it was his turn to pat-pat-pat her shoulder. Still, she continued speaking:

“Yet the people who were supposed to feed, and ‘water’ them in the first place are hiding behind tinted SUV windows. These children’s stunted growth is a result of these beasts’ actions and our lethargy against calling them out. I know the anger, Sambo, but this is not the time for that…”

Sambo had just stood there the whole time, watching her chest rise and fall as she expressed her thoughts. These words, he thought, came straight from the heart. They had experienced no delays at a roadblock where a certain organ asked them to part with some fifty shillings.

No, they skipped that blood clot and the threat of a stroke that accompanied it.

They flowed through her rich Nubian blood uninterrupted and lept out her mouth in quick blasts. But now, she had relaxed, she looked at him, and said, calmly:

“Sambo, please press next”.

He did so, without asking speaking a word.

King Kaka started rapping again:

“Bad times hukuja, na believe me bila warnings

So najipanga for the weather, jua tua ya jioni”

The moment this verse started playing, Zole started moving around excitedly. She walked towards the green wall with a yellow door leading to the kitchen, stopped for a minute, and then went in. From afar, Sambo heard her slurping the soup, tasting it.

“Aaah!”, she said, voicing her satisfaction with its taste.

A moment later, she came back, still holding the black, wooden spoon. It was ornately carved in the old Yoruba style. It’s handle portrayed a feminine figure, blessing the food which shall be served using it.

Before reaching Sambo, Zole stopped under her grandmother’s portrait, looked up and smiled. All this while, she was absentmindedly, lightly, striking her left palm with the spoon.

She thought of how her grandmother always told her that in this land of beasts hiding inside tinted SUVs, commonly known as “East kwa Mabeast”, one needed an extra pair of eyes just to survive.

Then, she came back to where he was standing, and spoke:

“That’s the song Sambo. That’s the tune that speaks of illustrates the necessity of that agenda you want to tell me about!”

Her husband, just stood there, looking at her. He wondered. Yes, he had told her that he had a Big 4 Agenda on how a dead or dying agricultural industry such as Kenya’s could be brought to life. But, he knew, he had not mentioned any of them to her. How did she know what he was about to speak about?

“Hawaamini spider Web zikishikana zinaweza funga simba

Kaka Sungura laundry tunableach ukabila na ufala…”

The tune kept playing and playing.

She had read his mind. He knew it, she was too good at this. After a year serving as his psychoanalyst and two years of intimate relationship, she could almost always predict what he would say next. He loved it. And hated it. And then loved it some more. Damn her, sweet Zole.

She spoke first:

“I know it’ll be perfect Sambo. And no, I have not read your mind. I just read the book.”

She said, while pointing at his right hand.

It was only now that Sambo remembered that he had been standing there, carrying the green-covered book for nearly 30 minutes. He remembered that he had declared that the first of his 4 agendas was contained within its covers. he looked at it.

“The Adventures of Thiga”, read the title.

He flipped a couple of pages and landed at what he had been looking for all along. But before reading from it, he spoke to Zole in a voice she had never heard before.

It was as if he had been possessed by an otherworldly force. Those journeys with Death and Dementia must have really affected him, she thought.

He spoke:

“My dear Zole, you won’t believe what Death told me the first time we met.”

She stepped back a little and went back to the seat that she had previously occupied. then, she gestured at him to go on.

“ I am nothing if not fair. I am not violent. I am not malicious. I am a result.”

Zole looked at him, dumbstruck. Still, he continued speaking:

“Those were his exact words, my dear. You see, King Kaka is also right Zole. Bad times come, without any warning. No one wishes for them, but everyone feels their impact.”

He held his breath, for a minute. Preparing for what was coming next. She held hers, too. He went on:

“We have seen many bad times Zole. We have seen famines. We have experienced flash floods. We have seen agro-industries collapse before our very eyes, Zole…

… But, like Death, they are a result. Maybe, like the rapper says, they had no warnings. But, when you think about it Zole, does anyone need to tell you that the sky is blue for you to see it?”

She shook her head?

“Then, Zole, like Death, these bad times are a result.”

This time, she chipped in:

“A result of what, Sambo?”

 

“Well, that’s easy. You heard King Kaka say that he prepares for bad weather, didn’t you? That’s exactly the point, these bad things are a result of a lack of preparation. They are a consequence of poor planning and leadership…”

Zole was now lovingly patting her baby bump, listening. Then, she spoke:

“So, what’s next Sambo, what’s your this Big Agenda of yours?”

He opened the book and started reading:

For a long moment, mother and son stood in silence. Then Thiga’s mother spoke:

“Look at the land below us as far as you can see. It’s very beautiful. There are pastures and forests, lakes and rivers. The country is very rich. It is a land which produces good crops and fine, fat cattle. What would you do if you were the king of that country?”

As he was about to read the next line, Zole suddenly jumped up and started running into the kitchen. He threw down the book and rushed after her.

This Agenda 1 of his could wait.

Till, till after he knew what was going on in the kitchen…

A screengrab from King Kaka’s ‘Swahili Shakespeare’.

Sambo Lera’s Big 4 Agenda

Sambo Lera felt good being back home.

It had been weeks since he left, riding on the shoulders of Nagini. He had missed the warm smile of his wife, and her warm laughter. And the warmth of her fond hugs the moment he stepped on the threshold. And her warm, well, he did not share more than that.

He had missed the warmth of his home. It was a one-roomed apartment in Buruburu estate, that which was once a leafy suburb of Nairobi. This was no longer the case, and it was mainly the abode of wannabe mid-class Kenyans like himself. Still, a home where the heart is.

And he enjoyed every moment he was there.

The gate leading to Sambo’s home.

He had missed the warmth of the food in his home. Spending time with Death, and later on Dementia, had  eaten a part of his soul. He knew it, something in him had died. he wanted to, so badly, resurrect him. The sweet aroma coming from the kitchen would do the trick, he thought.

Zole, his dear wife, was a pure-blooded Nubian woman.

She had the features of her ancestors and held on strongly to most of their cultures. Especially the culinary ones. She sat across the glass-topped wooden table, staring at him. Pity was wildly roaming all over her face, jumping from one eye to the next. He stared past her, avoiding her pitiful stare.

Their marriage had been a contentious issue between their families. It was especially the case, with her family. It was a respectable Muslim one. He had been raised a Christian, but was mostly known as a heathen these days. He had once even been baptized and christened John Sambo Lera.

It is known, that on the day of his baptism the charismatic televangelist declared:

“From today henceforth, you shall be known as John, for I see a future in you. Like the disciple of Christ, you shall prophesy to men of all nations a revelation. I see the spirit in you John! Arise, and be born again!”

She, on the other hand, was born and bred a Muslim in the slums of Kibra. She, was expected to marry from her own. ‘

“This was the norm”, his father stated. His goatee, dyed red with henna, shone as he demanded her to honor tradition. Her mother begged her to reconsider, even threatened a curse. So did her aunts.

Her three brothers promised him a broken jaw. And a shattered hip, or two. And crushed balls, for having the balls to seduce their only sister.

Still, she married the reformed criminal.

A couple of months after his baptism, John Sambo Lera started veering off his faith and within a year was back to his old ways. He went back to the old life of thuggery. In his view, there is only so much that a young man like him can try his hands on before being drawn in by the allure of quick money.

He was almost killed by a mob, twice. That’s why he had no left eye. That’s why he had a limp. The only thing that saved him was prison.

That is where he met Zole, his wife..

A potrait of Zole’s grandmother as seen on their wall.

That was almost 2 years ago, in a past he often chose not to remember. But she did, her brilliant mind never forgot a thing.

She was a psychology student at the University of Nairobi at the time. She was sent on assignment at the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison as part of her training. She was in her final year of study. He was serving his final year of his 5-year prison term.

She served as his counselor, and hence a friendship was born.

You see, convicts at the Kamiti Prison often have cell phones.

No one knows how they get in, but some reliable sources claim that they go through the ‘middle passage’ located in a valley Sambo Lera did not care to share.

They often use these phones to call ‘lonely’ members of the general Kenyan public and  get ‘tokens of appreciation’ from unsuspecting citizens in form of money transfers.

But, that was not the case with Sambo. His phone was dedicated to calling and texting Zole. Despite the professional boundary that was being crossed, she cared not. They kept in touch for a year, and was there to receive him on the day of his release.

He had been trained as a carpenter within those high walls, and soon got a job through her connections. And that is how he rebooted his life. He was yet to reacquire his faith, and wondered how different his life would have been if he had never abandoned it.

But that was the past, and he liked thinking about the present. And the future.

He stared at Zole, his wife, she looked exactly like her grandmother- whose potrait was hanging on their corrugated iron sheet wall. The only thing that she was missing was her grandmother’s gold-coated, large nose ring.

She wore it, once, on the day of their wedding a year ago.

He looked at her  growing baby bump, and stated:

“I missed you, Zole, did you receive my letter?”

She, glad that he had finally spoken since arriving a day before, smiled, her warn Nubian smile, and said:

“Yes Sambo, I got it. I, and the baby, missed you too”.

She said, while rubbing her the bump on her purple dress with yellow stars.

“You must have seen a lot of Death in your journeys, I’d like to hear what it taught you”.

“Patience, my dear Zole”, he began his speech.

“I will tell you soon enough”.

The lyrics are quoted from ‘Patience’ on this album.

He stood and went to the Sony Radio, placed on top of a cupboard that also doubled up as a bookshelf. He pressed it on, and an instant later Damian Marley blasted off the speakers:

Some of the smartest dummies…can’t find food for the starving tummies
Pay no mind to the youths…cause it’s not like the future depends on it

He listened for a bit and fast forwarded the song a bit, till Nas jumped in:

I held real dead bodies in my arms, felt they body turn cold, oh
Why we born in the first place if this is how we gotta go? Damn !

He allowed the playlist to go on as he bent forward and skimmed through the shelf. He spotted ‘Duniani Kuna Watu’ by Said A. Abdula, but skipped it. He saw Marjorie MacGoye Oludhe’s ‘Coming to Birth’, but left it alone.

He saw Ngugi’s ‘Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus‘, but ignored it this time.

He saw the Bhagavad Gita, stacked alongside a the Bible and the Quran, but couldn’t touch any of them at that moment. He saw ‘Mzimu wa Watu wa Kale‘ sitting beside ‘Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows’.

He run his fingers over ‘Walenisi‘, that which he had been gifted by Dementia, but stopped himself from picking it. He stared at it for a minute, still tempted.

Finally, he got to small children’s book with a green cover and a murderous ogre drawn on it. “The Adventures of Thiga”, read the title.

He then, declared:

“Dear Zole, if my journeys and that song taught me something, it is that we were not just born to go this way. There is a way to feed the starving tummies…

There is a way to cater for the youths who no one cares for, as if the future does not depend on it. We can resurrect the agricultural sector…

I have a manifesto for it, Zole”.

She stood up, and looked at him, in awe. Her eyes shone with anticipation.

A halo seemed form around his clean-shaven head. Maybe the charismatic preacher was right after all. He was destined to make the Revelation.

He raised the book over his head and said:

“Call it Sambo Lera’s Big 4 Agenda, and the first one is right here!”

 

The Raven & The Book Thief

I never thought I’d ever meet Death, at least while I was alive and kicking, buckets.

Of course, I have heard of other people meeting him, or is it her? I’m not sure, so let’s just call her him.

I have been told tales of people who saw Death passing by their window at night. A friend told me of how she saw him swimming against the current along a dark river.

I have heard stories about people who met with him face to face. Many of these claim that he has a shadowy appearance and you can never really see into his eyes. This is the impression I have always had of his appearance.

He only appears at night, they say, in dark cloaks made darker by the dark night. A very very very old red priestess one told me that such nights are dark and full of terrors. And as we all know, the fear of such terrible nights is quite contagious.

On his thoughts, not many are available. To many people, Death is the most vile creature to ever roam the earth. He robs us of our loved ones, and makes others suffer between his realm and this one for years.

I tried to ask those who have met him once what his thoughts were, but they were too scared to respond.

The few that actually tried trembled at the very mention of his name, and shut their doors on my face. Some I pressed further, pushed a little. But even they, simply shouted:

“Nevermore!”

Fear is extraordinarily contagious, they say.

In my thirst for knowledge about him, I tried reading a little but not many books yielded what I was looking for. It seems that even paper pages are afraid of telling his story.

I was at a loss, until I came across “The Book Thief”.

I generally have an aversion to stealing, but I did that one time. It’s title was too tempting to ignore. I thought it would be interesting to steal a book about a book thief.

I felt that it might tell a story that I was interested in. And it did so, for it gave me an impression of how Death thinks:

Here is a small fact-you are going to die.

Does this worry you? I urge you- don’t be afraid.

I am nothing if not fair.

Please, be calm, despite that previous threat.

I am not violent. I am not malicious.

I am a result.

I read and read that book for almost a month, discovering all of Death’s interests, aspirations. I learnt of what he disdains and what he is empathetic about.

All these came as a surprise, but none was more surprising that learning of his fears. That was some seven years ago. Thus, this desire to know him more subsided for sometime.

Well, that was until I attended that Nigerian Funeral, earlier this year.

Upon coming back to the country, the tide of thoughts about him came back strongly. The waves were sky high, chasing after the bloody full moon.

I tried stopping the thoughts, but they kept coming back. Night after night I fought the nightmares. The day dreams were even worse. I feared, in the words of Edgar Allan Poe, that remaining too much in my head would make me lose my mind.

I did not lose it, I think.

I kept pondering over what Death must be like after all this years. Like humans, did he change over time? Did he age? What did it feel like, the first time he took a soul?

Was it like breaking one’s virginity? Did it feel good, or was he filled with guilt afterwards? Was he Satan’s relative? Who were his assistants?

Who or what is killing Agriculture and her children?

The more I tried stopping this tide of thoughts, the more king waves I attracted. Especially at night.

I resigned to my fate. I gave up, and thus:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before,

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “Only this, and nothing more.”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Giant Raven of the saintly days of yore;

“Nevermore!” The Raven, sitting lonely on the placid stair, spoke.

Only that one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

“Wretch, Prophet!” I cried, “thing of evil!, said I – prophet still, if bird or devil!

And the Giant Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid stair, just outside my chamber door;

“Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore!”

Never, for a moment, had l thought I would be one of those people who were unlucky enough to encounter Death.

But, strange things happen to everyone. And, mark you, I have had my equal share of strange ones, but nothing compares to the events of that night.

Despite my inner protestations, the word that Giant Raven muttered reminded me of those termed by people who had met Death.

I decided, despite my fears, to climb atop its soft, black feathers.

A moment later, it took flight.

I did not know where this journey would end, but I took it anyway. The icy midnight wind froze my face as it flew upwards, into the dark clouds.

The bloody moon shone on. It was July 27 2018, that night of the eclipse.

“Nevermore!” The Raven shouted.

We flew on, towards the Lang’ata Cemetery.

To meet Death.

The Man Who Bred Bread

It is almost 2 AM and we are at the rooftop bar of the Trademark Hotel, off Limuru Road.

After a hectic week at the 2018 CGIAR Big Data in Agriculture Platform Convention, the after party was a welcome relief. I was seated on a comfy blue couch, overlooking a calm infinity pool.

Beyond it, the Nairobi skyline shone in all its glory.

Courtesy: Mutua Matheka

A little tipsy, I was just seated there smiling sheepishly at the dark sky and brilliant lights. Just as I’m about to slip into a stupor from all the free-flowing drinks, she stands in front of me. There’s just something about a charming young woman that sobers one up.

“Do you know that we have a wheat shortage to thank for all this?”

She asks, while pointing at the beautiful cityscape. She’s wearing a yellow kitenge dress with silhouetted motifs and a fishtail curvature that sensually grabs her figure. I’m still not listening as she repeats the statement.

I am focusing more on her cute, tiny eyes. They are what drew me to her at the gala dinner a couple of hours ago. I want to say something, but the stupor returns, I fall back on the couch.

My father always warned me and my siblings against alcohol. Now I know why.

She walks away. As she does so, she shouted, in her mellow voice:

“Go and find out who bred bread!”

I woke up the next day tired, recovering from a hangover I should never have had in the first place. Its around midday and I am at my place, with no memory of how I even got there. My near-empty stomach is crying, wailing, for help.

Quickly, I jump out of bed, stumble a little, but find my balance and head to the kitchen.

The moment I saw that a loaf of bread on the kitchen table, all the memories came trooping back. The hunger somehow disappears and I rush towards my computer. Her last statement made no sense given that bread cannot be bred. I wanted to find out what she really meant.

A couple of clicks later I came across a name: Norman Borlaug.

It was surprised that I had never heard the name before. This is despite the significant role the American agronomist has played in plant breeding. It is impossible to speak about the science of it without mentioning his name.

I was even more excited given that the blog series I am currently on is entirely about breeding. Opening several other web pages revealed a ton of information about the Nobel Laureate.

Through what is often termed as the Green Revolution, he was able to save an estimated 1 billion lives. That is not an easy feat, and it takes a special kind of person to pull it off. That got me even more psyched up and I went to YouTube to view a couple of documentaries on him.

So, how did he do it?

Borlaug on a field visit.

Wheat, alongside maize and rice, are the three most important food crops. They serve as the staple foods all over the world and a shortage in any one of them is of great concern. The East African famine of 2011 was due to maize shortage. The Great Chinese Famine of 1959-61 was due to a severe shortage of rice.

In the 1940s, Mexico was heading towards the same direction. The wheat production was extremely low and farmers could not manage to produce enough to even feed their own families. A combination of factors including fungal diseases and land degradation led to low produce that left the country in a precarious situation.

He moved to Mexico in 1944 and took charge of a wheat improvement program jointly funded by the Mexican Government and the Rockefeller Foundation. Dubbed the Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program, it served as a precursor to the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

Borlaug quickly set to work and created a team that was focused on achieving the three primary objectives of breeding: Disease resistance, robustness, and high productivity. In under five years, they were able to breed a variety of wheat that met all these characteristics.

Furthermore, they further refined it by breeding for semi-dwarfism which made the stalks stronger and hence capable of holding more produce. This lower height also made it suitable for mechanization of wheat production. Within some 20 years, Mexico became self-sufficient in wheat production, and soon began exporting.

He replicated this success in Pakistan and India which were also facing similar situations. Most of the wheat that is farmed commercially these days bears characteristics that are the result of his work. Production of wheat products, therefore, still heavily relies on his pioneering work.

This means that, in a way, he is the man who bred bread as we know it.

Alongside the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), CIMMYT became among the first agricultural research centers brought under the umbrella of CGIAR (Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research). The event that she and I met in was one organized by CGIAR.

Turns out she was right about this, too. We did have a wheat shortage to thank for that beautiful night.

Crop Breeding: From Svalbard to Zuhura

“The year 2128 was a terrible one”.

The robot seemed to cry as it said those words.

We were pacing all over one of Zuhura’s numerous decks as we inspected the rows and rows and rows of rice plants. The white basins on which they grew were filled with a dense bluish mist that nourished them. Piled up to 300 meters into the air, production was in full force.

As she spoke, Ms. Robot and I were being lifted on a platform that would allow us to see the crops on the upper decks. She glided along the rows, took mental notes and reported that the crops were doing fine. I agreed, and we moved on.

The platform lowered us and we were soon moving on solid ground again.

The snake-like, 5 foot robot led the way as I followed a short distance behind. For such a long machine, it was slender given that it did not measure more than 2 inches at its widest point. Its cylindrical body was filled with all sorts of sensors, making her the perfect assistant during crop inspection runs.

We were soon at the orchard.

This was one of my favorite spots, it reminded me of the world we lost. Of all the planting decks, it had the what appeared to be the closest resemblance to the vineyards of centuries past. The mangoes, apples, cherries, papayas, loquats, berries, avocadoes, and many many more.

I stood at one end and beamed the inspection gun. Its blue-yellow light filled the deck as it gathered data on each fruit. In the meantime, Ms. Robot moved from one tree to another at lightning speed. When she came back, her results matched mine.

They were all doing fine, too.

Our inspections done for the day, I bid Ms. Robot goodbye and headed to the observatory. It was raining, and the pink, brown and colorless drops of sulfuric acid covered that thick windows that protected the deck from the chaos that is Venus’ atmosphere.

Zuhura is one of the two dozen farm-cities that float some 50 kilometers above the surface of Venus. They are part of hundreds of similar but much larger cities akin to the space crafts I dreamt about all those years ago. Humans moved here after the catastrophe.

Zuhura, as it stands today.

 

Sitting at the observatory reminded me of that eventful day. Even after five decades since the doom, I remember it clearly, as if it just happened yesterday. It was in February, on Friday the 13th, the year 2128.

An apprehensive day, it was.

Unlike previous in years when most people would have been preparing for Valentines Day, evacuations to the Antarctic and outer space were in had already ended. Not all people could be carried on the space arks and therefore priority was given to those with expertise in needed areas.

The frozen continent was thought to be the next best alternative. That was a tough and controversial choice, I often wonder whether the situation could have been handled differently.

There was a huge risk of a meteor colliding with the planet.

“Asteroids and meteors are just jealous of Earth because they didn’t become planets!”, were the last words Ivar, one of my colleagues in the 1000-strong team said before we were asked to do the necessary. Some in the multidisciplinary team laughed, nervously.

There were fears that should the meteor hit the Earth, it could cause mass extinction. We had been preparing to evacuate the Global Seed Bank at Svalbard for years since the first reports of the risk were announced. The bank was made for Dooms day, and here it was.

The billions of seeds in its valuts had to be evacuated to the moon.

The evacuation was done secretly for several weeks eight months before the collision happened. We separated the vaults into appropriate sets, and placed them in massive shipping containers. Each one was labelled with the logo and of the Crop Trust.

The Norwegian cold stood in sharp contrast with the heat that would soon sweep through the world. That heat killed more than 8.5 billion people. Just slightly over a billion people safely made it to the Venus-bound floating cities like Zuhura and the Mars colony.

The last memories I have of Earth are of what happened on that Friday the 13th. The telescopes orbiting the planet beamed us the images on our moon station. The impact was, ironically, near the Cape of Good Hope. A huge blinding light was seen followed by a loud bang that could be heard all over the galaxy!

Even at thousands of kilometers away, we sweated, profusely the extreme heat that scorched the Earth. We trembled upon seeing the violent winds swept up sky-crappers like leaves in a storm. Tsunamis that were a hundred times the height of Mount Everest wrecked havoc. We wept. All of us lost family and friends in the doom.

Earth died a violent death.

The collision, as it happened.

Before that, the billions of seeds were shipped to the Kennedy Space Center on the Florida coast. Our team then split into twenty groups of 50 each and were airlifted to several rocket launch sites around the world.

A few days later we were blasted into the lunar surface to set up facilities for preserving and breeding the seeds. Since then, moon has acted as the new Svalbard and all space farms rely on it for their seeds.

The extensive diversity in that gene pool has been vital to humanity’s survival in this new environment.

Even in the face of such a catastrophe, crop breeding still exerts its importance. That is why in the next couple of weeks I’ll share with you stories on:

1. The History of crop breeding
2. The art & craft of crop breeding
3. The science of crop breeding
4. The economics of crop breeding

Keep breeding, and yeah, pun intended!

The Svalbard Global Seed Bank, as it once stood.

Testing Irrigation Water

Stage left, enters the Athi River.

The very first agricultural blog that I published on this site was “You Deserve Better Mangoes”. Originally, I wanted to name it “The Shit Eaters of Nairobi” but I thought it would be a bit distasteful (pun intended) to many people.

In truth, however, it is highly likely the food you are eating is likely to be toxic. It might be full of shit as it is grown using polluted waters. I would not like to rewrite what I did in January. but I’ll tell you something I noted this past week.

There’s this friend of mine who’s developing an app that is designed to link smallholder farmers with the market. She called me and asked if I can take her on a field trip given that she is more knowledgeable in coding than agriculture.

I agreed and on Saturday we were off to an area along the Athi River.

The first farmer we spoke to was busy watering his tomato plants. They looked healthy alright, but something was terribly wrong. The hose pipe he was using was connected to a pump that was sucking green waters from the river.

I did not want to comment on the matter so as not to offend him but I realized that with our currently weak trace-ability systems, this could very much end up on my plate within the next couple of months. It could end up in yours too.

As I did in that January post, I would like to say that we need to protect our rivers.

Other than just waiting on the government, we also need to change our culture for I see a lot of carelessness. There was this one time I was at the 14 Falls and I saw a child throwing a plastic bottle into the river, with encouragement from his mother.

To preach, though, is not the intention of this blog post. I wrote it to directly address any farmer or aspiring farmer.

You have to test the waters.

One of the most important things that any farmer can do is have their irrigation water sampled. There are several things that such an analysis investigates. These include the types and quantities of dissolved chemicals; the suspended solids; the BOD & COD, and electrical conductivity.

Why should one have their water tested, though?

Firstly, it is your moral responsibility. Being a farmer is a solemn duty akin to that of a doctor. You touch lives with your produce and therefore have the responsibility of ensuring that what reaches them is safe for consumption. This starts by using the right quality of water.

The other reason is that such tests tell you the quality of your water and hence its effectiveness for irrigation. Water with a high amount of suspended solids will clog your pipes and is especially harmful in drip irrigation systems.

The chemical composition of your water may also have an effect on how your agrochemicals perform. If it has certain chemicals that might hamper the action of the ones you are using, you can get tips on how to remediate the situation.

It may also contain high quantities of essential nutrients, hence saving you the money you would have used in purchasing fertilizers. That is something that can be of benefit to any farmer regardless of the crop they are planting.

Finally, irrigation water has the potential of changing the soil characteristics on your farm. This is particularly the case with water that has high concentration of salts as they can be deposited on your soil and affect things such as water infiltration. That is highly likely to hamper your crop yield.

These are just a few of the benefits that you’ll derive from testing your water. Like the tests for nutrients and pathogens, these institutions will take are of such needs:

1. Spectralab
2. Aqualytic Lab
3. SoilCares Ltd
4. CropNuts Ltd
5. Ujuzi Kilimo
6. SGS Ltd
7. JKUAT

The Taste of Clay

During her last trimester carrying our last born’s pregnancy, I used to spend a lot of time with my mother. It was during that first quarter of 2003 and Kenya had just elected Kibaki to the presidency. We were such a hopeful people, back then.

Former President Mwai Kibaki

Back then, the Kibaki government introduced free universal education in public schools. I was quickly transferred from the private one I was in and taken to the then relatively better equipped public one known as Tom Mboya Primary School. I was set to join Standard (Grade) Three.

For the sake of admission, joining the school at Standard 3 made the most sense. It was the last class in what we might describe as the elementary section of primary school. Getting a slot anywhere lower or higher than it was more difficult. Some parents moved their children a class higher or lower to secure a slot at the school.

The admission process was chaotic with parents scrambling to get their children in. There were three classes per stream, named for the three primary colors: Red, Green and Blue. Their metallic doors were colored accordingly. We were all packed into 3 Red and were more than happy to, for the first time, sit on proper seats.

During the first lesson I attended in January 2003, I was surprised to meet almost half the people from my previous school in the same class. Of course, I was not the only one who made the move to Tom Mboya Primary School. It was exciting, seeing all those old friends, the likes of Sylvia and Mbugua. Learners from other schools shared similar experiences, with unintended consequences.

The school recruited more Class Three pupils than it could handle. All one needed to get admission was evidence of birth in Kenya. There were too many kids of age for the available classes, but principals were bound presidential decree to admit all learners that had been registered in their records. They could not reject us after registration.

At some point, there were more than 100 learners in classrooms that were designed to carry 50. The school, therefore, came up with a compromise. Those pupils who had been at the school before the free education policy were given first priority alongside a small percentage of the new entrants.

This priority group would form the first batch of learners. They attended class during the morning sessions, running from 8 AM to the middle of midday. Afterwards, in the afternoon, the second batch would come in for lessons running up to 4 PM.  I was part of that second batch. It is how I ended up spending most of my mornings with Mum throughout the year 2003.

At the time she acted as a middle-woman between buyers of scrap shoe soles in Dandora and recycling plants at the Kariobangi Light Industries. We would wake up daily and go to a scrap metal/plastic dealer known as Wanyala to purchase the soles. We would then pre-process them by removing the fibers and selective burning before taking them to the industries for sale.

I noticed something weird during this time: Mum would consume a lot of rocks. I used to ask her, “Mommy, mommy, why do you eat rocks?”. She would laugh a little and respond with: “It’s the baby, he likes the taste of clay”. This went on until the boy was born in mid-April of that year. Till a few months ago, I had almost forgotten about this clay-eating habit.

Eating Clay

I work as an agronomist in Ukambani and interact with a wide variety of farmers. On this particular occasion, I went to inspect the farm of one who was planting some onions in Mwala. He has been farming since before I was born and he told me of how the productivity of his land was on a downward trend.

“I apply all these fertilizers but nothing comes out!”, he lamented.

I looked at him and asked whether he conducts any soil tests. The 70-year old veteran farmer looked at me for a while before declaring:

“Well, knowing the most fertile places to farm is easy. I just call a pregnant lady and she can spot the right place for me. The same clay that makes the fetus healthy is also good for the crop. And there is never a shortage of pregnant women, you know”.

He spotted how puzzled my face was and went ahead to explain that what exactly these ladies did: They had cravings for clay and it was often the case that the locations they selected their rocks from had the most fertile soils.

He went into a long tale of how even in the days of his grandfather that was how it was done and concluded by declaring: “The taste of clay used to tell all, these days it doesn’t seem to work, though”.

The farmer was wrong in his approach.

One can tell whether crops can grow on a certain piece of land by sight, we all have common sense. I am not too sure about how that is possible by taste though as the farmer claimed. In the long run, however, these are inaccurate techniques that can never yield reliable results. Too many farmers plant without fully understanding the makeup of their soils, which is a huge mistake.

You need sensors for this work, senses can wait. 

Before one sets up a farming enterprise, they need to conduct a series of tests that will help them determine important parameters about their farm. This is important to anyone who wants to establish an agribusiness that will optimize the soil and other resources.

This is the thinking behind the next series of blogs that I’ll share with you. They revolve around these three items:

1. Soil Testing: Fertility Evaluation
2. Soil Testing: Pathogen Analysis
3. Water Testing: Salinity, pH, BOD, etc.

I hope you will join me on this new journey and learn a thing or two from it.

Soil Samples

Blockchain Technology in Agriculture

What is Block Chain Technology & How Does it Work?

Picture this: You enter a supermarket and make a purchase. The cashier records information on the value of the purchase. Later on, the data is transmitted to an accountant who sums it up with those from other cashiers.

They then balance their books based on the supermarket stock to check the performance and whether the cashiers are cheating or not. Much later on, auditors come to check the books and report on the accuracy of the accounting process.

The data at each point is recorded in a ledger such as the MS Excel spreadsheets on your computer. The cashiers have their own ledgers. So do the store keepers, the accountants, and the auditors. Each ledger can be considered to be a block containing data about that given entity.

This is the same way that Blockchain Technology works, the only difference being that it is digitized and held on the internet. It comprises of a series of blocks that are linked to one another in a distributed network. The entities in this case are nodes (computers) that hold the information.

In the distributed network, each node is capable of generating and verifying a block of data in real time. This facilitates collective bookkeeping. Assume, for example, that you go into a Tuskys supermarket to buy a kilo of tomatoes costing 80 KES.

At that point, the fresh produce store keeper weighs the tomatoes on a digital scale. This is one block of data which is secured by a digital fingerprint known as a Hash. Imagine that the scale is part of an Internet of Things within the supermarket. Through it, all the Big Data generated at each node can be shared through these blocks.

That data is therefore immediately accessible to the cashier whose computer charges your credit card KES 80 automatically. This is a second block of data with its own unique hash. Additionally, it contains the hash from generated at the weighing scale.

Remember, all this information is accessible on the computer operated by the accountant. When your 80 KES is summed up with transactions from hundreds of other customers, it forms a third block of data with a unique hash on top of the one generated at the cashier’s.

In all the midst of all these, the auditor is sitting somewhere sipping their coffee as they monitor the transactions. All nodes have to agree on the authenticity of any new block and that’s why they interlink the hashes.

In the event, that the cashier, for instance, adds an extra 10 KES to the 80, all the other nodes trigger an alarm system. The change is denied as that is not what was present in the Genesis block (at the weighing scale). Consensus has to be reached by all nodes for a new block to be created.

As you can see, all these blocks continuously form a chain within the distributed ledger and that is why it is referred to as Block Chain Technology. The

 

How is it Useful in Agriculture?

There are multiple potential uses for this emerging technology. Some of these include:

1. Traceability of Food Products

There are concerns that some of the fresh produce is grown using polluted water, exposing customers to health risks. At present, it is quite difficult for, say, a retailer to determine the quality of the produce that reaches their shelves.

However, through a block chain network comprising of organizations such as government agencies like KEBS and KEPHIS, safety testing labs like SGS, and the farmers themselves, it is possible to track the food at all stages of production and distribution. China is already setting up such a structure through the Food Safety Alliance for China.

2. Smart Contracting

I work as an agronomist and have witnessed farmers losing their entire crop due to use of counterfeit seeds and other inputs unknowingly. They also do not have direct access to markets, something that disadvantages them greatly.

I recently read in the news that farmers in Laikipia were throwing away mangoes while the prices in Nairobi were skyrocketing. They could not get this valuable yet highly perishable crop to the market on time.

Blockchain can help address such challenges in the agricultural value chain. With a distributed ledger system, it would be possible for farmers to identify genuine suppliers of inputs as they would have been verified by everyone else on the network. This could ease logistics and make it more efficient.

Furthermore, farmers would be able to access markets through such a platform and get value for their produce. Cellullant has already set up such a system through Agrikore and the sector is projected to grow even more in the near future.

These are just a few of the possible applications, follow this link  and this link to read more about it.