Inconvenient Truths

I finally watched Al Gore's documentary. What an interesting and captivating piece. I felt totally enlightened. Gore earned that Nobel peace prize two times over! If ever there was an example of turning a bad situation into a good one. Perhaps there was a good reason why Gore lost elections despite winning them after all.I thought I had gone green but after watching that, I wonder how much greener I can get. You can be sure I'll be making a huge effort to get greener. I'm already what I consider almost extreme. take for example, unless in extremely unavoidable circumstances, I don't drink bottled water. Why? because it adds a whole lot of plastic waste to drink water that in its fine print says this: PWS. Meaning, public Water Source. Someone took the same tap water I drink, packaged it and sold it to me for more that it costs to buy gas. Not only does it offend my sensibilities, it harms the environment, so I just say no!

I noted that Gore mentioned Nairobi as becoming mosquito infested. I recall a doctor once telling me that there was hardly any malaria in Nairobi and people should not take malariaquin as it was harmful. Then, these drugs were still available OTC (over the counter). We had a good laugh over how rare a female anopheles mosquito was in Nairobi as he laughed when I told him how my entire family had once collapsed from malaria within 2 hours of each other. He had explained that that was the only way malaria occurred in Nairobi. Because there weren't that many malaria causing mosquitoes, you saw it as a significant wave and it was gone. His explanation had made sense then. I wonder how global warming will affect that balance.

After I watched Al Gore, i wondered what the impact would be on the medical expense budget should malaria become common place in Nairobi. Once upon a while back in this blog, I watched how a remote part of Kenya was struggling with malaria and the inability to afford its treatment. malaria would probably outbreak in the slums. that's where they have pools of stagnant water and other unhygienic practices glaring to the eye. This would cripple the entire medical system should cases of malaria start to increase and keep increasing exponentially.

So it started me wondering what about the future our presidential hopefuls were addressing. How much about the global issues do they become part of and incorporate into their messages? can Africa afford to turn a blind eye on all that is going on? Africa has been both blessed and cursed by being a developing continent in the face of developed nations. The bad about this situation is well known and could fill 4 days Worth of reading. But there is a good to this as well. And that is that we can learn from the mistakes of those that have developed before us. Aldo, we can benefit from their research. As the snow melts from Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya. what do we do to retain that tourism? Mark where the snow was for periods of years, just to make it worth visiting? Perhaps? Maybe, channel those visitors elsewhere. the problem with that is that it takes away from local traders who were benefiting from those tourists. Basically, we can all agree that these issues need to be addressed as they happen. this is where I call for effective media outlets. Who think outside of the noise being made and can engage politicians and force them to think outside the normal stagnating noises they make.

Genetically modified food. This issue just puzzles me. Why go there, Africa? There is enough research to show that this is a harmful route to take. It only benefits pharmaceutical companies. So again I ask, why go there? There are other ways to increase productivity and they don't include messing with God's work. If there is nothing else we are learning as the effects of technology start to be felt, is that no matter how much we as human beings think, "we got it", there is a perfect balance from a much more intelligent creator that we know little of but are prone to upset often. Our best bet is to work with things in their natural states. Plus cancers and MS and other weird painful diseases. All linked to modified foods. Not to mention the trend in the oceans. Fish now have both male and female parts and males are simply taking a path towards extinction, thanks to huge amounts of estrogen in our waters. bear in mind, that most engineering of foods has something to do with estrogen. And the issues that will arise include greater numbers of women with gonadic problems, from polyps to fibroids, worse to cancers both ovarian and breast. Why, oh why won't Africa, trailing behind, learn from those ahead of it? I surely hope they do.

I'm waiting to watch Sicko. the reason I haven't watched it yet is because I want to buy it and its not out on DVD yet. From this, I hope leaders in developing worlds will watch to learn what the possible entrapment of modernized medical systems, insurances and pharmaceutical companies tied into it, and device ways to avoid them altogether. I guess I'm a social capitalist, as Raila described himself to be. Off on a tangent, the whole entire NSE reaction to a Raila lead was surprising to me despite the fact that I have been fully aware of investors being very wary of a loss for Kibaki during the oncoming elections.I wasn't aware, however, that they were that nervous about it, enough to get out just because poll numbers indicated a possible loss for Kibaki. That was an interesting observation. And one that led Raila to eat back some unwise words he had uttered while in Atlanta. will the investors, trust Raila ever? I guess only time will tell.

I guess I'm wondering about which one of our presidential hopefuls worries enough about the global future to invest time and research so as to protect Kenya from some of the atrocities the developed world faces today. Why should we have to make the same mistakes? Can we afford to make the same mistakes? And to what extent should this matter in picking out a future leader?