Send in the Robots

For fresh fruit and vegetables in Banjul I usually head for roadside stalls. They stock an abundance of produce loaded with the 5- or 7- a day substances that everyone says is good for you. And, as I make my way towards my favorite stalls my sense of anticipation grows not just for the buying but also for the gossip and banter. They ask about my family and I do the same about theirs, while I feign shock and horror at the prices they throw at me. The scene is usually further enlivened by the antics of one or two toddlers weaving their way among the stalls, occupied in their play, uncaring about the mischief they might create in occasionally upsetting their mothers’ pyramids of oranges, mangoes and avocados. 

          So, when on my recent trip to the city I went to my favorite vendor to get my fruit and veg and asked about the whereabouts of one of those toddlers, little Fouad, and his mother told me that he had “passed on a few months back”, I was absolutely gutted. For that boy, with a large cranium, mischievous eyes and quick movements, all attributes of an intelligent mind, not to say sound body, to have "passed away" just like that was beyond my comprehension. What made it even more difficult to comprehend was that the enormity of this scandal seemed not to have discomposed the mother at all. Putting the issue of PTSD aside, in answer to my question as to how that death had come about, the mother merely said, “It just happened. These things happen.” Indeed they do, but they need not. 

What is the use of all this big international exercise about defining millennium development goals and targets and failing so lamentably when it came to protecting a healthy four-year-old and depriving the world of a potential genius? Loving parental care, it seemed was not sufficient to the task. It got me thinking that a robot, properly programmed, could have done a better job. And this was on the day that we learnt that a co-pilot had locked his captain out of the cockpit of a passenger airliner and deliberately crashed it into the side of a French Alps, killing himself and 149 others. Such a catastrophe should be preventable in this day and age, I would suggest. If we can land a Philae-Rosetta probe on a moving lump of ice after a 10-year journey through untold millions of kilometers, and the dodging all kinds of celestial clutter, surely we can frustrate a rogue pilot bent on crashing his plane against the side of a mountain on this here earth.

Tell Fren Tru