Slumming it

I can’t get this out of my mind.

A Slum quarter in Freetown

The last time I wrote, it was immediately after the latest “natural” disaster that had befallen Sierra Leone, in which untold numbers lost their lives. Up to this day, the precise casualty figure has not been determined.

The first lesson we learn from the tragedy is that when things go wrong it is the poor who cop it. They not only just die; they also lose identity as well. There is nobody to account for them or advocate on their behalf. As their corporal remains are washed away or consumed by fire, their humanity itself is not only diminished but is frequently erased entirely. Another recent example of this kind of erasure is the Grenfell Tower fire in London last June. In that disaster too, many victims remain unnamed and uncounted.

          And, as if to manage our guilt-ridden conscience for our failure to recognize lives lost or diminished, we quickly assume a posture of blaming the victims for what has befallen them. I cannot absolve myself from this failing, as a reading of my last posting amply demonstrates. Since that posting, however, I have had time to reflect on the predicament of those who live in the precarious margins, not out of choice, but of necessity. However, I cannot extend this admission of mea culpa to what I feel for the rich man sitting in his villa perched on the same hillside as the slum dweller whose abode was a shack in the same neighbourhood. That rich man had, and has, at his disposal, choices, including the benefit of expert advice that should have informed him of the foolishness of building where he did. Rather, it would appear, he ignored good, sensible engineering and environmental advice and went ahead and did what he did. He may have been a denier of facts, who might have interpreted attempts at dissuading him from doing something stupid as an instance of “fake news” and who, at the end of the day, probably congratulated himself on succeeding to manouvre his way around those pesky rules and regulations that inconvenience ordinary mortals. Similar to avoiding paying tax, as some openly brag.

          But what about the poor? When I wrote last, I dumped all those affected into a single basket of deplorables. Yes, the poor’s lack of foresight is to be deprecated. But how did they get to where they did? Sierra Leone has seen a number of upheavals, the most severe and enduring of which was the 10-year civil war that ended more than a decade ago. That war displaced tens of thousands, the majority of whom ended up in and around the capital, Freetown, seeking safety. And there they have remained, eking out a life of sorts, but building communities nevertheless. While doing so, they did things to the environment that unwittingly put their own existence and wellbeing at risk. What is certain is that those living hanging by the mountainside or in the path of an unstable land mass, or along a coastal strip, are bound to become victims again. And again, and again... Until and unless something is done.

          We demand that poor people living in these hazardous locations be moved elsewhere by whatever means, including by force, if necessary. However, an enterprise such as that is bound to fail if the new destinations provide no opportunities for productive employment and community-building. But we don’t pause to ask the important questions as to where the resources to pay the rent and maintenance will come from. Money will be required to pay for life in the new homes. Money for rent, money for maintenance, money for utilities (if the environment is to be protected). It would be lovely if this money could fall from the sky. But we all know that there is no money tree, especially in a country where it is estimated that over 70% of people have to live on less than a dollar a day.

        

Like someone said: “It’s the economy, my friend”.

Tell Fren Tru

The Environment Fights Back

In September 2015, I wrote in a post, labelled Consequences , about the danger we face when extreme weather events occur in a backdrop of environmental vandalism. What provoked me to write then was the loss of life and property that occurred in Freetown as a result of flooding that followed several days of heavy rain. Although the city of Freetown is used to rain during its rainy season, the intensity and quantity of rain on that occasion was unprecedented. At the time, I wondered whether the increasing ferocity of the rainy season could be a result of climate change associated with increased CO₂ emissions which began at the start of Europe’s industrial revolution and which has continued through to the present day.

And here we are again, barely two years on, facing exactly the same environmental circumstances with considerably greater human suffering: More than five hundred dead, six hundred others missing and thousands made homeless. How bad does it have to get?

Now, I am no geographer. Nor am I a climatologist. But, as a concerned citizen, when experts tell me that significant, and probably irreversible, climate change is imminent, I sit up and listen. And if they tell us further, that the threat is mostly due to unregulated increase in the accumulation of atmospheric CO₂ brought on by reckless human behaviour, that, I reckon, should instil in us a sense of urgency and make us want to modify our behaviour immediately.

But reducing CO₂ emissions is just one side of the equation. The other side is the protection and preservation of the naturally-occurring mechanisms that soak up CO₂ as part of the normal cycle of life. And, notwithstanding my lack of deep knowledge of climatology, I do retain elements of secondary school biology that taught me that green plants absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere to use for food, with oxygen as a by-product. All very neat, and consistent with maintaining a life-sustaining equilibrium. 

 We mess with this equilibrium at our peril. But everywhere around the world there are examples of man-made environmental degradation. And nowhere is this more glaring than in and around the city of Freetown. The hills overlooking the city, once covered in lush tropical forests, have been brutally stripped of their cover in a continuing act of environmental vandalism that the government of Sierra Leone has been complicit in. It is not certain whether this dereliction of duty has been deliberate or just negligent, but the result has been the same. It may be that the direct consequence on the micro-climate surrounding Freetown is insubstantial, although the direct effects on the stability of the ground itself has been all too obvious: Erosion of land without its trees and shrubs to anchor it to its substratum is inevitable. Indeed, no rain is required for this kind of topsoil loss to take place. The merest breath of wind is enough to remove the topsoil and blow it into the sea.  And then, if the terrain becomes sodden with the heavy rain that is typical for the months of July and August, the only predictable outcome is the one that we have just witnessed: A massive shifting of the land down towards the sea, sweeping everything in its path.

Quite possibly, the current disaster might have been mitigated had it not been that dwelling houses, if such structures can be so designated, had been built in the same ground that has been denuded of vegetation, weakening the land’s cohesion even further. Once again I have to deny any expert knowledge in engineering this time, but the dictates of common sense would preclude building in such locations without proper precaution and adherence to regulation that, not to put too fine a point on it, is stupid.

But what kind of stupid would lead to a catastrophe of this magnitude, right in front of our eyes? I will answer the question. It is the kind of stupid that is compounded with a corrupt system of land allocation and building codes regulation presided over by a government system that is, if not out and out corrupt, certainly languidly supine. I have no direct evidence of this. I am just saying. But if you look at the predatory tendencies of those who grab land, there is only one conclusion to draw. Namely, that those in charge have been complicit in the evolution of this disaster.

One might well ask, what is the purpose of government, if not to protect its citizens from death and destruction? Successive Sierra Leone governments have failed, and failed again, almost on a yearly basis, to meet this fundamental duty.

Tell Fren Tru

Spare a thought for the urban elite

I have been on furlough during which I have been thinking about the plight of a much-maligned group who are currently under the cosh.

It has become fashionable to blame them, the “liberal metropolitan elite,” as they are called, for some dodgy political decisions voters have been making recently. (Of course, the people are always right. How could one possibly think that they might be otherwise?). 

Anyway, the analysis goes something like this: the ordinary man or woman is fed up with being told what to do or think. Therefore, they are now rebelling and asserting their independence of thought, word and deed.

The charge is of course bogus and, ordinarily, in a world where there is common sense it should be summarily thrown out. But the world is one queer place these days. Now, anything goes, as long as it can be said in soundbites or delivered in 140 characters or thereabouts. Either way, such pronouncements can contain an enormous amount of misinformation, frequently laced with venom and other noxious substances. We’re not even talking about insults here. For those, four-letter expletives remain sufficient and for which certain world leaders are notable.

Demolishing untruths and misrepresentations packed into only 140 characters fashioned during the wee hours, for example, can, surprisingly, be quite tough, not to say irritating, requiring considerable skill and deftness in word craft. Re-formatting a bad sector, as old computer lingo used to have it, in a corrupted mind, can be incredibly difficult. Minds like that are just not amenable to the devices of common sense. You don’t have to look hard for examples. They are everywhere in the political landscape of today.

But who are these “liberal metropolitan elite” anyway? According to the label on the tin, you can infer that they live in the city or in a big town. Though not necessarily. What probably defines them most is that they fashion their wicked ways within a thoughtful network of innovative individuals. They nourish each other. Their currency is ideas. Ideas about what makes the world work. And indeed, how, in fact, the very thing itself revolves around the sun rather than the other way round, for example.  It is also not flat. It is a globe. Remember, these were the kinds of ideas that people got their eyes gouged out for or had some other unpleasant things done to them.

Most of these so-called elites would have spent years learning stuff. Although not necessarily.  They are just able to think clearly and sift wheat from chaff as well as show readiness to jettison ideas that obviously don’t make sense. Beyond that, they tend to take the long view too, both forward and back and pick out lessons from history.  Also, they try to warn us not to repeat the mistakes of previous generations. Most importantly, they welcome new ideas and show willingness to change position when facts warrant.

It is through this receptivity that the world has become a better place. Readiness to receive new ideas and, create new ones in turn, has guided human progress and contributes bigly, to coin a phrase, to the making of today’s world, where food is generally plentiful and people live longer, healthier lives. Life expectancy is increasing progressively, even in countries that are relatively poor. 

So what’s not to like about the urban elite? Nothing. Except, of course, when you have no alternative to offer. Especially, if your agenda is merely to seek public office for office's sake. In those circumstances, facts can be rubbished and substituted with “alternative” facts in a strange universe where the laws of physics and maths don’t apply, a place where 2 plus 2 does not add up to 4. There are many practitioners of these strange arts, some in seriously important positions from which they make a lot of noise, and with the power to mess our world about. Think of the vaccine rejectionists, the climate change deniers, the evolution deniers, to mention just a few of the really pesky ones. And there are many others as well of various dimensions. Together, they are a formidable force that makes the job of defining policy truly hard.

This is why it is important for scientists and technologists to resist and call out these destructive elements in society that aim to take us back to their “golden age” when they called the shots and held all the cards that kept the vast majority of us in our place.

But I might be too pessimistic. The urban elite are alive and well and will remain fighting fit to beat back the forces against progress. Starting in France. And the UK.

Tell Fren Tru