Elephants never forget disasters

Edward Indakwa

The occasion may have lacked the solemnity of a Supreme Court sitting, but that cannot take away the fact that last week, I was an honourable judge for six hours.

As usual, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw) were judging art entries from hundreds of school children as part of a week of environmental awareness whose theme this year was on elephants.

"Elephants never forget" couldn’t have been a more-timely message. Contraband ivory has been popping up in containers all over the place, especially at JKIA and the Port of Mombasa.

It’s a moot point to hope that those tusks were not hewn from our elephants, but that they came from some God forsaken country. If at all demand for ivory is that high, when they have cleaned up the elephants in Congo, what would stop them from overrunning our parks?

We might have forgotten the Ivory Wars of the 1970s and 1980s, but elephants haven’t.

And it appears neither have children who were born long after those wars were history and our elephants were thriving.

Children’s artwork

As I looked at the children’s artwork, I wondered what would happen if you gathered 300 people with PhDs on wildlife ecology for a seminar. They would talk for one week and then pen a report so technical and boring that only another scholar would figure out what they were talking about.

That is the funny bit about education. Far from simplifying things, it complicates and obfuscates everything as arguments veer deeper and deeper into the abstract. When the typical scholar studies putting a PhD thesis together, they are essentially discussing one little point. But to demonstrate knowledge, they pen acres and acres of literature and confuse everyone by drawing graphs, pie charts and slapping difficult-to-understand quotes from clever people on every page. The end result is unless you are a scientist; you wouldn’t labor beyond the second paragraph before falling asleep.

You can’t blame them though. They are bound to follow guidelines that cast on stone, which is hopeless for creativity. Fortunately, children have no time for that rubbish. In their world, as the Ifaw contest attested, elephants are purple, pink and orange. They draw elephants that talk and with bigger heads than the rest of the body. They draw elephants lying on their backs and those that laugh, cry and make phone calls.

One child aged six drew five elephants. One was happy another was sad, another was playing and the last was dead. It’s heading was simple: Please don’t kill my grandmother. This ability to see through things in simple and clear terms, to – pardon the clichÈ – think outside the box, to forget guidelines and let minds roam freely and creatively is probably what scientists need to resolve environmental challenges.

Children don’t give a hoot about an elephant’s scientific name. Neither are they fixated by the bacteria in elephant dung. They are angry that someone is killing the baby elephant’s granny. Why don’t adults feel this rage?

Dear good old posta workers

It’s a tough time to be a postal worker because people only remember you exist when you call a national strike.

You even hear callous people say, "You mean these fellows are still around? Gosh, I haven’t been to a post office in decades..."

Much as it hurts, you will not have failed to notice there is a drastic decline in the volume of letters and parcels that pass through mailboxes or that only lawyers and bankers seem to have any use for stamps. You will also be aware that these days, people prefer to send parcels by matatu rather than through the post (you seemed to lose them quite a bit...). In short, while the years passed, technology rendered you and your service obsolete.

Like everyone else, you certainly deserve better pay although you must wonder where the boss would get money to fix a pay hike when no one is buying stamps, money orders or the obsolete services you offer.

Fire all workers

And now to your horror, the boss has fired you. You guys forgot one thing. The Postmaster General is a real general – the ones from the army. There are no trade unions at the Department of Defence. An army general is not accustomed to hearing loud voices unless madam is angry about a strange text message from someone calling the general "honey".

So the moment you started shouting in his face, he had no option but to fire you although he would have preferred to court martial you. But do you know any national organisation that would fire all its workers and the country moves on without a care?

Even the Americans have downscaled their postal service. You are feeding off a dead cow, folks. Time is up. Run.