How Climatic Changes Affect Bamenda, Cameroon, West Africa.

INTRODUCTION

We are gathered here to listen to a small talk about climatic changes that are affecting us and our neighbors. These changes are not only in developed nation states presently (Friday, December 07, 2012) being discussed at a forum in the Middle East. They are also here in Africa. We will try to examine how they affect us and others with particular reference to a growing town and its environs in the Cameroon, West Africa called Bamenda. We will see how our lifestyles are contributing to climatic changes and what we could do to bring about positive changes in whatever we are doing and wherever we are in the world.

In the beginning, (do not ask me if I were there to start writing about it), there were carbon dioxide, C0², and water, H2°. There was no oxygen, 0². So, living things could not survive if at all there were living things. There was water but it was gaseous. That is, there were no rivers, lakes, and swamps we take for granted today. Then later on the water vapor condensed and C0² was taken up by carbonate rocks, fossils, and dead plants. Some were locked up in water. There is 1400,000,000,000,000,000 tons of water that cover ⅔ of the earth’s surface and land only covers ⅓. 

Scientists theorize that oxygen came into the atmosphere when organisms evolved the ability to use chlorophyll and energy from the sun to convert water and carbon dioxide [C0²] into food. This was photosynthesis. The waste product of photosynthesis, [whereby sugar is produced] is oxygen [0²] that is released into the atmosphere. We and other organisms can only survive because of this oxygen. We and animals breathe oxygen and in returned we produced C0² that is used by plants for the manufacture of their foods.  So you can now see our symbiosis with plants. Without plants, we cannot exist and without us and other living organisms, plants cannot exist.

What could happen if we pollute the air, water, soils, tamper with the flora and fauna that are responsible for our climate or mini climate that keeps us going in our cities, hamlets or homesteads? We could signal the end of us and other organisms, plants, animals, birds, insects and many other creatures. How do we pollute? We pollute by releasing C0², Carbon monoxide [C0], an oxide of nitrogen [N0], and hydrocarbon not buried and lead into the atmosphere, water, and soils. What will happen if we allow pollution of our water, soils, and atmosphere unchecked?  The consequences could be catastrophic. How? Pollution can screen radiation from the sun and that can reduce or literally block photosynthesis. Imagine the world now where plants cannot manufacture their food by photosynthesis? It will mean no food for us and animals and fish. Not only that. There will be no oxygen for us. Try to hold your breath for twenty minutes and see what deprivation of oxygen can do to you. I bet you could die. Some persons have tried this and literately died. So do not try this at home but you could put a mouse and a growing plant in a sealed bottle and both will survive for long. However, if you put a plant and your mouse separately in two identical bottles and their foods both will soon die. Why? It is because the mouse breathes in oxygen and produces carbon dioxide that the plants need in the manufacture of its food. The plants take this in and produce purified oxygen that the animal requires for its survival. Now imagine the world to be a humongous bottle with us as mice in them and plants. Now take away the plants or plankton and we will not survive. So you can now see how we are interdependent on nature and nature on us. If left unchecked we could have the greenhouse effect when the ozone layer is reduced.  The temperature on earth could increase and the effect will be seen below. How does this take place?

CONSEQUENCES OF UNCHECKED POLLUTION OF WATER AND ATMOSPHERE

Let us see. How does the rise in the price of gas in your cities or where you live negatively affect climatic change in Europe and other continents thousands of miles away from Africa?  How does it affect the microclimate of your town or geographic region? When there is temperature invasion in a city like Bamenda, the air quality is almost as bad as what we have in heavily populated industrial cities like Nanfang, Peking, Mumbai, Lagos, Cairo, London, Mexico City, and Tokyo to name just a few.  This year, 2012 the purity of oxygen in Bamenda was cause for concern. Some US visiting scholars actually took air sample for further analysis.  As they stated to me that the level of impurity of air in Bamenda was unusually high.  Why? It is because their citizens visit Bamenda as tourists or prospective investors.  And their concern is wondering aloud how they could settle to invest for our mutual benefit if we have polluted air.

High scatter downtown the City of Bamenda, Grassfields, Cameroon (Dec. 2012). Note the poor visibility and the sun barely discerned. This is not the smog in China or Mexico but Bamenda where there are no manufacturing industries.

How do the cutting of trees in the Amazon Forest in Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the southern regions of the Cameroon, Nigeria, and Kenya affect the air quality we breathe in Bamenda? This question is not being posed for the first time here but had concerned some scientists in the past as E.D. Morel (1920) in his well-written book: The Black Man's Burden,187 p.

I hear someone attempting to answer my hypothetical question: “It is a lie, Sir,” said a lay person, “as by the time the jet stream takes the air from Brazil round the world before it reaches the coastal region of West Africa, the pollution carried from the Americas is already dissipated in the atmosphere and the air is as pure as when it was created. It is imponderable to assume that it can affect us here in Bamenda,” he continued. The lay person does not know that when we burn fossils we create impurities that come back to haunt us. In the world, nothing is destroyed and nothing is created out of nothing as nothing ever vanishes in thin air as magic.  Not a molecule of water can ever disappear. We borrow it and believe that we leave it at it was. We often pollute it by the way we use it. and it is never as we found it in its pristine form. Briefly, nothing is created and nothing is destroyed for good.

Why then was the testing of nuclear bombs by the French in the then French Saharan territories affecting the people of Cameroon and Nigerians thousands of miles away? Cameroonians were coughing in the late 1950s and they had no explanation for this. Why was influenza, Spanish flu that was mostly in Western Europe affecting Africans in 1918? Two years ago we received unusual clouds of dust from the Sahara. Our houses and cars were covered with dust from the desert. Visibility in the Grassfields and many other regions of Cameroon was impaired.  The effect of this was felt also in Europe. Cars in European countries abutting the Mediterranean Sea and even as far as Switzerland and southern Germany were covered each day with the Saharan dust.  That was a form of pollution. We have not studied efficiently the effect of the dust particles and other impurities, pollutants we inhaled in our lungs and other parts of our bodies.  

If I were to say emphatically, that a good number of women, denizens of Bamenda City and Lagos after their menopause are to have breast cancer owing to the recently increased traffic pollution, particularly caused by  the influx of motorbikes in our cities that do not have catalytic converters, someone in the crowd may stand up and state that it was mumbo-jumbo. Is it? It may be because we do not have the technical facilities to study our air qualities but when we will have them, some of us would rather move up the mountain tops than to continue living in downtown Bamenda and Lagos or other African cities bombarded by fleets of Chinese and Taiwanese motor bicycles with the sort of lethal mini climate we have particularly in the dry season.

If what happens in distant lands can affect us thousands of miles away, it goes to tell us that we are not immune too from what is happening in other parts of the world as the world wars that once visited us when we did not know the cause and courses. We had to fight with the Allies as we had no choice. The argument is often that Americans, Europeans, Chinese and Indians who are the greatest pollutants in the world are passing the polluting bug to the third world countries after having made their super profits in manufacturing industries. The veracity is that they have realized the consequences and are trumpeting the news to us so that we could reduce pollution in any modest ways we could as we all belong in that laboratory bottle with the mouse and plant aforementioned.  

If the war of words between the Westerners and Iran spills out of all proportion and it turns out to be an all out war because Iran is insisting on developing nuclear power for “peaceful” and research purposes, we could find ourselves being affected. It should be recalled that our fathers fought with Lt. General Montgomery in the North African desert against the German General Rommel and others against the Japanese in the Burmese jungles without knowing the raison d'etre of the war. At least we want you to know the meaning of pollution and its consequences. Then the Iranians have demonstrated their belligerence by declaring openly that the Westerners are their enemies: by taking those who inadvertently stray into their territories as prisoners, by firing missiles to show their military might and launching a Press TV station that is focused on the criticism of the Americans and bashing of Westerners over sanction against them. Their leader, also openly alleged that there was no Jewish pogrom during the Second World War. It is not long before some right wingers will state that there was no slavery and slave trade or Jim Crow.  It is for some of these reasons that the Westerners cannot take their allegation with a pinch of salt.

All I am demonstrating is that we are all one and that the economic crisis in Greece, the USA heading to the cliff, and industrial development in China that is bent on developing so fast and become more capitalist than the capitalists before them; what the East Indians are doing in polluting the atmosphere and what the Brazilians, Indonesians, Africans of the tropical zones including the Cameroons are also doing in cutting all the rain forest for agriculture, will willy-nilly affect all of us in the Cameroons and Africa at large. There is no way we can live in a cocoon or bunkers and feel that we are safe. The Swiss have since realized that their bunkers are no panacea to any nuclear fallout and have lately given up insisting on building homes with nuclear bunkers. Should we give up getting worried about how polluting our city affects us because there is nothing we could do?

We are saying here that even when we foul our own premises in the hope that it would only affect us, it could similarly affect all our neighbors and distances are no insulation to our suffering from climatic consequences of our making. Many attending the World Climatic Change Conference in the Middle East at the time of writing (Friday, December 07, 2012) will explain better for us in their proceedings.

Let me now turn to the croak of the matter by reading to you an extemporaneous poem that I wrote minutes after a young man called P. P. Aime approached me that I was to be one of the guest speakers at this Africa Climate Change Market Place, in Bamenda.

It reads:

Fouler of his house

If we foul our nest it will be uncomfortable for us to live in and our eggs are soon contaminated and that could signal our demise

If we destroy our river sources, as sadly we are doing, we will have no clean water to quench our tastes and keep us clean

If we spoil our roads or neglect them, we will have to walk miles on our feet in bushes and forests to reach our destinations late

If we pollute our soils that feed us, our crops would not grow on them and we could all starve,

If we throw up showers of rocks in the atmosphere for stupid reasons, we must be ready to shelter from them.

We will need umbrellas of steel to shelter our skulls from facing them head on and that is an illusion,

If we spoil our rivers we will kill all that live in them, our sources of food and those of other creatures we share this world with, and that could signal the end

If we are not nice to our vegetation and other living creatures and wrongly see them as pests and venom and not part and parcel of us, the fruits and medicines they give us would all go and their yields would be reduced to trickles.

If we do not do the right things we would get the wrong results from those whom we thought were taking care of us

If we do not lay good environmental foundations for our children’s future, they would one day curse us and we would turn in our graves

If we do not plan now, we are simply passing the climatic bugs to the next generations and this is blatant cheating

If we harvest all the animals in our scanty reserves and replace those with nothing because of our insatiable appetite for bushmeat, tusks, special parts we claim are for medicinal purposes,

We would have nothing that would check the growth of mosquitoes and our ecosystems would miss their trajectory

We could be affected and all of us the harvesters, onlookers, and consumers could be history as those games.

WHERE HAVE THEY ALL GONE

I read a book five years ago on animals in the former British Cameroons written by an Oxford don sent to this part of our world to research on animals. This was in 1943 when the Second World War was still raging on. The author discovered that once upon a time there were mountain gorillas in the Grassfields and there were no traces of them then. Another Briton F. W. H. Migeod published another work Through the British Cameroons and got stories of gorillas. Today, no one in the region can tell one what a gorilla looks like and many other animals. They are only narrated in tribal fables.  The next book of that caliber that I ever read was the famous Bafut Beagles by no other than the wild animal lover, Sir Gerald Durrell. I still visualize him having audiences with the King of Bafut then and his being shown his bevy of wives that buttressed his kingship.

Ask anyone in  West Cameroon, West Africa what a buffalo looks like and they will ask you what the heck you are talking about. They once teamed the plains of Ndop, Mbo, valleys of Menchum and Kumbo blue mountains. This one was killed in 1912. Why were some not kept for posterity? (After Detzner, H.(1923) Im Lande des Dju-Dju.Berlin

 I must not stray as I did not have to read all those books from our sundry tribes to glean of fables talking of reserves teeming with elephants, buffaloes, alligators, leopards, boa constrictors, deer and much more that have been barefacedly hunted to extinction or near extinction.  As said above, they are only preserved in fossils called fables and our children will never see them unless we make concerted efforts to people them in galleries along our fast-dwindling-in-sizes river valleys or forest reserves that some unscrupulous people destroy for medicinal, agricultural, timber exploitation and various purposes.

I will have to take you to the Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC] to show you what depletion of primeval forest could mean to us.  The forest provides habitat for sundry creatures and once that habitat is destroyed, the creatures it used to harbor find their havens in man. We are getting to the reason why we suddenly have diseases like Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) and many others whose cures are not in sight that never ever attacked man in the past. Do they originate from laboratory experiments that spiraled out of place as alleged by some misguided people?

The yellowish red color shows healthy forest in the Congo Kinshasa (DRC). That is a forest in its pristine form.(After NASA, 19760

Let us return to one of the cities I know, Bamenda.  In the 1950s it was a Garden of Eden with a dot called the Abakwa or Old Mankon surrounded by lush vegetation. At the vantage point in Bamenda Station, a verdure sea of grass and forest galleries extended for miles on end.  Irrespective of the fact that this tiny settlement had some 7,000 inhabitants, the air quality they breathed was pristine, divine. It was because the vegetation purified the air people breath in spite of the fact that there were occasional indiscriminate bush fires in the dry seasons.  They were teaming with game. Today there are denizens of Bamenda who had never heard or seen cane rats, duikers, deer, buffaloes, and leopards that once upon a time inhabited the forest around Bamenda, Ndop Plain, Mbo Plain and the Menchum River Basin in the Grassfields. Where did they all go? Bamenda was almost clad with forest. Today it is exclusively covered with patches of grass fields as what is happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in NASA satellite image below. Again, we ask where the primeval forest has gone. They were naively exploited to extinction mercilessly by man for wood for heating, clearing for agriculture and cooking. Our burning released C0² into the atmosphere. That is how we unknowingly contributed a long time ago, and still do hitherto in polluting our atmosphere. We cut down the traditional forests and burnt the grass when hunting or to refresh the grass for grazing particularly when we welcome the Mbororo (Fulani) with their cattle in the 1910s and 1930s.  By our indiscriminate acts, we relinquished valueless trees and grass that were unique to their locales.

Compare this satellite image with the one above. This is still part of the Congo Forest where there is indiscriminate bush burning indicated by black spots to the right of the satellite image. The rate of destruction is unprecedented. 

 

What are we doing today to replace the forests and grass that once upon a time clad this hospitable Grassfields that gave us this beautiful name, the Grassfields, pidginized as ‘Graffi’, the delight of foreign tourists and others?  We are replacing them with badly planned houses, shanties that are built without taking into consideration the health of the occupants. The strife to be rich now; overnight is making people build awful houses worst than shameful shanties around Johannesburg in South Africa that traditional architecture that was environmentally-friendly make them laughing stocks. Where are the councilors with their red Xs to mark them out for improvement for the decency of human habitation? Where are Geographic Information Systems’ scientists to work with councilors in rectifying the planning wrongs of yesteryear? We must point this out for houses are planted in marshy areas that in a properly planned city, they would have been buffered and destroyed. They are just time bombs as they could be swept away by floods, or provide good flesh for mosquitoes that breathe in them. What is the solution and what has bad planning got to do with weather and climate?

Bushfire in the Grassfields shown by black areas. Each time you set fire to brushes you contribute in climatic changes. You kill the vegetation and release carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere. You literally kill billions of plants, animals, and insects. You destroy the soil and much more we have discussed. 

IMAGINE OUR WORLD WITHOUT PHOTOSYNTHESIS

It is when hidden in the marshes that we throw our garbage to be taken downstream by the creeks that take rise or traverse our citadel, Bamenda, and other settlements. These are headwaters of the mighty River Menchum that end up in Nigeria and join the Rivers Benue and Niger to reach our Ocean, Atlantic. By using them as our garbage collectors, urinary, toilets, as is sadly the case we witness daily, we are exporting our deadly scum to Nigeria and eventually to the Atlantic Ocean that provides us with our fish we barbecue each evening in front of bars, relish and wash them down with gallons of beers from the Brewery of Cameroon, UCB, Guinness and others. The polluted water that originates from the cliffs of Bamenda goes to kill the plankton in the Atlantic Ocean. These green plankton as vegetation that clad our landscapes convert carbon dioxide into oxygen (0²) through photosynthesis as do the plants in the Grassfields. We and our countless inchoate cottage industries produce carbon dioxide and in return, these green plants and plankton produce 0² that keep us and other creatures we rely on alive.  What are the consequences of killing these plants and plankton? We earlier asked if you could imagine our world without photosynthesis by plants and plankton and demonstrated with our mouse and plant experiment in our science laboratory? If we destroy these because we do not plan or because of our selfishness, we might not even be there to read what I am telling you now in archives.

You will think that it is only the garbage that is thrown in these rivulets. We also dump our sewage and other industrial waste there as there is no common sewage network that could take our excrement and urine to be recycled and used as fertilizers as is happening in other burgeoning Western economies.  How many of you have septic tanks in Bamenda that had never been evacuated since their construction? Where do they go? How many of you bury our dead harem-scrum when we do not know the hygienic consequences of the diseases that killed them in the first place? How are the soils poisoned? Have we ever thought of cremation using electricity? You will not learn from me that some sewage or cesspools overflow and end up in our precious rivers that some of us drink downstream. Let us not go far, owing to the high cost of water supply some Bamendans prefer to drink well water next door than treated pipe-borne water. In Bamenda, as in most towns in that region of the world, intermittent electricity is cheaper than water oozing from very old fragile pipes.   The outcome is cholera and typhoid that kill many in the morning of their lives. We do not even know the real number as the government of the day thinks it will be costly to carry out such an exercise, keeping of statistics.  What are cost and money when it concerns the survival of man?  We turn around to ask where these killers had come from when such things never used to be in this country in the 1940s or before then. Some have the audacity to blame innovations of the white man. Why not invent yours to replace those of the white man so that one day he would blame you. The poem above gives you the answer.  Now you know why there are outbreaks in our neighbors’ land, Bafut. We are all responsible and we know how.

FROM PIPES OOZES BRACKISH WATER THAT COSTS MORE THAN ELECTRICITY

Everything goes to the rivers. The outcome is a cocktail of scum that does not augur well with our environment and our seasoned stomachs and our friends whose homes are the rivers. The end result is the outbreak of occasional cholera many of us sitting here do not want to hear us talk about. It has stroked Bafut which is fast becoming part and parcel of Bamenda suburbia.  The sources are at Abakwa, Meta Quarters, Ntarikon, Foncha’s Street, Mile Three, Azire, Travellers, Ntamulung, Bayele, Nat Bessi, Up-Station, Nusang, etc. when we used them as our toilets and our dumping ground. It was not the case before. Are we not reasoning or think we are living in India?

No ward in the town is exonerated as our garbage collection is rare and far between. They are higgledy-pigledily thrown all over and mountains of them that are a sour sight to the eyes. They provide homes to multiple rats and mice, other distributors of pollution and infestation. The authorities have never heard of bubonic plague that once swept all of Europe. The fleas from rats caused this as the streets were used as public dustbins. Do we want to repeat what reasonable people dare not go near in the 21st century? Although the town councils provide men and women who clean some of the main streets, evacuate garbage with caterpillar loaders that occasionally bring traffic to a standstill interminably, the man of Bamenda has not been schooled that it is wrong to soil the streets by urinating wherever he felt, by shitting wherever he feels like doing so or by throwing away his maize cubs or leaves or plastic wrapping and bags after using their contents wherever he or her wants. To him, the streets belong to the government or the council and these are dreaded authorities. Are they? Where is patriotism and love of one's neighbor and country? There is no sympathy for the orange clothes clad men and women cleaning streets. Those who throw garbage or poison our soils feel that they create jobs for town councilors to employ people to work on them. Those men only clean principal tarred streets to tell tourists who rarely enter residential wards that dwellers are clean. Are they? Go to Meta ward, tour Travelers, Abakwa, banks of  brooks, tour ghettos in chaotic marshes and you will ask yourself who the councilors are fooling?

As earlier underlined, from most pipe ooze brackish water whose cost is higher than that of intermittently supplied electricity. How do we ascertain the health of our citizens when others sink wells for their drinking water for they cannot afford to have a meter to have pipe borne water in their homes? Are we fair? 

How many live in shacks without toilets in Bamenda and rent toilets 600 or more meters away from their homes because their homes are located without provision for toilets or pit latrines? Who planned such wards?  Who gave authorization for the building of such homes? What are the plans to rectify such appalling planning schemes? The cities belong to the present denizens and those yet to come? Why do you the pollutants assume that after your turn on earth that will be the end of Bamenda and other settlements? What religion or philosophies do they follow? What became of the sanitary inspectors that used to visit people’s homes in the past and even enter bedrooms to see to it that they lived in clean homes with proper toilets equipped with flies’ traps? The fly traps were not only for desert countries where flies were more numerous than sand grains. Ask people nowadays about these and they would look up as they have never heard of them or seen fly traps. Are the authorities lackadaisical or they do not just care? 

Besides, the streets are littered with shebeens, locally called 'off licenses', [liquor stores or corner stores] booming with noise pollution called music that has no limited stoppage time, drinking bars, taverns, where clean toilets are not provided and patrons end up doing the indecent public exposure to relief themselves. It should be pointed out indecent exposures are punished offense in all developed countries even in some African nation states as Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa, Malawi, and Zambia. If you are accosted urinating or passing your cesspools in the public parks, (sorry there are none in Bamenda or along the streets), you are arrested, serve your punishment or pay a fine. 

The coming of free range cattle grazing in the 1910s and 1930s, indiscriminate bush burning in the dry season and other poor agricultural activities have helped in the destruction of once forested Grassfileds. The land  is stripped of all blade of grass and trees. How do we expect carbon-dioxide to be converted to oxygen that we and other creatures badly need?  How could this be resolved? Zero grazing, improved scientific method of cultivation, rigorous afforestation, etc. Note that the animals are literally starving and are wiry. 

Who is to be blamed? The government for not regulating the bars, the councils for not providing adequate clean toilets at strategic locations or the people who use these facilities or the fact those men want to show how long their private parts are to women as their way of wooing them or the poor education system in the country were some teachers poison the minds of students instead of making them educated and civilized people? Many ends up urinating into rivulets that traverse the city and they are used downstream for washing, drinking, and building. Has anyone ever carried out studies on how long some germs passed in people’s urine stay in the soil until they find the next hosts, persons or animals? I am told that it could be fifty years. What of that of Ebola, cholera and typhoid? 

Now, go behind the congested Central Market of Bamenda and count the number of toilets that cater for literally thousands of patrons that use that market daily. There are literally none. Marketers tend to ease themselves by putting everything into brooks that pass by. Does the council or government believe it is saving money by not providing public amenities or by allowing people to use streams for emptying their bowels? Then it must be a wrong government that is not caring or just buying for time. Do not say that you are learning from me how the atmosphere, soils, and waters are polluted by unhygienic activities of man. If the government or the authorities concern address these issues, they have a healthier population and productivity is increased. Which government does not want a vibrant economy?

By leaving people to behave like pigs, we are speeding the death of our country’s valuable assets, the active population. Does it surprise us that the life expectancy is unusually low?  It is for this reason that the government must ascertain that its citizens stay alive and live to a ripe age of one hundred or more years even when they are no longer economically viable. They still will consume and that is still good news for the government of the day and the world at large. 

Now if for some reason, man does something to deprive the government of its income, that is by doing a silly thing to shorten his life on earth, if such a person were apprehended in the act, that is fouling the earth he is living on, he should heavily be fined. Is this not being discussed at climatic forums around the world? It is right and fitting that such a person should be fined for his risky lifestyle. He contributes deliberately or inadvertently towards the destruction or pollution of the soil or the environment that belongs to all of us and not him alone. You could buy a piece of land and call it yours that is no guarantee to pollute it for after you, millions will still live on that piece of land. Therefore it is the usufruct rights of the land you buy and not the land itself. 

WATER IS LIFE; DO NOT POLLUTE OR WASTE IT

When you pollute water and the atmosphere at Bamenda, it kills the fish as this you see in the Atlantic Ocean.  We have to look after it for the next generation too. 

The Grassfields that was once upon a time forested is fast becoming a desert in some places. There are only pockets of forest on high elevations as Mt. Kilung, the Menchum River Valley, and a few others patches. Why are we concerned with the vegetation?  We earlier said that it is vital for our very survival as it purifies the air we breathe necessary for our healthy living.  Now, what are the consequences when we are avariciously cutting down all our trees? Look at the NASA satellite image of Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C.) and look at the dark spots on it. Those are burnt areas and if combined are larger than a Province of Alberta in Canada. Imagine that this goes on year in year out. Burning down all our grass as in our illustration, overgrazing makes the once green Grassfields a desert.  It means that the carbon dioxide that we emit from the rampant burning of wood and grass goes to the atmosphere to deplete the ozone layer in the atmosphere that blocks the dangerous ozone, gamma, x-ray, infrared and microwaves that are harmful to us. Do not say that your pollution is not up to what is happening in China. If others are committing suicide out of selfishness or naivety would you also take part? When these electromagnetic waves are coming from the sun, the ozone deflect, reflects, absorbs them and they do not reach the earth to harm all living things on earth that are unprotected. Would you not do something positive to halt the causes of these?

Now you are seeing how we can foul our precious nest and damage our eggs. Imagine the earth without plants for they have been destroyed by some long and short waves. It will all turn into a desert and we could all be history. No one will be there to even write a tale that once upon a time there was a blue planet earth, blue because of water in its atmosphere that was destroyed through our greed and lack of planning. We should be reminded that water is a vital compound for nearly all living organisms in every ecosystem. The satellite moon and even the planet Mars we plan to people one day and export our surplus population to do not hold life because of no water and oxygen. Since water is the most abundant compound that makes up all living things, it should be crystal clear to all of us that without a good supply of fresh water life cannot exist.

So dear listeners, water is life do not pollute or waste it if you love your neighbor and the generations to come after you.  Maybe the council in Bamenda or Sonel or other water companies should put this slogan in it publication. Perhaps our children will learn to take care of their water and their environment. 

You will see that as vital as water is to our living, it is far more expensive than electricity in the city of Bamenda. If it is too expensive, it might drive some people as it is already doing to use filthy water from the polluted streams and wells and that could mean more patients to be nursed at the few hospitals that we have that lack facilities and patients are turn down from admission each blessed day. So can the government subsidize water companies’ prices to improve the health of people? What is the solution, to charge exorbitant prices for water and close our eyes and say that we do not care or to do something to improve the quality of our water sources and make it a priority for all and sundry to have good clean water in the city of Bamenda? It is too expensive for many and sinking of wells is no solution when this encourages the consumption of dangerous raw water whose contamination consequences we have seen above.

THE MOTOR BICYCLES' PARADIGM IN BAMENDA

We do not only use water for drinking. We even clean our jalopies and motorbikes with. Twenty years ago, one could count the number of motorbike owners in Bamenda. Unless you were well off you could not afford even a secondhand Japanese motor bike. If one ever saw one it was owned by European missionaries who had brought them from Europe or America. It was sturdy, heavy and reliable and the rider had to pass the Highway Code before he ventured sat on one. Besides, he protected himself by wearing a crash helmet and leather boots. If he crashed and that was rare as a shooting star seen during the day,  he never became history or a casualty as is the present case with motorcycles, Nanfang, Acada, Achaba, etc., that are manufactured in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. We are not against the new-found joy-riding machines but we are concerned with the fact that all of them do not have catalytic converters that are built in to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that pollute our atmosphere enormously and are sources of breast cancer that are killing our women.  The quality of the air we breathe particularly in the dry season in Bamenda and most West African cities that have welcomed motor bicycles from China is so bad that if measures are not taken to clean it, we will one day be having children in Bamenda and other West African cities with monstrous deformities, carbuncles. Women, in particular, will develop breast cancer and we will turn round to blame the devil or some food. We are the devils, the devils are not invisible. We either turn to a new leaf or stubbornly wallow in the maelstrom.

Bike riders in the city. These bikes do not have catalytic converters and are fast becoming the principal means of short distance transport throughout Western Africa. The price paid is pollution and rampant undocumented accidents that literally kill or injure many yearly.

Consult the government of the day and many of its representatives will tell you that the bikes provide much-needed jobs to youths and drop-outs from school and colleges who had been terminally unemployed. The riders buy petrol and that generate revenues that in turn are taxed by the government. It appears to be a win-win situation but it an illusion.  Is that the price we have to pay for our health? There is another argument that it helps to sweep away thieves from streets. Then, what of the cost of curing those suffering from long diseases owing to inhaling of bad air as they ride? What of accidents they have or sustained by their passengers? Many riders ride without wearing crash helmets as many drivers simply cut off seat belts that come with their vehicles are being on their way. The automobile and bike fatality is a different topic. Then, what of the damages they cause to other road users as motorists and pedestrians?

We are not against bike riders but we are against the fact that the importers of those bikes have not examined it thoroughly to ensure that they pass the safety checks, and are not pollutants. Most bikers are avaricious, aggressive and do not care so long as they get money. A good number are ever DUI, since most smoke hashish or imbibe cheap sachets of spirit still imported from China. What Tom, Dick, and Harry are saying about them is just blowing in the wind and is never heard or adhered to. Is that the trend of events? How long are well going to tolerate chaos that is responsible for the blatant pollution of our cities? The Chinese, Taiwanese and Indian suppliers appear not to care as shown by their history of trade in Africa and their strife to usurp the former European markets in Africa at all cost.  It is not the concern of Chinese companies when it is to their advantage to impose sanctions on belligerent Africa states as the case with Southern Sudan and Sudan. How long will they the Chinese, the second pollutants in the world continue with this attitude? How long will we sit back and say that we do not know that bikes pollute after having listened to this talk? “The dying ears do not hear tintinnabulations.” goes the Ngonso (Nso') in the Grassfields saying. What is the solution?

There was a time when most African governments did not put warning signs on cigarettes being sold in most African countries. Many smoked and there were many passive smokers. Cancer and smoke related diseases got their told. Not long ago news spread of the mayhem cigarette smoking unleashed on smokers and non-smokers. Now everyone who is level-headed and values his or her life quits smoking. When you meet someone smoking today, another form of air pollution, they look as if they had just appeared from another planet where health is not an issue. Could the pollution of our fragile earth be taken seriously as we have taken the warning message against smoking on cigarettes' packets seriously? Could we also know that if we raise the prices of gas for cooking, the next best-paid alternative will be cutting wood and other vegetative materials for our cooking and these are responsible for the destruction of our ozone layer when we release excess carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? What of reducing the cost of electricity and encouraging its use? What of rural electrification and the use of solar panel for lighting in rural areas. The technology is there but what is lacking is the authorities to encourage and enforce their use. Africa has to take the case of environmental care as a wake-up call with positive and fundamental ramifications. This could lead to global warming and the ice could melt and the sea could rise up to Bamenda and most coastal cities could be history. Is that what we want to go down in history as our achievement? 

CLOSING REMARKS

When the price of gas for cooking supplied in steel bottles was as high as 8500 Frs. CFA (circa $ 17.00 US), three months ago in Bamenda, many families could not afford it. They all turned to the use of eucalyptus, sawdust and other woods for cooking and heating. With high demand for this wood for both building and furniture making, planters plant them wherever there is land available.  In some countries, land use study could first have been carried out so that planters could only plant them where the soils are infertile and where the terrain may not be used for agriculture, crop or animal husbandry. It had been observed in the Grassfields that eucalyptus trees are gargantuan water consumers that deprive other vegetation of water. Where they are mistakenly planted in water catchment areas, this leads to the drying up of water sources to the extent that where water used to flow all year round, they are only available in the rainy season as trickles. Waterfalls that used to be meant for tourist attractions are no longer there and we cannot talk about the effect this dryness has on habitats along those river beds. No one has carried out studies or are we simply not caring?  How can we talk of loving our neighbors as ourselves when we pollute the atmosphere here that affects people elsewhere around the world? How can the new technology like the GIS, remote sensing helps us in the study and balance of our ecosystem that is vital for our very own survival? What are our authorities doing to salvage our dwindling or decaying environment of our own making in Bamenda and its environs? The scatter or 'specular reflection' in Bamenda is unusually high and this is due to the bad air quality whose cause we all know. What have we got to do to save us and others and keep our city clean from all this pollution?