“Forward” by His Excellency The Former President of Kenya, Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi, and echoed by chepkwonyr, ”Ukiona shimo, panda mti” (very ironic huh)

First if all, sorry about the delay of this post. The health and the job got in the way, should have been smarter than to have this one pending in December. :(

Thank you for everyone who swore or smiled for a tree (#swearforatree and #smileforatree campaign). We are in the final leg on this one. You will have sworn in vain but not smiled in vain.

The real objective

We wanted to raise enough money to buy indigenous trees to plant anywhere in Kenya. I am thoroughly disappointed in the fact that there are wannabee do-gooders who are busy hanging around Nakumatts frequented by foreigners and rich folk to try trick them into forking out 10 shs to by foreign seedlings that have no real use in the local arena. Yes, some are good and useful but most end up drying up all the resources if the surrounding environment.

The Flaw in the plan

While I was busy working on getting this to work, the gorilla/chimpanzee/Peter lion kissing chick mentioned that we were not entirely up to scratch with this plan. I disagreed strongly until she pointed my rear end to the pointy end of the gorilla/chimpanzee/Peter lion she had been making out with and had me screaming excrement before I decided to drink some more beer and fake a solution do some more research on this topic. And she was right. She wrote about it somewhere on her blog and pointed out where we were going wrong. Plus the fact that she was not a cow or was glad that she did not own a cow. Not sure which one she meant. ;) Planting trees is not the full solution. Its like copping a generous plea bargain, where you did the crime, don’t want to do the full time. Which is what Africans like doing. The easy what out or what appears to be the easy way out.

We are poisoning our planet with cars, planes, and all sorts of unnecessary rubbish, but worse than that, we are profiteering from cutting down trees. We are killing our last chance of survival. When you cut down a tree, you reduce the chances of the planet recovering by that much. And worse still, planting a tree does not mean that its immediate recovery, it can take up to 50 years before we get that full tree back. And look at how many we cut down. Decimated Mau, planning for the Aberdare ranges and Ngong forest and probably whatever other collection of trees exist in this country. And across the world. Look at the Amazon. It did not need a highway.

The new plan.

We need to take a two pronged a approach to this. I still believe we need to plant trees but we also need to conserve what we have already have. So the plan is simple. The non-Gema dude (we can’t trust this Kikuyu’s with cash) Banks is the finance manager on this one, unless he objects. I believe it is a better plan if we contribute a 1000 shs (we also accept all the cash in your bank account too). 500 shs goes to buying 10 indigineous trees and the remaining 500 shs goes to the best tree huggery conservation organisation that Paula recommends. This should help them fence and do whatever other conservation plans they have and we will have acted not just in defence but we will have taken offence. All monies will be pushed by MPesa. If you don’t have MPesa, well, find someone who has MPesa. We don’t accept credit cards cause you can’t swipe it across the lions crack. Hoping this is a better plan, we should be able to execute everything by mid February, ofcourse after Valentines. This plan can be ammended an is an open post so feel free to comment, shout at me if you think we are wasting your time or if you think we can improve this plan. Its a simple straight forward thing and if you feel you can do more, all the help is welcome.

Again, sorry about the delays on this and hopefully this time round we get to fulfill.

Kahenya

NB: The Amarula cuttings did not work. We are now going to try seeds next month or April.