Woes of a Reactive Society

How to Kill an Elephant
The methods of killing an elephant vary depending on who you are, what you have, and your reason for wanting the elephant dead. If you are a Kalahari Bushman, you are probably killing an elephant for meat and you have with you a short stabbing spear. You will be short enough to stand under the elephant while ensuring that it doesn’t detect your scent. You can then easily drive your spear through its soft underbelly and trail it for days as you wait for it to bleed out.

If you are a sadistic African poacher without many resources, you will pour copious amounts of potent poison in the watering hole where the elephant drinks from. After only a few days of waiting, you will not only have a dead family of elephants, but also rhinos, lions, hyenas, baboons, zebras, and any other animal unfortunate enough to drink there.

If you are a nice African poacher with a generous sponsor, you will shoot the elephant with a high calibre rifle. You will have tracked the animal for weeks to establish that it is an old solitary male who would be dead anyway in a few years even without you shooting it down. You will go for either a brain, heart, or lung shot, to minimise the suffering of the gentle giant before it dies. In another life you would be a legal hunter (if it was allowed in your country) and so you believe in all the honour ‘shit’ (pardon my French) that exists between hunters and their quarry.

How you extract the ivory from the dead elephant is a long and complex story for another day. I will not get into that right now.

Moral of the Story

I know by now you are wondering why the Layman has all of a sudden become an expert hunting consultant. Wonder no more. It is the ivory burning activity last week that has me all fired up. I don’t have an opinion on whether burning the ivory was the best way to make a statement to

poachers.  I however have an opinion on whether we should have waited for the poachers to use some of the methods outlined above before making our move.

Under normal circumstances, if one has to stop an illegal trade, the best place to start is at the source of the goods. This is the reason why we don’t stop mobile phone theft by burning all the sets that have been recovered from thieves. In other words, we don’t react to theft after it has already happened but rather, we try to stop it from happening. That is the best way to stop any illegal trade.

Prevention Is Better Than Cure

Contrary to popular belief, it is not the invention of vaccines that stopped most of the disease epidemics in the modern world. It is the implementation of proper hygiene with the major highlight of development of sewerage systems. It is therefore easier for us to prevent the onset of disease instead of treating it after it has already set in otherwise, we will continue trying to deal with preventable-disease outbreaks.

A Government that Constantly Reacts to the Opposition

Our government, or any other government for that matter, is elected on the premise of the pledges it made during campaigns. The government however seems to answer to every whim of the opposition, almost to the point of being painfully defensive. That is the reason supporters considered it a great achievement for no one to mention the opposition during the Afraha (Nakuru) prayers.

An Opposition that Revels in Whistle Blowing

It is true that whistle blowing is one of the mandates of the opposition. However, it is just one of the many responsibilities a strong opposition is supposed to have. Our opposition revels in pointing out the mistakes of the government after they happen without being proactive and raising issues early enough before they go wrong.

Forensic Audit

Auditors are supposed to be our friends, but they rarely are. An auditor once explained to me what an audit is supposed to achieve. He told me that an auditor finds out loopholes and weaknesses in systems and gives recommendations in order to stop errors from occurring. In Kenya, we now have a commonly used term; Forensic Audit. As the name implies, a forensic audit unearths mistakes and fraud that have already happened at some point in the past, and explains how they happened. A strong forensic audit system reflects a society that lives in the past without necessarily avoiding future pitfalls.

Commissions of Inquiry

The number of commissions of inquiry into past events in this country is staggering. Most of their findings are never made public meaning that, no lessons will be learnt and similar mistakes will not be avoided in future. If you ask me, we should replace commissions of inquiry with Professional Think-Tanks which are future (as opposed to past) oriented.

Flooding and Collapsed Buildings

The weatherman warned us of flooding but we didn’t take heed. Now we are acting all surprised that the rain is heavier than normal. It is actually so heavy that it is leading to the collapse of buildings. No wait! The buildings had actually been condemned. It was reported that the one which collapsed in Huruma (Nairobi) even had a ‘cross of condemnation’ but the owner ‘conveniently’ covered it up. Now that people have died in it, we are going to have a commission of inquiry (refer above).

But hey! don’t mind me, I am only a Layman. What do I know about these complicated issues of keeping promises and being prepared?