Our Smallest Enemies

Nairobi’s weather is absolutely perfect. In 1899, as the British were building the railway from Mombasa on the South Eastern coast, to Kampala in the North West (the capital of modern day Uganda), they came across this idyllic spot on a slightly elevated swamp, roughly 2,000 meters above sea level, and almost half way between the two cities. They decided to build a supply depot here. The early settlers enjoyed the scenery and the weather and started building out a city, which became so popular, so quickly, that within just 6 years of its founding, it replaced Mombasa as the capital of the British protectorate.

Day time temperatures in Nairobi range from the comfortable early 20’s to the nicely warm mid 20’s (in degrees Celsius, of course!). Nights can range from the nicely cool teens to the comfortable early 20’s. Most days are partly cloudy, my personal favorite out of all possible weather conditions. The equatorial sun rises and sets at a consistent time through the year. When it’s not hidden by cloud cover, it stings, but only just a little bit. Days such as this morning, were absolutely perfect. I enjoyed a game of tennis, with a slight chill in the air, mostly under cloud cover, but with a bit of direct sunshine every now and then.

Some call it the “only air-conditioned capital in the world”. This is so true that my plan to control global warming involves deporting everyone out of the Arabian Gulf, and forcing them to resettle here. The GCC Arab states have the highest per capita carbon footprint in the world, driven mostly by heavily subsidized hydro-carbon generated electricity used to power heavy duty air-conditioning units present everywhere from the public transport system to all the other white elephants which have been built out there (e.g. “The largest mall in the world”, where the air-conditioning plant is the size of a small power station – it alone is probably larger than the second largest mall in the world). The UAE’s per capita carbon footprint is twice even that of the United States, notorious for its gas guzzling SUVs, and large heating footprint. And the UAE’s per capita footprint is over a hundred times that of Kenya (see Exhibit A).

There is a slight problem, however. Whilst we may like this climate a lot, there is also a tiny flying insect which really seems to enjoy it out here. Yes, this climate is absolutely perfect for mosquitos to live and breed. In highly developed temperate regions, mosquitos have been eliminated altogether through DDT, other pesticides and also other methods of eradication. In less developed temperate regions like the sub-continent, they only have a small window in Spring & Autumn within which to live. I may have a short memory, but I cannot recall mosquitos being this serious a problem anywhere else that I have lived. In Nairobi, they are an extremely serious problem seemingly thriving almost all year round.

We are having to make quite an effort to fight off these blood sucking parasites. I have bought vaporizers, sprays, ointments, coils, matches, malaria pills and am considering buying electrical tennis rackets and all kinds of other gadgets to defeat them. I have even downloaded an application for my Andriod smart phone which emits a frequency, supposedly to annoy them, but which does not seem to have any impact. It does however, very quickly drain my battery, and seems to annoy me a lot (young ones, such as myself, can still hear low frequencies). My pre-sleep rituals are elaborate. I burn half a coil, and spray “Mortein Doom” across my room, closing the windows and suffocating myself for the next few hours. The weekly malaria pills I have been taking for almost 3 months now have turned out to be especially brutal. I have had some of the scariest nightmares of my life, night after night. These have involved such bizarre adventures as chopping my own hand off, to others which I cannot even write about. Still every now and then I hear that annoying buzz in my ear in the middle of the night, or have to suffer through extreme itch on my hands and face, as I am trying to sleep.

It has however, been extremely cold over the last couple of weeks, co-inciding with considerably less buzzing and itching. My hypothesis is that the mosquitos have not been able to survive through this cold spell. It is winter at this time of the year, for reasons hard to explain. Nairobi is not really in the Southern Hemisphere, even though technically it is 1 degree and 25 minutes south of the equator. I consider it to be as close to the equator as a city can possibly be. The only other major cities, which are this close to the equator, are Quito in Ecuador which is literally on the equator, and perhaps Singapore, which is 1 degree and 14 minutes north of it. But for some reason, it has been really cold very recently, and life has been mosquito free. I have forgotten about mosquitos so quickly, that I have stopped taking my pills, helping me sleep a little better and have also stopped going through all the pre-sleep rituals.

All was well, until last night when I heard the first buzz in my ear in over two weeks. It was a bit of a warmer day, providing the mosquitos with the opportunity they needed to get back in the game. This time there were at least three of them. The sunk their little straws in every part of my body which was exposed, my hand, palms, neck and arms. I had run out of mosquito spray, and had to make do with cockroach spray which was not very effective. I had also run out of ointment, and had no choice but to turn the lights on, and clap my hands across them one by one. I got two of them, but the third one kept buzzing in my ear. I tried to clap it dead but was agonizingly unsuccessful. I slept for less than an hour that night. My eyes kept twitching all day today for lack of sleep.

This was a somewhat trivial set of everyday musings, highlighting the trade-offs between itch and good weather out here in Nairobi. It does not fit in with the recurring theme of this blog, which is to understand complex and important world problems. Malaria is a semi-related theme, but I do not know enough about it to state anything new, meaningful or insightful. All I know is that it is preventable. With a bit of a collective upfront investment, and a recurring individual investment of just a few dollars per person per year, it can be eradicated. Yet no one seems to be making these investments. Indeed, a key driver is that poor countries and poor individuals do not have the resources required to do so. But I have also seen that malaria is not perceived to be a big threat or an important issue. A local colleague made the following remark to me, as I was sharing my malaria pill related nightmares with him:  “Yes, Malaria. It doesn’t affect us Africans, but it seems to be affecting the visitors a lot.”

Finally, when I was in the Masai Mara a couple of weeks back, I visited a local Masai village (had to be done as part of the tourist experience). As one would expect, they have adopted their lifestyle and dwellings to keep the mosquitoes out, but at significant cost, and without the benefit of modern innovation. Their houses look very similar to the kutcha (raw) mud houses, back in the villages in Central Punjab, with wooden frames and wooden supporting beams, plastered around with mud. They are only used to interacting with the typical western tourist, and when I explained to them that our houses in Pakistan are very similar to theirs, they were quite surprised, and wanted to know more. The key difference, however, is that they have tiny windows or rather holes to keep the mosquitos out. These are literally finger sized holes to let only a few tiny beams of light inside. The tiny surface area does not allow many mosquitos to get in. We went inside one of them and it was pitch dark, and filled with heavy smoke. They also cook inside the house with a special wood, the fumes of which the mosquitos do not like. The heavy fumes tend to suffocate all those inside, but are very effective against the mosquitos.

The Masai are also of course fiercely proud of their culture and traditions, and thus might prefer local solutions to local problems. They are the only tribe in Kenya which was able to withstand European cultural influence brought about by the European colonialists and missionaries over the past two centuries. Their uniqueness makes them poster children for Kenyan culture, even though they are just one of dozens of tribes in Kenya and account for a tiny proportion of the population. This brings me to my final question. Would it be appropriate to introduce modern, culturally agnostic (if such a thing exists), mosquito fighting solutions, a-la bed-nets, sprays or battery powered “Mortein Doom” vaporizers, so that the Masai can have more light and cleaner air to breathe? The Masai do get a modern education where they learn Masai, Swahili and English in Model schools. Some of their English was very good, probably due to heavy exposure to Western tourists. Yet they seem to continue to make fire using traditional methods, and continue to rely on their traditional methods to keep mosquitos out. Where does one draw the line and why? What’s the difference between tangible cultural practices (e.g. making fire, anti-mosquito house design, nice colorful blankets etc.) versus intangible cultural exposure (e.g. through education, etc.)?

This post has been fairly light and inconsequential. My next post promises to be heavier and filled with a little greater insight. I will be covering Memes (the intangible ideological or cultural equivalent of Genes), and how they could potentially explain the rise of religious extremism in Pakistan. The idea was first floated by Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani physicist and prominent intellectual, in a lecture he gave in Karachi around three months back. I will also be providing my version of a short history of religious extremism in the region, right from the formation of the Deobandi School in British India, over a century back, to partition, up to the most recent developments in and around Afghanistan. Stay tuned!