Whoever has a head is looking
for a cap and whoever has a cap is looking for a head. Is that statement not
truer in Turkana than anywhere else on the globe? When they cannot get water oil appears. Yet
someone, not a Turkana, bought Ngamia well decades ago. I was forgetting my
Chemistry: oil and water don’t mix and water is denser than oil. Water,
therefore is below oil in Turkana, little wonder that government got oil before
water. Whoever has oil is looking for water and vice versa!
Scantily dressed nilotic tribe
of a far-flung Northern Frontier Region of Kenya instantly hit number one on
the social networks worldwide trends on discovery of oil. Only one year ago when the Turkanas stared
death in the face, as a result of famine and starvation, they did not hit a
trend in any social network except for the campaign by Kenya4kenya team of
philanthropists. It was the first time a concerted effort of Corporate Social Responsibility
hit Trukana. Unprecedented wave of generosity after hundreds had starved to
death and a chief got sacked for lamenting! What makes sense here is Big
Business, Big Oil. Is Big Business anti-humanity or just anti-Turkana?
But Big Business has always
been inhuman. During the gilded age in another Union of States Big Business
survived on child labour, made huge profits and today they are Big
Multinationals and aid donors because of guilt not philanthropy. Big Tobacco is
another inhuman lot. Is Big Tobacco not killing big time? Ah! You cannot
compare human health to corporate wealth. As long as addictive nicotine exists
teens will smoke it to replace their cancer-ridden grandpas. Now that is a lot
of Big Business. So Turkana will be compensated
and relocated period. Big Oil will take over. And that is very human.
Wonders will never end! Turkana
region is marked for the biggest wind energy project in Africa.
Wind energy, for Starters, is clean, renewable and environmentally friendly.
Even in its utility there are none of those non-biodegradable green house
emissions that deplete our precious ozone layer. A lot of studies have linked
fossil fuel, Big Oil, to myriad cases of cancer and emission of cancinogenous
substances which take World Health Organization zillions of dollars to manage,
not cure. We are not talking about the cost of prevention here! The irony in
Turkana again is that Unclean (dirty) Energy will stall the biggest project of
Clean Energy! Big Oil will surely win.
So whoever is looking for water
has received oil and whoever is looking for oil has plenty of water but cannot
pipe it up there in Trukana! Why has nature ‘blessed’ Turkana with such a Big
Curse! For our economy and the Big Business it’s a Big Blessing. One man’s meat
is another man’s poison.
Shem Sam
