Major Ariel

Ariel studies Chemistry, but is also a footballer who retired prematurely because of a bad knee. A knee that chose chemistry over football. He is a farmer during long holidays. He keeps chicken and milk his father’s cow on a good day. On a bad day he goes to a nearby dusty arena to play football, to see if his knee could have possibly changed its idea about chemistry.

Ten minutes into the  game he becomes a living testimony that his knees were actually meant to stand long hours in the chemistry lab doing tests and mixing chemicals to see colour changes, precipitates and what have you that don’t excite me. He is a vocabulary expert and a story teller. He is a fitness aficionado. He is a brother and a son. I can’t prove that he is a boyfriend but I can prove beyond any limits that in the past 7 days he has eaten chapatti at least thrice. 

He's authored  THE FAMILY MAN,  WHAT I WANT, GRIP REAPER, J'S COCUNUTS just to mention a handful. He is a huge Chelsea fan, a bruised team that doesn’t match his potential an inch. Ariel is typically his own man.

Lastly apart from being an uncle to both Emerald and Rehan he is the recent winner of ‘creating a sustainable path for Africa’s energy transition’ an essay writing competition powered by Sahara Group foundation and Asharami synergy. This work is remarkable. How it actually starts like a piece of novel by your favourite Sydney Sheldon to turn out to be an essay about energy transition is just astounding. Have your flowers Major.

I’ll give you a piece of it. Don’t be mean with your comments and shares  

CREATING A SUSTAINABLE PATH TOWARDS AFRICA'S ENERGY TRANSITION

The mid day sun glared fiercely on the ground. Its rays were like laser beams that were directed from above. Under a grotesque acacia tree, Kanja sat on a grinding stone. He curved his index finger and used it to wipe the sweat that had gathered on his brow. Some of the sweat trickled on the little cassava flour he had just finished grinding. Kanja drifted his gaze to the horizon. The atmosphere was made hazy by the stinging heat and dust that was suspended in the air. He glanced at the flour and then at the empty sack that doubled up as the granary. That was the last of what they had left. It was barely enough to feed his mother and two siblings for one meal. He put the flour in a can and made his way through the charred curtain into the hut. On a small acacia bed that was reinforced with sisal ropes, lay his mother. Feeble wheezing sounds escaped through her clenched teeth. Kanja gropped for the bed in the dark, claustrophobic corner and drew her leso stealthily to cover her legs. His siblings would be home soon and they needed to find something to eat.

At the back of the hut, Kanja piled up dry firewood in the ashen three-stone fireplace and lit it. He pounded a little mound of ugali and boiled some dried pumpkin leaves. At half past noon, his siblings arrived. One was an eleven year old boy while the other an eight year old girl. Their lips formed thin, coarse lines across their faces. Tiny spikes of hair stood scantily all over their heads. The five kilometre trek to and from school had sapped the little strength they had gained from mouthfuls of porridge earlier in the day. Suffering and misery had made a forced acquintance with them. Nonetheless, a malignant sense of hope and determination was embedded deep in their conscience.After his father’s untimely demise, Kanja had taken the onus of protecting his siblings and senile mother and forking them out of the abyss of poverty they had hitherto dwelt in.

Kanja’s father worked in a gold mine some distance away from their village. The mine belonged to an Indian tycoon who had no compassion whatsoever for his workers. The workers would risk their lives and limbs navigating the subterranean labyrinth that held the precious mineral in its perilous bowels. Due to the extent of the mines below the surface, oxygen had to be pumped continuously into the holes via a diesel generator. Kanja's father mainly worked night shifts. One evening, he left with his tools of trade. He never came back. There had been a miscalculation and the diesel pump had run out of fuel. All the miners who were in the mine suffocated to death. It was nearly impossible to drag their corpses out of the holes, so they were tied with long ropes and their bodies pulled out by a pulley. Kanja's mother was offered a job in the mine as compensation. It wasn't enough but she had to accept it to provide for her children. She couldn't take the the dawdling path of litigation. Desperate times call for desperate measures. After a year of working in the mine, she started developing complications. She would have sudden bouts of illness that would hold her lungs captive and make her breathe like an old diesel truck. Her persistent coughs were accompanied by a mixture of blood and phlegm, and a piercing pain in the chest cavity. The illness ravaged her for a year until she couldn't get out of bed. Her face became pale and ashen. The flesh in her body evanesced leaving her bones covered with athin layer of wrinkled skin. At school, Kanja did some research and discovered her mother may have been suffering from lung cancer or other chronic respiratory ailments, courtesy of Her perennial exposure to soot and smoke from firewood and the toxic dust from the gold mine. He will never know for sure what killed he mother but there are no qualms that the smoke contributed immensely to her death.

When his mother was bedridden, Kanja had to step up and be the breadwinner. He juggled between going to school and taking care of his siblings and mother. After a while, it became impossible to concentrate on both pusuits. He had to put his education on hold. Just like his mother, he used firewood to cook. He soon developed eye complications. His eyes were always red, teary and itchy. These were always accompanied by nerve twisting migraines. One day Kanja decide he couldn't take it anymore. He came up with a solution. Using mud and some stones, He build an energy-saving charcoal jiko behind the hut. He burnt charcoal and used it to cook in the jiko. This innovation only reduced his exposure to smoke by a fraction. He also discovered that the indigenous tree he cut down to burn charcoal would soon run out.

One cold night after putting his siblings to sleep, Kanja grabbed an old goat skin bag that he previously used to keep his books. Inserting his callous hands, he grabbed an old textbook whose pages had turned brown and were compacted into one hard pad. He ripped the pages off one another carefully. The book was an integrated science textbook. There was a topic on renewable sources of energy. He read through the topic with ruthless focus. There was wind power, hydroelectric power and solar. Kanja was intrigued by this topic. He read it repeatedly until the flame in the tiny kerosene tin lamp started dwindling and died. The smoke from the lamp stung his eyes, leaving him with streaks of tears across his cheeks. That night he slept with an introspective conviction to be the change in his society.

The next day, he went to the school library and borrowed a textbook that shed more light on renewable energy and sustainable environmental practices….