CREATING A FLUTTER

It seemed like the other day when Hudhud created a flutter. The fury of the cyclone laid waste veteran trees in its wake and took its toll on birds; the butterflies simply stood no chance. Birds made a modest comeback even before the natural ecology of Dolphin Hill limped back to life-as-usual. Summer has been unbearably harsh, but Nature’s resilience is such that scrubland and woods have rejuvenated on their own steam. Few showers of Vizag’s monsoon have helped the ‘weed’ understory flourish. Now nine months on, something else is creating a flutter. The hillside is trembling excitedly to the rhythm of butterflies once again. They have been tardy in returning, but they are back for sure.

The much-derided lantana camara – the ‘untouchable’ among plant kingdom, has come to the rescue. Sitting on the patio, I had been witness to few swallowtails, which were once the pride of this place, flitting over verge and low trees. Common Rose and Crimson Rose, particularly attracted attention as they doubled in size mating mid-air! The general buzz of these bugs was tantalizing, so this Sunday morning I decided to give in. In my part of the woods, where ‘weeds’ have been allowed to grow, I counted nearly 20 species of butterflies in as many minutes on a 50-metre trail by the fence. Armed with my new DSLR and a macro telephoto lens, I set out on a chase.

Most species give you the slip as they flit from flower to wildflower. Some like this tailless swallowtail – the Lime butterfly – that I went after, flap constantly proving elusive. Others like albatross and emigrants are difficult to pin down frolicking as they are, usually, in twos and threes. Tawny coasters and grass yellows were gliding energetically by a carpet of ‘coat button’ daisies (Tridax procumbens or ‘Ravana-heads’ of our childhood) and Crotalaria. I did arrest the slow flight of a tawny coaster and was surprised to see that it had an oily sheen to its wings. Thankfully, the common leopard and lemon pansy posed as they did surya namaskar (they love to sun-bathe with wings wide open) first thing in the morning.

The Calotropis procera or the Sodom’s apple that grows invasive by the roadside is considered an outcast, but it is another great butterfly magnet. Its bouquet of mauve flowers provides food for variety of butterflies from tigers to pansies and the waxy leaves are a great host for caterpillars.

In all that drama, there was also the side-show. There were caterpillars—that would metamorphose into butterflies, feeding on plants. Crickets leapt out of thickets making me jump. Bugs made my skin crawl. Common Indian Chameleons basked in the sun, lazily, watching me with a curious eye, wondering at my whimsy.

This is backyard biodiversity at its best. Such macro-life can thrive only in ‘hospitable’ conditions that may seem ‘inhospitable’ for us. Most of us think that landscaping, trimmed trees, and regimented rows of pruned foliage with big, bright flowers constitute ‘natural beauty’. That unwieldy grass or scrub with dried twigs is sight for sore eyes. How many of us know that the so-called ‘weeds’ are but wildflowers with medicinal and commercial value to mankind? It is this higgledy-piggledy wasteland we so despise that is the actual breeding ground for bugs, bees, butterflies and birds that constitute the web of life. It is not my contention that, therefore, we encourage indiscriminate growth of invasive weeds. Under controlled conditions, natural vegetation can be co-opted into ‘tree plantation’ and ‘greening’ schemes to help restore soil and micro-climate. Even as we create artificial oases, we must strive to preserve wild pockets.

Lemon pansies feeding on Sodom's apple shrub 

Lime Butterfly (Papilio demoleus)

Dark Glassy Tiger

Lemon pansy (Junonia lemonias)

Plain Tiger (Danaus chrysippus)

Great Eggfly (Hypolimnus bolina)

Common Leopard (Phalanta phalanta)

Common Indian Crow 

Tawny Coaster (Acraea violae)

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS IN THIS BLOG AND WEBSITE ARE THE AUTHOR'S ORIGINAL WORK/COPYRIGHT.

Tall As An Oak

Today, I planted a sapling of Meru Oak in my garden. As my Kenyan odyssey inches towards the finishing line, I felt it would be fitting to give something back to this land – to its soil, sun and savannas – that nurtured my soul. Planting indigenous trees would be my enduring gesture of gratitude to its people who shared their stories with me and helped me evolve and grow. Meru Oak, one of the largest trees endemic to Kenya, was Wangari Maathai’s pet motif, as a symbol of strength and endurance, for any tree planting ceremony. Deforestation and over harvesting for timber has highly threatened it, which is also the reason why Mama Miti (Mother Tree, as Maathai was lovingly called in local lingo) chose to plant this species on every occasion.

I would have loved to plant the baobab - the African quintessence - too, but though the baobab is an indigenous species, it is not the one for Nairobi. Baobabs are not spread over Kenya indiscriminately, but found closer to the plains which experience relatively heavy rainfall. As you travel from Nairobi to Mombasa by road, you step into baobab country. On the outskirts of Mombasa these gargantuan entities stretch endlessly such that you are seemingly driving on a baobab boulevard. With ample breathing space and sparseness around, their girth and canopy spreads copiously, in keeping with their true nature. Just the other day, I came across a 100-year old baobab at the Nairobi Arboretum that would put a true-blue baobab to shame. Not suited to Nairobi’s elevation of nearly 5000 ft, this specimen was stunted and frail like a well-endowed woman shrunk in size as a result of crash dieting!

Time and again, Maathai emphasized the importance of indigenous trees for their capacity to regenerate and rejuvenate microhabitats and in inducing back birds that might have migrated. Plantation trees such as eucalyptus and acacia (the wattle of Australia and not the indigenous savanna species), conifers such as cypress and pine, majestic though they may be, play havoc with the immediate environment in ways that may not be instantly felt or understood.  Therefore, I chose the indigenous East African yellow-wood (Podocarpus falcatus), instead, as the other planting option. By virtue of its appearance, Podocarpus is a perfect substitute for the alien pine and is a viable alternative as a plantation tree. In Australia, this species is considered invasive, but in Kenya, its homeland, it is not an outcast and is, in fact, a great roosting place for birds.

The British with their incurable love of gardens and trees sought to recreate their homeland-highlands atmosphere in almost all nations they colonized, as also to swap species within the colonies. Thus, they sowed the seed of exotic plantations. So, whether you go to India or Kenya, whether you are sitting at the Bombay Gymkhana Club in Mumbai or the Mombasa Club in Mombasa, you see similar flora of Indian almonds and African tulips twig-by-bough jostling for space.

The African tulip (Spathodea campanulata) is truly a native beauty and my personal favourite for its enchanting blooms. Upturned orange-red bells crown the canopy and seen from a distance it appears as though the tree is aflame. Elspeth Huxley, the British author eulogized and immortalized this 'Flame of the forest' in her book, “The Flame Trees of Thika”. (Locally though, it is called the Nandi Flame, after the Nandi county of Kakamega region in Western Kenya.) Until now I had seen only the vermilion blooms, but recently, in Kenya, I came across mango-coloured blossoms (colour of ripe mango pulp), a mutation obtained from grafting, I am told. Our Embassy complex, like all colonial copycats, ironically, sports only the foreign jacaranda and frangipani, but not a single tulip tree, so I let the garden have it, finally.

Nairobi nurses several pockets of “urban forests” such as Karura forest and City Park, deserving of the epithet of “green city under the sun”. Majestic trees are an indispensable feature flanking the streets, and roadsides double as nurseries throughout the city. In the absence of buildings, shopping malls or other man-made structures, it was the trees that served as landmarks or milestones, in the days gone by. This back-to-basics approach still holds in Nairobi, if only in name. Thus, you have the kosher Muthaiga neighbourhood, Mutithi road, Mathare slums and Kamithi prison - localities and streets all named after trees!

Planting trees and tending to nature is an intrinsic ethos in this country which sired one of the world’s greatest environmentalists and inspirations on its soil, Wangari Maathai. Today, on Women’s Day, I pay my respects to one of the tallest women who walked the Earth - as tall as the Meru Oak.   

Meru Oak

On the occasion of Holi, enjoy the riot of colours in this album, "Holi more angana": http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.454565954530.245282.740459530&type=3&l=85b7c51cde

And some more splash of colours: 

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150371669624531.360652.740459530&type=3&l=cb1bd4991a

Take a Bow, Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai is no more. 

When she won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2004, the world sat up and noticed her and somewhere in my consciousness, she registered. But it was not until I came to Kenya and read about her work and saw first-hand the legacy of her tireless crusade against environmental degradation that I realized what a phenomenon she was. 

I was pursuing my Master’s degree in Environment and Ecology and had to appear for my second and final year examination from here and chose her Green Belt Movement (GBM) as the topic for my thesis. The title of my thesis was: ‘Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement in Kenya – A model for climate change mitigation for poor and developing countries of Africa’. I was secretly hoping that I get to meet my idol under the pretext of doing the thesis, and engage with her more often, as I went along. I wrote a letter to GBM seeking permission and asking if I could get a guide from their organization for my thesis. In a prompt reply, I was told that they would have loved to do so but did not have adequate personnel to undertake such an exercise, expressed regret, and wished me well.

I decided  to go ahead with my thesis without a guide, but in the course of pursuing it, I read a lot about her work and talked about it to people around. I read her memoirs, “Unbowed – A Woman's Story”  in which she narrates how her tree planting mission came about. In 1977, Wangari’s husband was campaigning for election and one of his prominent election promises happened to be employment for people in his constituency. It became an article of faith with Wangari to help him fulfill his promise and she decided to do something about it. She translated her ever-abiding love for nature and environment into a practical solution to  provide livelihood options for local communities. She started a scheme whereby people would plant indigenous trees and start tree nurseries to reverse forest degradation while making them productive. She involved women from local community; there were stumbling blocks in that people planted trees alright but did not care for them enough or did not have the necessary expertise to make them flourish. She paid stipend, introduced monetary incentives and had local experts monitor plantations in a sustained manner to achieve better results. After trial and error, she finally succeeded and her campaign took off in a big way such that a localized experiment became a nation-wide campaign. In nearly three decades, the grassroots model of GBM extended to other countries in Africa and even protects the Congo Basin Rainforests, today.

Thus, GBM actually started as a project to generate employment to fulfill an election promise which is often empty bait by politicians to get voted into power. Subsequently, Wangari Maathai, herself, had a tryst with politics when she became the Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources during 2003- 2005. In the course of her green movement, she often set on a collision course against vested interests of private land lords, land grabbers in the Government and corporate companies. She also crossed swords with then President Daniel Arap Moi when nobody dared to oppose him. She had become a threat to people in powerful places.

Here was a woman who had a pulse on the people of her country, had boundless energy to tackle problems and find solutions, and who had her heart in the right place, I gathered from what I read. But, ironically, it is here, in Kenya that I heard very little of her. She did not figure on the pages of any newspaper and in the three years that I have been here I do not recall any footage or sound bytes on TV Channels, either. It was almost as though she was a 'spent force' who had lost her relevance in the current scenario. I only heard of her from the pulpit of Copenhagen Climate Change Conference or from the virtual pages of her Green Belt Movement e-zine. With an achievement such as hers - she fought for sustainable development, democracy, livelihood and women's rights - and an active public life during the peak of her green movement, I often wondered why she did not shine on the political firmament.

I strongly believed that Wangari Maathai was "President material" as she had the makings of a true leader. Moreover, seeing the vacuum in political leadership and governance here,  I felt doubly sure that Prof.  Maathai could be that Messiah  the country is in dire need of. I couldn’t fathom the reason why she merged into the background and I started enquiring about it asking anyone – from the media to environment lobby, who would have something to say about it. I encountered many reasons for this “non-performance”. One, an extreme and cynical view was that she had sold her soul for money; the Nobel Prize went to her head! I straightway discounted that; nothing that I had read about her work and character seemed to suggest that and canards like that simply reeked of idle insensitivity. When I posed the same question to an environmentalist friend, a Kenyan, she said: “She is not prominent in political life because she is a woman.” And I got my answer. She is not just a woman, but a conscientious woman - morally upright - capable of upsetting the political applecart, of being a real threat to the power-hungry. 

I tried to seek a meeting with Wangari Maathai, many times, but was often told that she was out of the country. (I almost wondered if that was one of the reasons why she wasn’t active politically anymore.) An opportunity presented itself, when Karura Forest – an urban forest - was thrown open to public for recreation, recently. This was one of her success stories when she had protested against the degazetting of the  land by the government and the construction lobby priming for residential projects in this rare indigenous forest in the heart of Nairobi, in 1999. She was beaten by the police and was severely injured during a dramatic protest. This evoked public sympathy and stalled the destruction of Nairobi’s green lung. This time, nearly 12 years later, she was to be the Chief Guest to inaugurate the public opening of Karura Forest and I was hoping to meet her. Unfortunately, she did not turn up as she was sick. I had missed another opportunity to meet her.

Like many in this country, I did not know that she was ailing in her final days, fighting her own private battle, that she had cancer. Not many cared. The country of her birth and karma gave her a raw deal even as the world, thankfully, looked up to this great woman. 

Kenya is going through tumultuous times; some of the top leaders are being prosecuted by the International Criminal Court for 2008 post-election violence. The country is embroiled in corruption controversies and MPs are demanding reimbursement of tax arrears when a large part of the Nation - North Kenya - is undergoing one of the severest droughts in several decades. The atmosphere for the forthcoming elections in 2012 is surcharged with passions. In such a claustrophobic and chauvinistic atmosphere, Wangari Maathai, the woman, did not stand a chance, perhaps.

But, I still feel Wangari Maathai could have been the answer; she could have been a great

Chief executive to steer the nation to greater heights, but alas, Kenya has now lost its chance.

“Planting a tree for me is a sign of hope and a sign that as long as we are taking action, we can make a difference.” Prof. Wangari Maathai