Nobody wants to be the last one holding the hot potato when the time is over; that’s kinda how I feel about electronic waste. E-waste is a really, really big problem. There is a village in China, for example, where people crouch over fires of melting electronic components (mobile phones, motherboards, wires, CRT monitors, etc). Children have sores all over their bodies, mothers have breast milk with heavy metals, cancer rates are through the roof. All of this just to reclaim a few ounces of gold, silver, or who-knows-what other precious metals live inside that 21st-century trash.
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Rants
The Evolution of Language
Last week I was reading about the evolution of Latin languages in Western Europe and it made me think about Swahili here in East Africa. Swahili is the official language of Kenya and Tanzania (and apparently Uganda, but I’ve been there and I didn’t hear much). The thing is, while most Kenyans do speak Swahili, everyone knows it’s not the sanifu (“pure”) brand you’ll find spoken in Tanzania. After independence, Tanzania’s first president was all excited about forging a strong national identity, and part of that was pushing for the adoption of Swahili as the national language. I read in Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari that one independence-era government official’s words were: “English is the language of the imperialists.” Sure enough, traveling in Tanzania is hard if you don’t speak Swahili because English is by no means pervasive!
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The King(s) of Kenya
Not me, haha, Mwai Kibaki. They say he’s the president, but he’s more like a king. I knew he was filthy rich, but a recent newspaper article in The Nation detailed his earnings. Here’s the deal, he earns 2 million Kenyan shillings as a basic salary and another 1.2 million in allowances (entertainment, they say). That’s per month, by the way. 3.2 million Kenyan shillings is approximately equal to 40,000 US dollars. Remember, per month!
Now add to that Prime Minister Raila Odinga‘s pay (who serves in a new position in the government since December, 2007’s presidential election debacle). Current newspapers quote him as saying that he should earn as much as the president, as they are supposed to be at the same level of government (co-kings, I guess!). Then we have the 200+ members of parliament who earn somewhere around 800,000 basic salary and around 100,000 allowances for things as ridiculous as entertainment, car maintenance, etc. What’s more ridiculous is that one of the first pieces of legislation these MPs pass when they arrive in office is an increase of their salaries.
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