The news is that on Friday evening a giant, centuries-old baobab tree fell on the outskirts of the town of Malindi, on the road leading to Tsavo East National Park.
The asphalt road is currently blocked and operations to re-establish the normal passage of cars are proceeding slowly.
The news for us at Malindikenya.net is that another piece of history of this Earth, particularly of the Kenyan coast, has collapsed to the ground after about a thousand years of life.
Someone on our social pages wrote that it is useless to recite the "de profundis" to a baobab, because the serious problems of Africa are quite different and also those of each of us.
I replied that there is no doubt that the problems of each one of us are more important than preserving nature and regretting it, including our daily needs and requirements, the health of our loved ones, our business and so on. This is why, after all, the world has gone in a certain direction. Personal problems (thanks mainly to those who have created them for us) versus nature, culture, respect for traditions and also, why not, literature, music...
It is surely too late to do anything, but we irredeemable assholes still hope that in a place like this, where humanity is still young and has shown in other parts of Kenya that it can improve its life while protecting the environment, indeed turning it into a source of income. This is something that the Western world has for decades snubbed and mocked, treating environmentalists as half-wits (indeed, they had their faults, appearing almost all as fashionable flower children rather than convinced promoters of a lifestyle that could at the same time preserve the world and provide more wealth). In Kenya, there are hundreds of examples of people who, through habitat conservation, recycling, alternative energy and so on, are earning money and teaching people to do the same.
It is an unequal fight, a war already lost against those who see in Africa once again a foothold to restore their own failing economy and remain competitive. And so on to infrastructures, cement, oil, sounded and dredged oceans, pipelines and factories. In order to do this, they deforest, ruin coastlines, coral reefs, lakes and savannahs.
It's an unequal fight, of course, but those few examples of resistance that try to limit the damage and build a clean future encourage us to go on, to be stubborn assholes who want to see beyond these dark and sick times, full of negativity and people who close themselves off in their own backyard.
So let us mourn the baobab tree in Malindi that decided to let itself fall on the road that was paved two years ago, so as not to mix its ancient roots with tar.
A little further on, there is another even bigger and more important one. They call it "Mbuyu akusema", the talking baobab. According to the age-old traditions of the Mijikenda, the souls of the ancestors hidden in its trunk give advice to those who know how to listen. And many elderly people in the neighbourhood confirm this, with dozens of anecdotes on the subject. But that's another, wonderful, story of those that interest us assholes and that we will tell you soon.