What of nature’s fury?
Apr 01, 2011
AFTER a three-week absence here I go again. Pat Boone (who?!) sang, when in our diapers (ie about 13), that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
By John Nagenda
AFTER a three-week absence here I go again. Pat Boone (who?!) sang, when in our diapers (ie about 13), that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
But whose heart here: your columnist’s or yours, Dear Reader? I was touring Europe in the shape of London, Hamburg and Brussels – the latter to pick up Brussels Airlines – and filing the column proved problematic.
Especially because of momentous and sometimes overwhelming events, how much I missed the chance to pontificate! First and foremost, of course, was Japan. But Libya also; and by that route, a slice of Africa.
Anyone alive who saw what the forces of Nature visited upon Japan in a matter of a few hours will never forget it. Television has never been more vivid in feasting on what terror lies in the deep, and bringing it into sight in our very living rooms. It got to a point where you were sometimes loath to turn it on, and yet still horribly fascinated. Pictures are often worth thousands of words, reams of paper!
On the way home by chance I looked from the plane and saw the eternally terrifying sight of the Alps waiting below, bright and sunlit. Here is Dumb Nature saying, along with Ozymandias, “Look upon my works ye mighty and despair.†‘Dumb’ in the sense that Nature’s forces, stronger than any living thing (not that they are dead!) possess no moral sense of right or wrong. Should the Alps pull you by gravitational force into their horrible embrace (and my heart continues to pound until we have left them well behind) you perish, but not because there is intention behind it! So it was with the Japanese tragedy. Of course some saw the Hand of God in it, punishing humankind for sins committed.
When the earthquake, followed by the terrifying tsunami, hit Japan, and cars, ships, planes and buildings, flowed upon the water’s swell like kids’ toys, Nature “red in tooth and claw†devoured existences as if they had been created in vain. You shuddered upon seeing it, especially because of the utter helplessness, and hopelessness, of the moment. Humankind, for that Moment in Time, seemed submerged under forces whose might appeared insurmountable. So why bother to counteract? You questioned Creation itself.
The way the Japanese dealt with all this, when they picked themselves up in that vast debris of their very lives and, almost as “blind†as the forces destroying them, somehow, as in direct challenge to these, slowly and painfully and painstakingly continued towards the life that would follow, as you watched you felt yet again the strength of Life, as shown by these indomitable beings. These were moments which your columnist will never forget.
The rest will follow, and is following. The recovery of the remaining dead, the termination, or otherwise, of the nuclear stations, the rebuilding, piece by piece, of all that was destroyed, and, somehow (which will take longest) that of the smashed lives. If anyone can do this, it is, as already shown in harrowing detail, the Japanese. In different circumstances it has been seen as cruelty; here it emerges as pride with its accompanying composure and a kind of noble resignation which transcends tragedy. God forfend Japan!
And what of Libya? Forty-two years ago, when a 27-years old Muammar Gaddafi pushed aside King Idris and embarked on the job of creating a real nation of the disparate tribes roaming the sands, he was, whether he fully knew it or not, becoming the founder of modern Libya. You can blame Gaddafi for a lot of things, for lack of the democracy that comes with elections, for thinking that he, and he only, knows what is best for his people (what megalomania!) and, at the end, turning on his people and destroying them without pity. But you cannot deny him the credit for forming Libya, and the improvements he has wrought: harnessing oil, finding water under the desert, building cities. And, not least, standing up straight until his detractors, aka The West, made a beeline for his door. Is it the shame of it for which they are now hunting him?
Reading the long article by President Museveni, his take on the matter, it is obvious, as he stresses, that talks must be carried out with all the different sections of Libya, set up by the African Union and the Arab League, and that Gaddafi must take part. There are those, no matter their pious words, who would welcome a disjointed Libya, split into tribes and cabals, and consequently much weakened for the voracious appetite of those who hanker for its oil.
If they crisscross Libyan skies for love of ordinary Libyans, where were they before? Gaddafi has indeed put himself beyond the pale to continue leading Libya. But he must take part in the discussions to come. Otherwise Libya will disintegrate into factions and much of the good work of the last 42 years thrown to the desert winds. Meantime, if Gaddafi needs asylum, Uganda, a friend, should offer. For light relief, I finish with the so-called Mayorship of Kampala! Except in the wearing of mayoral robes and other trinkets, that office should be scrapped for the next 25 years, replaced by a department of Government. More, later.
AFTER a three-week absence here I go again. Pat Boone (who?!) sang, when in our diapers (ie about 13), that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
But whose heart here: your columnist’s or yours, Dear Reader? I was touring Europe in the shape of London, Hamburg and Brussels – the latter to pick up Brussels Airlines – and filing the column proved problematic.
Especially because of momentous and sometimes overwhelming events, how much I missed the chance to pontificate! First and foremost, of course, was Japan. But Libya also; and by that route, a slice of Africa.
Anyone alive who saw what the forces of Nature visited upon Japan in a matter of a few hours will never forget it. Television has never been more vivid in feasting on what terror lies in the deep, and bringing it into sight in our very living rooms. It got to a point where you were sometimes loath to turn it on, and yet still horribly fascinated. Pictures are often worth thousands of words, reams of paper!
On the way home by chance I looked from the plane and saw the eternally terrifying sight of the Alps waiting below, bright and sunlit. Here is Dumb Nature saying, along with Ozymandias, “Look upon my works ye mighty and despair.†‘Dumb’ in the sense that Nature’s forces, stronger than any living thing (not that they are dead!) possess no moral sense of right or wrong. Should the Alps pull you by gravitational force into their horrible embrace (and my heart continues to pound until we have left them well behind) you perish, but not because there is intention behind it! So it was with the Japanese tragedy. Of course some saw the Hand of God in it, punishing humankind for sins committed.
When the earthquake, followed by the terrifying tsunami, hit Japan, and cars, ships, planes and buildings, flowed upon the water’s swell like kids’ toys, Nature “red in tooth and claw†devoured existences as if they had been created in vain. You shuddered upon seeing it, especially because of the utter helplessness, and hopelessness, of the moment. Humankind, for that Moment in Time, seemed submerged under forces whose might appeared insurmountable. So why bother to counteract? You questioned Creation itself.
The way the Japanese dealt with all this, when they picked themselves up in that vast debris of their very lives and, almost as “blind†as the forces destroying them, somehow, as in direct challenge to these, slowly and painfully and painstakingly continued towards the life that would follow, as you watched you felt yet again the strength of Life, as shown by these indomitable beings. These were moments which your columnist will never forget.
The rest will follow, and is following. The recovery of the remaining dead, the termination, or otherwise, of the nuclear stations, the rebuilding, piece by piece, of all that was destroyed, and, somehow (which will take longest) that of the smashed lives. If anyone can do this, it is, as already shown in harrowing detail, the Japanese. In different circumstances it has been seen as cruelty; here it emerges as pride with its accompanying composure and a kind of noble resignation which transcends tragedy. God forfend Japan!
And what of Libya? Forty-two years ago, when a 27-years old Muammar Gaddafi pushed aside King Idris and embarked on the job of creating a real nation of the disparate tribes roaming the sands, he was, whether he fully knew it or not, becoming the founder of modern Libya. You can blame Gaddafi for a lot of things, for lack of the democracy that comes with elections, for thinking that he, and he only, knows what is best for his people (what megalomania!) and, at the end, turning on his people and destroying them without pity. But you cannot deny him the credit for forming Libya, and the improvements he has wrought: harnessing oil, finding water under the desert, building cities. And, not least, standing up straight until his detractors, aka The West, made a beeline for his door. Is it the shame of it for which they are now hunting him?
Reading the long article by President Museveni, his take on the matter, it is obvious, as he stresses, that talks must be carried out with all the different sections of Libya, set up by the African Union and the Arab League, and that Gaddafi must take part. There are those, no matter their pious words, who would welcome a disjointed Libya, split into tribes and cabals, and consequently much weakened for the voracious appetite of those who hanker for its oil.
If they crisscross Libyan skies for love of ordinary Libyans, where were they before? Gaddafi has indeed put himself beyond the pale to continue leading Libya. But he must take part in the discussions to come. Otherwise Libya will disintegrate into factions and much of the good work of the last 42 years thrown to the desert winds. Meantime, if Gaddafi needs asylum, Uganda, a friend, should offer. For light relief, I finish with the so-called Mayorship of Kampala! Except in the wearing of mayoral robes and other trinkets, that office should be scrapped for the next 25 years, replaced by a department of Government. More, later.