Showing posts with label African and Environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label African and Environment. Show all posts

Wednesday, 12 October 2016

OF HORNETS, SPIDERS AND A SMASHED CAR WINDOW

If we start today’s chat with the word Vespinae, would you, instantly,  get what I am talking about? It would be wrong to suppose it is reference to the small motorbike called Vespa. Sorry, no pun intended but, Vespa is a joke compared to what Vespinae actually means. That dear friends, is the scientific name of Nyigu or Manyigu in Kiswahili. The no -nonsense insect bit me when I was a child growing on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. I might have been eight or nine AND funnily, I still remember the pain. Vividly. Like it was five minutes ago. So intense that I should compare the experience to a bullet wound; which not many of would like to try out, nor imagine.

Monday, 16 November 2015

CLIMATE CHANGE “THRESHOLD” AND SCHEDULED PARIS GLOBAL MEETING






Threshold.
 A word I did not quite know, until very recently.
 I kept hearing politicians saying threshold, threshold, threshold. Threshold this, threshold that.
The word means strip of wood or metal forming the bottom of a doorway.  In Swahili, that is “kizingiti”, i.e.  kizingiti cha mlango. What fits this article is the second meaning of threshold. A new beginning and era; brink, verge, debut, inception, point, dawn. The start.
According to Thesaurus dictionary, the opposite of threshold is conclusion, death, end, finish, completion.