Of earthquakes, plane crashes, floods and child abuse

Simbarashe Msasanuri
(Bongoblast)

I remember finding it very difficult to fall asleep on new year’s eve last year, due to unbearable noises from people who were celebrating. As a norm, many people don't go to sleep on the last day of the year because they want to be there when it happens. They don't want to be told by others how it feels like to 'enter' into a new year.

To be frank, I used to be one of those people who would stay awake constantly checking our watches so that when it is 12 O'clock, we celebrate. But, with time, I realised that the last day of the year is not different from any other day. Someone had told us that the coming in of a new year is usually marked by some certain sounds. So these are the sounds I wanted to personally listen to but this was to no avail. Of all the days I stayed awake, the only sounds I heard were those coming from people who would have laid an ambush, waiting for the arrival of the new year.

Confusion usually reigns supreme during this time as people temporarily lose their minds in the name of celebrations. They run in groups singing, shouting and banging anything that makes noise. I don't know whether these people will be celebrating or will be doing it deliberately to disturb those enjoying their sleep.

As I said before, this year was no different as many people took it to the streets. In so doing many people were hoping that the new year was set to give them an opportunity to finish or accomplish what they failed to accomplish the previous year. Many people had and are still hopeful when it comes to 2010. Christians all over the world consider this year as that of “Restoration” where believers will recover what the devil stole from them.

I know many people had their own resolutions and above all hope of a better year after the global economic crisis had wreaked havoc in many people's lives, especially their pockets. But, the year is proving to be something else. Judging from what has happened throughout the world so far, the year will most likely to be remembered for the wrong reasons. I am not a prophet of doom here , dear reader, but I am just telling the truth.

The world has had its fair share of disaster years in the past and it is said that our ancestors used such disasters as their benchmarks to know either their ages or their children's years. I remember one granny who use to say in our local language but loosely translated as “I was born in the year of the locusts”. Because they were illiterate, they didn't know their ages but could remember these disaster years as their points of reference.

It is in the same view that this year, we have had a lot of disasters throughout the world and they are both natural and human inflicted. It's barely six months into the year but we have had a lot of earthquakes hitting different parts of the world. To be precise, we have had at least 11 major earthquakes through out the world. I am not talking about tremors here.

The most disastrous of all is the one that reduced Haiti's economic hub, Port-au-Prince, to heaps of rubbles. Just 12 days into the new year, an earthquake of a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Mw, with an epicentre near the town of Léogâne, approximately 25 km west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital struck.

An estimated 230,000 people died, 300,000 were injured and 1,000,000 were made homeless and it is estimated that 250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial buildings collapsed or were severely damaged.

But this was not the only earthquake as many others were experienced through out the world. Even Bongoland had its own share of earthquakes. Tremors were recently experienced in some parts of this country although no loss of life or destruction of property was reported. On 5 May this year, an earthquake of 4.5 magnitude affected south west regions of this country.

There have been other disasters throughout the world such as plane crashes. I still remember the one that killed the Polish president, his wife and other senior government officials. We had several others such as the Ethiopian Airlines aircraft that plunged into the Mediterranean in a ball of fire, minutes after taking off from Beirut in a raging thunderstorm in January.

As if that was not enough, last week, another one had the audacity to fall on African soil, in Libya, killing 103 people. Only a 10-year-old child survived. These are some of the accidents that have occurred so far and the world is sadly continuing to count the losses.

I won't dwell much on volcanic activities that have affected some parts of the world because I am still pondering whether I should include these activities as natural disasters or not. But, one thing I am certain is that a volcanic ash cloud wreaked havoc in Europe as airspaces were closed, travellers inconvenienced and airlines incurring a lot of losses.

There are many other disasters such as floods, droughts and so on, I can't include in this column because of space but the bottom line is that, this year has had a bad start. Though this seems to be a year of disaster, I think there is a possibility for Africa experiencing another disaster as the historic World Cup competitions nears. This will be a disaster of it's own kind. Where instead of people wailing and grieving, there will be joy and celebration.

The disaster will only befall us as Africans if we fail to utilize our home advantage so that the trophy remains in Africa for the first time in history. To avert the disaster we need to shock the giants such as Brazil, France, Portugal and England so that they go back home, with tails in between their legs and empty handed after we wallop them. Hard it might be but it is achievable. I know many soccer lovers think I am day dreaming but you might never know. Enough about soccer madness.

Though disasters continue to rock the world, I also feel that we have our own disasters in this country. Today I won't be talking about floods, droughts and diseases but those such as road accidents. Many of our relatives and friends continue to lose their lives on our roads that we deliberately turned into death traps.

This seems a tired subject as it is constantly covered in media but it is a cause for concern as our roads are now dangerous to an extent that one is no longer certain to get to his /her destination after embarking on a journey. The problem is that these road accidents in most cases are caused by human error and are preventable.

Another time bomb is child abuse. Our media are awash with stories of child abuses where parents cause grievous bodily harm to their own children for silly excuses such as stealing 1000/-. It's a shame that our children are fast becoming endangered species as some parents in the name of disciplining, end up killing them.

I have just pointed out these two social ills but we all know that there are many areas we are found wanting. Let us not the ones to make disaster statistic in this year of disaster, but be a shining example.

The owners of this language say charity begins at home, so it is important for us, while we join the world in helping out wherever disasters strike, to prevent unnecessary loss of life and make this country a haven of peace we all know. God bless you.

bongoblast@thisday.co.tz