The challenge

In late January I was in Morogoro to attend a non-title professional boxing match between Francis Cheka and Karama Nyilawila. Cheka won the match on points.

As I waited for the preliminary bouts to begin, the challenge in my mind was focused on the Uluguru Mountains in the background.

My interest in climbing mountains is not restricted to Mt. Kilimanjaro only. I kept mentally charting routes on the mountains and wondering how a climber could get to the peak. And where was the peak?

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Letter from Butiama: Science and scientists

Sometimes I feel the pair comprising science and scientists is similar to an imagined joint venture between the KGB and the CIA, whose agents I believe at one time were the World's leading gatherers of information. For the latter pair, every piece of information sought had a purpose. For science, it is different.

Scientists are interested in the occurrence of natural regularities. So they investigate these regularities and tell each other and others who are interested, outlining the causes for these occurrences. As a group they have an appetite for understanding every phenomenon in the universe, seen and unseen. The curiosity is important, otherwise humans would still be afraid of venturing too far into the seas and oceans for fear of falling off at the edge of the horizon.

Arthur Koestler, in an article for Encyclopedia Britannica in 1989 wrote: "Spontaneous laughter is a motor reflex produced by the coordinated contraction of 15 facial muscles..." He was discussing the psychological and physiological factors which elicit laughter in humans.

I admit knowledge is important for the survival of humans, but the necessity to know how many muscles it takes to laugh sounds to me irrelevant.to man's survival and advancement. Surely, absorbing such information can be a potential cause for information overload for the average human. Not even computers, one of science's great inventions, have come close to dealing with information overload.

In some instances scientists seem to be so involved with what they do that they fail to provide a convincing link between their work and the 'real' world. These people are principally interested only in knowing why things happen and they leave to others to determine whether the discoveries have any useful application on Earth.

When the North American Space Agency (NASA) launched the New Horizons spacecraft on 19th January 2006 it was the beginning of a nine-year journey to the planet Pluto. Today* New Horizons is on its ninth day of a voyage, having already covered 12.6 million kilometres. At its launch, a man of science, leading a team of other men and women of science, explained the importance of the mission: "...scientists hope to look into the formation of the solar system, how the majority of it operates, and perhaps if the water and organic molecules ubiquitous on Earth and other inner planets might have originated in its vast gloomy reaches."



The launch of New Horizons. According to NASA the craft will make its closest Pluto approach in 1,219 days and 22 hours. [Photo: Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech]

Invariably the objective of these missions is to locate clues about the origin of the solar system. How will the discovery of the clues to the origins of the solar system help me make enough money this year to reduce a large component of my debts? It requires a long stretch of one's imagination to always find the link between science and the solution to our problems.

But to be fair to science and scientists, there is normally a long incubation period between discoveries made in science before those discoveries make a meaningful contribution to humanity. It is also not usually easy to predict where one discovery may lead to. Sometimes, a combination of discoveries leads to something that was unplanned. The roots of computer science can be traced to work carried out by scientific minds in the field of electrical engineering and mathematics.

A long period passed before some other people put together this invention with that discovery and assembled a computer. Today, computers are used widely in every conceivable sphere of human activity, from the creation of music to business logistics, from aerospace design to use in modern warfare, not to mention being extremely convenient to columnists who find reason to criticize the impractical minds of some scientists.

But I am yet to find reason in the discovery of the number of facial muscles the human being requires  to execute a serious laugh. What I might find extremely useful is the day science will enable people to transform an existing debt into a virtual debt at the press of a key on a computer keyboard.


*28th January 2006. This article was originally published on 29th January 2006 in the Sunday News.

Picking (cheap) locks

A few days ago I woke up at a hotel and could not find the key of the padlock to my luggage.

Having seen and studied a few tricks from spy movies over the years, I decided to pick my own lock. And it worked. With a few twists and turns applied to an office pin I was reunited with my clean clothes, a toothbrush, and toothpaste.

Under different circumstances I would blame the manufacturers of cheap padlocks for imparting a false sense of security to buyers and for simplifying the work of thieves. In reality, we are told importers make a deliberate choice of importing cheap products rather than offer higher priced and more secure alternatives.

For the moment I am not blaming anyone for manufacturing or importing cheap padlocks. The passage of time might change that. A week perhaps?

The Mwalimu Nyerere/Mt. Kilimanjaro Charity Climb (post 9 of 15)

Friday 23 September 2011
The trek from Shira 2 to Barranco Camp was interrupted by one interview with Jaffar in which, in response to a question, he said I am a celebrity journalist. When Jim Becket asked me to define one I said: "It is someone who has no formal training as a journalist but I happen to have a regular weekly column and when the stars are aligned favourably I manage to write some good articles."



We had a lunch stop just before reaching Lava Tower. It either rained or snowed most of the way.

The after-lunch smiles.

Snow at Lava Tower.

After lunch Steve Kamau began to bleed through the nose and I thought that was cause for serious concern. When we stopped for a short rest at Lava Tower, I sought Yahoo's assessment and he said they will monitor Steve's condition. If the condition worsens, he would have to descend. He did not bleed again.

At dinner, Innocent, one of the assistant guides, suggested to Steve that should the bleeding resume he should avoid blowing his nose but instead soak the flow with tissue.

Next: Yahoo, a true professional

Posts related to this one:
http://madarakanyerere.blogspot.com/2012/02/mwalimu-nyereremt-kilimanjaro-charity_27.html
http://madarakanyerere.blogspot.com/2012/03/mwalimu-nyereremt-kilimanjaro-charity_12.html

My fictitious second wedding

It is interesting how easy it is to fabricate a lie using a photograph without even using Photoshop.

More than a decade ago I was best man at my cousin's wedding. As is custom with contemporary Tanzanian weddings, it is not only the bride and the bridegroom who step up to take a slice of the wedding cake; the maid of honour and the best man also have their turn at cutting the wedding cake.

The edited photo (below) showing me cutting the wedding cake with the maid of honor could easily pass off as a photograph of a bride and bridegroom.

The original unedited photo (below) reveals that the newly-weds were actually observing us a fews steps behind.

I am reminded of a photograph that appeared in some of Tanzania's Internet forums in which President Jakaya Kikwete was shown in the United States, on stage, with the American R&B vocal group, Boyz II Men. In the discussions President Kikwete was accused of traveling to the United States to attend the group's concert and wasting public funds. The truth, never revealed by the person who introduced the subject, was that the president had traveled to the United States for a meeting and the performance by Boyz II Men was concluded at the end of that meeting.

They had not lied about President Kikwete having attended a concert; they just did not bother to mention the meeting. The impact of excluding some information distorts the actual facts.