From Kibera to The World
Monument after monument
Sometime back, the city authorities decreed to close almost all the major clubs within Nairobi.
The reason? Noise.
Apparently.
Most of the club-goers were furious. Clubs are like amusement parks for adults. They may not have bouncing castles, but people, heads, and things bounce to everyone’s delight.
As a local and confused man, I could not know the forces underlying the massive closure. Plus, I had no closure.
The flip side was a single club franchise opening branches in different corners of Nairobi. Word going around was that it was a plot to redirect people into these new clubs that were ever as noisy as the previous ones if not more.
It made me wonder if the reason for the closure was justified.
In particular, I was shocked when I saw pictures showing that the 1824 club was closed. This was a popular joint when we were on campus and it still is to date. I never thought the authorities would be bold enough to close a monument along Lang’ata Road.
Yes, 1824 is a monument. It is like a one-person genre — it only evokes a single club. Quiver might still have follow-up questions like — Kilimani? Or Thika Road? But there is only one 1824. By that standard, it is a monument.
You can’t just shut down monuments. Stories abound monuments. So many memories are made and told about 1824. When they closed it down, I knew it would only be a matter of days before it would be opened.
And it was.
It bounced back like the other people, heads, and things that bounce inside the club every single night.
To my surprise, days after I had written this draft, it was closed yet again. I felt like changing this article before releasing it, but I had to believe in the power of the monument. I have it in good faith that the club will be reopened somewhere close to where it initially was.
The lesson? You simply can’t knock down a historic monument.
But it is not the only entity that bounces back despite surrounding annihilative forces. I can bet all my money — which is very little by the way, so I’d be risking abject poverty — that inside the club lies corners with some of the most resilient creatures you will ever find.
Like TBT, let me take you back
I’m writing this script on a Thursday, so it’s fitting that we throw it back.
And since I started by talking about monuments, let me take you to one island famous for monuments — Easter Island.
It also evokes a single picture — the tall face statues that greet any online or physical visitor.
Scholars have different ideas as to why the original Easter island civilization collapsed. The prevalent theory was an unsustainable practice where the members were obsessed with making statues to appease the gods.
David Deutsch has a different opinion, arguing that creativity was the reason. He makes a very cogent argument in his book, The Beginning of Infinity, an argument I have since agreed with. Regardless, there are remnants of the practices of the people of the past.
But while the numbers of the initial civilization reduced, a thriving ecosystem continued to grow in the faces — lichen.
I think I might soon become obsessed with lichen because they defy almost all the biologists who have previously existed. They are the group of organisms I look to when I think of radical ideas that defy all the previous legacy-imbued theories.
When Darwin developed his ideas, it ran contrary to everyone’s understanding of the origin of life and its diversity. And 10 years after the publication of The Origin of Species was published, Simon Schwendener published a paper that will always be remembered about lichens.
It defied the idea of what an individual was.
He discussed the dual hypothesis of the lichen — that is, that lichen is a composite organism, comprising a fungus and an alga. The preferred way of looking at it is that lichen is emergent from the merger of the fungus and the alga. It’s a form of symbiosis.
Symbiosis is a type of cooperation. It counters the idea of competition, which has been a core force driving the emergence of species.
The evolutionary tree has a thick trunk from where stems emerge and these stems form twigs and from the twigs we get leaves. The leaves are supposed to be species.
Lichens looked at this picture and told the world:
Hold my drink.
On these monuments on Easter Island lichens thrived and continued to weather down the fine edges of the faces found on different parts of this forgotten corner of the dry seas. Lichens are found in almost every monument you can think of.
Persons and authorities responsible for preserving these structures can cite some of the weathering forces that disrespect these structures put up and preserved by humans for historic reasons.
Number nane to the world
In the past, the world comprised kingdoms — various kingdoms on different continents.
Ancient works tell us of the kingdoms of Macedonia, Persia, Kush, Buganda, and many others. But long before we could even consider writing as a means of storing information, genes ruled the world.
This was the microbial world. It was made of three domains — bacteria, archaea, and eukarya. Billions of years later, Carolus Linnaeus developed a system for classifying organisms. This was the beginning of kingdoms.
Alexander the Great declined all of Darius’s attempts to create a peaceful merger between Macedonia and Persia. Lichens, however, are a merger of one kingdom, fungi, and another entity that can span various kingdoms, algae.
Since this algae is known to feast on the sun, that is, using photosynthesis to create energy, we can easily associate it with plants.
Every monument, including 1824, has this resilient ecosystem. They are an ecosystem because they behave just like one — diverse entities remodeling their surroundings. And like the largest ecosystem, the Earth, lichens are found everywhere in the world.
The easiest way to think of how lichens have dominated the world is by thinking of the dry land and the oceans. Dry land is engulfed by the waters, always receiving blow after blow of what the combination of hydrogen and oxygen gives through waves and tides.
On these shores, but never on dry land, seaweeds survive. They cannot survive on dry land. But from these boundaries, lichens thrive. Fungi have always thrived on land. They thrived so much that when plants considered moving to dry land, fungi formed their root systems.
As the plants become acquainted with the new territories, they would create the shoots. But underground, their roots were forever bound to fungal roots.
Rooted in the ground, they would shoot for the star — the sun. But those that would continue to crawl from one shore-loving stone to another are the lichen. They are found on almost any shore you visit.
Back home, in Luo Nyanza, we barely have showers. We’d go to the lake, Lake Victoria, to swim either in the morning or evening. The rocks that fence the shore’s outline have a wet-green residue about it that never fades.
These are lichen.
In short….
It’s another one and another one
From one shore to another.
Their territories are so expansive, they cover close to eight percent of dry land. Eight, in Swahili, is nane. Ergo, number nane to the world, in the same tenacity which Octopizzo is conquering the world with his unique style.
Number nane is also the public means of road transport to board for you to head to Kibera. As one of the largest slums in the world, Kibera and its residents continue to exist despite the harsh living conditions.
They are like the lichen that exist in different parts of the world despite the difficult weather — in this case, environment — where they reside. The merger, between algae and fungi helps build resilience. This much is evident from the multiple experiments done in space.
Lichens can survive nuclear-like radiations, the kind found in space, and the massive pressures that shape landscapes like the Himalayas and the Rift valleys. It appears that Earth’s forces cannot put it down. Similarly, members of this slum in Nairobi continue to live, and even some, like Octopizzo, thrive.
Biological species are supposed to be closed, and reproductively isolated. Only its members should be able to successfully breed to produce more viable offspring. But lichen can continue to grow as a composite organism without adhering to these rules. Two kingdoms — fungi and plantae — thrive without isolation.
And just when we thought the dual hypothesis holds, we find that lichens comprise not just a single fungus and alga, but more communities nested within each other. They are indeed an ecosystem, which remains resilient in some of the driest and coldest places on Earth.
The central link is the role of one organism serving the other. The fungus releases chemical concoctions to break down rocks and absorb the minerals that it shares with the algae. The algae converts sunshine into food that it shares with the fungus. They form a stable hierarchical relationship.
A merger.
According to the theory of Organismal Selection, mergers are the go-to solution when situations get tough. Algae cannot survive by themselves on dry land. Fungi can get some help with food from the ever-present sunlight. When the two merge, they form a resilient, emergent organism. Just like that, you have understood the core argument of the theory of Organismal Selection.
The same theory mentions how one identifies an organism. It is by subjecting it to a form of credible threat. Radiation is as good a threat as any. Lichens have survived these in the most, forgive the pun, radiant way.
Kibera, too, as a slum has survived despite many threats to its residents and its complete existence. Like lichens, they have continued to avoid all forms of ‘radiation’. Rather, it has been sending its products all over the world, just like lichens.
What I’m trying to say is…
From Octopizzo’s story, we can see how it relates to a resilient organism.
From Kibera, we can learn a lot about how a composite entity has spread all over the world.
(Oh Boy) Nimekuwa ambassador bila kupitia CBD — Octopizzo
Indeed, Octopizzo is an ambassador. In particular, I like the Hennessy Cypher where he still insists on using the language that sling-shot him into fame, Kiswahili and sheng’, while the other rappers exclusively stick to English.
If that is not lichen-like behaviour, then I have wasted my time learning about these wonderous creatures.
When Octopizzo says: Round this itabidi mmenisoma, he means it.
From this article, I made sure of it.
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