Before 1980's Kenyan urban centres were unaware of the menace that what they embraced as convenient technology would work to their disadvantage. Nylons were branded in all manner of ways with calendars, arts, images and quotes from the wise. It was the end of traditional basketry and marksmanship as a machine replaced reeds and guards. Calabashes and viondo's which last years were out fashioned by the quickie and disposable papers that resembled the lifestyle of its progenitors.
I was born in the city but grew up in rural. The next time I was back to the city was a week after secondary education. I was picked at Machakos country bus by my father who took me to Dandora Phase 4 down a nylon road. I was heartbroken, betrayed and disappointed by a city I yearned for while at school. Manual work at high school was to ensure no white paper flew around, a clean compound. The rural home was clean, streams were clear with tadpoles and crows were few to be seen. The city was opposite.
At campus we had many outreaches that included cleaning and unblocking drainage channels. This was not a solution. The sooner a street was cleaned the quicker it was issued a sweet wrap, a chips funga paper, a mandazi nylon and all that. Some unconsciously drop the papers that the city council kept collecting a good fine.
NEMA has done a good service to the country by being determined to end it once and for all. This would reduce the heaps of waste that majority are papers with soil or other components. A nylon paper is as ugly as even when it is as small. A moist one smells bad. The organic materials that would otherwise be disposed in papers would find itself to gardens. Cows would no longer die of nylon traffic in their alimentary canal. Talk of poisonous carbon that they emit when burnt, the sure way of disposing. It would be our job while visiting home to go round the homestead picking out nylons to burn.
Listen to the excuses that people give. Banning would make us lose jobs, where will we throw the papers in store, the government should have given alternatives and such. But if your job is a threat to the nation, and it happened that every citizen was employed by it, would we not close the industries for the sake of our nation? What do the eyes see when exposed to nylons all over? Can such a person stand to say 'I am the Director of...' This is as hypocritical as it should sound.
Happy that the light is real at the end of the tunnel, there is need to allow no dent for return of nylons or have sister products exist. The plastic bottles mostly of beverage and water need be done away with. They are as dangerous to the environment as nylon is (was).
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