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Jackson, Mississippi, USA - The city of New Orleans in Louisiana is a tourist haven. You cannot claim to have come to America's Deep South if you have not visited Big Easy, as the city is called. People are attracted to New Orleans by her history; rich and varied. It is a confluence of America's past. It has the influence of Native Americans, The Spanish, the French and Britons. They all fought for her until Americans finally laid claim to the city and adjacent regions through buying and blood.
X.N. Iraki Even in the best of the times, New Orleans is under siege. The most noticeable thing about it is that people are buried above the ground! The city is below sea level and there is too much water to bury people underground. To the north, Lake Pontchartrain ensures that the city has water almost completely around it. To the south lies the Gulf of the Mexico, while to the west the mighty Mississippi lazily hugs the city as it reaches to the sea.
It is a great city to visit -- in it you see how man attempts to subdue Nature. Levees guard the city from the rising waters of the surrounding sources. A 24-mile bridge, raised above the swamps and the lake, links the city to the mainland. But Katrina seems to have violently stopped man's claim of success over Nature.
For years, experts have dreaded the nightmare scenario where levees would give way and flood the city. But for all the earliest hurricanes, New Orleans has been spared -- until Katrina.
We may never know why hurricanes strike when they are most unwanted, to disrupt oil supplies and raise already high oil prices even higher. In this regard, you will feel Katrina in Kenya.
The Gulf Coast of the US is lined with oil rigs that pump oil from under the sea, the same way Britons get it under the North Sea. Hurricanes disrupt such expensive operations. Being a sea port, New Orleans -- like adjoining ports such as Biloxi in Mississippi or Mobile in Alabama(The name Mobile has Native American origins, it is not from the English!) -- serves as an entry point for imports including imported crude oil which is refined there, just like at Mombasa.
It is not just oil that will be interrupted butmany other supplies, too.
The problem goes beyond the US. Money that could have been used to purchase goods and services in the US -- possibly from Kenya and other countries -- will bediverted to relief efforts.
Katrina is not only an American problem, it is our problem. We hope that Katrina will not slow down the US economy and drag the rest of the world with it.
Katrina may show us all how interconnected the world has become. There have been other hurricanes in the past, but not that furious. We may rise from the devastation of Katrina and still visit New Orleans, listen to jazz, and take a walk along the Riverfront. But it will be a costly affair. Some suggest the hurricane gives the city a chance to renew itself by building better defenses against water.
But before the rebuilding and the drying of tears, some questions will have to be answered. Why the hurricanes and their high frequency?
Could we have interfered with Nature so much that it is hitting back? Could hurricanes be caused by the Greenhouse Effect?
Christians will point to the Bible prophecy, while others may suggest ordaining gays and attacking other countries may have brought this curse to America. The truth may never be known.
We may have hunger and poverty in Kenya but we are at peace with Nature; no hurricanes, and our floods are not that destructive. It may be that Nature -- or whatever you see as behind the events on this planet -- is a Great Equalizer.
What are the lessons from Katrina? The first lesson is that we are all the same, forget about the media hype. Every society has its disadvantaged people, often affected disproportionably by disasters. Some of the people who stayed in New Orleans and other cities that have suffered recent disaster may have had nowhere to go and possibly no means to leave. They may have had no relatives to stay with and, as one person put it, they lived from check to check.
In Kenya, we seem to believe -- wrongly -- that everyone in America is rich and owns a car. Far from truth! Disasters expose fissures in society.
We are the same in terms of needs; people looted food when none was available; our basic needs are same irrespective of where we are on this small planet.
No matter how much we dislike the government, it is the last refuge when disasters strike and an efficient government is critical to our well-being.
Like most other crises -- including 9/11 -- new heroes are created like, the Mayor of New Orleans and Mississippi Governor, Haley Barbour.
The forces of Nature should not discourage us from going on with our mandate to subdue Nature; that is what science & technology are all about. Such disasters as that upon New Orleans help us refine our technology. While we may not stop hurricanes any time soon, we can come up with structures that can withstand such forces. Maybe such disasters give us unwelcome chances for renewal, for rebirth.
Disasters wake us up from our obsession with this Earth, reminding us of our mortality. They remind us that we are not here permanently. Some day, we shall be gone and leave this small planet to others.
We, therefore, need to do our best, for ourselves and for everyone else, when we have a chance to, including helping disaster victims.
Are any Kenyans raising money for the victims of Katrina, without saying that Americans are rich?
Finally, through man's creativity and resilience, New Orleans -- founded in 1763 and known for its Mardi Gras festival and Jazzist Louis Armstrong -- will rise from the bottom of the water, the streets will fill up with people, and the long battle between man and Nature will continue.
We all secretly know that some day Nature wins.
We shall succumb to her forces and find our way under the sod, leaving the living pretending they will not soon join us. They too know the truth.
X N IRAKI is a Lecturer at the University of Nairobi's Faculty of Commerce. He is currently a Fulbright Scholar in Mississippi and was regular visitor to New Orleans.
© 2005, GENERATOR 21.
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