THE MOST arresting news story intro I read this week was: “Thanks to an experiment that’s tracked barley over the last century…”

I actually finished the rest of the sentence as if it was all normal to me before asking myself, “First wait. What? CENTURY?!” Then I went back to the beginning for the answer.

The “experiment”, the story insisted, had tracked barley OVER THE LAST CENTURY.

I do not need to check a dictionary or google for the definition of “century”. It is still 100 years.

For real, scientists started this experiment back in about 1928.

In a laboratory, they have been studying via ‘direct observation methods’ (I hope this sounds scientific) the way in which barley as a cereal crop grows and responds to changing climates across different parts of the world.

As we have sadly come to expect, these were not East African scientists. We can only laugh at ourselves briefly over this little bit, and then we will have to Be Serious once again.

According to the scientists Barley is an important cereal because it is a key ingredient for what they drink and eat those ends – “breakfast cereals”, beer and whiskey (with the ‘e’ in there).

More seriously, because “it is genetically similar to wheat, rice, and corn…” which means that finding a solution to its adaptability under all sorts of climate shifts could enable the scientists to ensure the world never suffers the failure of key staple foods (mostly for the Western world).

Admirable stuff!

THIS is what science should be like, eh? 100 years means that the scientist who first started the study certainly dropped off at some point and handed it over to another, who by the logic of biological mathematics must have also handed over to someone else by now.

Forget about the cereal for a second; these people really know how to pay attention and focus. Eh!

I know too many people who would have caused the extinction of barley if they were put in charge of this experiment, or even involved in any way.

Some of them can barely pay enough attention to last week’s newspaper and radio news headlines, let alone an experiment of this length and focus. Preparing for anything long-term?

Please! Put your hand up if you even own an umbrella yet you live in tropical Africa during the light and heavy rain seasons?

What is more worrying now is that the majority of our demographic here in Africa is a certain way that means we are likely to become extinct ourselves if we don’t look up and change something drastically.

Too many can’t even write out a paragraph of anything without abbreviations and emojis.

For sure, there is no way that any of the scientists involved in that century-long barley experiment had access to a smartphone and its distracting apps. The experiment would never have gone past week one.

This week alone I was disturbed at how easily I got past security persons in charge of fairly serious installations but whose attention to Tik-Tok and Instagram made it difficult for them to dedicate more than three minutes of scrutiny to my bag and pockets – all of which were beeping merrily as I gained access.

That’s just a microcosm there. Perhaps the optimist would say that the people charged with more serious tasks do not get distracted by small things like social media and whatnot, but…we’ve got to check.

I mean, perhaps our scientists out here can tell us: What are we experimenting on and how long-sighted are we being while doing those experiments? Is anybody applying any “direct observation methods” on/to millet, ffenne, matooke, nakati, katunkuma, muwogo and other such traditional favourites that our great grandchildren should healthily and heartily enjoy?

If not, shall we kindly start now and create the scientific succession pipeline so that somebody 100 years down the road can give the world an update?

Actually, let’s not restrict ourselves to scientific research – let’s do this for everything around us:

The people building roads, for instance, please put on their century-long thinking caps so that we don’t have the tarmac breaking away in a matter of months after a drizzle.

Those in charge of disaster preparedness, what disasters that may happen over the next century are we preparing for? Lazima, let’s start by buying umbrellas for tomorrow’s rainstorm?

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Simon Kaheru

www.skaheru.com
@skaheru