Thought Picnic: In our symbolic aquariums of our human existence

Fishes in a world

At a sauna there was an installed aquarium full of fishes of different sizes, colours and surprisingly temperaments. Some swam around excitedly even cresting where the air meets the water as if to take a breath, some idling listlessly and others apparently shy and docile hiding behind stones probably not wanting to be disturbed. The spectacle a calming effect on the observer.

I have always been fascinated about aquariums, though I wonder if the entertainment of human beings to the wonders of the deep in ponds, streams, rivers, lakes, seas and oceans are to any other purpose than the abuse of the predominance of humanity to the detriment of other life forms.

Obviously, they need to be studied and understood, the abuse and misuse of some has brought great health benefits to us, but is there is a better way?

The Pisces think tank

To an extent, I have begun to detest zoos and apart from the real effort of conservation brought on by our creating the loss of habitat for economic purposes, anthropomorphic climate change and hunting within the threat of extinction, we all can share this planet without exterminating each other.

The aquarium looked like a fish world and I began to put human thoughts in the heads of the fish. Do they think there are other aquariums like theirs just as we wonder if there are any Earth-like planets with inhabitants like us or lifeforms we can begin to understand? Goldilocks zones at distances that boggle the mind.

In each aquarium that we have built and filled with fishes, have we adopted the role of a demigod in making that nature suitable for their habitation? Keeping the water clean, ensuring it is oxygenated, feeding the fish, observing closely their health and wellbeing with the taking of action to arrest anomalies. Are we like fish to a divine being in the same sense?

By dorsal velocity

Consider a situation where the fish was able to escape its aquarium to experience life outside it and then we realise that to escape earth we need to take essential parts of our earthly environment with us, a life-supporting kit as we put a fiery rocket to our backsides to escape. It would be madness to the fish, it would have been madness to man just over a century ago.

Then just two days ago, I boarded an Airbus A380 with the capacity for a village from Johannesburg to Paris for a journey of 10 hours 55 minutes at 40,000 feet (12.192 km) altitude which in a straight line would be 5,430.95 miles (8,740.26 km). I did that return journey 5 times in the space of a year.

This our capacity for mad adventure is more or less the norm, yet, we would find it strange in fish, yet, we are gleefully entertained out at Hermanus, South Africa, between July and November when whales flip out of the water and we can watch from comfort terra firma.

Fishing for meaningfulness

None of my thoughts are fully formed on the comparison for aquariums and fish tanks to our earth of somewhat diminishing resources with explosive population growth in some parts of our world. However, I do recognise that we live in different kinds of aquariums within national boundaries that confer citizenship as well as limitations in travel where others have privileges, opportunities and means to leap between aquariums of humanity without much of a care about it.

Global travel, we have probably mastered, space travel after the moon landings has gone no further than International Space Station with considerably finite resources. Interstellar travel is still the stuff of wild imagination and science fiction, even that had helped our understanding of how to live better on earth.

The human body for all its resilience is still quite fragile, there is still much to learn about ourselves and the many organisms we share the earth with. I do wonder if the fish see us as some other lifeform and as they swim to the sides of the tank or the top of the water, they are trying to communicate with us and in all our human predominance masking our apparent idiocy we have not learnt to say a common hello to the fishes in our aquariums.

Dinner in the infectiously youthful company of Chief Jibunoh

Shy and shrinking

Generally, I am not that good at networking, but I have that there are some people I have met who have had such a profound impact on me and with whom I have cultivated interesting eye-opening relationships.

I can strike up conversations with people on almost any topic, from the utterly mundane to the very serious, the theme that recurs is that our lives are stories, yet many of us never really get to tell those stories from the unique perspective of our voices.

I was in London to attend TEDxEuston and had arrived the night before to stay at my very good friend, Funmi Iyanda's place who as I arrived in London was about to go out to dinner with friends.

To dinner

By happenstance, the planned meeting was running a bit late and with it came an invitation to join them for dinner in London’s Mayfair area.

Before we left, she mentioned we’ll be meeting with Chief Jibunoh, his daughters, granddaughters and friends. I had read of his expeditions on the Sahara Desert years ago and this suddenly looked like an exciting prospect to meet an explorer.

Dr Newton Jibunoh [CNN] is nothing like what you will see of his peers in Nigeria, a grandee, no doubt but quite down-to-earth, adventurous, optimistic, interesting and most of all, an engaging raconteur. At 27 in 1965, he drove alone all the way home from London to Nigeria crossing the Sahara Desert, he has gone back to the desert twice again.

Much as I will not share as a matter of discretion the particulars of our dinner conversations, he left a great impression on me.

Adventure is educational

He is an environmentalist; he founded the NGO – Fight Against Desert Encroachment [FADEAfrica].

However, this well-travelled man allowed me to draw a contrast, the unusualness of his activities that we do not generally find amongst Nigerians, who tend to travel but appear to lack a sense of either adventure or curiosity.

As one of my tweeps observed on Twitter a few days ago, London is the main holiday destination of Nigerians, probably with Dubai and New York, not to imbibe art or relax, but just to shop.

Losing our youthfulness

It is a sad reality that there is no inquisitiveness that drives the desire to explore, to discover, to experience, to appreciate or to understand things and differences outside our zones of comfort and familiarity.

This mind-set has insidious and debilitating consequences because it robs us of youth and youthfulness, the possibility of expanded horizons is left to degenerate into disabling myopia, as we allow bluster and bombast to cover for our satisfied and yet stark ignorance.

In Dr Jibunor, who is soon to be 77, I found a man still open to the new, the different, the other and the exciting and as we parted ways, we all knew he’ll be up to something really adventurous and we cannot wait to hear of what he has gotten up to next.

More pertinently, there is a need for us to capture a sense of adventure, the quest for knowledge through the education of experiencing something new, first with our neighbourhoods, like going down a different path, trying a different means of transport, trying different foods, going to museums and breaking out of established norms.

The world is a beautiful place, but until we get out to see that world of people, culture, diversity, amazing colour and breath-taking nature for ourselves, the sense of beauty will only be heard of in the stories told by others, like Chief Jibunoh.

The faucet apothecary

Water throw-ups

There was a period of about 10 years when I could not drink water without falling sick. One time, I was offered pills at a clinic with a glass of water and promptly threw up the whole thing in less than five minutes.

You cannot imagine the after-taste of bitter sick aided by pills that usually have to be sugar-coated to be ingested in the first instance.

Now, I can handle sparkling water quite well whilst still water makes me quite uncomfortable.

Beyond washing out my mouth with tap water, it would never go down my gullet, however, boiled water for tea or coffee is fine with me.

Water in the bottle

A few weeks ago, we had this entire rumpus about bottled water being immoral, now, there might be scientific or environmental studies that support the view that bottled water is not environmental sound, but when it gets hijacked by activists, anarchists and carbon Nazis, I suddenly go deaf to it all.

Then there is the view that we are wasting money and environmental clout on bottled water when tap water would suffice – that might be good for some, but how do I get the sparkle into my tap water? I definitely would not be doing D-I-Y (Do It Yourself) sparkling water – that is completely out of the question.

The faucet chemist

Just as one ventures toward the moral faucet of holy water, news comes to us from the States that Americans are subjects in a seeming homoeopathic drug trial of antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones.

It appears their tap water contains traces of these drugs, that is not to say that some bottled water that is just the repackaging of tap water does not contain traces, if tested for specific pharmaceuticals.

Traces and homoeopathy

I used the word homoeopathic earlier to highlight a worrying situation that we would be told to ignore considering scientists do not believe that homoeopathy has any efficacy.

Some people have benefited from homoeopathy to various extents where medicaments are diluted to a point that they are scientifically untraceable before being administered in treatment.

Advocates contend that water has a way of memorising information stored in it at one time no matter how much it is diluted – science contends the dilutions make the homoeopathic remedies no better than placebos.

I would say homoeopaths have not offered conclusive proof and scientists are testing within the framework of ideas and laws that may not explain to the best possible extent of knowledge available to man why homoeopathy is efficacious to some users and benefactors and not to others.

Curative water supplies

However, back to the stream of the modern faucet, if tests are able to detect with such assuredness the presence of pharmaceuticals a lot higher than typical homoeopathic dilutions, what is to say many are not already self-medicating through tap water to deal with bacterial infections, epilepsy, depression, sex alteration or erectile dysfunction? Perish the thought.

But with the price of drugs in the States, you can drink in New York what would fill you with heart medicine, infection fighters, oestrogen, anti-convulsants, a mood stabiliser and a tranquilliser.

Choose your city

The city of brotherly love would cuddle you with medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems, in fact, 56 pharmaceuticals or their derivatives.

You will never have a fit in Southern California and gender adjustment might just do fine in San Francisco – no allusions to realities there.

If you happen to live in the following cities of Albuquerque, New Mexico; Austin, Texas; and Virginia Beach, Virginia, there is nowt in the water, you need a new water board.

It is safe, they say

Before we get irrationally hysterical, we are told that all these supplies meet all federal and state standards for quality of water – which might mean standards have to be raised and some more exploratory tests need to be conducted to ascertain what comes to all in drinking water.

Meanwhile, when I sing in the shower, I might just wear a shower cap over my lips to create a new type of sound, this type of water pollution; which, it is, without any shadow of a doubt; is not confined to those across the pond, apparently.