What a mosquito, a potter in SA, and a Ugandan peasant have in common
What you need to know:
- It does not have lecture halls, as such. The students and lecturers spend most of the time out on “sites”. Some of these sites are traditional prayer places, what modernists would call witchdoctors’ shrines.
- At the end of the film, August Rush, the music prodigy Evan (Freddie Highmore) answers the question of how someone who is just 11 years old could be so talented.
- It is not a big secret, he suggests; “The music is all around us, all you have to do is listen,” he says. The same could be said of breakthrough African knowledge.
In the past few days, as we were outraged at the racist Chinese restaurant in Nairobi that did not allow in Africans after 5pm, a wonderful story broke. It did not break, really, because mainstream media largely ignored it.
It emerged that researchers at the Nairobi-based International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (Icipe) have discovered a new approach that could be used to control malaria.
They “discovered” a naturally occurring chemical, cedrol, found in mosquito breeding sites near Lake Victoria that attracts pregnant malaria-transmitting mosquitoes. They think the chemical could be used in traps to “attract and kill” the mosquito, preventing reproduction before she lays eggs.
More than the scientific breakthrough, the most impressive thing for me was the clever simplicity of how they did it. Icipe researcher Mike Okal explained that his team spent six years studying breeding sites near Lake Victoria that attract pregnant malaria-transmitting mosquitoes to understand how they choose which pool to lay their eggs in, then worked to figure out how that choice could be manipulated to intercept and kill them before they laid their eggs.
It would be like figuring out the favourite pub of an elusive criminal kingpin and arresting him when he is sneaking in for his evening drink. The researchers set up a number of pools of water with different infusions, and judged which pools the mosquitoes preferred by counting the number of mosquito larvae in each.
They found that the mosquitoes were more than twice as likely to lay eggs in water infused with what they called “magical mud” soil than in water fresh from Lake Victoria.
They then confirmed that it was an odour released from the soil infusion that attracted the mosquitoes, and finally that cedrol was the precise chemical that drew them in.
Think of it; in future it will be possible to produce synthetic cedrol, and if folks can spray it in the pools and bushes around their homes, the malaria-carrying mosquito could be zapped.
GOOD OBSERVERS
The Icipe researchers asked the right and clever questions, but really they were good observers. And that brings us to a university called the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute, located in a quiet unremarkable outskirt of Mbale town in eastern Uganda.
Even in Mbale, only a handful of people know about it, but in some universities, especially in South Africa and Europe, where there is an interest in “indigenous knowledge”, the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute folks are rock stars. Some progressives in Kenya, like Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, used to have close links with the institute.
This week the good man who heads it was in Nairobi, and we had coffee. The Marcus Garvey people ask questions and study social and economics issues in much the same way Mike Okal and his colleagues at Icipe dealt with the pestilential mosquito.
It does not have lecture halls, as such. The students and lecturers spend most of the time out on “sites”. Some of these sites are traditional prayer places, what modernists would call witchdoctors’ shrines.
They sit, non-judgementally, listening and getting insights from the witchdoctor to try and understand African spirituality. Some of their lecturers are peasant farmers.
The students live and work with the peasants, seeking to understand their knowledge of soils, weather, crops, and how that knowledge can be harnessed to improve rural economies.
I was told of one of their scholars who figured out a whole new history of a little known migration that ended with the Venda people in South Africa, which was traced to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and then to southern Uganda through studying the animal designs on Venda traditional pottery.
He listened to songs, recitals, traditional poetry, and by stringing together the common words and linking them to the art, found an African story that had never been told before. Every year, a major European university sends its students to the institute and they are scattered deep in the villages to live and learn.
At the end of the film, August Rush, the music prodigy Evan (Freddie Highmore) answers the question of how someone who is just 11 years old could be so talented.
It is not a big secret, he suggests; “The music is all around us, all you have to do is listen,” he says. The same could be said of breakthrough African knowledge.
The author is editor of Mail & Guardian AFRICA (mgafrica.com). Twitter:@cobbo3
