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When undertakers are chased away

 Once upon a time, in the night, right in Blantyre, Lilongwe, Zomba, and Mzuzu, we could hear the lowing, cackling, giggling, growing, whining and whooping of hyenas as they prowled the cities for leftovers in dustbins. Once upon a time a stray dog here and another there would be caught and become meat for the hyenas.

Once upon a time in the same cities, in the nights, we could meet hyenas and marvel at their huge forelimb build. Once upon a time.

Once upon a time, in the same cities, in the night, we could hear lions roaring but rarely meet and see them.

Once upon a time, we could see, in the night, in the same cities, owls and other sky borne night hunters, the natural undertakers of dead ant and birds. The clearers of mice and night snakes.

All these animals visited us to fulfill their natural assignments. Those who could afford to drive between and within the cities would regularly hit and kill stray dogs but by the morning the carcasses would literally vapourise, as if resurrected, leaving no drop of blood at the ‘accident’ spot.

Rumour was, once upon a time, amok that such stray dogs killed by drivers in the night were, in fact, picked away by kanyenya sellers. Some people even argued that they knew where the dog carcasses were being taken to. Others even claimed that they had accidentally eaten dog kanyenya and found it tastier than goat meat.

Here we are two decades later. When we drive along Malawi’s intercity roads and within the cities themselves, we see dog carcasses lying on the roads all night long, all day long, all week long, until they are pounded to pulp by truck tyres.

Clearly, kanyenya sellers may not have been responsible for clearing the roads of dog carcasses. If kenyanya sellers were indeed responsible, the practice would have continued to the present day. In our right thinking judgement, the main reason for dog carcasses rotting on the streets coincides with the disappearance of God’s natural nighttime undertakers: hyenas and owls.

Hyenas are away from the cities because their habitats have been encroached and depleted. Michiru, Ndirande, Soche, Bangwe, and Mpingwe used to be thick and provided hyenas with places to live and water to drink.

Today all these mountains look like old baldheaded men. In Lilongwe, the animals have run away from the public animal sanctuary to the private one across the road. In Mzuzu and Zomba, the story is the same. Natural habitats disrupted and overharvested by us, the human race, the last to develop and, the first to destroy what we found intact.

This is a lesson to all that if we disrupt the food web, human life will be adversely affected. We cannot clear our homes of all the dead dogs and food leftovers. It is in such conditions that harmless viruses and bacteria find opportunities to mutate and come back to haunt us. Covid-19 may not be the last pandemic. Let’s brace ourselves for worse times.

We have not yet reached a crisis point but all right thinking people will agree with us that the extreme and highly unpredictable weather being experienced presently might have a link, even if it be faint, to the decimation or disruption of the environment. Consequently, the natural undertakers that used to eat up left overs, hyenas especially, have been driven far away; so far away that they cannot come back just for a mere dog carcass.

Residents of low density residential areas, where once upon a time, city authorities used to come and empty the dustbins, will testify that these days, garbage, food left overs including meat and chicken bones stay three, even four days in the dustbins, rotting slowly right by the roadside. The dustbins themselves stand upright for days and nights without being disturbed or tumbled over. This is so because the natural garbage cleaners are not around. And we are paying the price.

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