Where Acacia Meets the Algorithm by Godfrey Onyango - HTML preview
Download the book in PDF, ePub, Kindle for a complete version.
C H A P T E R S E V E N
The Drought
T he drought had begun three seasons ago, though no one had called it that at first. A dry spell, people said. A temporary aberration. The rains would return, as they always had, as they always would.
But the rains had not returned, and the landscape had transformed from green to brown to something approaching gray, the color of hope exhausted.
Kofi saw it in the faces of the villagers, in the way they looked at the sky each morning with expressions that mixed prayer and resignation. He saw it in the cattle, their ribs visible through thinning hides, their movements slow and deliberate, conserving energy they no longer had. He saw it in the children, whose laughter seemed quieter now, whose games were interrupted by the adult worries they were too young to understand but old enough to feel.
His mother's well had dried up. They now collected water from a communal borehole two kilometers away, walking there each morning with yellow jerry cans balanced on their heads. Kofi insisted on making the trip himself, though his mother protested that it was women's work.
"There is no men's work or women's work," she said, "when survival is the only work that matters."
The borehole was surrounded by others with the same need—women mostly, though some men had swallowed their pride in the face of necessity. They chatted as they waited their turn, gossip and news exchanged in the timeless rhythm of community. Kofi, with his city clothes and his soft hands, was an object of curiosity and gentle mockery.
"The professor has come to learn how to carry water," one woman joked, and the others laughed.
"I'm not a professor," Kofi said. "I work with computers."
"Computers." The woman made a face. "Those things that tell you what you already know, but in a way you can't understand."
Kofi surprised himself by laughing. "That's... actually a very good description."
"I may not have gone to university," the woman said, "but I know foolishness when I see it. And spending all day looking at a small window instead of the real world—that is foolishness."
26
He couldn't argue. Not here, not now, not with the evidence of climate change all around him and his algorithm's predictions proving as helpless as any other form of prophecy.
Because the algorithm had predicted this. Kofi had checked, once he managed to get a weak signal on the ridge above the village. The model had flagged this region as high-risk for drought conditions. It had recommended changes in planting patterns, crops that required less water, irrigation investments that smallholders couldn't afford.
And the farmers had ignored it. Not out of ignorance, but out of the accumulated wisdom of generations that said: the rains always return. Until they didn't.
He carried his water back to the house, the jerry cans heavier than he had expected, the straps cutting into his shoulders. His mother watched him approach with an expression he couldn't read—pride, perhaps, or pity, or some combination that had no name.
"Now you know," she said, as he set down the containers.
"Know what?"
"What we do. What we have always done. While you were learning your computers, we were learning the land. And the land is a harder teacher."
That afternoon, Kofi walked the boundaries of his family's land, trying to see it as his grandfather had seen it.
The cornfield was a graveyard now, dry stalks rattling in the hot wind. The vegetable garden his mother had tended for decades was bare earth, its productivity sacrificed to the greater need of water conservation.
Only the trees remained healthy—the ancient fig that hosted the elders' meetings, the avocado his grandmother had planted when she was a bride, the eucalyptus that his uncle had insisted on despite everyone's warnings about their water consumption. Trees had roots that reached deeper than any crop, access to reserves that remained hidden from surface observation.
He found himself at the edge of the property, where the land dropped sharply into a ravine that carried water only during the wettest seasons. A young woman was there, perhaps his age or slightly younger, tending to a small plot that seemed to defy the drought's logic.
"You're using drip irrigation," Kofi said, recognizing the system of tubes and emitters that delivered water directly to plant roots.
She looked up, unsurprised by his presence. "My brother sent it from the city. He works for an NGO that does water projects." She stood, wiping her hands on her skirt. "You're Mama Wanjiru's son. The computer man."
27
"Yes. I'm Kofi."
"Njeri." She gestured at her plot. "You want to see?"
The plants were thriving—tomatoes heavy with fruit, kale in various stages of maturity, beans climbing trellises made from salvaged branches. In the midst of devastation, this small oasis of productivity.
"The key is the tank," Njeri explained, pointing to a black plastic container elevated on a wooden platform. "It collects rainwater when it comes. And when it doesn't come..." She shrugged. "I use what I saved. Carefully. Very carefully."
"How did you learn this?"
"My grandmother. She remembered a drought from when she was young. She taught me that water is not something you use and forget. Water is something you save, you respect, you treat like a guest who might not return."
Kofi thought of his algorithm, with its recommendations for drought-resistant crops and efficient irrigation.
It had the information. It had the knowledge. But did it have this—this relationship with water as something sacred, something alive?
"Your technology," Njeri said, reading his expression. "It could help with this, couldn't it? Predicting when rain will come. Telling people how much water to use."
"It tries."
"But?"
"But it doesn't understand..." He struggled to find the words. "It doesn't understand that some things matter more than efficiency. That saving water isn't just about calculation. It's about relationship. About remembering that you're part of something larger than yourself."
Njeri smiled, the first genuine smile he had seen in days. "Then maybe you need to teach your technology. Not just the numbers. The meaning behind the numbers."
"Can that be taught?"
"Everything can be taught. The question is whether anyone is willing to learn."
28
They talked until the light began to fade, two people from different worlds finding common ground in the shadow of crisis. Njeri told him about her plans to expand her irrigation system, to create a demonstration farm that could teach others. Kofi told her about his algorithm, its potential and its limitations, his growing sense that he had been asking the wrong questions.
When he finally returned to his mother's house, he found her waiting on the veranda with a kerosene lamp casting shadows that danced on the walls.
"You talked to Njeri," she said. Not a question.
"Yes."
"She is a good girl. Smart. Practical. She would make someone a good wife."
Kofi laughed. "Mother, I'm not—"
"I know. You have your city life. Your city women." She waved her hand dismissively. "But remember, Kofi: the city is a place you visit. The land is where you belong. Even if you forget, the land remembers."
That night, he lay awake listening to the silence of a world without rain. And he made a decision that would change everything.
29