Reflections on the Bronchials

Sometimes I think that getting sick helps me let go a bit, keeps me humble. It reminds me that I’m human, a somewhat fragile being subject to the elements, pollution and allergies. Don’t get me wrong, being sick is a frustrating experience for me. I loathe it and I kick and scream through it, especially at first or when it drags on after I feel like I’ve put in my time.

For fear of sounding like a wuss, and I almost hesitate to post this, but I’m sick again. I hope I’m near the end, but I had a weeklong struggle with bronchitis. It’s something I’m familiar with, being an asthmatic and luckily, I even had the antibiotics on hand just in case.

So, I believe I’m on the upswing. I have my energy back, but I still have a nagging cough that I wish would let me rest . I must say, it’s times like this that make me so grateful to have access to medicine. Without the antibiotics, this thing would go on for weeks or even months (believe me, I’ve tried to go the “tough it out” road before). And lots of people here face just that. They’re asthmatics with no inhalers and definitely no antibiotics to bail them out of bronchitis. They don’t even have simple drugs that we all have continuous stocks of in our medicine cabinets- things like aspirin and ibuprofen .

Lots of people here suffer from asthma (and other respiratory tract issues) because they grow tobacco. Not only does tobacco-growing require application of harsh chemicals (and I rarely see farmers wearing masks), but to dry the leaves the tobacco is placed into a smoke house, which billows dangerous particles. These smoke particles get trapped in the lungs of children playing in the yard and the women with babies on their backs and men loading the smoke house with racks of tobacco leaves.

Watch our latest video- “Kuria Project: Episode 4” (click on link on the right)- it captures this perfectly.

And, it gets worse…
Then, in the big tobacco company shed, women literally stomp on crates filled with tobacco leaves to produce a nice compact square for the tobacco company to pick. Once, while I was waiting for Lucas, a man from the tobacco company was in town for a pickup and offered to give me a tour of the shed. I never told him who I was or what I was doing. I noticed that the women had cloth masks hanging around their necks. I asked about them. He said that they were required to wear them, but even if they actually wore them over their noses and mouths, it wouldn’t help, they’d still be breathing in the toxic fumes.

He ended our conversation by saying something like this:

“Every year less and less people plant tobacco. ...You people are doing a good thing here. You are teaching the people to farm [train them how to use good maize seed and fertilizer]. The land is fertile, and the yields will be very good.“

The thing is, no one here really even smokes. They just grow tobacco or their parents or neighbors do, and now they have asthma. And that’s yet another reason why we’re empowering our friends here to plant maize, a new cash crop without the side effects. Another reason why I’m so grateful for Nuru’s holistic strategy…because health, agriculture, water/sanitation, education and small business, they’re all interconnected.