Ahoy there, people of Ladysmith! I hope you are all well and happy. Spring is in the air. To celebrate the arrival of the new season, I made a deal with myself that I’m going to “gym” my arms a bit more. In the winter, I became a bit lazy and relaxed my exercise regime. The Springbok squad got selected. It’s a good squad and I’m so pumped for the World Cup that starts on September 20. It is still going well with my new wheelchair. This week, I opened the top half of the fridge for the first time in my life.
Now I’m going to try to braai a braai broodjie and a piece of boerewors. From my side, it has been a quiet week. I went to a bachelor party. I’m not going to tell stories, because I don’t want to break the bro code, but I can promise you it was nothing like that movie The Hangover. There are a lot of bad things happening all over the world: North Korea and their nuclear weapons, the Hong Kong protests, uncertainty over Brexit, the fighting in Kashmir, and the children separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border.
And there is the Amazon wildfire. Wildfires in the Amazon rainforest have increased this year by 85%. Vast tracks of the forest perished in the fire. A lot of the animals and the indigenous people are threatened by these flames of hell. There was a lot of speculation in the media that the fire had been set to clear the rainforest for farming / mining operations.
A lot of uncontrolled logging also takes place. I don’t know if that is true, but if there is smoke, there is fire. The Amazon rainforest is considered the “Lungs of the World”. Carbon dioxide, a gas formed by human (fossil fuels) and natural sources, gets absorbed by plants and then they (plants) release oxygen into the atmosphere. It is how all things alive survive. This whole process is called photosynthesis.
If the Amazon is destroyed, it will be a catastrophe. We, as inhabitants on the earth, urgently need to take action. We need to protect the environment. We need to plant more trees. If more trees are destroyed, it can also have a negative effect on rainfall or agriculture. We need to stop thinking about the money we can generate and think how we can make this planet livable for future generations. Aloha (Hawaiian word for goodbye).
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