Sonya Kassam

Poetry | Customer Care | Natural Health Wellbeing

[Sonya Kassam @SonyaKassam]

If you hear words that hurt you
then bow yourself before them
and they will miss you
~Imam Ali
#Quote

[Jim Spire Ssentongo @SpireJim]

A special gift from my awesomely talented son, Raymond Bunjako. Sculptor, painter, carpenter - all in one person. He made this detailed portrait out of TOOTHPICK cuttings and oils. I can’t stop smiling. Bwenfanga mutekangawo kino.

Please give him work: 0773352182

[Iain Cameron @theiaincameron]

There is a volcano in Tanzania that erupts lava unlike anywhere else on Earth.

Ol Doinyo Lengai produces a black, extraordinarily fluid lava at temperatures half that of normal volcanic lava.

And, chemically, it is genuinely bonkers.

1/n

[Ole Teya @TeyaKevin]

😂😂

[Wolf Totem 🐺 @CanisLupus003]

THIS IS SO SAD

The last known male Kauai 'o'o singing in the forests of Hawaii in 1987. In 'o'o courtship, males & females sing in harmonized duets. As the last surviving member of his species, his call pauses where a female would normally sing back .

No response ever came back

[Sonya Kassam @SonyaKassam]

@CanisLupus003 💔

[Daniel Hannan @DanielJHannan]

An apt day to remember that Dolly Parton once recorded a cover of Stairway to Heaven - and, in defiance of every moral law in the universe, she absolutely owned it.

[wananchi @wanainchi50]

five monkeys dead today. Four dropped from a tree on mtama road near the new construction. One on 6th. They’re either being poisoned or there’s some serious disease breaking out. @parklandspamoja @teddyobiero

[Parklands Residents Association @parklandspamoja]

@nairobi_rivers @NairobiWater
1st Parklands at Parklands court, the sewer problem is a time bomb after the demolitions.

We have children and residents who are exposed currently to waterborne diseases.
Please let’s this be treated as URGENT 🚨

@GulagstormRider
@SakajaJohnson
@teddyobiero
@metro_alliance_
@Alfayaz11
@cbs_ke
@Hawkish_GenZ
@047County

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

When India accidentally wiped out its vultures, half a million people died in five years.

The bird doing zoomies in this video runs the most extreme digestive system in the animal kingdom. Vulture stomach acid sits near pH 1, strong enough to destroy anthrax, rabies, and botulism in the carcasses they eat. A flock strips a cow to bone in about 45 minutes.

India had 50 million of them. Free sanitation at national scale, in a country where religious custom means most cattle die natural deaths and every dead cow becomes a carcass someone has to deal with.

Then the patent on diclofenac expired in 1994. Farmers started using the cheap painkiller on livestock. Trace amounts left in a carcass cause kidney failure in vultures. Within a decade, 50 million birds fell to a few thousand. The fastest collapse of any bird species since the passenger pigeon.

The carcasses didn't disappear. Feral dogs took the vultures' place and brought rabies with them. Rotting remains leached into waterways. In districts where vultures once thrived, human death rates rose more than 4 percent. Economists at Chicago and Warwick put the toll at 100,000 extra deaths a year and $69 billion in annual damages.

So yes, the goofy bird sprinting down the walkway is adorable. It's also a disease firewall that evolution spent millions of years building and one generic painkiller nearly erased in ten.

[David Nahinga Π 🇰🇪✊🏿 @dnahinga]

Yesterday I walked along Woodvale Avenue in Westlands and noticed that when you cut mature trees and replace them with ornamental palms, you do not get the same value for money.

You lose:

🌳Shade and canopy: mature trees provide a continuous canopy that cools streets and public spaces.

🍁A humane city : trees create the scale, shade and comfort that make cities pleasant for people.

🫆Identity : mature indigenous trees give Nairobi a sense of place. Palms can be beautiful, but planting them everywhere creates a generic landscape.

“A truly complete street offers more than transit. It is a place as well.”

🦅Ecological value : mature trees support birds, insects and other urban life in ways that ornamental palms often cannot match.

In Westlands, i observed there was no single bird nest on the palm trees.

⌛️Time : a mature tree represents decades of growth. You cannot replace that function overnight.

And for what?

You gain very little that justifies the loss.

A modern city should not confuse landscaping with urban improvement.

The objective should be to preserve mature trees wherever possible and design infrastructure around them.

We should be building a city for people, not merely a city that looks newly landscaped.

Does this signal the end of #JacarandaPropaganda?

See this street in Zimbabwe with kissing Jacaranda canopy. It is full of life! 🌳💯

[Will 🦥 Menaker @willmenaker]

One of the most evil things imaginable to me

[Sonya Kassam @SonyaKassam]

@gwrites345 Yes 😣

[Mwaivu Kaluka ☭ @MwaivuKaluka]

His eminence Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei with comrade Thomas Isidore Sankara in Tehran 1985.

[IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) @iribnews_irib]

An Iranian police officer, following the custom of Iranian Arabs, offers water to the funeral attendees of Ayatollah Khamenei.

Five percent of Iran's population are Arabic speakers.

[Sonya Kassam @SonyaKassam]

@gwrites345 👏🏽❤️

[🥊𝕳 BARRAS DEL MUNDO ⚽🍺 @Barras_LATAM]

🇨🇩🇺🇿 Ayer en RD Congo vs Uzbekistán, otro Congoleño ocupo el lugar de Lumumba.

Además, los Uzbekos se sumaron en apoyo.

[Kenyanbirder @Kenyabirder]

Mrs and Mr Saddle-billed Stork in Masai Mara

[The Paperclip @Paperclip_In]

DR Congo pulled off a major upset at the WC, drawing their opening match with CR7 led Portugal. When DR Congo last appeared at the World Cup, their players were threatened by a dictator. The story begins with a political assassination that once sparked protests across India. 1/27

[Rashid Abdi @RAbdiAnalyst]

I met a schoolmate this week who is now a relief worker in northern Kenya.

He told me something fascinating; something that haunts me since then.

"Do you know how we measure severity of hunger in pastoral nomadic communities?

We count number of mothers who have died. The more mothers dying of hunger the greater the famine.

Among the pastoralists, the womenfolk are trained from infancy to repress hunger; while men are allowed to 'act on their hunger' by raiding a neighbours' cattle.

There is a piece of cloth women are given before marriage for tying their stomachs to gird themselves against hunger.

Girls and women are the last ones to eat - they only eat after the menfolk have finished eating.

Paradoxically, it is women who are least vulnerable to hunger by death. They are accustomed to extreme hunger and have devised various mechanisms for coping."

Wow !