A moment of reflection for a news junkie in the wild

2015 is now ebbing to an end and for many the New Year resolutions that were not met have already been pushed to January 2016. I am not in the habit of setting any particular resolutions myself. I just keep trying to stay alive and out of jail. To me that just cuts it. The closest I came to having made a resolution for this year was when a journalist friend of mine presented a rather strange proposal as we talked about our careers. I was whining about a prolonged writer’s block and how I needed some new challenges in order for my creative juices to flow again. Then he challenged me to spend a whole month without reading a newspaper or magazine, no watching TV especially the news or even listening to the radio. In short he was challenging me to take leave from following news so that my head can think outside the news cycle. I promised him that I would think about it. I later figured it was quite impractical considering that news is my only drug. I am always watching international and local news and keeping tabs on the smaller news bits coming through the different social media platforms. My phone has alerts for breaking news just so that I am never the last person to find out when something big happens. In the end I made up my mind that my friend’s idea was a crazy one and I wasn’t going to go through with it. However, this past week has seen me moving from one place to another, gradually moving away from the kind of life that I am used to as well as my news addiction. I can now safely say that from around Monday last week, I have been living an involuntary news-free life. I feel like I am in a rehabilitation centre of some sort. I am writing this article from Apoka Lodge which is found at the northern tip of Kidepo National Park, in the Karamoja region of Uganda. A quick Google search can show you just how far I am from my usual environs. Only one mobile phone network works here and not all the time. There is wifi but only when the generator is switched on briefly, thrice in a day and you need to access it from the reception area that has no power sockets! I am sure the intention was for visitors to focus on their trip. Anyway so when it is on, you can briefly charge you phone and send out a modern day smoke signal to prove to your people that you didn’t go missing in the wild. In this place, the only information that I have been consuming has been about wildlife from the various game rangers and other people I found here. This has allowed me to reflect on a wide variety of issues, observe and savour this amazing experience. Before I went ‘off air’ my heart was in pain as I followed all the bad news that keeps coming from Burundi of people dying each day from a conflict that only seems to escalate as time goes by. When some of us spend our time keenly following such news all the time, we slowly become numb as our shock valves loosen and only work when a major disaster occurs. In this era of social media we tend to think we should comment about each and every thing that happens while staying detached from the actual event. It is so easy to live the life behind the buttons that we click and move on. I think each of us needs a moment to step away from all this and think for about a week or more with no access to our mobile phones and computers but just the basics of shelter, food and human contact. I believe, in fact I now know that such moments go a long way in rehabilitating us from our routine lives. Away from all the political noise that streams through the media. Staying in these parks compels you to learn so much from the different animals in the wild, the humble yet extremely knowledgeable people that work in the parks and your surroundings in general. At the end of this tourism expedition I will be sharing with you a lot of what I have picked from here. One thing is for certain though, we all need this.

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A moment of reflection for a news junkie in the wild