It has been almost 18 months since the coronavirus pandemic struck. Many people in the developing countries and disadvantaged people in the developed countries celebrated the mistaken notion that the virus spares nobody. However, the celebration was short lived because it soon became obvious that not everyone was equally vulnerable.
When someone dies, we feel sad and grieve for the life lost. This was the case with the passing of Lapwony Mzee Isaiah Lazaro Loka who was born on January 15, 1939. He passed on April 15, 2021 at his home near St. Mary’s Hospital, Lacor, Gulu District, Uganda. We mourn his passing because he was a husband, a father, uncle, grandpa, a friend, and a teacher to many.
Before the development of a market economy, Ugandans used bags, strings, pots, and baskets made from local materials such as palm leaves, papyrus, banana leaves and fibers, grass, fibrous shrubs (jute and sisal), or clay for packaging, storage, and transporting of goods. Other than baked clay pots, all these materials are biodegradable, and they pose little danger to the environment. However, plastics rapidly replaced most natural fibers because they more convenient, but they pose tremendous threat to the environment.
President Joe Biden has many challenges to confront in his foreign policy. One of which is the seemingly forgotten United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that remains unratified by the US, the only major country not to do so. Yet, UNCLOS serves the interests of both sea-every country because what happens in, under and on the sea affects the food, water, and air that every living thing depends on.
The “Forgotten Voices” is a collection of the most inspiring poems. It unveils human emotions, identity, displacement, pain, agony and abandonment which I bring out in a simple clear language. Social conflict in northern Uganda is central in the thought-provoking and mentally stimulating prose in this collection of poems. A good read for both writers and readers of poetry.
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