Saturday, January 24, 2015
With the best of intentions
Another of the roads to Hell has been paved, this time with mosquito nets. In ares of Africa where malaria is a major problem, well intentioned foreign donors have sent mosquito nets to protect people while they sleep at night. Unfortunately these same people view hunger as a greater threat to their lives than malaria. And now they have these beautifully made nets that sweep up everything.
Out here on the endless swamps, a harsh truth has been passed down from generation to generation: There is no fear but the fear of hunger.The fine mesh netting leaves nothing behind, no food, no babys not even their eggs, unlike a proper fishing net. And when everything is fished out, they will still suffer from malaria and add starvation to their problems. All thanks to the best of intentions.
With that always weighing on his mind, Mwewa Ndefi gets up at dawn, just as the first orange rays of sun are beginning to spear through the papyrus reeds, and starts to unclump a mosquito net.
Nets like his are widely considered a magic bullet against malaria — one of the cheapest and most effective ways to stop a disease that kills at least half a million Africans each year. But Mr. Ndefi and countless others are not using their mosquito nets as global health experts have intended.
Nobody in his hut, including his seven children, sleeps under a net at night. Instead, Mr. Ndefi has taken his family’s supply of anti-malaria nets and sewn them together into a gigantic sieve that he uses to drag the bottom of the swamp ponds, sweeping up all sorts of life: baby catfish, banded tilapia, tiny mouthbrooders, orange fish eggs, water bugs and the occasional green frog.
“I know it’s not right,” Mr. Ndefi said, “but without these nets, we wouldn’t eat.”
Across Africa, from the mud flats of Nigeria to the coral reefs off Mozambique, mosquito-net fishing is a growing problem, an unintended consequence of one of the biggest and most celebrated public health campaigns in recent years.
The nets have helped save millions of lives, but scientists worry about the collateral damage: Africa’s fish.
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