2023- 2024 Harmattan, Dustier, Hotter Than No Other

By Femi Kusa
johnolufemikusa@gmail.com

ABOUT this time in Nigeria every year, the SADs have a field day for which everyone prepares according to one’s health challenges.

The SADs are the seasonal Affective Diseases. They are peculiarities of the transition from one season to another and of the seasons themselves.

We have been in the Harmattan season since December last year and should be through with it at the end of this month or in early February. Since I have known the HARMATTAN, which connects the RAINY SEASON with the DRY SEASON, it has been a transitional season of cold and dust. It is another phase of the weather which, like the rainy season, many asthmatics do not like.

“The rain makes the environment greener and the air filled with PLANT POLLEN which might aggravate symptoms of ASTHMA. The cold and the dust of the HARMATTAN may do the same and more. In particular, the dust of the HARMATTAN might freight airborne germs into homes and offices and food in the kitchen or on the dining table. There appears to be no cold this year, but a much bigger offloading of dust and scorching heat everywhere, ahead of the heat season even heat strokes, heat death, measles, and cerebrospinal meningitis.

Nigeria’s weathermen, I mean the meteorologists, were sluggish this year in forewarning the public that the Harmattan this year would be more brutal than any other. Ghana’s weathermen gave public warnings before Nigeria’s roused themselves from slumber. Thank goodness they ever did, warning of the need to wear nose masks as we did for COVID-19. That was when respiratory and other infections reared their heads, especially in Abuja. Many families came down not just with cough and other problems, some persons developed TONSILITIS which may be fatal. Happily, the doctors sprang to their feet in aid of whoever had infections and could afford their bills. Persons who could not seek relief in natural medicines.

NATURE is forever UNBEATABLE. It remains the season’s master even in a well-curtained 23-window house designed for natural ventilation and minimum dust inflow. Last week, I overheard the complaints of a gentleman about this season. He designed his house as just described to protect his pocket from electricity expenses of air conditioning and to safeguard his health from the environment.  The curtains held dust and could drop them off in the laundry over five minutes and, in another five minutes, be ready to run on their tracks. In the cold, rainy weather and in the Harmattan, the special curtains kept the house warm. But guess what? Today, he needs to add an equal number of curtains to hold back the dust, and that would mean a warmer house in this HARMATTAN heat with no air conditioners or electric fans. For houses which have air conditioners, where is the electricity to run them? How many people can run electricity generators as they did until about eight months ago when petrol prices went up? Anyway, man is an adaptive being and, so, we all should adapt to the weather to beat the SADs.

SOMETHING HAPPENING?

We, journalists, are trained to have A LONG AND SHARP NOSE FOR NEWS, otherwise, we would not be the REPORTERS we are proud to be called. It is an INSTINCT. Different professions have different instincts. The reporter tends to embody many if not all, instincts in THE LONG AND SHARP NOSE FOR NEWS. Even around my house, it didn’t take me long to discover that the neighborhood was “farming” a “catfish”. From my bedroom or study at different times of the day, I easily figured out two cars parked in different locations watching over a third of their passengers. I do not see them. The manner of their signaling gave them out. One car would branch off from the others at a road junction and become stationary in the rear. The other support car would move about 50 meters ahead of the man’s car. The signaling cars have different horn sounds. One car hoot may signal attention “TO OTHERS” Another car may signal “READY TO MOVE”.  Even when the persons I shared this experience with did not seem to trust my judgment, they soon discovered regularity could mean something.
CLIMATE CHANGE?

In their reportorial work, journalists are dissatisfied with the surface of an event which, to many persons, is THE NEWS. The News, for them, always lies deep beneath. That’s why they dig up the FIVE Ws and one H… Who, what, why, when, where and how? Thus, the news about 58 years ago was not that the Deputy Premier of the then Western Region of Nigeria refused a handshake offer from a senior political leader of the region to the embarrassment or amazement of guests at an important official government function. That was surface news. I learned of the news beneath the news about 25 years ago in the company of Mr Nduka Irabor and Mrs Harriet Lawrence who, together with me, had a memory lane interview with this gentleman from Modakeke, Ile Ife, who was trying to make his son succeed him in politics. I was 15 years old, 58 years ago, and an avid newspaper reader at school and during the holidays. So, I knew of this well-publicized event. When I asked him why he put his hands in his pockets, it turned out that political adversity was not the cause as was erroneously widely reported in those days. He told us the other gentleman wore a ring on one of his right fingers which he suspected was for diabolical manifestations.

HOT HARMATTAN

We are wondering why the weather is so hot during the HARMATTAN and we are pulling off our dresses when we should be wearing woolen dresses, but we only end up shrugging our shoulders and leaving the question for scientists to thrash out for us. Already, they have inundated us with noises of CLIMATE CHANGE.
Almost every country is hosting at least one major international conference every year on CLIMATE CHANGE. They are showing other countries how CLIMATE CHANGE is affecting their landforms, human geography, and economy to inform them of their adaptations and new businesses evolved from their new human existential trajectory. Thus, we are all talking about climate change and blaming it on the burning of firewood and charcoal for energy or on the exhaust of factory machines and motorized vehicles. May we not all be looking at surface news? Could there be no triggers for climate change beneath the orchestrated surface news? In all of these, only a few people remember the unforgettable EDGAR CAYCEE, “the man who saw tomorrow”. He predicted with accuracy or near accuracy some of today’s events. He predicted, also, future events, including the coming of a powerful Star, much more powerful than all the stars combined, to rearrange the cosmic forces and reshape the earth as well in all ramifications. In some spiritual circles, this Star is known as THE GREAT COMET.

Besides Edgar Caycee’s, there are many prophecies about It, including spiritual descriptions by PROPHET EZEKIEL. I had the privilege in the 1990s to review several times and from different perspectives in THE GUARDIAN newspaper the book of American journalist TOM KAY on this subject titled WHEN THE COMET RUNS. The book is a compendium of prophecies about this Star. The bottom line is that it would cause gargantuan climate and weather catastrophes on earth, “suck up and high” water bodies on earth, generate earthquakes, and floodings, overturn social, political, and economic systems, cause the disappearance of several coastal lands and bring up from the seas some lands which sank millennia ago and were overrun by water. One of these is believed to be THE LOST CONTINENT OF ATLANTIS, displaced by the ATLANTIC OCEAN when the diminutive moon, the Earth’s nearest cosmic neighbor, was empowered and lowered towards a degenerate master civilization called Atlantis to eliminate its aberrations from the surface of the earth. Some thinkers say, however, that the Atlantean story is philosophical fiction. Edgar Caycee and other seers say it is real. A risen Atlantis will wholly or in part surely devastate the present landforms with displaced Atlantic ocean water.

The Atlantic Ocean is the world’s second-largest ocean after the Pacific Ocean. It commands a depth of about 8,605 meters, occupies 24 percent of the Earth’s water surface area, is about 17 percent of the Earth’s surface, and spreads 85.13 million square kilometers, according to Google. Re-surfacing of Atlantian land would surely displace Atlantic Ocean water on coastal cities and nations, including the coast of West Africa. Japan may disappear. So many islands and some parts of England. In my days as a teenager picnicking at the Lagos bar beach, there were many cherubim and seraphim churches, restaurants, and hotels, including the famous OCTOPUS owned by the Benitie family on this beach land. Much of the land has given way to the Atlantic Ocean. Google says the beach land lost two kilometers between 1905 and 2005.

Edgar Cayce foresaw a religious war in which Arab armies, close to victory in the present-day United States, would be swallowed by a major earthquake that may destroy Western civilization and return mankind to near primordial beginnings. Imagine Earth without airplanes, electricity, internet, telecommunications, pharmaceutical medicines, packaged foods, ships, and motorcars, among others! That is the picture painted, also, in DOOMSDAY 1999, by CHARLES BERLITZ who unites religion, philosophy, and science to predict a new apocalypse in all corners of the earth. Although catastrophes of nature painted by Edgar Caycee did not happen in 1999 to bring mankind on their knees as suggested in this book, scientists do not believe dramatic changes will fail to occur sometime. They have proof ours is not the first civilization of humans to live on earth. For example, the Earth’s magnetic poles which make its structures stable have often shifted their positions, causing dramatic changes. Edgar Caycee says they would, again, and that a huge lake would appear in the Sahara Desert, the origin of the dust of the present and previous harmattans. When he made this prediction, science was unaware of a huge underground water reserve beneath the Sahara desert. Now, it is known that there are several aquifers there. One of them called the Nubian sandstone aquifer system holds the equivalent of 500 years of Nile River Discharge embedded in the North Eastern Sahara desert. Its area covers North Eastern Sudan, North Eastern Chad, South Eastern Libya, and Egypt. The water is said to be unreplenishable. Who knows, however, if new rivers to be cut inland by waters by a risen Atlantis would feed its receptacle?

Since the prediction of Edgar Caycee, “the man who saw tomorrow”, the Earth’s second-largest aquifer, underground water body, has been discovered beneath the Sahara desert. Will it be intruded upwards? If it is, where will the present desert sand go?

When I described the moon earlier as the earth’s diminutive neighbor, it was compared with the size of the giant star or THE GREAT COMET we are told is on its way to the earth. From one of the descriptions of it, our sun may appear to us like a diminutive star. We may not see the twinkling stars at night. This was why, a few months ago, I jumped out of bed at about 5 in the morning one day on hearing from the VOA Africa program that scientists had discovered a star several light years away that was shining more than one million times brighter than our sun. I mentioned this information on this page at that time, and some of the readers of this column tracked it for a while.

HARMATTAN 2023-2024.

It is past midnight as I write on 03 January 2024. The Sun went down a long time ago. I am sweating all over, especially from the armpits where I hardly sweat even in the heat season.

HARMATTAN

In previous harmattans, I took one capsule of 1000 heat units of Cayenne two times a day to beat the cold and wear light clothing. In this one, I tie a wrapper indoors like my friends in the east of Nigeria, except when I have guests.
Producers of satchet water called PURE WATER are cashing in on the heat. My household consumes about 10 bags of 20 sachets every week. Last week, the price of one bag rose from N200 to N250. One sachet sells for 25 Kobo, so the minimum anyone can buy is two sachets. Everyone, everywhere, is buying and drinking water to replace water lost to sweating. The poor fellows do not realize it is not only water that needs replacement. That is why they are weak, if not run down, despite the volumes of water they consume. Sweat removes minerals and electrolytes from the body. It is the electrolytes and minerals doctors try to replace through “drips” in a run-down person. Sweating takes away sodium, potassium, calcium, and especially, sodium in larger quantum. This is why sweat tastes salty. The more water a thirsty person drinks without some sodium in it, the more water the kidneys will run out because it is sodium which keeps water in the body. Sodium deficiency is dangerous for several reasons.

According to Google, this may include but is not limited to, nausea and vomiting, headache, confusion, loss of energy, drowsiness, fatigue, restlessness irritability, muscle weakness, spasms or cramps, seizures, coma, insomnia, or even death.
Therefore, it is advisable to add a pinch of sea salt or natural salt to meals or a fourth glass of water. Sea salt has about 40 chemical substances other than sodium which neutralise the dangerous side effects of TABLE SALT or bleached salt. When they are readily available, I prefer the biochemic sodium salts. Some of them are NATRU MUR (sodium chloride), NATRUM SULPH (sodium sulfate), and NATRUM PHOS (sodium phosphate) in the 6x tablet dosage. Of equal benefit are the biochemic potassium salts, kalimur, and Kali sulph. Some persons prefer ORT powder from the pharmacy.

Some people go for water-loaded fruits, especially the REFRIGERANT types. As their generic name suggests they refrigerate. Among them are cucumber, melons, leafy greens, buttermilk, mango, lemon, curd, Avocado, coconut, mint, and chamomile. They have potassium which prevents the collapse of cells and is good for preventing elevated blood pressure in some cases. Dehydration in blood vessels may cause “THICK BLOOD” and reduction of flow surface area to prevent AIR LOCK in which case air replaces fluid and dams blood circulation.

Airborne diseases cannot be ruled out in the avalanche of dust everywhere. Breaks in the skin surface are vulnerable. So are the eyes. One of the best remedies for eye infections is BITTER KOLA eye drops. I do not advise that it be made at home because of the possibility of infected gadgets. Therefore, I prefer the pharmaceutical grade made by Professor Bukunola  Adefule Oshitelu, an opthalmologist. EYE BRIGHT eye washes and teas are good, too. So are eye antioxidants herbs such as bilberry, and marigold flower extracts, for their lutein, zeaxanthin, asthazantin, and other carotenoids, nettles for hay fever or hives, vitamins A, C, and E, selenium, and zinc.

Vitamin A requires zinc for bio-availability in the eye. This should be a season, also, for GINGKO BILOBA. It puts blood not only in the brain but in the eyes as well. Eye doctors should have been warned that the Sun is penetrating and harsh on the eyes. Eyes that do not have adequate nutritional protection may develop cataracts and glaucoma or these conditions in festering stages may be worsened by them. This is why it is important to protect the eyes not just with dark eyeglasses but with those that block the damaging blue spectrum of sunlight from reaching the eye.

For those persons whose respiratory systems are weak and tend to succumb to whatever degree to dust, I suggest, they do not mind that orange is now selling for N100.  Remove the PEEL, but do not throw it away. It is a great medicine for cough as it is for bronchitis and asthma. Eat the peeled orange minus the seeds. The fruit sacs have lots of bioflavonoids which are anti-inflammatory and immune-boosting apart from helping to build collagen. The peel may be eaten after it has been ridden of germs in a saline solution or white cider vinegar solution if the teeth are still strong enough to munch it. It may be parboiled and eaten with any meal. The water should not be thrown away. Orange peel has lots of ANTI-HISTAMINE. That is one of the medicines the doctor prescribes for asthma and other respiratory system conditions, and its costs can put a hole in the pocket these days. I do not advise that it be dried and kept for future use because fungi may infest it and this would cause another problem. So, use it fresh or purchase the factory-made orange peel powder or extracts. As I said, this is a great medicine.

FEMI KUSA was at various times Editor; Director of Publication/ Editor-in-Chief of THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER; and Editorial Director/ Editor-in-Chief of THE COMET NEWSPAPER. Currently, he keeps a Thursday Column on Alternative Medicine in the NATION NEWSPAPER.

Some of his health columns may be found on www.olufemikusa.com and in MIDIUM a digital platform for writers. He is active also on Facebook @ John OLUFEMI KUSA.

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