THE BIBLICAL SEVEN LEAN YEARS

According to the biblical story, the Pharaoh of Egypt had a dream that no one could interpret for him. Joseph, then a prisoner with a history of interpreting dreams was brought before Pharaoh who told him of his dream. As the story goes, Joseph prophesized seven years of abundance and bountiful crop would be followed by seven years of famine which would ravage the land.

He advised Pharaoh to take a fifth of the harvest during the seven years of plenty and store the grain to be held in reserve, to be used during the seven years of famine that would follow...

Today Lankans are facing a probable seven-year period of famine. Unfortunately we had no biblical Joseph to warn us of the impending disaster which has struck us. There were plenty of warning signs, but we chose to ignore them.

We are in a crisis of our own-making so-to-say. We are deeply indebted, no foreign reserves, our granaries are empty, fertilizers or agro-chemicals are unavailable and farmers are unable to cultivate. The sale of fuel for private use has been banned. For the next two weeks, only buses, trains and vehicles used for health services and transporting food will be allowed to fill up with fuel.

Schools in urban areas have been shut and officials are calling on working people to work from home.

We sent one of those responsible for today’s plight packing and are demanding the president to resign from his post and go home. We have set up protest sites countrywide, but are no closer to replenishing our dwindling stocks of fuel.

In the unlikely event, the president decides to resign and go home, it would only fulfill the current prime minister’s life-long dream of becoming president. It will not bring us fuel or the dollars needed to procure basic requirements.

So what do we do? Or is there anything that we can do to ease this unimaginable situation? The answer is a simple ‘yes’. There is plenty we can do if we are ready and willing to fight back.

First, we need to conserve what little resources we still have... Plenty of fuel guzzling monster luxury vehicles still ply our roads with their shutters up. A sign that they are wasting precious fuel for the luxury of travelling in comfort while the majority struggle to catch public transport which are very few and far between.

We have no cooking gas and are fast running out of firewood in the cities. But, could we not as in an earlier era (during Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s regime) make use of substitutes, like preparation and use of bio gas as an alternative to LP gas.

Additionally, the slurry from the bio gas pits can be used as fertilizer to commence home gardens. This reduces our dependence on mass produced vegetables which farmers find themselves difficult to transport from their fields in the countryside to the cities where the greatest need is felt. It also brings down our own expenditure on foodstuffs

To overcome the shortage of kerosene, we turned out and used home-made solar cookers made up of materials found in nearly everyone’s backyard - a glass sheet and Styrofoam boxes.

The heat generated by the sun makes cooking less time consuming. In these days when cooking gas is in dire shortage, the home made solar cooker will help conserve whatever limited stocks of LP gas we may have left.

It will also help keep our blood pressure from rising whenever we hear the latest promise by Minister Kanchana Wijesekera, regarding the arrival of fuel and plentiful stocks of cooking gas to be delivered at the port on the morrow. The minister himself may then find it unnecessary to tell us his early morning fibs regarding the arrival of fuel.

In earlier times, vehicular transport was minimal, whereas today we have vehicles for transport, but no fuel to move the vehicles.

Perhaps we need to take page out of the book of the people in the north and east who were subject to severe fuel shortages during the civil war. Today they are reverting to horse-drawn and donkey-drawn carts to meet some transport needs. There is definitely a lesson to be learned.

Beating pots and pans and creating a din, may be a necessary measure to maintain pressure on our rulers, to do the job we elected them for. Yet the saddest failure of our country is that we do nothing about the education of the next generation as schools remain closed.

Perhaps our political leaders want to ensure we will have a plentiful supply of semi-educated lads and lassies to be the drawers of water and hewers of wood to the MNC’S they are selling the country to.