Smoke In The Sky

 

The west coast of the United States had been covered in thick smoke for weeks due to forest fires in Californian, Oregon, and some parts of Washington States. For days we could hardly see the sky, air quality was the poorest in the world. These wildfires are becoming common due to global warming which caused extra dry summers for the region. Wildfires are becoming a common occurrence during the summer for many years and they are becoming more devastating each time. I hope politicians and policymakers will see that there is no alternative fact to global warming and act to stop it. 

The smoke-filled air and the smoked covered skies reminded me of Ethiopia in the month of November. Each year in this month people deliberately burn whatever they can burn to create smoke that fills the sky. This ritual started during the Spanish flu pandemic which killed millions throughout the world and Ethiopia was not an exception. No one was spared from the flu which was highly contagious even the then crown prince Ras Teferie who later ascended to the thrown as Haile Selassie I barely survived it. To stop the spread of the virus the imperial government issued a decree ordering citizens to burn all trash throughout the country. Ethiopians burned all their trash and all potentially infected articles of people who died of the flu. The air was filled up with smoke from all the burning which was mainly done in November. The influenzas pandemic stopped after inflicting heavy losses but the practice of burning to cleanse continued as a ritual every year since the pandemic during the month of November. I wonder if wildfires of the west coast and the smoke it causes will cleanse another air-born pandemic but it clearly brought back memories from home.