CANDID:  Zacchaeus Njuguna believes humans have caused damage to the environment and they are the ones with whom also lies the solution.   

  —Zacchaeus Njuguna, Kenyan expat, on the importance of a newspaper
By Anand Holla


For the average Joe, day-old newspapers and outdated diaries aren’t exactly the sort of stationery that would produce excitement. Kenyan expat Zacchaeus Njuguna is special for not just using them for an important cause but also for his unrelenting optimism in bringing about a change in his own little ways.
Five years back when Njuguna came to Doha and started working with Awaj Catering Services as a waiter, he felt an urge to do more than just work, eat, rest, and go to malls.
“I love reading. But when I came to Qatar, I didn’t have access to Internet or a library. So it was only newspapers that I could get my hands on. There was a big difference between newspapers in Qatar and those in Kenya. So I started reading Gulf Times,” says Njuguna, who, for Amwaj, first served at Royal Plaza and now works at a Qatar Petroleum (QP) office on C-Ring Road.
It was when the staff would call it a day that Njuguna’s passion project would spring to life. “I would collect the day’s newspapers that the staff would have disposed of. I would read them, and cut out stories and sections,” he says.
Discarded diaries of bygone years would serve as home for these precious nuggets of wisdom. “I would paste those stories on every page of the diary,” Njuguna says, “I have been reading the Community pull-out of Gulf Times, earlier called Time Out, and cutting and keeping interesting articles on health, environment, inspirational cover stories, and also informative columns from Gulf Times’ editorial like Live Issues or stories about Kenya on the Africa page.”
His hard work paid valuable dividends as these info-diaries — he calls them Kenyan Expat Green Books — helped his foray into the scene. “In 2011, I attended QP’s Environment Day celebrations and interacted with people to realise that a lot of things they were doing are what I was doing back home,” says Njuguna, who worked as a volunteer at the Kenya Red Cross, and also a United Nations volunteer.
“So I showed the QP staff my green books,” he recalls, “That helped me socialise and discuss my ideas. It boosted my morale as every year, QP gave me the opportunity to share my ideas with people. I have been setting up a table with my green books. I make children go through them, teach them about recycling and making such green books of their own. I have also compiled diaries full of colouring pieces, taken from the Community section, and I photocopy them on recycled paper and distribute among kids on birthdays and events.”
The first time Njuguna went home on holidays, he took some of his “green books” and visited the school he had studied in. “I shared my green books with teachers, students, and donated some to the school library, where children continue to read it. It felt amazing. Local radio station Hope FM invited me to the show and allowed me to talk about conserving environment,” he says.
After giving away all his books to children there, Njuguna returned to Doha and started compiling thick info-rich tomes all over again. “As a waiter, I wonder — I have served you. My work is done. Now what am I waiting for?” muses Njuguna, “That’s how I embraced the opportunity to read newspapers, and share fascinating knowledge with others through my books.”
In Kenya, Njuguna grew up with the impression that newspapers are meant only for the educated upper class. “But now I have come to realise that it’s for everyone,” he says. That explains why Njuguna likes to draw people’s attention to his books, at least so that they leaf through them.
“Along with generating environmental awareness, I would like to bring back the culture of reading. That’s because today, I find most people immersed in Facebook; rarely anyone reading a book,” he points out.
Although “green books” is what led Njuguna into finding passion and purpose in Qatar, it’s just one of his many noble and creative deeds. Called Turning waste into art, a bottle cap art project was thought up by Njuguna and two other Kenyan expats living in Qatar, Peter Kimani and Gabriel Kamiti.
At QP’s Environment Fair, they made murals of animals, fishes and birds using plastic bottle caps, and created a mural that raises environmental awareness using 60,000 caps, in collaboration with the Solid Waste Interest Group (SWIG) of the Qatar Green Building Council (QGBC), among many others.
But perhaps the best use that he and his mates have made of bottle caps was donating it for making prosthetic limbs. Last year, for Qatar Petroleum’s Corporate Health Safety and Environment Department’s Prosthetic Limbs Campaign, Njuguna and his friends gathered thousands of bottle caps by spreading the word.
“We would take a sizeable number of caps to the Prosthetic Limbs Section of Hamad Medical Corporation, Rumeilah Hospital, which are then sent to Bahrain, where they are made into prosthetic limbs. These limbs return to Qatar or help the physically challenged elsewhere, and help make them affordable by lowering the production cost,” Nujguna says.
For Njuguna, collecting caps and making good use of them is a way of sanitising our surroundings and also reusing what would be treated as waste. Citing a public service message — Reuse, Reduce and Recycle — issued by Gulf Times, Njuguna argues that he puts this thought to practice. “I try to do that with everything,” he says.
Even while taking out a march on World No Tobacco Day, Njuguna used props made of recycled materials. “I stuck many toilet paper roll bases, end to end, and coated it with tissue paper to make it look like giant cigarette sticks. Then, I wrote messages on them and we promoted no-smoking,” he says. At his accommodation in Mesaieed, Njuguna is nicknamed ‘Doctor’ by his friends because he also volunteers to administer first aid whoever needs it.
Njuguna, in fact, is a regular when it comes to rustling up social help events. “I am involved in some event or the other every weekend. This helps me to learn new things and meet different people. At QP fairs, for instance, I have met lots of students and people, and it encourages me to keep going,” he says. For these activities, he has been covered in local newspapers and also in QP magazine.
By rolling dozens of polythene bags together and tying them up to make footballs, Njuguna and his Kenyan friends play with it. “We, Kenyans, don’t play football here with normal balls,” he says, smiling, “We play football with these polythene bag balls also on Qatar National Day, just to draw people’s curiosity and inculcate the idea of recycling in them.” In Qatar, recycling, as it is, is difficult, Njuguna admits.
Going by the breadth of his interest, Njuguna’s benevolence seems multi-dimensional. Earlier in May, as the world observed the third UN Global Road Safety Week in support of the #SaveKidsLives campaign, Njuguna and his buddies raised awareness about road safety among children, by handing out brochures to kids, explaining to them the importance of observing road safety rules, talking to parents and guardians, and even via Facebook and Twitter.
That’s not all. Njuguna’s six-member dance group Green Maasai Dancers, which has performed at events like Doha Trade Fair and QP’s family days, is as much a window into African culture as another avenue to promote love for nature. “I founded it five years ago. We dance to traditional African music and this helps us reach out to people about caring for our ecology and also promote Kenyan culture and tourism,” Njuguna says.
Njuguna is greatly influenced by Wangari Maathai — Kenyan environmentalist, founder of the Green Belt Movement (GBM), and the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Last September, to mark her third death anniversary, Njuguna and some other Kenyans in Mesaieed planted trees to continue her legacy. Njuguna, who is a member of GBM that has planted more than 51 million trees in Kenya, had initiated the tree-planting drive at Mesaieed.
“Maathai had said that if we continue destroying our environment, nature will never forgive us. Be it climate change, soil erosion, pollution, or global warming, I have seen that happen. We are the ones causing it. But I try to show people that we are also the ones who have the solution,” Njuguna says.
However, Njuguna doesn’t believe in being preachy. “I always try to remind people. That’s because most times, people forget. So we shouldn’t judge others,” he says, “I don’t believe in preaching. I only want to remind what’s right.”