 In enforced post wisdom tooth extraction recovery, I have been doing a lot of reading, and came across this fascinating National Geographic article.
I was moved by the beautiful pathos of a story about abandoned scientific research stations of old empire. This one in Tanzania - 'a vision of the future, suspended in time' - is crazily incongruous, modernist buildings now mostly abandoned in the African jungle. Amani was founded in the 19th century as a German botanical garden, going on to become a British malarial research institute. These days, now funding has pretty much disappeared, a skeleton staff has stayed on, mostly in the hope that it's fortunes will be revived. Retired lab assistant John Mganga still lives there, amongst the dusty books and remnants of the insect collection that he put together with famed British entomologist John Raybould in the 1970s. 'Something really was lost when the whole place folded... he had truly believed in science and the country's future. He lived that dream and he suffered from losing it.' |
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