Although flowers are not essential for heating homes or obtaining good harvests, it is no less true that they make life more pleasant in the midst of an increasingly turbulent world, and above all, one threatened by the possibility of extinction due to nuclear conflict.

The immediate effects of this grim scenario have Kenyan flower growers on edge. They are suffering from declining demand in European countries, their main market, and to a lesser extent in the Middle East, as well as a brutal increase in freight costs, in addition to the difficulty of finding shipping companies willing to venture into areas near the conflict between Washington and Tel Aviv on one side and Iran on the other.

Official statistics reflect a drop of up to 50 percent in exports from a market that, since the start of the conflict, has been losing an estimated $1.4 million per week.

Data from the Kenyan Central Bank puts the value of Kenyan flower and ornamental plant exports at $800 million annually, a substantial sum for the national economy, in addition to collateral damage from job losses and the decline in hard currency revenues, vital to the economy of this East African country.

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