Ebola and Cameroonians

Over the weekend at a family gathering, a cousin of mine put on his mobile phone and showed almost every body in the gathering, the photograph of two very intimate friends shaking hands, each at a distance from the other. They only shook the stretched out hands to avoid close body contact.

It was not until almost everyone had set his or her eyes on this photograph, that my cousin explained what it was all about. It was a very serious matter put in lighter-mood, the way Cameroonians hardly take anything seriously until it creeps under their roofs.

My cousin now explaining the joke said Cameroonians have been told not to greet anyone, even if they are our friends by hand shake except from a reasonable distance, to avoid getting infected by Ebola in case one of them is already in the net.

That is exactly how Cameroonians take serious things rather lightly. In the early eighties, when rumours of a deadly disease, called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) became rampant, not many Cameroonians accepted the logic of its being.

Cynics in their wisdom, turned it into mathematics and called it Seven plus one (7+1)=8, eight meaning a distortion of the pronouncement of AIDS.

There is no doubt that AIDS has taken its toll on us. Many have died of it. Many more are still struggling with it, while a good percentage of those who have kept to the preventive rules, particularly abstinence from sex, are surviving. To many however, mostly those involved in the sex trade do not hide their disbelief in all that “endless noise about the existence of AIDS”.

The sole relief in all this is that experts have not been sleeping and there is much hope that the threat is being minimized.

But right from the time of the outbreak of the killer disease, there had been a debate about the origin of the disease. Some said it is the product of a laboratory research by a sadistic man of science, while others say it started in Africa through the green monkey, a specie found in the rain forests of the Congo basin.

However, while the dust is yet to settle over how we can best contain HIV/AIDS, here comes another killer, Ebola Fever. The difference between the two is that Ebola got to West Africa like a storm, hitting hard against any object that stands on its way.

In the three affected West African countries of Liberia, Guinea Conakry and Sierra Leone, it has taken the lives of more than a thousand in less than three months.

The first time the disease hit Africa was more than fifteen years ago, affecting mostly the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Much was done to contain it from spreading to the rest of the Congo. Much is still also being done to eradicate it completely. So why don’t we borrow a leaf from there?

I understand that preventive measures have been put in place by government to stop the spread from those affected countries and these include the suspension of flights from Ebola affected countries.

Among the population itself, there are such unscientifically verified or tested preventive measures involving the regular consumption of bitter kola with salt, bathing heated salt water and so on.

On the other hand there have been warnings from health experts against relying on traditional medics.

Beginning from the discovery of Quinine some centuries back to the present efforts over HIV/AIDS, let us rely on science and God the Almighty.

But before I conclude this write-up, I will like to make an observation concerning the outbreak of Ebola and the countries so affected. It is my personal opinion which I do not want to keep to my self.

If we look at the recent histories of these countries now being attacked by Ebola, one discovers that the countries were those in which blood has been spilled recklessly on account of ungodly leadership by cruel and unrepentant rulers.

It started in Zaire, or now Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Let us look at the way Patrice Lumumba, the father of the nation was brutally murdered, in the early years of independence, with the complicity of Joseph Desire Mobutu, the young man he had handpicked from the school of Journalism, in Belgium, to become the first African senior army officer in the colonial army.

Up to now the blood spilling is still going on in eastern Congo.

Then look at Liberia, where Sergeant Doe took over power in a bloody coup. See the retaliation by Prince Johnson in a counter coup. Sergeant Doe was tied at the back of a land Rover and dragged on the tar along the streets of Monrovia, before being butchered in pieces to death.

See what part Charles Taylor played in Sierra Leone in promoting a civil war through which he benefitted from the country’s diamond riches.

Look at the intensity of the carnage in that country which has left a large percentage of the population as cripples.

Guinea’s case is an unfortunate one. The blood spilling is negligible. So did the Bible not tell us that there were times when, whenever the Kings of Israel disobeyed God, He punished the whole tribe of Israel?

I am not however saying that Cameroon has been spared and so let us take precautions over Ebola.