Quick! Get out of Africa before Ebola kills you! Trust me, if you are not African, you need to beat it and leave Africans alone with her damn-forsaken Ebola! And as you leave, please kindly also abandon the oil, the gold, the diamonds, the gas, the fresh waters, scenic serenity and millions of acres of arable land. Of course, as you get on to the planes to safety, carry along your over-rated so-called global policies and meaningless moral connotations of leadership and governance that may only apply in Africa well…only in the absence of Ebola!
We Africans are a god-forsaken lot. Our blood is extremely cheap so who cares how many of us die from Ebola or whatever. Our blood is worth a mere palm-full of sand but you my friend, your royal blood is worth the moon and if it is split here because of Ebola or anything then the heart of the world will surely stop!
You do not belong here. Africa is not safe for you. Ebola is real and it kills with a frenzy marched to none. Ask our kin from Liberia, Sierra Leona, Nigeria and Guinea. They know what it is like to have the devil dance on your back. It is the kind of devil that dances when Africa’s forlorn are in war, civil strife, epidemics, hunger or suffering the brunt of climate change – yes, the kind of devil you know because you understand just how such devils are nurtured, right?
Wait! Let me tell you something; a smart mind once said that the best way to kill a frog is to lock it in a bottle devoid of any air and let it kick and fight and choke in its own waste until it dies. With our Ebola wrecking havoc and the rest of the world “running away from us, closing its borders, suspending flights to this damn dungeon then surely the lid on this jar called Africa is tightened every minute as we suffocate in our own fate.
I heard this morning that a somber and compassionate statement had been rolled out. It said; “..the safety of our customers, crew and ground team is always on our top priority..”; Oh, and elsewhere, I read; “..we will do all we can to ensure that our citizen are safe and protected”. With these, flights were suspended and rumors have it that some borders have been closed and any incoming African marked as “dangerous” . I do not blame you. You are right – you protect your own.
Dense as it may seem, Africa is trying to protect its own but you just can’t let it, can you? What, with all the double-edged bi-lateral arrangements and Judas-puckered kisses in air-conditioned boardrooms and sugar-coated conniving summits, how on this forsaken hub of humanity are we ever going to make it! Of course I did not say you are fake, pretentious and utterly bigoted as you harvest what is only important to you materially, No! How could I when you are the world leaders in lectures on human rights, human dignity, human equalities and God knows what else! I surely could not dispute that, could I?
With Ebola in mind, all I am saying is that while signing billion-dollar contracts on foreign direct investments, resource excavation and exploration rights, trade agreements and treaties and feel-good global summits and symposiums with fancy names, please include in the package a humanitarian clause in case Ebola and his cousins strike!
Yes sir! You were right when you complained that the response to Ebola on the ground has been “Woefully inadequate”. We are guilty as charged. Our technical, medical, research and social mobilization resources and machinery can surely not match yours, especially when we are so loudly aware of that accidentally historic injustice of colonization (both past and present) that has ensured the ground will never ever be leveled.
I have one plea though. While we suffocate in our Ebola jar, we have seen that with a single shot of a concoction you have been cooking in some of your kitchens you are actually able to revive a dying Ebola patient! Pray tell me then, why are we still having this conversation if you have the answer to what could have prevented the deaths of over 900 people? Why are we not collectively intervening in this massive emergency crisis with the urgency it deserves? The number of the dying has just shot up as I finish this sentence yet that “magic concoction” is still lying there in your kitchen….
Oh, you must be busy running away from this strange African World of Ebola back to the safety of your own developed surreal world, right?
Look, I may arrive in one of your airports some day. As I disembark from the plane I anticipate the glares, snares and stares of “the Ebola carrier from Africa”. I am prepared for that. I will never apologize for my heritage, and neither should you. So while I will be going through the scrutiny and gloved quarantines in case I am carrying the Ebola virus, I will recall that tiny FACT that the world is only ONE and the air we breathe is the SAME, weather it is Ebola-infested or not.
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