#INYB5: Ojigbijigbi, Whites Are Confused?

Breaking News and Coronavirus.

Opening notice: do not click on any links till you're done reading.

Let's Talk

Nowadays, happy days are few. There's a new news on the TV, something breaking the front pages of dailies, OAPs analysing a new issue, something for the folks who visit Instablog to comment on, a sub-thread on Nairaland, and a barrage of outrage for the Twittereens. What opens with the two words: Breaking News, may quickly degenerate into a national crisis. Those in news rooms should be having the time of their lives. No slow news day.

Just in the space of two days, two Nigerians rocked the boxing world. Not as Nigerians, but as immigrants. We learnt quickly that talent maximisation is a reason for migration. If your country forsakes you, another will treasure you. ASUU announced a warning strike. The second case of Coronavirus was announced in Nigeria. And an Emir was dethroned, exiled, and silenced.

What we see is a ripple effect of events that metamorphosis so quickly that we forget the last event that occurred. We can't follow events, we can only remember they once happened. This morning a new Emir was appointed. The news of the dethronement is quickly forgotten. It becomes more obvious that our attention span is continuously shortening. But a quick path down memory lane, we find things that are damaging to the things we quickly forget.

The history of diseases reveals that humans begin to think of ways to cure and prevent after the first occurrence of it. It's obvious that we care about a disease after we realise the effects. From sleeping sickness to AIDS, we study for prevention and cures when the first cases were established. This is because we never can know what disease will hit our doorstep next.  We are just in a limbo till a new disease knocks.

The emergence of COVID-19 was swift. Quickly, it took over some of the biggest countries in the world, then gradually it spread like it was on a musical tour. The scope of Coronavirus has not yet been determined in many countries. A respiratory disease moves with the gentility of air, but it takes away with the burst of wind.

However, it appears this virus is different. Suddenly, the top countries are at the bottom. There's an upturn from the disease. Everyone is panicking as they try to grasp who's next on the virus' hit list.

Who would have thought a country like Uganda will be issuing travel ban to countries like Italy and China.
But the funny thing about diseases is that it has always been Europeans importing them into Africa. Not the other way.

Upon the arrival of colonialist in Uganda, there was an explosion of diseases. All these diseases were formerly unknown: smallpox, plague, gonorrhoea and syphilis. Later measles, cholera and typhoid.

In 1901, sleeping sickness broke out along the shores and islands of Lake Victoria. That by 1905, it affected over 200,000 people. A third of the population in the region died of the disease. It later affected Tanzania, Rhodesia, and Sudan.

By the 1909, three health centres were built in Uganda exclusively for the treatment of venereal diseases (syphilis and gonorrhoea).

Between the 1980s and 1990s, through a secret organization known as SAIMR ( South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR),  a group that masterminded a lot of coups and internal violence in African countries, the spread of AIDS was effected with deceptive methods.

If you have heard about Josef Mengele (the Nazi doctor who performed inhumane surgical procedures in the Auschwitz concentration camps), Keith Maxwell was the South African version. Maxwell, who was not a doctor, envisioned something like the human experiment labs you watched in movies.

With the help of SAIMR which he ran, Maxwell established clinics in the poorest neighborhoods in South Africa. These clinics served as locations for the spread of the virus. In an apartheid, where blacks had no rights and access to medical care, a white man establishing clinics to treat people was benevolent philanthropy. But when a black person walked into one of those clinics for vaccines, they came out with the AIDS virus.

What Maxwell wanted alongside many other white folks was a South Africa with an higher population of white people at the turn of the 21st century. At the time, AIDS was the best way to wipe them off.

The Tuskegee Experiment comes to mind. In 1932, under the guise of free medical care,  Doctors from the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) enrolled 600 black people into an experiment. 399 had contacted syphilis while the other 201 who were free of the disease were told they were being treated for "bad blood."

The people who were enrolled in the programme were expecting to be treated. They were not. They were experiments. Rather than give them the correct drugs, they were given aspirin as health workers tracked the disease's progression in them.

But we don't know about these things. When any small disease affects a part of Africa, all Africans are stereotyped because we don't control the stories, who tells them, and how they're told.

Africans have been reporting on Coronavirus in these countries with so much respect. I'm not saying this is reverse-Ebola, but I think you should have seen the reports then.

There have been News reports that show some sort of obsession with black deaths in Western media. They are surprised that blacks are not dying. It feels like an abomination that only whites and Asians have been greatly affected by the disease.

The Nigerian case is an Italian. The Egyptian case is a German. The south African case is from an Italian tour group. Rather than focus on the problem, there's a confusion surrounding black immunity.

If feels like we are Henrietta Lacks-ing Corona.

What follows is to ask why we are not dying? Why we have shown some sought of immunity? I have no answer to this salient questions. But think about it, we really wash our hands a lot and we actually bath. Not something you can say about the whites. Maybe it's just because we have enough problems already. Or just a recompense or what you call “karma.”

But notwithstanding, what this virus has shown is that because you own power, it takes a pandemic to humble us all into equals. To quote Wale Adenuga Production,

we are nothing but a waiting Corona in the hands of the creator.

On Desk

1. I received my contributor's copy from The Republic today. You can read my article here. Whew! It's beautiful! I did photoshoot 😏

   
   
   

   2. If you know Culturetrip.com, I have something coming out soon with them.

   3. It feels like this year is running out too fast. We are in approx mid-march already. Still 15/100 rejections but we adulting on.

Musa's Gate

In this edition of Musa's Gate, I think you should read this article that describes Trump so perfectly, I'm annoyed on his behalf. Read here.

So that wraps up this edition. Kindly Share with your friends. Click the Like Button!

Do you have something you want me to talk about? Drop it in the comment section.

And remember, share your sanitizer with others.

Till the 25th!