Breath of life, the kiss of death
Mbongeni Mguni | Friday August 22, 2014 16:00
It is safe to say Thomas Robert Malthus and the British cult group, Pink Floyd have never met. While the two lived at least 175 years apart, their significance has come home for Batswana in 2014, combining to produce the soundtrack to the fears that have gripped the nation since August 07 when the Ebola red alert was issued.
Cruelly, Malthus’ theory of population posits that because human populations grow at an exponential rate while food production grows at an arithmetic rate, natural checks such as war, famine and disease are at play to ensure the species’ survival.
Pink Floyd, meanwhile, are symbolic of a darker genre of rock music in the 1970s whose major themes included “life and death, time and space, causality and chance,” according to Rolling Stone magazine.
Where Malthus’ theory provides the lyrics, Pink Floyd provides the music to that irritating tune that becomes stuck in your mind and won’t leave no matter how hard you try to forget it.
Robert Malthus and Pink Floyd, however, were the last subjects on my mind as I stood face to face with Health deputy permanent secretary, Shenaaz El-Halabi in the ministry’s corridors on August 14.
A week earlier the ministry had issued its first Ebola public warning and today was holding a multisectoral briefing where travel restrictions against Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia were announced, among other initiatives.
After a dread-inducing briefing lasting more than an hour – where the room fell into introspective silence several times – I hoped to glean some form of assurance from El-Halabi and hopefully dispel the depressing Pink Floyd melody that had began strumming quietly in my mind.
I hoped that away from the glare of the cameras and other reporters, El-Halabi would possibly tone down the gloomy picture she and her lieutenants had painted of a disease that by Thursday afternoon had killed 1,350 people in West Africa. “The Ebola threat is very real and it is very present,” she says however.
“We are taking it very seriously.”
Halabi explains that Ebola could take half a day to arrive in Botswana, presenting citizens with a disease the likes of which their imaginations have hitherto refused to allow them to fathom. I mull over the idea that a flight full of Ebola could be heading our way at a moment’s notice, almost not hearing Halabi’s explanation of the focus on airports.
“We have placed health care workers at the airports because that’s where most of the people who are not symptomatic will be coming through,” she says.
“Someone coming through by road or sea from the affected countries will be symptomatic within the time it takes to arrive here.” Cold comfort, my inner voice says, as I try to educe meaning from the private conversations El-Halabi’s lieutenants are having around the corridor. Protective gear procurement is ongoing says one while another points out that labs are being set up, the private healthcare sector is being engaged, traditional and religious leaders are on board.
Whatever solace gleaned from the briefing dissipates the second I check my social media accounts, where apparently, wild opinions are being cast about like rocks in a riot.
“Someone is in isolation in Block 8,” says one, “The stables are being locked after the horses have bolted,” says another. Local twitter is aflutter with one spine-tingling post after another.
Fear reigns supreme. Thomas Robert Malthus and Pink Floyd are serenading the most terrified among us to the shores of insanity and beyond.