COVID 19: WHERE IS THAT HERBAL MEDICINE FROM MADAGASCAR?
Vaccines are now rolling out of laboratories in the Western world and we are all hailing the development as the beginning of the end of COVID 19. The United Kingdom will put a vaccine into service next week, the Russians did theirs months ago, despite all the questions raised about the lack of peer review of the processes leading to its production, America is also getting set for some kind of mass vaccination program any time from now. The dark shadow cast over the world by COVID 19 is beginning to clear but, like the scientists themselves are warning, we shouldn’t be celebrating the death of COVID 19 as a pandemic any time soon.
So what’s happening in our homeland, Africa? We understand our relatives in South Africa are doing well so far with their vaccine. What we don’t about is what has happened to this herbal cure from Madagascar. In the thick of the pandemic, the leaders of that country were busy promoting that herbal cure as the best thing to come out of Africa in recent times. They even sent plane loads to other African countries to help fight the pandemic. A few days after Sierra Leone received its own share everything went quiet. We have no idea whether that Madagascan herb was ever used on any patient in out here.
We thank the Madagascans for doing something in their bush laboratory and for seeking to help the rest of Africa but sadly, that herbal cure appears to have failed because our brother in the Indian Ocean are recording many cases. It’s a bit like Yayah Jammeh’s herbal cure for HIV/AIDS that was a monumental publicity stunt targeted at making him feel good about himself. That’s all.
We put a lot of trust in the Madagascan medicine but alas, the whole thing failed. Let’s try again African brothers. Good luck.
THE YEARLY DISAPORAN INVASION IS WELL UNDERWAY
COVID 19 or no COVID 19, Sierra Leoneans who live, work or study abroad are making the traditional mass return to the homeland to do Christmas and New Year celebrations with their families and friends. It’s normally a time for families and friends in Sierra Leone to receive gifts of shoes, clothing and cash from those coming over. It’s also a time when young people in particular set up relationships that culminate in marriages and overseas travel and also a time for major disappointments along the same lines.
Truth be told, the mystery behind the arrival and swagger around this so-called Just Come or J C people to Sierra Leone is no more. And the reasons are many such that we cannot catalogue them in full here. But here are a few of them:
1. Many Sierra Leoneans have travelled to these same countries recently and have seen what obtains there. These nice pictures people post on social media means nothing to people back home anymore. They have seen it with their own eyes.
2. A good number of very blunt Sierra Leoneans have come back and told their families and communities that the streets of those countries are NOT PAVED WITH GOLD and that people have to work really hard and PAY TAXES to survive. Some of our brothers and sisters do two or three jobs just to be able to pay their bills and manage to send a few dollars over here.
3. Young girls in Sierra Leone have been so badly treated over the years by the JCs that they have now decided to ignore them. NO MORE abominable lies about love and the possibility of living abroad. The home-based girls are no longer prepared to destroy their relationships over such promises.
4. There are many young Sierra Leoneans who have NEVER travelled abroad but are doing very well here. Some of them don’t even intend to travel because things are good for them in Sierra Leone. In fact some Sierra Leoneans who had lived abroad for decades gave up the search for greener pastures and returned home. They have started businesses that are doing extremely well. Some have become politicians and their mortgage payments are back on track with big houses here in the peninsular.
5. Actually, the racial discrimination exposed by social media and all that has discouraged many who always thought those places were heaven on earth. Africans are in jail for all sorts of reasons including those for which their white counterparts get a police caution and a ride home. African people are the ones whose necks are easily found under the knees of police officers or are shot to death for stealing a bar or chocolate. So why bother risking that?
That Viral Girls school video gets mixed views
There is a widely shared video of girls in school uniform screaming as one of their own was being proposed to by a young man on a street. It seems Methodist Girls High school pupils in Freetown were in this video that has got people talking. The youth in jeans went down on his knees, holding the girl’s left hand amidst shrieks, screams and what have you as he proposed to her. Some elderly citizens have not taken kindly to that; they wonder whether the girl was over 18 and could not understand why the whole thing was done with her in school uniform. This people say our children are quick to copy things of foreign origin and always do them in the most detestable way. One elderly cab driver said it is no surprise that results of public exams keep getting deplorable year after year as students have other priorities than educational success. That very footage could have got the disciplined and highly acclaimed Methodist Girls High School Principal Madam Fashu Dora Collier nee Cummings as they say, turning in her fresh grave. The woman of blessed memory passed away on the 3rd September this year after serving the school from 1959-1985. One could tell the whole marriage proposal stuff had been well planned, with all the other girls watching and then going into delirious banter.
Other people have just waved away the entire drama, saying it is the trend of the times and that our adolescents with all the smart phones and technologies are out of control.
What we would want to know is whether the girl with that ‘’marriage proposal’’ will be going into wedlock straight after school or what. Won’t her head now be turned away from anything academic after that bold and controversial act that was filmed and shared for the world to see? Well they are young and bold and we could only advise that they are well counseled so as not to manufacture babies prematurely.
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