THEY KNOW IT IS LASSA FEVER BUT THEY PREFER TO CALL IT EBOLA-LIKE DISEASE
Sections of the Western media are up to their tricks once again in terms of how they have started reporting the few cases of Lassa fever in Tonkolili district. We are very sorry about the death of the doctor who traveled so far from his homeland in the Netherlands to heal people in this country. Our hearts go out to his family and friends. We also join the many Sierra Leoneans praying for his colleagues who are undergoing treatment after being exposed to Lassa fever.
That said, we have a big problem with the way the some of the Western media are framing these few cases. In fact, what are they trying to achieve by calling Lassa fever “an Ebola-like disease”? They are only trying to cause fear and panic among our people and those wishing to visit Sierra Leone by the very mention of the word Ebola. They know very well that the moment they mention the word Ebola in any report from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, the world is bound to stop and take notice. This type of framing is problematic. Soon when anybody holding a Sierra Leonean passport turns up at any Western airport they will be required to run many tests or be quarantined for days.
Back home we shouldn’t allow this type of reporting to spread across the powerful media organizations of the world. We should be able to report our own story by simply giving out the facts about Lassa Fever as a disease and what is being done now to bring it under control. Here is what we think:
1. For us the only thing new about the current situation is that the disease has appeared in a place where it wasn’t expected. Lassa Fever, for many people, is confined to a corner of Kenema district. We are not even sure whether this is an outbreak in the true meaning of the word.
2. Surely it bears some similarities with Ebola but it is not Ebola. It is easier to say Lassa Fever than to call it “an Ebola-like disease”. There is nothing wrong for a reporter to include the fact that Sierra Leone experienced an Ebola outbreak in 2014 as background material but this is Lassa Fever please.
3. We must not only mobilize medical personnel to deal with this problem, let’s also mobilize the media. For now we don’t want that elaborate command structure Koroma put in place to fight Ebola.
4. Somebody asked us whether this wasn’t an Ebola outbreak disguised as Lassa Fever. It is for that kind of question that the media MUST be an integral part of this effort.
BUSHY CEMETERIES, OVER-FLOWING SEWERAGE SYSTEM vs. CABLE CARS
Last week we drew the attention of our Mayor of the Sun to the sorry spectacle of raw sewerage flowing on the major streets in the Central Business District of Freetown. We are now monitoring the situation to see what she will do. We warn her that we cannot be ignored on this matter particularly because it borders on the health of the people of this city. We are ready to report that issue over and over again until somebody who campaigned to be elected to do this kind of work hires the relevant people to save Freetown from a cholera outbreak and forget about social media blitz and overseas travels.
Now we have pictures here of a cemetery in Freetown which is beginning to look like the Gola Forest. Almost all the graves are totally covered – this particular one in the east of our city looks abandoned.
We cannot believe this is happening in the same city where our Mayor is talking about spending hard cash to bring in Cable Cars. To be honest let’s have Cable Cars but before that let’s clear the stench from Freetown by lifting the cholera veil hanging over us and making the home of our departed compatriots reasonably decent. Look at those Commonwealth graves near the EDSA power station at Kingtom. Is the Mayor of the Sun telling us we can’t do the same for our own cemeteries? She doesn’t seem to care for the dead probably because they don’t have a vote after all.
We don’t want to start talking about encroachment on the burial spaces – Circular Road and Kissy Road will be half gone by the time this Sun Mayor is thrown out of office.
HOW TO HIDE UNDECLARED PROPERTIES FROM THE COI
Some properties are becoming too hot for their masters to handle these days because Biobele and friends are asking this simple question: TELL US HOW YOU ACQUIRED THIS PROPERTY? Why should this question be too difficult to answer? Now we hear people are trying desperately to hide their Malibu-style luxury homes, their very own status symbols of yesterday under people with very low credit ratings – zero incomes in fact in some cases.
Maybe what some of these guys with these unbelievable bank accounts and expensive properties should do now is to come clean at the COI and tell the nation the whole truth and nothing but the truth about those bank accounts and property adding, of course, the fact that in their unbridled acquisition, they never thought a day like this would ever come. After that we will take some of the stolen money from them and allow them to live in peace on earth as they prepare for hell fire for breaking this commandment: THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.
We know some are planning to fight to the bitter end so we might as well help them do so by suggesting some more ways of hiding their assets.
1. Don’t tell Biobele and friends that your brother or cousin or mother or father in the United Kingdom, Australia or America sent you the cash to build those castles. It’s easy to check their earnings there. Hahaha. Yanda notto ya oh! Some of them are working hard out there but they are on zero hour contracts. Be careful!
2. Tell Biobele and friends that your cousin lives in Mexico and is the right hand man of the jailed drug lord El-Chappo. They will understand what it means to hold that position.
3. You can also say that you woke up early one morning for your usual devotion and found huge boxes full of US dollar bills in your garden and that you waited for a year for the owner to turn up but nobody came forward so you decided to give yourself a decent retirement home. Why not?
4. Here is another clever one: say you actually constructed the property to give it to your favorite charity as atonement for breaking the great commandment: THOU SHALT NOT STEAL. Your favorite charity is: FRIENDS OF THE DEAD. They don’t have homes and have found their way into our cemeteries.
5. If all of these fail to convince Biobele and friends then go home and wait for the government White Paper on the commission’s recommendations coming up in the New Year. Hope you find our effort useful.
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