LAST WORD
The Wuhan Exam
H
ow times change! Ochieng was
reminiscing on the useless topics
in geography that he had to cram
to pass an exam. He knew exactly where
in UK coal was mined and because of such
worthless knowledge he actually passed his
secondary school exams and proceeded to
university.
Coal was important for the colonial
masters because it drove the industrial
revolution that catapulted Great Britain
into world dominance and they were just
duly cataloguing their successes. They set
the exams and we had to know the answers
as nonsensical as they were to the African.
At the beginning of this year Ochieng had
not even heard of Wuhan or that it was in
China and he still cannot pinpoint where it
is on a Chinese map but the town has found
its place in the annals of history albeit for
all the wrong reasons.
Wuhan will be etched in infamy as the
source of the first real global crisis where
the dreaded corona virus surfaced from and
created such an amazing social upheaval of
a scale never witnessed before and it was
like a bad movie playing on a far off screen.
This terrifying and highly contagious
disease has in a very short span of time
travelled to literally every corner of the
planet and caused havoc in the world order
from destabilizing trade, closing borders,
crashing markets and causing unparalleled
fear and despondency to so many people.
A well-known African saying states that
if you see people being shaved it would
be wise to wet your hair to avoid an
uncomfortable dry shave. It is prudent
to watch the environment and react
accordingly to minimize the consequences
of an imminent event.
whether since everything is made in
China nowadays, Wuhan made the virus
and exported it to the rest of the world
without instruction manuals on how to
handle it?
It would actually be more correct to state
that we imported the virus rather than
the Chinese exporting it since the world
by the pattern of the spread of the virus
seems to have gone to China to collect
it and were caught flat footed when it
began to spread.
An equally known maxim of life states
that it is not what happens but how we
react to the event that determines whether
we overcome the obstacle or even thrive
in adversity. We have seen some radically
different reactions to the same threat. That the world is a village is a well-worn
cliché but we seem to have forgotten
that whatever happens in any part of the
world you will know about it in seconds
and it will affect you physically within
a day if travel is involved. That is how
small the world has become.
Ochieng cannot comprehend how it is
that Wuhan, where the problem emanated
from is currently going back to normal life
after a grueling three months of pure hell
while the rest of the world is preparing for
Armageddon. Did we not learn anything
from Wuhan? Isn’t it interesting that no major city in
China, the cities that we can actually
pinpoint on a Chinese map, is reporting
a crisis? Why is the gnashing of teeth
and the tearing of cloth being witnessed
everywhere except the very country
where the virus was first identified?
At the risk of sounding flippant about
such a serious topic Ochieng wonders Unfortunately it all boils down to
leadership and what we have come to
value as important in our lives, strangely
enough one would like to assume that
the preservation of life is the paramount
consideration of any nation state but
apparently that is not necessarily true.
The last word is that a world exam on
cooperation was set in Wuhan and we
are all sitting the exam and unfortunate-
ly the marking scheme will be written in
human cost whatever the numbers even-
tually tally up to and the final verdict
will be posted in history.
It also comes down to the type of system
that runs a country and it has become
abundantly clear that autocratic regimes
respond to crisis better than democratic
regimes where the next election colors
all the moves that a leader takes in
confronting a crisis.
This is not an apology for autocracy with
94 MAL35/20 ISSUE