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The dead lay like dolls over the grass, limbs at
awkward angles. They were grey-tinged, blue-lipped with blank stares. The
bodies, once repositories of people as alive as we were, were abandoned shells
left to rot in the open. There was no one to bury them and shed salty tears on
their graves, no one to send them away with a love song and kiss the breeze
that carries the dead heaven-bound.
There was no more sentimentality for the dead. It was
easier not to think of them as people at all. Our senses of humour became
warped and darkly macabre. We laughed at their pallid expressions and gave them
rude names. We tossed them higgledy-piggledy into the mass graves.
Before the virus America was on top of the world,
invading countries and imposing their policies, issuing ultimatums. After the
virus, we were all equal for a short time. Equal in our universal grief for
humanity. There was no Super Power until we Africans moved to America, removed
the dead from their houses on the hill, and stole from them without guilt.
In the year 2076, a virus ravaged the world. It
started in the Americas. The Zika virus spread faster than malicious gossip as
everyone cowered in their countries obeying their governments’ travel
advisories. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared an international
emergency of the virus.
First discovered in Zika forest in Uganda in 1947 in
Rhesus monkeys, Zika virus was identified in humans in 1952. It affected human
new-borns. Babies were born with abnormally small heads. It was spread though
mosquito bites by Aedes mosquito. However, the infected people spread it
sexually.
But Zika virus was something else entirely different.
As four million people in the Americas got infected, some of them started dying
of nerve gas related complications. And then the apocalypse started. Overnight
people started dying en masse. The world panicked.
America was as powerless to stop the virus as it was
of the deaths. The plague, natural or bio-engineered, had over 95% kill rate.
No amount of money or sophisticated technologies could save them.
Then there was a glimmer in the proverbial tunnel:
cure was discovered among the little known Ogiek people of Kenya who lived in
Mau and Mt. Elgon forests. The people, who lived all their lives in the forests
save for a few who sought western education, were immune to the virus.
Kenya became the fifty-first American state, CIA the
police. The Ogiek were targeted. Mysterious disappearances, abductions, and
illegal detentions abound. A remote lab was established in Mau Forest. American
scientists used our blood and bone marrow to develop a vaccine. It never
worked. Most of the people who had mysteriously disappeared, or were abducted,
returned home, narrated their ordeals in the hands of the American researchers
and the CIA.
And then I happened. I went public with the truth, why
we were immune. With friends from Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), we
developed the vaccine.
Consequently, Zika Sans Frontiers was formed. Zika is Swahili for ‘bury’. We
volunteered to bury the dead.
America was ghostly. There was so much horror to take
in. We went around looking for dead bodies to dispose of. Sometimes we saw a pallid
person staggering to a health care centre that didn’t exist. We rushed to
vaccinate them but sometimes they dropped right where they walked. I doubted if
any of the medics had survived and would help for fear of becoming infected.
Once we were done burying the dead world, our American
Dreams came true. We did not go back to Mau Forest, or Mount Elgon. We became
Americans straightaway, no lengthy applications for the almighty green card.
Being the brain behind Zika vaccine I was voted
unanimously the President of the United States of America. Dr. Sophia Lebo, an
Ogiek, POTUS. Unbelievable.
One day in the Oval Office I stumbled on TOP SECRET
documents. Zika virus was created by Centres for Disease Control in the US on
recommendation by WHO as an austerity measure to control the exploding world
population.
Daring and adventurous, the twist in the end got me. Karma!
ReplyDeleteYes, Nduka. My idea was to show that the stone (Africa) that was rejected by the builders (Americans and the rest of the world) became the cornerstone.
DeleteDaring indeed! If only ...lol! What name would you give to these biological elimination or warfare stories you seem to have a leaning towards, Vincent? What genre? Not quite Sci-fi right? Just faction? I liked the futuristicness of the story as well as the use of the collective pronoun.
ReplyDeleteYes, Ruj. They are just faction, with a twist of vice and conspiracy. I try to show that nothing is this world is what it seems.
DeleteThis is an awesome piece. You are widely read. In my end of my year exams, i was asked about Zika virus as being a new child to the commonly known TORCHES infection. Also as one of the causes of small head (microcephaly) and as part of the arboviruses. From your article, which is well written (factual), I appreciated the medical part of it. I don't dispute the fact that it may have been engineered
ReplyDeleteThis is an awesome piece. You are widely read. In my end of my year exams, i was asked about Zika virus as being a new child to the commonly known TORCHES infection. Also as one of the causes of small head (microcephaly) and as part of the arboviruses. From your article, which is well written (factual), I appreciated the medical part of it. I don't dispute the fact that it may have been engineered
ReplyDeleteThank you,Gideon, for reading and offering your expertise comment. That tells me I am not badly off in my research, which is the first thing I endeavour to do.
DeleteI'm glad you got time from your busy schedule to read.