EBOLA SHOWER!

Yes it happened!

I was awake till about 3.10am this morning and be sure I needed some hours until 8am to make up for the lost sleep but it was not to be. Just at about 5am or thereabouts, my phone was barking silly from all four corners of the house shouting at me as if about calling me a lazy man. It was terrifying that the pillars of the house pleaded I should get up even if it is for their sake. I did.

From only two humans, it was as if a thousand generations were calling; just two persons? They are for sure my best friends and greatest lovers. One was calling from my ancestral home in the village and the other from a city of Igwenga; my dear mother and my beloved Uche. The story had gone round. Over and beyond here, even down to the farms in the hinterlands of Tiv land in Benue State Nigeria, people were already taking early morning hot salt-solution bath.

Just like the usual care, I was advised to make sure I stand up immediately or as early as possible to have a shower with a bit of hot water mixed with some salt. This should be done prior to the last morning cock crow – that should be perhaps before the clock mentions 6am.

Normally, KEMKA S. IBEJI must ask questions, he will always discuss with people around him to have an idea of what the seeming truth or working truth within is. For sure, I took the path on the staircase down. Seeing a young lady doing her morning chores I enquired; have you taken your hot water salt bath this morning? She smiled with a confidence of knowledge mixed with ridicule. The news is all over!

In a chance of less than a minute, over four persons were out of their rest-pits obviously jeering. One of the ladies told me that she is not cheap for such initiation. This is a version of insinuation which opines that some cult group have concocted some cunning items with which to initiate the ignorant. But for this lady, she has her wit’s cap on for any simplistic awe. Imagine that!

Another lady who I should think is more enlightened came up telling how the story emanated from a certain man in Kogi State who has openly distanced himself from such proclamation that this strand of shower is a preventive certainty against the Ebola Virus spread.

At a little turn, one man working up called my attention explaining how he listened over the radio an interview on this EBOLA SHOWER with a medical professional who is received as an authority. According to him, the medic authority discarded the news making rounds that such a hot salty bath is preventive of Ebola Virus spread.

At this point I got seriously confused. But if I dare stayed behind to exhaust the views, I bet you I would have been there till now because many more people were coming out to render portions and versions of their own contributions.

I climbed up the staircase that brought me down.

Inside the room, I have this computer set and the internet giving-piece looking at me. They gazed at me as if about to ask me what I was waiting for. I picked them up, switched on the laptop, fixed them up and headed for the social media.

An army of insults, ridicule, jeering, and sorts of the same kind were littered everywhere. While some people were insulting and ridiculing those who posted the information or misinformation, others brought out Africa for some serious dealing of punches and lashing. Africa is a backward continent, Africa is foolish gathering, Africans are this and that…

Nobody was ready to give reasons except this trade described above. And here, I got more stunned and with a little courage I could shut down the system to think. The conclusion is that from a few who managed to hint, ‘the news was unscientific, unsubstantiated, and lacks proof of laboratory experiment.’

All these people might be right after all.

Let us think about the irony and the verisimilitude.

What if the judges were wrong? What if the EBOLA SHOWER was right?

The truth is that nobody knows EBOLA and many are already making knowledge claims. Ebola has no authority yet. All medical experts and all clinical human gods are as ignorant as the ‘layrest’ of all illiterates of Ebola virus.

You have the right to argue against this but be truthful to your mind. If anybody knows Ebola virus, that person should also know its cure. If what we hear is true that Ebola has no cure, then it follows that nobody knows Ebola.

Those who say that the news is not scientifically given have also forgotten that the news has not also been scientifically refuted or falsified.

But come follow me to my little hut for this gossip. Sheeeeeeeew! Silence! I know Nigerians very well. Do you know that those who have come openly to say that this story is stupid and nasty have all taken hot-salt-water-shower this morning? Hahahahahahahaa… Don’t argue! I know them all.

Back in the university then, I got so close to my school of atheism that a friend of mine who is a professor noticed it. One day he called me close and asked me this question; what will you lose at the end of the day if you believe there is God? I had no immediate answer to his query and needed to go home then maybe to fathom one. Homewards, I thought over it again and again. I actually did not have anything to lose by believing there is God, but I equally have nothing to lose to doubt the existence of God if only I have an efficient moral police.

Here again I request to know; what do I stand to lose if I take EBOLA SHOWER???

Do not think am an apostle of EBOLA SHOWER and never take it as truth that I am against your bathing for prevention of Ebola. If there is anything I may want you to believe, if only I have such right and power, it is that we take our positions cautiously especially at this time since knowledge is yet far. But till it comes…

KEMKA S. IBEJI