A rallying cry for action

With the WHO’s announcement that new Ebola cases could reach 10,000 per week by December, centre stage is the failure of the world’s leading nations to properly confront one of the worst epidemics in human history.

It is time for the world to wake up. Yes, the response has been gaining momentum relative to the world’s initial reaction, but the virus continues to grow, and we’re losing the fight.

Solutions are often difficult to find when the root of the problem has not been revealed. It is time to speak very frankly – to reveal the true problem.

Edward Said and V.Y. Mudimbe famously wrote about the Western creation of the ‘other’. Said wrote in terms of the Orient, while Mudimbe was more focused on Africa and what he called ‘alterity’ – both referring to ‘otherness’.

The basic argument goes something like this:

Throughout history, the creation and continuation of the ‘other’ has been made necessary by the West’s need to justify its cruel treatment of people in the non-Western world – major events and ideas such as the slave trade, colonisation, and post-colonial political interests provide good examples.

DELAYED RESPONSE

The perpetrator more easily accepts the obvious injustices of these acts if they are committed against lesser societies.

Therefore, historically, the non-Western world was depicted as exotic, savage, and uncivilized, while the Western world was portrayed as a bastion for intellect, good governance, and civilization.

Most importantly, these legacies remain and have filtered into Western societies, so that children growing up in the West are exposed to very little African and Middle Eastern history. The parts they do learn – the slave trade, colonization, and post-colonial political interests – reinforce this idea that the West is somehow positioned above (both on a map and theoretically) these ‘other’ populations.

So how does this relate to the current Ebola outbreak?

Let’s start here: the first time the world’s most powerful leaders decided to seriously address the epidemic together was on October 15, 2014.

To put that into perspective, the first case of the current outbreak was recorded in December, and Guinea’s Health Ministry declared a national emergency in March.

The delayed response reflects a mentality that the West African people suffering from Ebola are somehow beneath Western societies, and therefore it’s not the West’s problem.

But the simple truth is that the West has helped create it, both conceptually in the ways Said and Mudimbe describe, and sometimes even literally.

In the case of Liberia, the United States of America helped found the country and has heavily influenced its state building process ever since.

Another way the West’s ‘othering’ of Africa has manifested itself is through the lack of contextual understanding.

Initial responses to the outbreak were correctly focused on informing those in danger about Ebola. Despite good intentions, international experts found that the very people they were trying to inform were refusing their help, and sometimes violently pushing it away.

We in the West could not wrap our heads around such a strange response, reflecting our Western-centric mindset.

The truth is, those societies pushing our experts away operate on a system of trust, and they simply did not trust the foreign experts and government officials coming to deliver important Ebola awareness information.

Once we dug deeper, we realized that winning the trust of tribal chiefs – the true leaders of those communities –is more effective in creating an accepting and cooperative citizenry.

RESPECT AFRICANS

So now, as the world’s most powerful nations attempt to slow one of the worst health epidemics in human history, they are forced to confront an ugly tradition of viewing Africa as the ‘other’.

Some have chosen to hide from this unpleasant history and solve the problem using a blank slate approach. But as I discussed above and here, their methods have lacked contextual understanding.

In the wake of the great Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui’s death, maybe this is an opportunity for the West to re-invent its view on Africa, to actually show respect for African people.

Western powers admittedly have a plethora of foreign policy issues to address at the moment, and their response has indeed become exponentially more powerful in recent weeks.

But it is not enough. Two days ago, Liberia’s National Health Workers Association called on medical workers to go on strike to demand an increase in the monthly risk fee paid to those treating Ebola cases.

Additionally, recent reports indicate teams sent to collect the Ebola-infected deceased are accepting bribes from family members so that the family can give their loved one a traditional burial – and thus further spread the disease.

These are financially driven decisions that are obstructing the response to Ebola. Why shouldn’t these workers be given proper compensation? Why shouldn’t the West provide that monetary aid?   

Thousands of people are dying. Entire civilizations and states are at risk of being wiped out. So the response must be stronger, and it must start now.

Because the fact remains: the West has helped create the problem.