©Awkadigwe Ikenna: 9 August, 2014; comparable to recent doctors' Lassa experience.
I have become the lonely orphan. My people and my friends have rejected technically me. I see it on their faces, though they fear to tell it to my face. With my extra senses, I hear their muted voices; I secretely observe as they look at me with their lateral canthi. They watch all my steps; I mean my family people and my friends . Where I step, none would want step; where I sit, none would dare to sit; with what utensil I eat or drink, none uses them till I am gone from the house; and I could pledge my two fertile testicles that they "sterilize" those cups and plates with concentrate salt and hot water when I am gone.
I could bet with the shrivelled breasts of my grand mother that my little daughter had a bath with concentrate salt and hot water this morning as I left for work ,in pugnacious derision of my explanations that salt water in dangerous for bath. That is when I accepted that the opinion of one old man in the village about Ebola, that early morning salt-water bath cures the disease, makes more sense to the people, to my people, than the opinion of a practising doctor.
I ask myself: am I really any different from a suicide bomber of the Boko sect, paid to exterminate his life and those of others? I wonder this in my small moments of silence. I have become a "threat" to my people and my friends. They hail me from afar, and disappear into the thin air when I attempt to reply to their greetings. I extend my hand in handshake but nobody returns it. The small small boys and girls living next to me, point at me in muted conspiracy , from afar. It is not paranoia, but I can assure u that I hear their conked voices telling one to another that I have a highly contagious killer gem called Ebola. It has been told that Doctors working in a hospital environment carry and share Ebola.
I have not seen one Ebola yet, but I am now Mr Ebola himself. Ebola disease has not even arrived here yet, and this is happening to me. I think it is happening to other colleagues of mine too.
Even my neighbours say their goodmornings to me on phone so that they wont have a need to talk with me or shake my hands at our common single-line car park.
I work in the hospital, and they have already been told that hospitals are the best place to acquire the disease for onward transmission to unsuspecting people. Its rather spooky to me. I now know that in those periods of Ebola, I am quite alone.
Even fellow Doctors, who work in less Ebola-exposed areas, now shy away from a close-range chit-chat with those Doctors that are more Ebola exposed. I too am tempted to scoot when there is an opportunity to exchange pleasantries with the highest-exposed Accident and Emergency Doctors, left to their meagre fate by hospital management and government; notwithstanding that Ebola viridae are established to have acquired some inexplicable predilections for the pregnant women and their placentae; the category of patients that fall squarely within my competences and job descriptions.
My requelm to Ebola is my Sawyer's epithaph; LOVE VAPORIZES BEFORE THE EBOLA DEHISCES!!!
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© Copyright 2016 Ikenna Fredrick Awkadigwe. All rights reserved. No part of this publication is permitted to be used in any way, copied, photocopied printed, reproduced, transferred, adapted, argued in any fora, used in Court or recreated in any form or resemblance whatsoever, without the written approval and license of the author, Ikenna Fredrick Awkadigwe.
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