Saying it in song: A bouquet of blessings for them
As at the time of writing this, no case of the ebola disease has been confirmed in Ghana, touch wood. Thank God all the reports have turned out to be false alarms.
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And one can only marvel that there are still people of such angelic character in this wicked world that they volunteer to go and help ebola victims, despite the huge risk.
The international community’s support in West Africa’s time of desperate need, including the 3,000 troops being sent by President Obama of the US, demonstrates ‘the milk of human kindness’, as Shakespeare put it.
But equally inspiring, perhaps more so, are the individual contributions to the offensive, some of them the ultimate sacrifice – such as the eight people brutally murdered in Guinea, by distrustful villagers in Wome just for trying to educate them about the disease.
Two weeks ago, simultaneous funerals were held in Ghana and Nigeria for Dr Ameyo Stella Adadevoh, a Nigerian medical specialist with Ghanaian roots who in preventing an ebola patient from spreading the disease in Nigeria contracted it.
British nurse, William Pooley who caught the disease in Sierra Leone and was evacuated home for treatment, recently made global headlines when after his miraculous recovery he announced his determination to return to Sierra Leone to help fight the epidemic. “It’s the least I could do to go back and return the favour to some other people,” he explained.
And what about Ruth Atkins of Oxford, the first person in Britain to volunteer to be injected with an experimental vaccine so that its efficacy can be confirmed and sent to West Africa to treat ebola victims?
Then there is the compassion of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which has donated 50 million dollars for the Ebola fight. Here in Ghana, the wireless Application Service Providers, together with TXT Ghana, have donated 50,000 Ghana cedis to the Noguchi Research Institute to help its ebola work.
Furthermore, there are the researchers worldwide frantically working to produce a vaccine and a cure.
I certainly don’t have adequate words to express my admiration for these people and I suspect that the direct and indirect beneficiaries of the humanitarianism of these extraordinary beings don’t have either.
But maybe one can try to say it in song, for example, by paraphrasing the lyrics of one of the chart-toppers of the highlife maestro Amakye Dede, translated as:
If we give you expensive cloths to thank you, they will wear out; if we give you money, it will soon be spent; so all we can do is to ask for God’s bountiful blessings for you.
A bouquet of blessings for them, as well as to all front line health workers, lifesavers, wherever they may be. Such people help restore one’s faith in humankind.