Some human behaviours need more than two thousand years to change. Remember the ungrateful lepers whom Jesus saved from the horrible leprosy disease and 90 percent of them just walked away without thanking him?
Well, in 2026 a thankless international community just did worse than the nine lepers; they have kicked Uganda in the mouth for saving them from the spread of the deadly Ebola!
When the zoonotic disease broke out in DR Congo last month, Uganda moved swiftly to close its border with the source country, spending billions of shillings and diverting security personnel from other duties to enforce geographical seal.
The other eight countries bordering DRC did not act as decisively as Uganda. A few Congolese who managed to sneak through and enter Uganda were followed and taken into isolation. One died after infecting four health workers, who were quarantined alongside the Congolese who were saved before mixing with the population.
Uganda Ministry of Health officials and Uganda Civil Aviation Authority (UCAA) managers at the frontline in the fight against Ebola . Uganda has not reported any new cases in the last 18 days .
You would think Uganda would be applauded by the international community for the timely move! Maybe that would be expecting better conduct by the mighty countries in the international community. After all, do we deserve better than Jesus who was snubbed by the lepers he saved?
So some powerful countries instead slapped travel/visa ban on Ugandans! And it bit us at the right or wrong time: Hundreds of Ugandan Rotarians had already packed their bags to go for their annual international convention in Taiwan. They had already paid for air tickets, hotels and visas. A ban was slapped on them. Other Ugandans had done similarly to go for the FIFA World Cup and were equally affected.
While the visa/ travel bans did not affect the other countries that border DRC but did not take the measures Uganda did, those slapping the ban forgot that being on the other side of the Atlantic, they could have used their a microscopic bit of their huge resources to secure the mere 37 kilometers of Congo’s tenth border with the world – the small coastline on the ocean.
And who doesn’t know that DRC hosts many mercenaries from or funded by the powerful countries that are constantly seeking the country’s minerals – and use child slave labour in the process, which is another but related subject?
But thankfully, Uganda’s leadership is not petty minded and as the visa ban bit, Kampala did not reciprocate the international malice but instead sacrificed eighty (80) of its medical personnel, deploying them deep into Congo to go and fight the deadly Ebola outbreak.
The sacrificed Ugandans have set up four emergency centres inside Congo to treat the affected and do all that is possible to prevent further infections. Initially the plan was to deploy forty medics given the country’s meagre resources. But Uganda’s top leadership decided to throw all that it had into the struggle to save mankind and doubled the force to 80, and the centres from two to four. We hope resources allowing, even more Ugandan health workers will be sacrificed to go and make the world safer.
As for the international press, some of the big ones chose to go to the gutters and assign the DR Congo numbers to Uganda as well in their reporting. When they learnt the truth, they stubbornly chose to be clever and lump Uganda with DRC and kept reporting the total casualties of the two countries, yet knowing that Uganda had only four health workers who had been affected in the line of duty, and were quickly quarantined. But as the cynics say, why let the truth get in the way of a good story? Just continue lying to the international audience that Uganda is affected by Ebola like DRC.
But trust the Ugandans for not letting international malice put them down. The Rotarians who were blocked from traveling to join their brothers and sisters in Taipei have organized mean Rotary “extravaganza” at Munyonyo and all Rotarians in Africa and the world are invited, for they know how committed Ugandans are to the ideal of service to humanity above self.
