You're undecided now. So what are you gonna do?

Nothing is quite as mesmerising as the sight of money being spent. I mean, huge amounts. And the spectacle becomes even more absorbing when the object of this largesse seems unwilling or unable to respond in the desired manner.

At least, for one of the two men running for president of the United States, the entire enterprise would turn out to have been a monumental waste of money. But even at this point, neither party can claim ascendency. The polls are deadlocked, Obama clocking 48% and the challenger exactly the same.

The question in everyone’s mind now is, how is the remaining 4% going to shake out? Who will win the prize? Deadlocked it has been for weeks and thus it appears destined to remain until polling day. A game-changing minority seem unable to make up their mind whom they are to trust to lead them out of the swamp in which the country has been stuck for nearly a decade.

For outside observers, it is a strange business that choosing seems so difficult. The incumbent has had a fair record of achievement, when the opposition permitted, whilst the man trying to unseat him does not seem to have much cred outside his coalition of fiscal conservatives, small-government advocates, plus a curious bunch who, despite evidence to the contrary, insist that Obama was not born in America.

I wonder if not being born in America has parallels in not being “Made in America.” This could be important because of the unemployment spectre that is turning the American dream into a nightmare. The parallel is apt because of the love-hate relationship that Americans enjoy with stuff from China. They love the price tags but, with equal intensity, hate the hemorrhaging of all those high-paying manufacturing jobs to the Chinese. In short, they would very much like to eat their cake and have it. If only. Unfortunately that hemorrhage cannot, at present, be stopped: One-half blame the attending physician and demand a change of doctor. One is conveniently at hand carrying a bagful of rubs and licks that he had tried often enough, but which, sadly, had actually resulted in exsanguination rather than staunching the flow. Unreal.

The sense of unreality is deepened further by the notion, held by many in America, that the government has no business in the affairs of the people. Excuse me? How far would you take that? Until there is no government at all? Then what? Don’t worry, if push comes to shove, you have your gun, and you can take care of yourself?

The economy remains the thing, though. The President’s men (and women) reckon that he has done his best given the hand he was dealt by his predecessor and the events of 2008 and after.  And, in these very last days before the vote, employment figures have shown a slight increase, not enough to make a dent in the 7.9% unemployment rate. Exactly what the challenger needed to put on the charge sheet that Obama has mishandled the economy.

It is looking like the undecideds will remain so until that very last moment when they enter the booth on Tuesday. How could you not have made up your mind 48 hours before Election Day? And if it hasn’t been made up by now, what possible chance is there of it being made up by the day itself? Perhaps they are hoping for divine guidance? But if there was to have been divine guidance, surely, it must have been delivered by now.

Instead, what I can see is flashes of silver, as coins are tossed in order to settle on whom to vote for. Trouble is, that trick might still not break the deadlock. I am not very familiar with American electoral arithmetic, but the potential for trouble seems very real.

I don’t know how many of you know about or remember or even care about an election in the year 1967 in an obscure parliamentary election in Sierra Leone that ended in a dead heat: 32:32. That, future historians will record, was the beginning of our troubles which resonate even to this day.

Tell Fren Tru

Two Elections

A number of general and presidential elections are taking place next month. One of these, predictably, is getting worldwide attention, whilst the others are of local interest only. As you would expect, the big one is taking place in America, gobbling up huge amounts of money and media time.

"Red is the colour of my vote"

Did you know that Americans are spending a staggering 6 billion dollars on their presidential election? You would think that they are getting value for money. Instead, they are saddled with an incumbent bored out of his mind, to the extent that he couldn’t even be bothered to show up at the first of their presidential TV debates.  The wannabe, on the other hand, disses half of the electorate as plebs, not worthy of attention from his kind.

"We will bark you all the way"

  A world away in Sierra Leone, people there too, have been consumed by their presidential election set for November 17, although campaigning was not supposed to have begun officially until a few days ago. Salone is a small country with an annual budget that is as far from the $6bn that Americans are wasting on their election as it is geographically remote from that country.  But still, you can make quite a splash with a few leones in a country where a sizeable crowd can be hired for the equivalent of a few hundred dollars. And certainly, the cost of kitting out supporters in party regalia, whether human or canine, does not amount to much, a fact that one party has taken full advantage of. Such low-tech devices can also be deployed to send messages, calibrated to shock, even in those supposedly enlightened and sophisticated United States.

"My neck is red"

Violent subtexts abound everywhere, of course, whether in a constituency determined to keep its right to bear arms (for what?) or where, more explicitly, violence stalks the political landscape. Here participants do not necessarily take naturally to the business of jaw-jaw, so the Sierra Leone version of the televised debate between the front running aspirants seems, for the moment, to be languishing in the long grass.

But let us hope that we will all get to the other side without any major bust-up and America will have its 3 billion-dollar man in the White House whilst Sierra Leone will have its own one thousand-dollar version at State House. One can only hope that each would deliver the goods they promised. We can’t wait for ever.

Tell Fren Tru

Cleaning up our Act

I just came back from holiday to find Sierra Leone grip(p)ed by a cholera epidemic.

Why I am not surprised? Cholera has had a lurking presence in the country for as long as I can remember and, from time to time, depending on the intensity of the rainy season, emerges and runs through the population like a dose of salts. I can recall, as a freshly-minted doctor, my first epidemic there. Bursting with knowledge about the way cholera and other waterborne diseases spread, I readily remembered lessons taught in med school, about how an astute physician, John Snow, had sussed out cholera by merely observing how the infection clustered around a street pump in the Soho district of Victorian London.

I recall also how I was immediately conscripted into teams managing cases desiccated almost to extinction by the diarrhoea and vomiting that are typical of the infection. We fought valiantly then, but the epidemic took its course, regardless, and faded away only at the end of the rainy season.

Yes, we have come a long way since Victorian days. Most of us no longer invoke mysterious forces when an epidemic rages. We know that a physical element is involved, and that in this case, if we keep feces separate from the food we eat and the water we drink, we will not catch diseases that have a fecal origin and die from them.

            And yes, we also know that the more crowded the environment, the more likely it is, when the barrier between excrement and clean food and drink is breached, that epidemics will occur. And yes, even in towns and villages that are not so crowded, run-off from heavy and persistent rain will enter pit latrines, cause them to overflow and discharge their contents into the environment, contaminating everything. This is what happened forty years ago and this is what is happening today and what has always happened.

Yes, hand-washing is crucial in breaking the cycle during epidemics and even in more settled times. But where do you get the clean water to wash your hands with when everywhere is contaminated?

The answer to this simple problem is beyond politics or ideology. Neither political posturing nor the dialectics of ideology can stem the tide. Germs will do what germs do. We know how the disease is caused, how it is transmitted. So all we need is a plan. I mean an actual blueprint of the future sewage systems in our main cities and towns.

Did I say beyond politics? I was wrong, of course.

I just read that the President of Sierra Leone recently signed a massive memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the government of China, in which they agreed to cooperate in a whole raft of activities including huge engineering projects. But, significantly, there was no mention of how to deal with sewage in the country’s towns and cities.

I know, I know. Such documents are drawn up months in advance of their signing, and yes, yes, the epidemic burst upon us in the last six weeks (surprise, surprise, it only rains torrentially every year from May to November). But here, we have an urgent, urgent public health priority that must be handled as urgently, even if it means adding a paragraph or two to that MOU. It would give us the chance to revisit the plan that imperial Britain proposed for Freetown more than a century ago, a vantage from which we can begin to talk meaningfully about how we can get this doo-doo out of our face.

Tell Fren Tru

Not doing it

It must be about six weeks since I last blogged. I have been on holiday. Well, sort of.

Taking a holiday from writing is seductive. It just comes upon you. Easy. Just like standing on a slippery slope and being given a slight push. You slide down gently at first, and then you accelerate as the days go by. And by the time you know it, days, weeks and even months have passed. 

And try as you might, anything you want to say sounds foolish or irrelevant or both.

So, time for a diversion: Watch the Summer Games; paint the house; take a trip. When all these fail to inspire, try selling the house.

They say that death, divorce and moving house are the three most stressful things in life. I have not tried divorce and, so far, I have escaped the attentions of the grim reaper. But trying to write a piece when the spirit sags is, in my view, much, much more disruptive to the soul than any of these.

…So we sold the house and, temporarily homeless, took up residence in a midtown Toronto hotel two or three blocks from where the house was (and still is). 

Hotel residence is never ideal, but this one is particularly vile, even though it is one in an acclaimed international chain. Besides, its rates were extortionate, probably because of demand created by the ongoing TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) season. Although we did eventually negotiate the rate down (by the VAT), the stay caused serious damage to the family exchequer. A film festival should not be a licence for hotels to “tiff” from the public, the authorities should be told.

But the price has been worth it, nevertheless. I find I can write once more.

Tell Fren Tru