Season's Greetings From The Hot Zone.....

Lest ye be worried that I am lying in a hospital ward spurting blood just like the champagne punch fountain at your cousin’s wedding, let me take this brief opportunity to calm your fears. My plans to deploy myself to Kampala as Intrepid Girl Disease Detective last week were scuttled by my bi-continental bosses. The suits in Washington had wanted us to help provide some stories and information about the outbreak for radio stations up north, but the U.S. Embassy-Kampala bureaucrats decided that really wasn’t our territory. So instead of walking around in a cool haz-mat spacesuit alongside CDC scientists, I’ve had a bit of time to decompress.

I guess now I can go ahead and tell you the truth. Last Saturday, as I was orchestrating our evacuation out of Gulu, I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. It’s true that when you’re in charge during a crisis, the adrenaline HAS to kick in, and you push your own panic aside. I was a rock on the outside....and a whimpering weasel on the inside. But right now, I’m having a pedicure at the Sparkle Salon at Garden City Mall, as one last flirt with civilization before we head back to Gulu tomorrow morning. Our bosses and the Ugandan government concluded the outbreak fears aren’t as bad as originally portrayed, and that the alleged cases in Gulu turned out to be false reports.

Whatever. The most important thing I’ve gleaned from this past week has been a more robust intellectual grasp of the immense geopolitical game-playing that goes on with the lives of the hoi polloi around the world, at every conceivable level. Essentially, about 9/10ths of the people on the face of the earth are utterly expendable to the other 1/10th. I mean, take
this Ugandan situation, involving a “mystery disease” that was first identified in August, but finally confirmed to be Ebola about two weeks ago. Now, I must stress here that there’s no proof the Ugandan government withheld information about the Ebola outbreak ahead of the big Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting last month. So in a sense, there’s really no point in running around pointing fingers and making accusations…at least until or if some proof is found.

I suppose the next 30 days will be critical. Ebola takes a while to percolate in the old immune system, up to 22 days max. Most of the reported cases and deaths have occurred in or very near the epicenter, in a Western Uganda town called Bundibugyo. So it’s not like people all over the country are showing up at clinics with symptoms.

However, if that starts happening a month from now, we are all in deep doo doo. I’m talking Grand Canyon Deep, people. But I can’t allow myself to worry about that right now. I’ve been too busy bracing myself for the traumatic emotional suckfest that will, for me, be Christmas Day in Gulu. The good news is I’ll be all alone, which means I won’t have to pretend to be cheery and sociable. And I’ve finally had it up to my eyebrows with all the tranquility and meditative solace on our compound, so a few days ago, I bought myself a sweet 29 inch Samsung flat screen TV.

The Dish Satellite TV guys will hook me up on Tuesday, so that means by Christmas Day, I’ll have already logged significant fetal-position hours on my cramped, uncomfortable couch watching endless reruns of “Friends” and “According to Jim,” which actually do a marvelous job of reflecting the vibrant diversity of American culture. Coupled with the steady stream of obscenely sexist and violent rap and hip hop videos, I’d say people around the world know all they really need to know about American society by watching satellite TV. (Remind me to tell you about the conversation I had with a British computer guru the other day. Let’s just say he wanted to know why I wasn’t like the “typical African American.”)

Anyhoo, truth be told, I really think I’m gonna be okay come Noel. I wouldn’t bet the rent on it, but I truly don’t think I’ll fall apart or anything. I’ll have my “moments,” as I’m describing them to my colleagues Akiiki and The Intern. There have been times when my smile isn’t quite as wide, and I don’t feel like hanging out at Da Pub, or one of the other local social watering holes in Gulu. There’ve been times when all I’ve had for dinner is a glass of Glenfiddich while lying in bed. There’ve been times like earlier today, when I was wandering through one of Kampala’s crafts markets looking for items to make my cozy little cottage feel more like home, and I saw a necklace that just screamed Julie’s name. I just KNOW she would have absolutely loved it. And just last year at this time, I would have gone ahead and bought it for her.

Now I don’t have to.

That’s what this Christmas boils down to for me. Now, I don’t have to pretend to even WANT to feel the Christmas spirit. I don’t have to be merry. I don’t have to buy presents for anybody. I don’t have to listen to Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas” a billion times in every public space. I don’t even have to be assaulted by the gaudy materialistic trappings of the traditional American Christmas, when people beat the crap out of each other to get their hands on the last Wii console, and spend three months’ mortgage on stuff they don’t really need, and won't really do what advertisers spend tens of millions of dollars each season trying to convince us they will.

This Yuletide, I’ll just be curled up on my couch eating rice and beans in Northern Uganda. Dreaming of an Ebola-free Christmas.