Apamwamba Disease

Apamwamba Disease

‘What are you doing nowadays?’ I asked my youngest daughter Kupela. ‘You’re always moving up and down, is it to any purpose?’

‘Poor old Dad,’ she sighed, ‘you’re losing your memory. I told you the last time I was here, I’m at Yunza studying public health.’

‘Ah ha!’ I cackled. ‘That won’t take you long to study! We don’t have any public health. What we have is apamwamba health and apansi death.’

‘On the contrary,’ retorted Koops, who makes a habit of contradicting me, ‘even the upper class get sick and die.’

‘Poof!’ I sniggered. ‘Those fat cats, even the few sick ones refuse to die. I’ve been waiting for some of them to die for these past ten years, and even today they’re still lingering on. It’s most annoying. Meanwhile poor people just pop off overnight. Here today and gone tomorrow.’

‘Say what you like,’ sighed Koops, ‘but the main health problem is amongst the ruling class. The apansi have minor diseases which merely kill individuals, but the apamwamba have major diseases which are killing the entire country.’

‘Huh!’ I scoffed. ‘Where’s your evidence of these apamwamba diseases?’

‘There’s plenty of evidence if you know where to look,’ said Koops. ‘Didn’t you see that newspaper photo of the Chief Injustice refusing to shake hands with Cycle Mata? Why do you think he behaved like that?’

‘Typical of you,’ I laughed, ‘trying to make simple things complicated. He didn’t want to shake hands because he doesn’t know him. As a judge, he spends all his day in court meeting thieves, tricksters and murderers. These are the people of his acquaintance that he has to greet on a daily basis. Since Cycle Mata is not a criminal, the Chief Injustice had never met him. He didn’t know who he was, so naturally he had no inclination to shake hands with him.’

‘Unfortunately the answer is not as simple as my simple father would like to believe,’ said Koops. ‘The awful truth is that there is a dreadful disease circulating amongst the ruling class, and the Chief Injustice was frightened of catching it, or of passing it on.’

‘Now which is it?’ I laughed. ‘Catching it, or passing it on?’

‘That’s the problem,’ explained Koops. ‘Nobody knows whether they’ve got it or not. It’s a hidden disease, whose behaviour is peculiar. Although it’s a pathological condition spread by a virus, its broader effects are both political and economic.’

‘Does this mysterious disease have a name?’

‘It’s commonly known as Sticky Finger Disease, because the symptom of the disease is government fingers sticking to donor dollars.’

‘So is the disease caused by sticky fingers?’

‘That’s what the donors say. But the government calls it the Sticky Dollar Disease, because they say the donors are deliberately introducing sticky dollars which are designed to make ruling class fingers become sticky, as a way of making third world governments look like a bunch of crooks.’

‘And what does the medical profession say?’

‘They call it HGV, meaning Human Greed Virus. Apparently a small greedy virus infiltrates the skin on the end of the victims fingers, then makes its way to the victim’s heart where it multiplies until it has destroyed all their moral fibre. Then it secretes a nasty sticky stinky glue on the end of each finger, causing the unwitting victim of this terrible disease to collect thousands of donor dollars intended for the poor and needy.’

‘So does this virus cause an immune difficiency?’

‘Quite the opposite,’ explained Koops. ‘It is caused by immune deficiency. Just like the indigenous people in America were vulnerable to syphilis because they had no natural immune defence, so our apamwamba have no natural defence against Sticky Dollar.’

‘So where does this immune deficiency come from?’

‘That’s one of the things I’m looking at in my research. There is a theory that the victims of HBG have previously been infected by a Human Greed Vulnerability Virus, HGVV, first introduced into Zambia by a pigmy politician who brought it from the Congo forest, where sticky fingers were very useful for climbing tall trees. This HGVV makes people vulnerable to the Human Greed Virus which then causes Sticky Fingers.’

‘And you say the poor Chief Injustice is scared of shaking hands because he doesn’t know whether he’s infected or not. But don’t we have an HGV test, just like the HIV test?’

‘There is an effective test,’ replied Koops, ‘but people are scared of taking it. The Auditor General has a test called AIDS, the Audit Investigation Diagnostic Survey. But naturally people are very nervous of being publicly exposed as suffering from Human Greed Virus.’

‘So how exactly is the disease diagnosed?’

‘Victims are found with thousands of dollars sticking to their fingers.’

‘And is there a cure?’

‘Not really. The only remedy is to protect the uninfected remainder of the population. Those infected have to be separated, or quarantined, so they can’t infect the others.’

‘You mean they have to be jailed?’

‘That’s the problem,’ she said, ‘its not possible to jail them.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because,’ she explained, ‘the infection has already spread to the judiciary.’