Cancer, the King of Diseases Has to be Kicked Out of the Village, Now!

This is not an academic paper. It is not a medical journal. Neither is it a professional opinion. Then what is it? I would prefer to call it a pedestrian observation by a regular Joe. It  is the thinking of a common man riding on a Route 46 matatu.

If you grew up in the eighties, like yours truly, you would agree with me that life was easy and nice. The worst that happened those days was Askari wa Chifu and KANU youth wingers harassing Mama Mbogas and drunkards in the village.

But around 1988, there appeared a scourge in the village that did not have a name at first. Since it was a new, strange, and a killer ailment, many communities gave it a name depending on how it manifested itself. My community called the new unwanted village killer, Mukingo, meaning an enlongated slim neck. This was because anyone suffering from the ailment ended up with little flesh around the neck area.

Fast-forwards to the 90s and the early 2000s, the AIDS scourge ravaged the whole land. It was named a national disaster by Rais Moi in his sunset days. It swept without a care in the world about a person’s status in the society.

Hospitals across the nation were filled to the brim with young and old suffering at various stages from the disease. Cemeteries filled up in the land. The village was dotted with graves in every other homestead.

NGOs targeting the scourge were formed in galore. Even the United Nations formed a special body, UNAIDS to fight the scourge globally. Nobody knew how to combat the virus adequately.

But even as the AIDS fire spread far and wide, something else was happening in the land. This dragon was very sneaky. It still is. And it is a very painful death when it begets a person. I am talking about cancer. Yes, the ugly C word.

As I write, every other hospital bed is probably occupied by a cancer patient!

But maybe we may want to find out why a disease that was so rare when we were growing up is now sweeping the nation. Perhaps due to how stealth and shrewd it approaches, nobody is spared.

It does not matter how many condoms you use to protect yourself from shit, it does not matter how careful you chose what and when to eat. Heck, it does not matter whether you are a smoker or not. Once a stupid cancer carrying cell in any part of your body start misbehaving, starts unchecked subdivision, then before you can even say mama! It catches you. Without kubisha hodi!

My little knowledge in matters cancer is that our bodies kill numerous cancer carrying cells every minute. But sometimes one of those shitty cancer carrying cells escapes the body’s askaris, the whole battalion of troops that guard our bodies from ailments gets cheated, and, just like the Trojan Horse, the body starts killing itself from within.

But we may not belabor interviewing medics to know where the rain started beating us. You just need an analytic mind. It is as clear as the moon in a cloudless sky that we have brought the big C unto ourselves. Why do I say this?

Because we are our worst enemies. Period. Have you seen the chemicals they spray on sukuma wiki and tomatoes? Have you not seen greens growing literally in shit in town? Raw sewage mixed with lead and other carcinogens is the new irrigation system in Nairobi. We feed our animals chemicals which they do not have time to break down before we slaughter them. And because we are at the high end of the food chain, we end up with the chemicals fed to the animal three days ago in our system. Simple.

Have you seen the shit they add to milk to make some extra cash? Have you not observed that the village posho mill is now silent? Are we not now buying unga mamba moja from the supermarket? Don’t we all want the whitest refined sugar from hell?

Have you not observed how we worship soda to the point of making it part of the special drinks served at the high table during village functions? Have you not witnessed how nyama choma joints have mushroomed in the land?

How about the fully-grown two-and-a-half broiler chicken we happily chow and mow at the Moi Avenue chicken fries joints? How is it possible for an egg to turn into an adult chicken in less than 90 days? Kwani inamwagiliwa dawa gani?

I could go on and on with my list of what is wrong with our eating culture today. Someone said that when you see multinationals like Monsanto invading a country, when you see global fast food chain restaurants like KFC and McDonalds making in-loads into your country, be worried, be very worried. Run as fast as you can. Get out of town. Run to the hills. Because no sooner do those multinationals set up camp in town than global pharmaceuticals follow suit. Why? You ask. Because its new market for the drug manufacturers. So they bring in disease-laden foods in our supermarkets and then we start getting strange diseases. Diseases of the rich, they call them. It therefore goes without saying that multinational drug companies come in to “treat” us. Fast food and refined food is thus quickly followed by strange diseases. Got it? Thanks.

Can we reverse this? Yes. But it will take a while. The ship is already out of the docks. Our palates are now addicted to kuku porno. Our sweet tooth is fully functional. We attend parties and cakes are our favorite bites. Our fridges are filled with refined foods from China. Our most liked dink is Coke baridi. Shit, we can even buy a Coke with our name written on the bottle. Our young men can now seduce girls with love messages written on Coke bottles. See how shrewd the devil is? Imagine giving your loved ones poison every time you give then soda. How pathetic.

Therefore it will not be easy to convince ourselves to start eating the tasteless nduma for breakfast. Or sweet potatoes. Or the traditional mrenda. Na terere, na managu. It will not be easy to go back to the village posho mill for unga namba tatu. The whole cannel of corn for ugali. But we can do it.

We can also walk a few hundred meters to the local duka without calling msee wa nduthi atupeleke. We can work a little more rather than Netflixing and chilling whole weekend. Get out of town and hike on Mt. Longonot, or a foray into Hells Gate for bike rides.

We can afford the gym fees. It is said that our grandparents worked eight hours in the outdoors, and then went home to rest. In our case, we work eight hours and then hit the gym to ... you guessed right, “work out”, (duh!) Because our work involves a lot of sitting on our butts hunched over computer screens!

See, I told you from the beginning. These things don’t require medics to tell us. Or seminars and conferences in posh hotels. We can educate ourselves right here. Nipigie makofi!

Finally Brethren, say a prayer for cancer patients in the world.

By Mzee Moja | mzeemoja14@gmail.com