It's been 49 weeks since Ebola came to West Africa, and still there hasn't been a single case in Ghana. This is an uncommon blessing. An amazing eleven-and-a-half-month run of good fortune. The concern most people have is that, much as we wish this lucky streak would last forever, we must still plan for the worst. Ebola though, is not the easiest thing to plan for. There are so many unknowns. We don't know when - or even if - it's going to come to Ghana. We don't know how it's going to come in. We don't know who will bring it, or who will be infected with it. Worst of all, we don't know how to cure it.

 

 

Ebola stalks us

There's a lot we don't know, and as humans, we fear the unknown. The problem with fear is that it paralyzes us. When there is so much we don't know, it makes us feel like there's nothing we can do, like all efforts would be futile. So we freeze. We do nothing. We pretend there's no problem, or we blame it all on something outside our control, we go into denial, and soon, we get overtaken by events, and find ourselves in crisis. And then it's too late.

The fear of the unknown is a very dangerous thing. The human experience will always involve problems and obstacles. The worst thing you could face a problem with is ignorance. In our hometowns, unexplained death is often blamed on some elderly relative, who gets branded a witch. We spend all our time condemning this witch, while the real cause - often something manageable, like diabetes - just gets left unresolved, so more people keep dying for no obvious reason.

We have a problem with slums in this country. We don't seem able to stop people from settling where they shouldn't, and before we know it, they have laid down roots, dug in for the long haul, and created a community for themselves. A community with no toilets, with no streets, with no utilities, no leadership, no representation. We drive past them every day, and pretend they don't exist. We don't feel affected by their disgusting living conditions. That's them, not us. Until they start having diseases. Until the filth they have to live with becomes the Cholera we have to deal with. Then all of a sudden, it's a problem. A problem we have no idea how to fix. And the worst thing to face a problem with is ignorance.

Ignorance. A total lack of knowledge, inspiration or ideas. The sort of thing that makes us raze down a slum after giving three days' notice to the inhabitants, without any thought of where they will move to. Without the imagination to tell us they are likely to simply settle in some other slum. Without the inspiration to conceive a lasting solution to the problem that does not involve depriving our own nation's citizens of their fundamental human right to shelter. Without the knowledge that razing down a slum does not solve the Cholera problem, but simply adds a homelessness problem to it.

Anyway, I was talking about Ebola. And our fear of the unknown. There is so much we don't know, and that breeds fear, which paralyses us. So what's the solution, How do we fight the fear of the unknown? Well, we fight what we don't know with what we DO know.

We don't know when Ebola will come, but we DO know that we must have a plan to manage it if it does. We don't know how it will come, but we do know that it will need to be contained if it does. We don't know who will bring it, or who will be infected by it, but we DO know we will have to trace all their contacts and monitor them for 21 days. We don't have the cure for it, but we do know the treatment for it. We also know that the earlier you get treated, the better your chances of surviving Ebola.

This solution applies to all the things we fear as a people. We may not know whose fault it is that our economy fell into all these … challenges, but we do know that the solution is up to all of us. We may not know when our wages will finally catch up with our bills, but we do know the only things that will get us from now to then are sacrifice and discipline, We may not know how to deal with slums, but we do know that if we don't enforce our laws, more and more of them will keep springing up around us. We may not know what killed our relative in the village so suddenly, but we do know it keeps happening to others, no matter how many witches we unmask. The simple solution to our fear of what we don't know, lies in our application of what we DO know. Ignorance breeds fear, but knowledge is power.

My name is Kojo Yankson, and I may not know everything, but I do know a thing or two. That's why I'm not afraid.

GOOD MORNING, GHANAFO!