And then there were three ...

Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are neighbors. Why Nigeria, which is far away?

One word puts them in a special group: Polio.

“We are closer than we have ever been before to wiping out this virus. The next few months will tell us if we may be able to finish the job this year as this is the time when the virus is circulating"

Many of us here in the US and elsewhere suffer from the craziness that trump and his minions have been.   We have a president who openly questions whether vaccines are good!  Bill Gates says that the idiot-in-chief asked him about it--"he asked me if vaccines weren’t a bad thing because he was considering a commission to look into ill-effects of vaccines."  And what was Gates' response?  Gates said he told Trump, “that’s a dead end, that would be a bad thing, don’t do that.”  Had trump been the president back in the day, the US government might not have done anything regarding polio, small pox, ...

Thankfully, trump has come about during the end stage of the fight against polio.  Pakistan is inching towards zero.  One of those instances in real life when we begin to appreciate the mathematical idea of "tends to zero" but not yet zero. Perhaps the country might have wiped out the virus if the US had not recruited a Pakistani doctor to help find Osama bin Laden by having him carry out a fake vaccination campaign.

As we get closer and closer to eradicating polio, we need to pause and think about one of the most remarkable aspects of the vaccine: Jonas Salk did not patent the polio vaccine that he created.  He chose not to patent it.

Actually is is only two--Pakistan and Afghanistan. Because, Nigeria has not recorded a case of polio for 20 months since 2016.

If the country can make it to three years, plus a few extra months as an epidemiological cushion, it will be certified polio-free, which will also mean that the entire continent of Africa is clear of the disease. 

Imagine that; the African continent could be officially polio free in a year.  The entire continent.

Against such a backdrop, we have our eyes set on the November elections.  But, 2018 will be far more historic than a Democratic takeover of Congress if there are no new polio cases in 2019.  A big fucking deal, as Joe Biden once remarked!

Fifty shades of brown ... but one gets targeted all the time

It was one of those rarest of rare days.  I guest-lectured, on campus.  Really.  There is at least one faculty colleague/friend who thinks I am worth her class time. The talk/discussions were about the caste system in India, in the context of Carnatic music, about which one can go on and all I had was fifty minutes!

India is a strange (sub)continent with all kinds of discriminatory practices.  The poor engage in it and so do the rich.  The educated and the illiterate alike are avid practitioners.  And, of course, they extend this "courtesy" to visitors too, especially if they are darker skinned--yes, from sub-Saharan Africa.  The latest happened in Bangalore, which is the hometown of the long-time commenter/debater:

An African woman was reportedly brutally assaulted by an angry mob in India’s Silicon Valley, Bengaluru

What happened?

A 21-YEAR-OLD Tanzanian student has lodged a police complaint accusing a mob of stripping her and forcing her to walk “without her top” on the street in Bengaluru on the night of January 31.
The alleged incident took place following a road accident earlier in the day, when a car driven by a Sudanese medical student hit a local resident, 35-year-old Sabeen Taj, who died in the accident, while her husband Sanuallah sustained injuries.
According to the woman’s complaint, a mob gathered that night and set on fire the Sudanese student’s car, as well as a car in which the Tanzanian student was travelling.

Perhaps you are thinking, hey, a mob might treat anybody that way--the crazy mob didn't care to be racist.  The mob "pummelled a chivalrous Indian man who’d given the woman his own shirt to cover herself."

The two were targeted for their race: by the mob’s logic, an African had killed someone so Africans should pay the price. Officers of the Bangalore police stood by as the mob thrashed the Africans, and passengers ejected the victims from a passing bus they’d attempted to board to save themselves. Later, police refused to register the Tanzanian’s complaint until she produced the hit-and-run driver. (A cop told her, “You all look alike.”)
 Racism (and racist violence) is only one of many forms of intolerance in which India specialises. But it’s the most modern of India’s evils. Particularly sickening is the casual racism shown by Indians toward Africans in their midst.

I just don't get it!  How awful!!!

Wait, there's more:

Source

On the morning of Feb. 06, a few hundred African students gathered on the steps of Bengaluru’s Town Hall ... It was a heartfelt outcry over violence against Africans that is becoming all too commonplace in India. But there was also a strange air of amusement and bewilderment at the protest site. The policemen sniggered, speaking among themselves. Some passersby openly laughed, entertained by the sight of a group of agitating African students.

But, it is not merely the accident and the mob.  According to one student, Janeth:

Her experience with fellow students was problematic, and she did face racism, especially from the general public. “They think Africans are into fraud and prostitution,” she said.
Even landlords, who sometimes speak with potential tenants on phone, often deny apartments on realising that they were speaking to an African. “I don’t want Africans,” the typical landlord would say, Janeth recalled. 

It is just bizarre :(

Source

For a change ... I bring you good news!

A polio-free world is in sight.  Yes, a world without polio!

Since the initiative was launched by the assembly in 1988, the number of polio cases have reduced by 99%. The remaining 1% of cases can be found in the two countries with endemic polio – Pakistan and Afghanistan.

This is one of those rare moments when we humans deserve to stand up and congratulate ourselves.  Go ahead, pat yourself on your back.

Note that AfPak is the problem, in more ways than one!  The other notorious home for polio, Nigeria, is off the list; what an achievement, right?

It has been one full year since polio was detected anywhere in Africa, a significant milestone in global health that has left health experts around the world quietly celebrating.

A quiet celebration because of the recognition that the virus can always stage a comeback.  After three continuous years of no cases, the real celebration will begin.

“This is a big success, but it’s still fragile,” said Dr. Hamid Jafari, the initiative’s World Health Organization director. “There’s always a worry that there could be an undetected case in a population you’re not reaching.”

If you are like me, you then wonder how public health experts go around seeking confirmation.  (Maybe it is a good thing you are not like me, eh!)

How does one go about finding the polio virus across the expanse of an entire country or continent? There are now far fewer polio virus needles in the global haystack, which is fantastic news. But the remaining ones become even more difficult to find. We can’t stamp out a disease if we don’t know where it is. But with polio we do know where it is—and we know thanks to poop.

And now, if you are like me, you are puzzled.  What has poop got to do with polio.  That's how ignorant I am; turns out that all these years I hadn't bothered to find out how polio spreads!

When children get polio, the virus grows in their intestines and is excreted in the stool, and from there it spreads to other children. That’s why it has been so tough to beat polio in areas with poor sanitation. 

No kidding; now I understand why India eliminating polio within the country is such a cause for astonishment.  A country with extremely poor sanitation facilities managed to wipe out polio.  That's phenomenal!

The last case of polio in India was reported in 2011, an achievement once thought impossible. The country once suffered from more polio cases than anywhere else in the world, and the combination of dense populations, poor sanitation, and weak routine immunization programs led experts to suggest it would be the last place on Earth to drive out polio. Today, India’s polio story is one of historic success.

What more evidence does one need that we humans can achieve remarkable success, despite all the hurdles!

Since 1988, more than US$9 billion has been invested into the global polio eradication initiative.

What a wonderful use of nine billion dollars!  Let me put this in perspective:

The Marine Corps, the ascetic tribe of “Devil Dogs” that prides itself on being “the first to fight,” is getting a new weapon, announcing Friday that its version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is, at long last, ready to be unleashed in combat.
The announcement comes after years of testing and development, marking a significant milestone for the sometimes-beleaguered, often-criticized and always controversial $400 billion program, which is years behind its original schedule and billions of dollars over its original budget.

Got that?  400 billion dollars. For fucking fighter planes!  Ok, I shouldn't rant about the military expenditure because I want to bring you only the good news in this post ;)

So, brother, can you spare me a dime. Er, make that a billion dollars. To launch something similar to the war against polio.  Against the Ebola virus:

Last month, the New England Journal of Medicine published a bold proposal by three doctors for an international vaccine fund with an initial capitalization of $2 billion. That is far less than the $8 billion that Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, which had the most Ebola cases, say they need for recovery. Bringing a single new vaccine to market costs between $500 million and $1 billion.
The fund would be a boon to the biotechnology companies and university research centers that are already working on vaccines but don’t have the resources to get drugs approved and manufactured. And it would save lives.

Don't try telling me that we don't have the money for it.  You can never, ever convince me about lack of money.  Will stop here before I take off on a rant on our misplaced priorities! ;)

'Tis Thanksgiving. Remembering the year that was ...

As we sit down for the Thanksgiving meal with friends and family, perhaps all of us can be thankful for one thing—the year with strange and unexpected developments is coming to an end.

Who would have thought that this country would ever end up panic stricken about Ebola? So panicky we became that the photograph of a nurse biking in a small town in Maine caused quite a few, who were thousands of miles from the Pine Tree State, to worry that they, too, caught the dreaded virus infection. We became so involved with the panic over nothing that we even forgot the thousands in West Africa who continue to suffer from the illness.

Ebola came in time for us to worry about the state of the world just when the Israel-Gaza conflict ended. Of course, the end of the bombing campaigns does not mean that peace has descended upon that troubled geography. Not far away, a ruthlessly barbaric outfit that grew out of the ashes of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has quickly become a force to reckon with. And the number of name changes this outfit has had in a matter of few months—Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Islamic State (IS)—has made the casual observer feel like there are multiple versions similar to the number of Agent Smiths in “The Matrix” movie series.

The big European story is, of course, about how Russia swallowed up the Crimean Peninsula. One day Crimea was a part of Ukraine, and the next day it became a Russian territory. Russia is not done with gobbling up Ukraine’s land, with more military incursions expected.

The perils of Pakistan continue, with the same old formula of a weak and ineffective government that is constantly trying to keep the powerful military away. The story of its life ever since its birth in 1947! Meanwhile, suicide bombers continue to strike, with a recent one near the border with India killing nearly sixty and injuring another estimated hundred. Terrorists have warned that the next incident will be in India.

If you are like me, every once in a while you wonder whatever happened to the more than 300 girls who were kidnapped in Nigeria. Remember all that Facebook and Twitter activism to “bring back our girls”? But then that was such a long time ago and Ebola has completely taken over our panic-stricken collective consciousness.

The global economy continues to be in a state of flux. Economists keep warning about the Euro area on the verge of a recession and, perhaps, deflation as well. An economic contraction while prices keep falling is one awful combination, which will surely be worrisome to the millions of unemployed youth, especially in the southern countries of Spain, Italy, and Greece.

While we in the US might feel sheltered from such an listing—however incomplete it is—of less than pleasant developments around the planet, the Ebola virus was a nasty reminder that we live in an interconnected world and that what happens in a remote part of West Africa will not necessarily stay in West Africa. The military conflicts around the world will force the US to act—a burden that comes with being the sole global superpower. Economic slowdown in Europe will affect us, given the highly interdependent economic web that links us to countries that we might not even be able to identify on a world map.

An old idea that is often mentioned, especially in academia, is that “war is God's way of teaching Americans geography.” We need to update that for the contemporary contexts. Now, any crisis is apparently how we Americans learn geography. Thus, thanks to Boko Haram, we were forced to look up Nigeria on a map. With Ebola in the news, there is a good chance that a few Americans were suddenly thrust with narratives about the historical connection between Liberia and slavery in the US. But then, if history provides any guidance, we perhaps passed on all the chances to learn geography.

Whether or not we learnt anything, not unlike my students, we are thankful that the tumultuous and eventful year is coming to an end. But, of course, just because the calendar year is ending, all those problems won’t simply go away. It will be a long while before the public health professionals declare an end to the current Ebola outbreak. The geopolitical tensions in the Levant, Ukraine, and Pakistan, will continue irrespective of the month and the year. Above all, there is really no respite from one certain scary development—when the calendar flips to 2015, the campaigning for the November 2016 elections will begin!

Three meals. Five friends. One awesome life.

Back in the old country, in those old days before television and the internet, it was in rather strange ways that I learnt about the African continent.  Father's interest to get to Sierra Leone on a work assignment, the travel writing by Manian, and my classmate having spent two years in Kenya, all gave me an idea of Africa that made me all the more curious about the people from there.

Perhaps those early experiences were also why I did not grow up with the cliched portrayals of Africa that are often nothing more than horrible caricatures.

In graduate school, at Los Angeles, one of the fellow students I really liked interacting with was a wonderfully sharp guy from Nigeria.  Kayode, whose intellectual pursuits were in science and engineering, and I shared so many common interests, from movies to politics to sports too.  Yes, Ramesh, I used to follow sports back then!  

The first time I invited Kayode to taste my cooking, I thought I had to warn him that the food might be spicy for his taste.  After taking a bite, Kayode laughed his hearty laugh and said something like "if you think this is spicy, you have to taste my aunt's cooking back in Nigeria. I bet you won't be able to handle it."  A few days after that, we were talking about this and his friend, who was from Ghana, challenged Kayode that his family cooked even spicier meals.  

I had no idea until then that in Africa, too, spicy food was not unusual at all.

Over the years, I have come to understand that breaking that proverbial bread with friends is more than merely about food. We learn a lot more about them, their families, their stories, their angst, their excitements.  And, if they are from a different part of the world, then a meal becomes a window into that world that is otherwise so far away.  

I was reminded of all these during the hour-long drive back home after dinner at a friend's place.  

Dinner home-cooked, which itself is a rarity anymore.

Dinner prepared by two sisters from Ghana.

Because they know about my fascination for cooking at home, and my interest to take photos of foods as well, they even decided to document the cooking process at various stages. When they systematically follow-up on what would interest me, isn't that by itself a wonderful statement!  It was one of those moments to realize that, thankfully, it is not a world of small talk alone, and not a world of mere fake emotions.  

So, what did I get to eat there?

Wait ... before I describe the foods to you, let me present the photos of some of the ingredients that my friend made sure to take for my sake:

These, along with a few other ingredients not in any photos, became:

the appetizer

"red red" black-eyed beans

fried bananas

spinach with those seeds in the grinder, plus ...

And they all came together on the table:

It was a wonderful way to spend a gorgeous summer evening.  We traded stories, which included a few unpleasant ones as well.  Life is, after all, not always joyful and there are aches and pains and heartbreaks along the way.  As much as it is up to us to transform a hard legume into a tasty "red red," I suppose it is equally our challenge to render anything unpleasant as nothing but an ingredient for an enjoyable life.

The morning came, and I had with coffee some of those fried bananas.  Yes, not only did I have a tasty meal, they even packed up some of that for me to take home!

Soon, it was time to go on a short hike with another friend.  

We walked and talked and sweated our way on a bright and muggy summer day to the mountain top from where we had some amazing views of the valley and mountain ranges in the distance.  As if all that was not enough of a reward for me, I was treated to an awesome pesto salad, which quickly attracted the attention of a couple of yellow-jackets that were interested in the parmesan.

Allow me to recap: dinner with friends, and lunch with a friend. And all home-cooked food.

You drooling and jealous, yet?

Wait, there is more.

My neighbors invited me over to share dinner with them. It was a fantastic summer evening on the patio, with music and a gentle breeze in the background.  Appetizers, sauteed summer vegetables, and grilled steak.  

Life can't be bad when the past twenty-four hours of my life has been with some wonderful people.

The fight against polio turns deadly. Literally. For the workers

Throughout my childhood years, running a fever was a constant event in my life.  One moment I would be playing like any other kid, and the next I would be down with a scalding temperature.

(My parents and I worried that I wouldn't be able to sit for the Class X exams, when I came down with one such fever.  For one exam, father escorted me to the hall and sat outside ready--in case he had to rush me to the hospital.)

One of the questions I was always asked was whether I experienced any pain in my legs.  And the worried look on my parents' faces if ever I said yes to that.

It was all because of a fear of polio.

I was fortunate, and so were millions of my cohort and later on.  In 2012, India registered its first year of no polio cases at all.  A Himalayan feat, indeed!

It is a phenomenal achievement that even within my life time, this dangerous disease is now close to being wiped out.  Very close, with only three countries remaining.

One of the final battles against this virus is being fought in Nigeria.  Two days ago, that medical battle turned lethal for nine polio vaccinators, not because of the virus but because of humans:

In the first attack in Kano the polio vaccinators were shot dead by gunmen who drove up on a motor tricycle.
Thirty minutes later gunmen targeted a clinic outside Kano city as the vaccinators prepared to start work.

How awful!  Simply insane.

Why did this happen?

On Thursday, a controversial Islamic cleric spoke out against the polio vaccination campaign, telling people that new cases of polio were caused by contaminated medicine.
Such opposition is a major reason why Nigeria is one of just three countries where polio is still endemic.
But this is believed to be the first time polio vaccinators have been attacked in the country.

Let us hope this will be the last instance too.

How and why do those vaccinators work in those areas of Nigeria?  Bill Gates, whose foundation--along with his wife Melinda, and Warren Buffett--has been working on this ever since he turned his attention to philanthropy, writes in his annual letter:

One huge problem the polio program found was that many small settlements in the region were missing from vaccinators' hand-drawn maps and lists documenting the location of villages and numbers of children. As a result, children weren't getting vaccinated. Often villages on the border between two maps weren't assigned to any team. To make matters worse, the estimated distance between villages was sometimes off by miles, making it impossible for some vaccinators to do the job they were assigned.
To fix this, the polio workers walked through all high-risk areas in the northern part of the country. Step by step, they explored these areas and spoke with people, adding 3,000 communities to the immunization campaigns. 

It was nine of such public health workers who were killed.  Those bastards responsible for the killings don't deserve anything but the harshest punishment.

Of course, polio is only one of the health challenges that humans, especially children, face.  If only we could spend more on global health issues, instead of wasting the money on the militaries of the world, particularly here in the US!

BTW, here is Bill Gates admitting to his geeky nature on the Colbert Report, in the context of his annual letter.

The Colbert Report
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Philosophy professors will do it ... topless?

South of the border, geographically and not anatomically speaking, there is one heck of a war going on--the drug war.  One candidate for the Mexican Congress, a 34-year old philosophy professor, decided to shake the voters into action in a rather innovative manner (ht):

[Natalia] Juarez decided to appear topless on a billboard surrounded by half-a-dozen supporters of her party, the PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution). The billboard shows the seven women, including Juarez, naked from the waist up and covering sensitive areas with their right hands while they raise their left fists.

The candidate says it's her way of giving voters in Mexico a wake-up call.

"Society is lethargic. We don't seem to be aware of our role. We need to get energized. We need to tell people, 'Hey, wake up because if you don't, sharks are going to eat you up. Wake up, you citizen and politician," Juarez said.

A caption above the women on the billboard reads: "I dare you to build a new project for a nation with no prejudices."

Of course, women baring themselves to protest is not new.  It seems to happen quite regularly in Ukraine.  In the past, such attempts may have worked--when intentional nudity or even semi-nudity in the public would have been extremely rare.  But, the shock value is immensely low, I would think, in these contemporary times of "whatever."

In Nigeria, women threaten to do that as a shaming strategy ... 

I am rich. I am rich. ... wait ..

A new avatar of the old Nigerian scam artists? Boy, look at the specifics :)  And the name of the sender: "Dr. Emperor Cross" .... muahahaha

After the just concluded United Nations summit held in Geneva regarding the 2010 first quarter of the year diplomatic payment, your funds are among the twenty others that were released and endorsed for immediate delivery to their beneficiaries. The official approved mode of payment for this exercise is a "First class diplomatic delivery as a result of scrutiny and diplomatic fraud
checks.

Your payment will be made out from the United Nations diplomatic drop box in Seattle Washington United States of America . Failure to respond to this notice within three days of the receipt of this notice will attract a cancellation of this payment till further notice and we are advised to conclude this delivery within seven business days as the United Nations will soon commence with their end of the year diplomatic reconciliation exercise.

You are advised to re-confirm the below details to enable us cross-check with the ones we have in our files. This is for us to be sure we are communicating with the right beneficiary to avoid misdirection of package.

FULL NAMES:
DELIVERY ADDRESS:
DIRECT PHONE NUMBERS:
OCCUPATION:
AGE:
MARITAL STATUS:
SEX:
CLOSEST AIRPORT:

I will provide all the required details as soon as I confirm your understanding. The United Nations has advised you to stop all correspondence with whoever that claims to be in possession of your funds.

Thanks for your understanding.

Dr Emperor Cross
US DIPLOMAT

The geography of slavery

Henry Louis Gates has a neat op-ed in the NY Times on the complexities of identifying the parties responsible for the horrible trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Gates refers to this database, where you find a treasure of maps on this subject, including the following map:

The topic of slavery is always like the topic of the Holocaust: every time I read something about these topics, I simply cannot understand how humans allowed these to happen. History is full of such atrocities, I suppose ... and, yet, even the President is so cautious about using the "genocide" word when he referred to the manner in which the Ottoman Turks practically wiped out a good chunk of the Armenians ...

Quote of the day: on life

the most important thing about myself is that my life has been full of changes. Therefore, when I observe the world, I don’t expect to see it just like I was seeing the fellow who lives in the next room. There is this complexity which seems to me to be part of the meaning of existence and everything we value.

Chinua Achebe

BTW, in the interview, reference is made to the incident at Jos.  A horrible massacre, which is, unfortunately, the latest one in a long series of violent incidents:

332 bodies were buried in a mass grave in the village of Dogo Na Hawa, the Nigerian Red Cross said Wednesday. Human rights groups and the state government say that as many as 500 people may have been killed in the early hours of Sunday morning, in three different villages.
Sunday’s killings were an especially vicious expression of long-running hostilities between Christians and Muslims in this divided nation. Jos and the region around it are on the fault line where the volatile and poor Muslim north and the Christian south meet. In the past decade, some 3,000 people have been killed in interethnic, interreligious violence in this fraught zone. The pattern is familiar and was seen as recently as January: uneasy coexistence suddenly explodes into killing, amplified for days by retaliation.

A 150 million dollar offer that I refused :-)

Here is the email from "Prof N.M Gadzama" that just popped up:

Attn.
I am the P.A to the Vice president of Nigeria Chief Goodluck Jonathan
Mr. Vice President has a transaction to the Tune of $150 Million USD.
Can you handle it? Please do respond with your direct phone number. So we can discuss.

Best regards
Prof. N.M Gadzama

Any takers?  Feel free to contact Prof. Gadzama but only after you read this