Mungu Anajua is a delightful term that Kenyans use when they don’t have an answer to something. I asked a father of six how many kids he and his wife were going to have and he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Mungu Anajua” (God knows).
So here we are, at least four-half months into the worldwide pandemic and not much progress has been made in containing the virus, curing it, opening our economy or living a normal life. Why? Because no one has answers and no one has the courage to say, “We don’t know.” Instead we have daily governor briefings to tell us the same thing they said yesterday. They spitball every day with mandates and executive orders hoping it will “flatten the curve,” but they don’t know any more today about how to solve the problem than they did sixteen weeks ago.
Follow the science, people argue, but they ignore the science because it doesn’t fit their narrative that somehow this virus is equal to the bubonic plague. Science tell us that kids rarely catch the disease and maybe they don’t even transmit it, yet we’re going to make little Johnny wear a mask to school or maybe won’t have school at all. Mungu Anajua.
Two things I have learned, maybe three, over the last four months about this pandemic journey:
1. PEOPLE ONLY LISTEN TO WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR, whether it is about the pandemic, religion (how many times have you heard someone say, “I like to think of God this way”) or politics. Though there is no scientific data that masks slow the virus (please don’t cite the CDC as they have hardly been right about anything), some masked fanatic will pepper spray a father and his son because they didn’t have a face mask on (which happened in California). Or, like me, they think this whole thing is nonsense and still won’t wear a mask no matter what the governor says. We all believe what we want to believe and ain’t nobody going to change our minds!
2. FEAR OF THE HYPOTHETICAL is what drives the behavior of many people, and for me, that is a very sad way to live. As I stated in an earlier post, I worked in a mosquito/malaria part of Kenya for fourteen years. If I lived my life on the “what if’s” I would have never traveled into the bush to establish churches. I wasn’t foolhardy. I took my weekly chloroquine tablet but still wound up in the hospital twice with malaria and dengue fever. If I lived life on the “what if’s” I would have never left Arkansas. The whole world is held hostage to the hypothetical and that is tragic.
3. MUNGU ANAJUA. In the end, the God of the universe and the sustainer of all things really knows about the virus. I don’t know, the experts in white coats have proven they don’t know. The only science I have a little faith in are those who are actually working on a vaccine. But since they still haven’t developed a vaccine for SARS who knows if they will find an effective antidote for COVID-19. Mungu Anajua. Six months to a year from now we will all look back and will have a better picture of this crazy year. Until then, I’m going to live my life according to the Book, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” and say along with my African friends, Mungu Anajua.
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