By Ibrahim Ndamwe

Throughout history, a disease pops up once in a while that wipes out sizeable chunks of the human population and fills every living soul with horror and dread: Cholera, smallpox, measles, Ebola, influenza, herpes, HIV.

After the epidemic has swept across the earth and populations have been decimated, the individuals who survive arise from the ashes stronger, wiser and, sometimes, immune from future attacks. But what is often forgotten amid the heartbreak and tears is that such disease epidemics are Mother Nature’s way of purging itself of excess human population, ensuring that she only plays host to populations that she can sustain.

Her concern is understandable. Wherever nature blesses a hamlet with good soils and abundant rainfall, members of the female sex, be they humans or antelopes, get ridiculously fertile. In no time, and aided enthusiastically by their male folk, they spawn offspring in multitudes that quickly overwhelm resources. Springs and rivers are sucked dry; the soils are swept bare by overgrazing and agriculture while urban slums fill to choking point.

Lacking the common sense to rehabilitate nature to its previous status of milk and honey, animals and humans leg it up the mountain or forage deeper into forests and wetlands in search of virgin land. This they quickly deflower and fornicate upon before slashing and burning the next virginal haven without an iota of shame.

But it’s at the point of no return, when a slum is bursting at the seams, elephants are packed shoulder to shoulder and humans are fighting for donated yellow maize that nature unleashes a major disease epidemic. Millions of deaths later, the earth is purged clean and an ecological equilibrium of sorts is achieved. Then the reckless mating game begins all over.

The problem with mankind, however, is that we often get too clever for our own good. That’s why scientists tinker with nature, engaging in sideshows like creating genetically modified food when the real problem is staring them in the face.

Unfortunately, the most they do is bark up the wrong tree. Take swine flu for instance. Since Kenya’s first case of swine was diagnosed, the country has been seized by panic, forgetting that just the other week, we were vomiting and dying from cholera. Even our own Public Health minister, Beth Mugo by her own admission, suffered a bout of diarrhoea.

We’ve even forgotten about Mungiki, marred elections, road carnage, extra judicial killings and famine, which between them have decimated thousands more Kenyans than swine flu has, globally. Meanwhile, Kenyans are still having unprotected sex, jiggers are ravaging entire districts and mosquitoes hold court in virtually every household in the land. These have claimed millions yet we’re going bonkers about swine flu — a mere passing cloud — because it’s on CNN and the developed world (whatever that means) is going nuts.

Can’t we just worry about jiggers and contaminated maize and leave the H1N1 virus for President Obama to deal with?