By Ted Malanda
It's a good thing that when Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, was in these parts fishing for men, converting water into wine and caning noisy hawkers in a synagogue, technology, as we know it, didn't exist.
Back then, stubborn mules were the only four-wheel-drive vehicles available and mark you, without a dashboard, you only discovered that the fuel tank was empty when the rascal sat down and refused to budge.
What’s more, GPS was still a pipe dream, meaning all navigation was via distant stars. Woe unto you if there was a heavenly blackout and you were on your way to Timbuktu on a dark rainy night.
To be fair, a few inns are mentioned in the Bible but I doubt the businessmen of that era had discovered mineral water or soggy chips that you could pack in a juala and eat under the shade of a sycamore tree as you took a break during a long journey to distant parts.
That is why the pilgrims making a sojourn to Loliondo, Tanzania in search of the miracle drug should be happy. They can go by bus, helicopter, matatu and even boda boda. TV crews are monitoring their every action and of course they can pack bread and sour milk. They even have mobile phones.
Of course, there are those who scoff at the potency of this Loliondo drug but they have no idea what they are talking about. A drug manufactured from the ordinary arrow tree yet can cure any illness surely must be the work of God, a miracle.
What’s intriguing is the troubles people are willing to endure to get hold of this drug. If you have sat in a kilometre-long traffic jam for one hour, you can appreciate the horror of spending days on a queue — hungry, dishevelled, pressed and sick — in pursuit of a drug whose efficacy is still a rumour.
Stupendous miracle
And yet the Son of Man was not a rumour. Here was a healer whose miracles were mind boggling — healing the sick, scattering daemons into swine, and even bringing the dead back to life. Now close your eyes and picture this breathtaking headline: Bethlehem preacher resurrects the dead in stupendous miracle!
Barely hours later, a video clip of the saga would be all over the Internet. The news would be the rage on worldwide radio and television stations and newspapers, including the gutter press, too. For one week, mobile phone systems would jam from all the 411 traffic.
Now imagine the drama of men and women of diverse ages, race, religion, class, shapes and sizes shuffling from Japan, Shamakhokho, Darfur, Afghanistan and many other distant places on their way to Bethlehem for the miracle cure. They would come by ship, air and land causing a snarl up so severe that the whole world would grind to a halt.
One thing has not changed though. Some crackpot would definitely assassinate Him today, just as it was 2011 years ago. Good thing the Tanzanian version of GSU is guarding their man.
