Face masks were worn by almost everyone in China at the height of Covid-19 pandemic. The Chinese President Xi Jingping appeared in public wearing a face mask.
President Donald Trump said he could not wear one. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wore a face mask while declaring a state of emergency in Tokyo and other regions.
Our top leaders in Kenya have started appearing in public wearing face masks. One wishes the Queen of England had one while giving her latest speech to the Commonwealth.
The wearing of face masks will remain one of the enduring paradoxes of the Covid-19 pandemic. If China subdued the virus by wearing face masks, among other measures, why didn’t the West and Kenya simply follow the Chinese example?
Surely all the 1.4 billion people can’t be wrong? Wait a minute, I drive a Toyota and it is possible other car models are better and more reliable than Toyota. But I always ask myself, “Can all these people be wrong?”
Interestingly, I tried other car models but eventually came back “home” to Toyota.
Why didn’t we use the same philosophy in wearing face masks? The “herd intelligence” like herd immunity should not be underestimated.
Why did Kenya and the rest of Africa fail to adopt the face mask as widely as the Chinese, three months after the pandemic hit Wuhan?
In Kenya, we are now wearing face masks made from all sorts of materials and with all the colours of the rainbow.
Did you notice such assorted masks in China? Our late adoption of the face mask shows we face the East, read China, with only one eye. The other eye still faces the West.
Think loudly, if Americans, read the US started wearing masks immediately the Covid-19 got there, every Kenyan would be wearing a face mask. Who can deny that?
We validate most of our major decisions both as individuals and at the national level using the West; from our names to the constitutions.
Why don’t we give our kids Chinese names?
Even studies on our witchcraft need Western validation! Despite the phenomenal rise of China to become a global economic power in record time, we made almost no reference to her constitution as we rewrote our new constitution in 2010.
There was nothing to learn from the Chinese?
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It seems we still look at China with suspicion despite its new enhanced global status.
We don’t seem to believe that China’s economic power is real. We don’t even believe her data on Covid-19 cases.
There could be a good reason for this disbelief. The economic growth of China was not buttressed on exporting her culture. That is why most of us do not understand China. British entry into Kenya had a cultural and religious base.
We got to understand and admire their religion and mannerisms; remember table manners? The US had movies and religion too.
Chinese entry into the global arena has no cultural or religious base. Who knows the Chinese religion if they have any?
Beyond the popular belief that the Chinese can eat anything, the government controls everything and abuses human rights, what else do we know about China?
Kenyans visiting China are not as excited as when they visit the US or Europe. It is not “cool”. We rarely boast of our relatives in China the way we boast of those in “the States”.
While the Kenyan elite knows how to use cutlery from “outside” in high-end restaurants, how many of them can use Chinese chopsticks?
Minimal research
China does not feature in our curriculum; both in geography and history.
Most of our knowledge of China is based on hearsay.
Our scholars rarely quote Chinese scholars unless they are in the west. Even now, minimal research on how Chinese beat the virus is available.
It will probably come from the West. Studying Microsoft is cooler than studying Huawei in MBA case studies.
Learning Mandarin may not be as cool as learning German or French. Any high schools that teach Mandarin in Kenya?
We are even suspicious of Chinese advances in technology.
Noted how 5G technology has been shrouded in suspicion, even connected with coronavirus? President Trump even called Covid-19, the “Chinese virus”.
Yet, it’s not discriminating who to infect. The misunderstanding and suspicion of China delayed our adoption of the face mask as the first line of defence against coronavirus.
We had to wait for the West to validate the wearing of a face mask before adopting it.
Few countries are making it mandatory. Not to appear “Chinese”? Others claim we did not want to give Chinese money; they would produce face masks en masse.
Common sense suggests a face mask covers two entry points for the virus except for the eyes. Holding all factors constant, that would reduce the chances of contracting the virus by two thirds. Does that need any science?
We should be more open-minded when seeking solutions to our national or even personal problems; the source of the solution does not matter. It can be local, from East, West or any direction of the compass.
The ravages of Covid-19 in the US and a number of European countries could have been prevented or partially mitigated if they learnt from Chinese and subdued their own pride.
The deep suspicion of the Chinese, their technology and global ambitions fired by conspiracy theories, left every developed country in the West badly exposed to Covid-19.
If we do not learn from Chinese, we could learn from the USA and Europe, the hard way; despite my boundless optimism in finding a cure or vaccine for coronavirus.
And who knows, the weather, stoicism and hard reality might spare us the worst of Covid-19.
The writer is an associate professor at the University of Nairobi
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