A Big, Small, Wonderful, Mad World

Do you know that people are actually surviving Ebola in Africa?  Yep, even with a mortality rate of 75-80% depending on who you listen to, some people live through it.  Which creates a whole new set of problems, which are pretty much head-scratchers to most of us.  Apparently, there's a stigma around people who have survived Ebola, even after the hospitals have declared them disease free, they may not be welcome back in their villages, because, you know, death juju or whatever.
I'm going to try not to be patronizing here, but I may not succeed so give me grace.
Africa is an amazing place in a lot of ways.  It tends towards being the land that time forgot.  Of course, there are eruptions of enlightenment, there are deep traditions of art and music and there are wonders, both natural and human, but there is also a lot darkness.
With HIV/AIDS and Ebola, it turns out that the ignorance and fear of the people is a major vector of the disease.  People with Ebola symptoms are resistant to head to the hospital because they apparently believe that it's actually the disinfectant spray in ambulances and hospitals that is the cause of death, not the Ebola Virus itself.  It reminds me of the rather troubling story of people who believed they could be cured of AIDS by having sex with a virgin, which of course resulted in a lot of rape, and compounded rather than slowed the spread of disease.
Fear is the mind killer, and if the minds in question have been functionally isolated from much of the progress that has been made in the world over the past 100 years... behold a perfect storm of ignorance.
As the survivors of Ebola begin to emerge from the hospitals they are being greeted with suspicion.  Many of these survivors are young, because young people were probably healthier to begin with and they heal better in the long run.  There will be a wave of orphans, not doubt that will join with the orphans of AIDS and Genocides and overall the situation just seems like it's going to get worse before it gets better.
In other words, there is not a viable option for these people that will now be shunned from their home communities.  The sort of society that exists in much of Africa is much more interconnected and inter-reliant than many of us in the west can really imagine.  The people in these villages need each other to survive, they're very far from the isolated nuclear family units of Europe and America.
Ignorance and fear must be counteracted in the wake of Ebola and HIV as much as they are in the path of the oncoming storm.  Work is being done, explanations are being made, and my prayer for Africa is that the people will listen.
The forgiveness and reconciliation work that is being done in Rwanda is what gives me a glimmer of hope.  The orphans of the genocide are being cared for by the people of Rwanda,  The public and ongoing act of reconciling between victims and perpetrators of violence is long and difficult, but it is being done.
As much as I wish that the people there would learn from our scientific and rational way of dealing with things like Ebola, we can learn something from them as well.  We can look at the effect of fear and ignorance and learn to root it out, yes, but we can also learn a lot about resilience and community, and picking up the pieces.
While it may mystify me that so many people can believe that disinfectant is more dangerous than Ebola, it should probably be of greater concern that I/we are so poor at showing forgiveness and grace.
We can be so protected by technology that we begin to feel invulnerable, but we're not above being blinded by fear.  I worry that if we ever do experience a pandemic like what is happening in Sierra Leone, we might not be so easily pulled out of the darkness of our own fear.
As Jesus taught us, it is good to remove the log in our own eye before we try to take the splinter out of someone else's.  Even if the other person appears to have a log in their eye, it is always good to consider what you might learn from their predicament.  This requires empathy, this requires some difficult self reflection, but if you're going to help, it just has to be done.