It is quite unfortunate to learn that people are dying of Ebola in West Africa. Ebola is very deadly and I guess we just have to maintain impeccable hygiene if we are to avoid such epidemics. One of the things that we should avoid is that mandatory handshake! I am a bit concerned about our brothers and sisters in Rwanda who insist on mandatory handshakes. Just recently, a research conducted at the Aberystwyth University showed that handshakes are riskier than fist bumps and high fives. I remember during the mid-90s, Aggrey and I had devised serious tactics in a bid to dodge people stretching out their hands. That is why we were always seen walking around with our hands full of items. Such items ranged from books, video cassettes and briefcases. This meant that whenever someone extended his or her hand for a hearty handshake, you would show him or her that all your hands were occupied and therefore not capable of responding accordingly. Usually, those items that Aggrey and I carried around were never of real use to us. Although we were always seen carrying Jackie Chan video tapes, our modest home was void of a video deck or a television set for that matter. Then of course, we posed around with a briefcase as if it was full of dollars and important legal documents. But instead of real dollars and francs, our briefcase would be full of dry beans and maybe a kilo of rice. Therefore, our briefcase was not only there to deter people from shaking our hands, but also served as a mobile dry food store. But then folks never give up. If he has made up his mind to shake your hand, then there is no way out. And that is how we usually ended up putting the briefcase under our armpits in order to free our paranoid fingers. The fingers would be suffering from paranoia just because our heads imagined up certain things. Our heads imagined that the fellow we were on the verge of greeting had just come out from the nearest pit latrine. And for the great fear of catching the dreaded disease, our fingers would begin to perform a mixture of reggae dance and break dance. Having failed to dissuade people from shaking our hands, we decided to abandon the system of carrying countless items which were too heavy for us in the first place. Instead, we began to seriously save cash which was supposed to end up at the nearest pharmacy. We were not saving cash in order to buy ourselves medicated soap for washing our hands every time we shook someone’s hands. No way! We were saving cash so that we could stock several cartons of hand gloves at our place of residence. This implied that Aggrey and I would be walking around Kigali with our Michael Jackson-like gloves. We entered shops with a lot of confidence knowing that the shopkeeper would be met by a gloved hand. The same applied to offices whereby handshakes dived in from all corners. Those handshakes came from the gatemen who ushered us in, up to the top most chief. But with our gloves well intact, we were fully covered. I hope we do not have to buy gloves in the 21st century! Sorry once again to the families in West Africa!
