Fear Itself

F D Roosevelt was clearly a man way ahead of his time. In the late nineteen thirties he proclaimed that all we have to fear is fear itself (can’t see the current incumbent managing anything quite so profound). Sadly in the recent terrorist clamor this seems to have been rather lost.




In terms of your likelihood of dying at the hands of a terrorist it's one in 9.3 million. Which is roughly the same as being killed in an avalanche, no chance of that happening to me here, though a bit of snow would be most welcome! This is probably one of the few parts of the world not to have been altered by the events of September 11th and the US’s reaction to it.




However in its own way this country suffers from a similar paranoia. Recently there has been a spate of cattle raids, all pinned on one feared tribe, a few people have been killed. The local population has armed itself to the teeth in response. Recently the roof of a mud hut fell down (no one was hurt) but an old woman screamed. Someone nearby heard the screaming and presumed it was cattle raiding and opened fire. Someone else heard the screams and shooting and presumed the same and started shooting as well.



News spread round the village that there was fighting and the women and children fled into the surrounding countryside, having to be coaxed back during the course of the day. The chances of being killed by a cattle raider are very small indeed; none of my staff who I work with could name a single family member who had met their end this way. However this is inversely proportional to the panic they instill. The link between us in the west and terrorism is striking. Particularly when you look at the havoc malaria and other diseases wreak on a daily basis.




For malaria read heart diseases for cattle raiders read terrorism and the only conclusion one can draw is that we are all more than capable of irrational fear. It’s also interesting to note that in the west much is made of the media over exaggerating the menace of certain perceived threats to our health and safety (comets, bird flu, beef etc etc). Here however there isn’t any advertising and few people read newspapers and yet the problem prevails. Psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists book your tickets; your PhD subjects are just a few plane trips away.