The creation of an African ‘bloodstream’: Malaria control during the Hitler War, 1942–1945 (Part 4)

[This piece is culled from a book authored by Jonathan Roberts, titled: Sharing the burden of sickness: A history of healing and medicine in Accra]

Though Lt. Ribbands and his fellow malariologists were tasked with fighting the spread of malaria, they were not particularly interested in whether the men used as human bait contracted the disease. None of the men who slept in the mosquito traps were named, nor is there any mention of whether they fell ill. The express purpose of the anopheline index was to collect entomological data to determine which parts of the Korle watershed to target with pesticides and larvicides. Nor was Ribbands particularly interested in spraying campaigns’ effects on the local population. The Malaria Control Group sprayed DDT on African houses and into wells and ponds without asking because it was the only way to break the 14-day larvae-mosquito-human cycle of malaria transmission, thereby clearing incubated plasmodia from what Ribbands called the African “bloodstream.” At the same time as they mapped out the habitat of the mosquito, Lt. Ribbands and the Allied malariologists began to think of the inhabitants of Accra as a reservoir of malaria—one that could be cleansed with the liberal application of chemicals.

The residents of the old quarters of Accra did not share Lt. Ribbands’s enthusiasm for malaria control. Having endured the indignity of sanitary inspections, they were reluctant to let the spraying crew into their compounds.

Details about local resistance are limited because there are no memories of the event at the Korle shrine house, but a brief, revealing passage does appear in an American report on the antimalaria campaign: “The application of larvicide to [lagoon] areas was strongly resented by the local native population who associated a high religious significance to these lagoons . . . [but the] natives [were] placated through negotiation by British authorities with the African chiefs.”

This passage offers evidence that the residents of Accra were quite aware of the impact of a citywide spraying campaign and were concerned about encroachment on their sacred spaces, but it shows how colonial indirect rule allowed the British to curry favour with local chiefs as a way of disenfranchising the religious authorities of the city. How exactly the British appeased the chiefs is unknown, but it probably involved sums of money to pay for the temporary rights to spray the lagoon, distributed in a manner that would allay resistance to the campaign. It so happened that the antimalaria campaign occurred during a period of fierce stool disputes among the Ga subchiefs in the city, a time when the priestly stool of Korle stood vacant. The Ga indigenous understanding of health and healing in the city remained firmly in place, but the figureheads who championed the social health of the Ga, and the environmental health of the paramount gods, were temporarily absent. Without traditional leadership, and under conditions of martial law, the residents of the city must have struggled to voice their concerns about the spraying campaign.

Memories of the antimalaria campaign during the Hitler War

The ascent of bio-power during the antimalaria campaign barely registers within the collective memories of the residents of Accra. The oral history of the event is difficult to collect because so few veterans of the “Hitler War” remain. Nonetheless, many ex-soldiers did remember basic elements of the Malaria Control Group operations, such as being locked in their barracks while the Americans sprayed their buildings, forced to take yellow mosquito tablets, and ordered to dig through riverbeds with iron bars and rakes. However, only a few of them recalled anything about the war on mosquitoes conducted by Ribbands and his colleagues, a surprising gap the collective memory considering the extent of the campaign.

Those who did recall the mosquito traps expressed resentment about how inhumanely the human bait was treated. Otia Badu, a Ga veteran who fought in Burma, remembered that soldiers were forced to sleep in the traps as punishment if they disobeyed orders. Badu himself never slept in the tent, managing to get guard duty in the camp when he faced disciplinary measures. Choosing to sleep in the tents was a death sentence, he claimed, because everyone who slept there is now dead. Badu  recalled that British officers forced African soldiers to test “mosquito capes,” overcoats with holes in the cloth that were covered with sticky glue to trap insects. According to Badu, the soldiers were ordered to wear the capes when they went out at night as a way of attracting and collecting mosquitoes, but there is no evidence of such attire in the military records. Another former member of the Gold Coast Regiment, Oblitey Commey, stated that all of the “northerners” who slept in the traps must have died shortly afterward because they had “challenged their spirits” by giving in to their colonial masters. At the end of his interview, Commey declared that if the British had wanted to catch mosquitoes, they should have slept in the traps themselves. Yet another veteran indicated that the residents of Accra were not happy to see their homes doused in chemicals and that during the campaign rumours circulated that the British were trying to poison the local population. But all of the veterans emphasised that, despite the inhumane treatment the Gold Coast subjects faced during the Hitler War, no one dared to challenge the authority of their officers. As retired soldier John Borketey bluntly asserted, resistance was never an option: “Whatever they tell you, you do it. Colonial days. You have no choice.”

Apart from the recollections of a handful of elderly veterans, memories of the antimalaria campaign within the general population of Accra are sparse. No one at the Korle shrine has any recollection of Allied airplanes dousing the lagoon with DDT, and people living in the older quarters of Accra have forgotten the story of the antimalaria campaign. Even at Nima, the suburb that likely provided the migrant workers used as human bait, religious leaders and elders have no recollection of the spraying campaign, the mosquito traps, or even the evacuation of their suburb. As a way point for migrants from points north of Accra, Nima has always had a transient population, but it is still surprising that no one remembers the campaign. Considering that the residents of Accra rioted against British attempts to fill the reservoir at Bukom in 1889 and stoned the plague-fighting crew that tried to demolish houses at Ussher Town during Simpson’s anti-plague programme, it is difficult to believe that the residents of Nima simply walked away from their settlement to accommodate the one-mile cordon sanitaire.