There was a series of articles that was done in the guardian a while back about Kibera, and poverty porn. It was probably one of the best written things I ever read. What stood out though is that the number of people in Kibera isn’t actually 1,000,000 as we keep hearing. It actually has a lot less zeros, actually one less zero. It’s about 100k. This seems significantly less. I mean, how did that extra zero come about? I bet the guy who wrote the initial report was too busy looking over his shoulder at the pretty girl seated behind him that he forgot to count. Or maybe he just got carried away typing zeros and keyed in one too many in a frenzy.

Seriously though, 900,000 people off? They must have counted each person at least three times for that to work. They said that this happens simply because some PhD student puts the number in his report, some reporter picks it up and puts it in a article, some NGO picks it up and marks it up a couple of thousand in their proposal. This proposal is seen by some PhD student and voila the cycle continues. One would think that this story, on this scale, would be the end of this false reporting. Clearly inflammation of numbers is wrong and exploitative of actual crisis. This had to come to an end.

One would think.

On Sunday the Standard reported that Kenyans are spending KES 100 Billion on cancer treatment every year. Now cancer is a horrible disease, don’t get me wrong. It has killed more people than people have killed mosquitoes and no one should underrate it. KES 100 Billion still sounds like a stretch though. As @coldtusker put it we barely export tea worth KES 100 Billion let alone spending it on cancer.

This, of course outraged some people who went on to speak about how horrible we are and how we are missing the point. Cancer is an epidemic and the fact is that whether we are spending KES 100 Billion or 10 Billion there is no difference – there really is, KES 90 Billion worth of difference.

Anyway, it really can't be that serious. It’s not like these numbers determine anything. It’s not like the number of people in Kibera will affect how NGOs invest, or that the amount we spend in Cancer treatment will affect medical donations. They are just numbers yes? Made to sensationalise a crisis, and further more to bring attention to what can only be described as a pandemic. The end of the world as we know it.

So I come here to bring another pandemic to your attention. 1,000,000 people die every minute from boredom. This is a catastrophe of global ramifications and I have begun a fund to end this. The purpose of the fund will be to eliminate boredom by means of entertainment and just general irritation. I expect that the sympathy will begin to flow and my bank account will grow significantly over the next couple of years. After all, 1,000,000 people a minute can only be described as a pandemic. The end of the world as we know it.