The government tried to play the streets, but the courts just put them in check. On Tuesday, Kenya’s Health Minister Aden Duale had to show up in court, apologize, and pull the plug on a secret US-run Ebola quarantine facility at the Laikipia air base in Nanyuki. This shutdown happened because Duale thought he could ignore a High Court order to stop working on the camp. The judge, Patricia Nyaundi Mande, held him in contempt and basically told him that nobody is above the law, especially when citizens' lives are on the line.

Let’s keep it 100: this whole deal was shady from the jump. The US wanted to set up a 50-bed containment zone to treat Americans evacuated from the DRC, where Ebola has already infected over 1,000 people and killed more than 250. But instead of flying those infected folks back to the States, they tried to dump them in Kenya, a country that has never had a single case of Ebola. The streets immediately saw through the noise. Dr. Davji Atellah from the doctors' union laid it down straight: "If it is too dangerous for America, it is too dangerous for Kenya." No lies detected.

Instead of being real with the community, the politicians tried to build this bio-hazard camp on the low without asking anyone. When the local people found out, they took to the streets of Nanyuki to defend their neighborhood, and the government responded with pure violence. Riot police came in heavy, shooting and killing three protesters—two on June 1 and another on June 9. The government was literally letting the police smoke their own people just to protect some empty tents for a foreign superpower.

Even after the court ordered them to stop construction in May, the politicians and their US partners kept trying to sneak around. Diplomats admitted they kept flying in specialist gear, and satellite pictures from June 22 showed them actively putting up tents and paving the base. They really thought they could ignore the courts and the streets just to keep their US connect happy. But the judge wasn't playing, hauling the minister in for contempt and forcing him to shut it down.

The real motive here is always the bag. The US promised Kenya $13.5 million (£10.2 million) in "aid" to let this go through. President William Ruto tried to act like they were doing "the right thing," but everybody on the block knows that $13.5 million was just a bribe to look the other way while they brought a deadly virus into the backyard. You can't put a price tag on the community’s safety.

Duale is still out here trying to claim that people are tripping for no reason, calling the fears "scientifically unfounded." But if it’s so safe, why didn't the US build this facility in Washington or New York? The hypocrisy is loud, and the people aren't buying the government's excuses anymore. They know that once a virus like Ebola gets out, the politicians won't be the ones suffering in the streets.