printOK, I’ll say it. He’s a lily white Canadian-American with the name Ashoka Mukpo. Mr. Mukpo loves Liberia almost more than life itself. This is how his family aggrandized Ashoka’s Liberian pursuits:
Mukpo was a researcher for the Sustainable Development Institute, a Liberia-based nonprofit shining light on concerns of workers in mining camps outside Monrovia. And “was into the culture. … He seemed to have a lot of passion for it.”
(CBC)
Days before his infection with Ebola became public, Mukpo was hired by NBC as a cameraman in that country. (Wasn’t he a “researcher” of sorts?)
Instead of assuming the name of his “birth father, a prominent Rhode Island doctor,” Ashoka and brother “took the name of his mother’s first husband, who founded the Shambhala Buddhism community”—upon a cursory read of this Wiki entry, Shambhala seems like a cult of sort, primed to ensnare a certain type of westerner.
The quest for exotica trumps honoring thy father.
Throughout the interview this married couple gave Sean Hannity, Mother Mukpo came across as pretentious, uppity and worse. Ashoka’s stepfather, Mitchell Levy, seemed perfectly nice; an affable fellow.
Still, Ashoka’s mother was referred to as Diana Mukpo, and not Diana Levy. The infected cameraman’s sullen mom clearly preferred to take on the name of her former husband than assume the name of the man at her side: Dr. Levy, “director of intensive care at Rhode Island Hospital.”
Oh, Ashoka Mukpo is said by the faithful to be “a tulku, the reincarnation of a Buddhist master teacher.”
“Ashoka Mukpo (center) with his mother, Diana (third from left) and birth father Mitchell Levy (far right) during a visit to Tibet in 2002. (Konchok.org)”