I walked with Coronavirus to Mombokolo

I WALKED WITH CORONAVIRUS TO MOMBOKOLO: Coronavirus and the world’s RURAL

kansmus@gmail.com

Yet there is hope in the fight against coronavirus:

Not a subject to statistics for reason suggests that objections will be fallacies on logic. The destruction authored by COVID19 thrust on my countryside Mombokolo is identical to the conditions of a battle between a legless one eyed hare and a lion that neither suffered a toothache nor broke its paws.

Scene: This follows a story of my two days’ 60 km walk to the deeper countryside. The walk that presented me a do or die menu of jumping fences, swimming across streams, climbing trees just to set foot on the next stony hill, negotiating a lonely thorny slope and wallowing through a forbidden swampy valley all with the features of the never-never land void of call or radio signals.

The lifting and resting of feet, the falling rivers of sweat and the Boston terriers dog likened panting were neither related to the famous ‘Long walk to freedom’ nor a taste to fitness nor a pursuit for an athletic body structure but an escapade to have an eye on fact assessment of the rural readiness to coronavirus deterrence or cure and the pandemic’s aftermath that will present the question of loud quandaries.

This countryside seemingly hides but yet tries to sprout the leaf of its head out of the shadow cast upon it by the lighter world. It is that countryside that grouts with the fume of global-cast inequality, the punch of preventable diseases even before covid19, the itching dependency and acne of disillusion, the whips of underserved health facilities, shambles of poor domestic sanitation and dis-concern for health and long life, the fiascos of famine, starvation and ignorance (lack of information) or the rant of fake news, the mess wrought by illiteracy, the dilemma championed by poverty. Oops! My book of lamentations stops here. The word ‘endless’ cannot fit the tale of how long the list of problems goes. All termed as a conundrum of a disasters-stricken countryside waiting to deter or avert a monstrous disaster that comes in the form of a social class indiscriminate earth sweeping pandemic. This countryside is looking for the sun that will shine on it: Many think that sun was swallowed by a celestial black hole. But still there is hope in a single star.

After returning to my hut on the PiliPili hill south of Mombokolo after this walk, I breathed through my stack nose, wetted my failing throat and said, “There is hope”.

However much I had a keen eye on these sad realities, I gathered reasons to hope and the courage to laugh in the face of coronavirus and tell him how his journey to the countryside is fateful and defeated. The people in Mombokolo have listened to the presidential addresses on COVID19 whenever they bumped into that specific position that ‘owned’ signal. They have listened to local authorities, reported returnees, dialed police at the sound of a simple junior cough, adhered to measures, locked bars many hours to the curfew time, taken pregnant mothers to hospital before the reign of dusk, restricted their movements, kept meter distances except in cold nights, washed their hands and warned their few visitors to wash their hands, have abandoned their cultural greetings to a simple wakanda fist crossing.

These people’s willingness to listen commands us to do one simple thing, that single star, that is “TO CONTINUE TO FEED THEM WITH INFORMATION” especially those stack in rigidity, innocent ignorance, a bad systemic taste for compliance, a historic absence of rules and laws in their communities. Now is not the time to build hospitals nor recruit nurses and doctors because the authorities in Mombokolo are already in too big a deficit to afford. Now is not the time to vaccinate everyone like we did to kick out polio because it is very expensive that Mombokolo may sell everything including her people she would have vaccinated if she attempted.

This is the time a politician becomes a leader but most importantly it is the time when practical information is needed than ever before.

That Covid19 is not here to stay gives us a reason to hope for a life after it: Yes, Covid19 has defined its era and put its imprint in the modern history of this digital age. However, the sad news is that if it stays, we are not meant to stay. We cannot accept to coexist with it either. This justifies why the human race must fight, cooperate and be humane much more than ever before.

Now comes the time when the human race must, in a knockdown manner, beat its records be it in medicine, morality, governance among others to usher a new era of hope. To beat covid19, we must be more suffocating than it is. To be more suffocating than it is, we must first know what it is. Information, information, information.

#StayhomeSaveLives

#Covid19

#SpitTheInk

kansmus@gmail.com