By Napoleon Esemudje
These are unusual times for many people. A time for serious contemplation and immediate lifestyle changes. Admittedly, many are struggling to adjust to this new reality and in the chilling wake of Covid-19; a protracted period of solemnity can easily degenerate for some, into days of melancholy. We should do all we can to avoid those around us falling unwittingly into depression.
I should know. Last week, my spouse returned home and offhandedly mentioned an incident about someone having coughed nearby while she was out shopping. For some reason, I could barely sleep that night and watched her with anxious suspicion as she slept peacefully all through the night. I imagined it was all in my head until I became aware of the curious case of a friend who said his wife had started practicing domestic social distancing in their bedroom. First, she made sure to avoid all meaningful contacts by sleeping at the opposite end of their six inches by six inches bed. Now, she reportedly sleeps in the guest room. I stayed clear of asking the perturbed man the underlying reasons for this sudden self-isolation while impishly offering some social distancing pointers in his corner, such as those related to fewer shopping trips and aso-oke parties commonly favoured by madam.
Understandably, there is a pervading feeling of vulnerability for many of us, especially parents like me. And like parents have done through the ages, we try to push the worries from our mind by being busy and sticking feverishly to the official and somewhat unofficial rules of infection prevention for our families. So we wash and sanitize our hands regularly. We stay away from crowds and try to maintain where possible (or in principle) at least two metres from others while ensuring that our children do these things too.
Apparently, we also have to put up with the newly empowered license that our teenagers (recently forced back from school by the grim threat of Covid-19), now have to boldly lock themselves in their rooms and to retort smugly to our queries with “I’m practicing social distancing, daddy!”
Indeed, distressing developments from across the world have shown that this pandemic is both contagiously democratic and an equal opportunity menace to all regardless of age, race, gender, ethnicity or social status and affiliation.
After dithering in the typical Nigerian way, our local authorities are finally taking urgent steps to ensure that citizens are safe and practicing social distancing.
Back in the office and on cue with recent government proclamations, HR also released a memo amongst others, explaining that due to Covid-19, all foreign trainings have been suspended or cancelled. A few disgruntled employees took it upon themselves to remind others that they don’t remember any employee being sent on foreign training in the last five years. It may appear that those employees sent on foreign training in the past have been practicing self-isolation long before Covid-19 arrived on our shores. HR subsequently received some grudging praise though. Evidently, the possibility of working from home, long discredited as being impossible, has suddenly become possible. It is the magic of social distancing.
It does make you wonder. The world seems to have turned upside down. In addition to foreign travels for its civil servants, the government eventually mustered the pluck to suspend entries into Nigeria for nationals from countries with high incidence of Covid-19 in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Obviously, Nigerian citizens were allowed to return as long as they submitted to a period of ‘supervised’ self-isolation and social distancing. This unverified WhatsApp message, one of many ubiquitous posts circulating on social media and allegedly issued by the authorities, stated this in all its uncompromising bluntness:
“Do not go to the shops. Do not go to the gym. Do not go to visit friends. Do not go for any party. Stay home and self-isolate.”
Of course I support this necessarily hard stance for the ‘altruistic’ reason of our common safety. But it has to be said, that without any support from the authorities, this sort of self-isolation and social distancing is particularly difficult in Nigeria. One can’t help but feel a measure of compassion for those financially unprepared for this as well as for those, who in coming back home, thought they had escaped the severity of the pandemic abroad. One thing is certain though; if we diligently apply the social distancing rules outside our homes (while managing to convince our spouses to adopt a less than strict interpretation of the rule in “the other room”), we will survive this pandemic perhaps with cries of pent-up relief in well, nigh months to come. For the moment though, morbid humour aside, let’s just grin, stay safe and practice Social Distancing!
Napoleon Esemudje, author and social commentator, wrote in from Lagos