Today I meditate in a mournful manner, not just for the sake of a fallen icon but for the sake of a fallen nation. News making rounds in the past 24hrs is about the fallen “Chief” of a motherland country through whose office everything must pass to get to the final authority in the land and under whose watch the health system of the motherland country has dilapidated to abysmal stages. Those who follow me know what I am talking about.
A few days ago we watched the interviews of two chief medical directors conducted by a local television station, talking about how many COVID-19 admissions they already have. While the rest of you listened to the news I paid attention to what was not being discussed : the buildings in the background which were supposed to be general hospitals. What a caricature!
Again today I mourn, not for a person per se but for an entire nation and a system in which our fallen person had all the opportunity to make all the difference of a lifetime, having at his disposal these many years the ears of the president. I thought the best doctors from the wuhanic region that had mastered covid-19 were smuggled in to make all the difference and rescue our chief. If indeed our man is resting in peace, now therefore may we let the Chinese Covid doctors leave in peace?
There are changes one cannot make in four or eight years in office but there are certain changes that should be made in four or eight months. We don’t need 8 years in office to build and equip our hospitals, reform our educational system, provide electricity to communities, be genuinely committed to fighting insurgence and terrorism, provide basic amenities that make life bearable for the common man in 21st century. What are we talking about?
Oh I forgot am not supposed to lose it, I am in a mournful state. If indeed our chief is dead, maybe he shouldn’t have died if we had good and working hospital systems, or if we had basic medical equipment in those unglorified mortuaries called general hospitals. Maybe he would still be here with us if we paid doctors and nurses and teachers a little more than we pay politicians and crooked government officials. Maybe our learned and brilliant british trained legal technocrat would still be here with us, a man who made things happen from behind the scenes, and who in fact, is a much better qualified person to be the number one citizen. A man whose name means ‘father’, and who was indeed the de facto father of a regime whose lapses have obviously impacted his life in his final days. Oh, how are the mighty fallen?
Corona virus!, corona why did you go for the finest and the smartest? Why did you start from oversea countries where our leaders run to every time they have headache and fever? Why did you block all the exit points so that our man could not jet out to get the best care money can buy anywhere under the sun? Corona virus you are very wicked; you are crude and you are rude, therefore you are cursed!
In my four decades of life this is the first time I have seen a disease that has no respect for caste or class. Corona does not recognize social status nor position in government. I pray that the governors and other officials who are now battling or have recovered from corona will prioritize healthcare for all in their states and pay frontline medical personnels a little more than a morsel of bread that has been their lot these years. Time will fail me here to go on and on because I am in a mournful mood here in my little quarantine closet, praying and hoping not only that corona will please go away but that the lessons of corona will lead to tangible economic, sociological, and sociopolitical changes, for those of us who will survive it, especially in motherland Africa.
May the souls of all those who fall by the sword of corona rest in perfect peace, Amen.
– Mezie Okolo is a Public Health and Leadership Analyst @mezieokolo.com