This is the time to protect our limited numbers of medical people, who expose themselves to this virus on a daily basis. No expense must be spared. No strategy must be spurned.

Ghana Covid-19

I know a little about stigma. It was the year 2005. I had just finished my first surgical residency exam. I had left Battor and spent three weeks in Accra burning through anatomy, physiology and histology pages. I battled sleep, tiredness, I pushed through the days, until the final one when I stood in front of the examiners. And they told me 30 minutes after the exam, that I had passed. That was just how things were done. You knew your fate, almost as soon as you finished the exam.

And a lockdown cannot quieten the busy streets, because sometimes the streets are an extension of the accommodation. Sometimes the place of convenience is at an inconvenient distance away from the home, and no policeman can do anything about the queue of nature’s call.

Pushing Forward

The plot thickens. There is talk of peaks, and curve flattening in the atmosphere of a pandemic gathering speed. Physical distancing seems like a dismissed fairy tale. A lockdown seems like that unachievable haven, that could just have offered some security… but the door is closed.

COVID19 closed the doors. And suddenly we can see the chasm for what it really is. But we have accepted it for so long, that it seems unchangeable, unbridgeable, and unconquerable.

The scene in one of Accra's business district after the lockdown was lifted. Image credit - myjoyonline

I have part Fante ancestry. Maybe it is the reason why I love good bread, and cannot let delectable pastry pass by unappreciated. And this morning, I was on my way to visit my Mother, who is the genetic channel for this part of me. All the more reason I could not just pass by the bakery shop at the filling station along the road.

For now, we cannot afford to forget the habits we have acquired on masking, social distancing and hand hygiene. The lockdown may have ended, but ...

Lockdown Ends - Image credit - AFP

Lockdown ends. The streets are already beginning to fill again. There is a new item of colour on the landscape of faces now: masks. I am learning to recognize people by the pattern on the masks they wear. It is a different world now. I don’t think things will ever be the same again. This virus has ravaged through the very fabric of our societies. We are living through historic times. This is a transition nobody could have seen coming. The syllabus for life’s textbook has undergone a major revision.