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Living through a pandemic: Where were you when the world stopped moving?
I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing. It came with news from my childhood friend, Apollos Ezeogu. He called to say his mum had passed away. She had been ill for 10 years. A long and painful journey which had included diabetes, high blood pressure, and stroke.
She had been taken to the hospital for what used to be a regular treatment when her sugar level rose. But this time, the local hospital had run out of insulin, the roads were empty, the pharmacy shelf was scanty, and a lot of hospital staff had stayed at home. Nigeria was in a lock-down — afraid of an increase in the COVID-19 virus.
This one phone call shook me to my core. It was like being alive inside of a film. Mrs. Nzeogu was also a neighbor, living a few minutes of walk from our home in Kubwa, where I and my family had lived for the last twenty-six years. This problem was now in my front. The death of Mrs. Ezeogu made me realize that in some way, the COVID, is similar to HIV — it does not target the host directly — it cripples systems that could have helped.
In truth, COVID isn’t crippling something that was functional before. Healthcare services have always been a problem in Nigeria — the survival cocktail has been a mixture of prescriptions from pharmacists, parents, friends in the diaspora, roadside…
