By Hoccas Siwel
For a long time since the outbreak of Covid-19, I struggled with believing that it’s real. There were too many conspiracy theories. Everyone was blaming China for their 5G network and the finance head of Huawei had been arrested in Canada. I reckoned the disease was being used to keep China out of the west’s easting pot. Donald Trump’s antics didn’t help at all.
I wasn’t a fan of any preventive measure and regularly flouted them, even going as far as arguing with soldiers and police officers trying to enforce the Covid regulations.
That was until yesterday 3 December.
I received word that my 28 year old son, the first sign of my manhood and strength, died in the early hours of yesterday (December 3). He died from complications due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
I was shocked to hear of his passing. Although we’ve been estranged for the most part of his life, we were recently reconciled and had been working at warp speed to normalise our relationship. I even discovered through him that I first became – unbeknownst to me – a grandfather nine years ago, when I reckoned I was still a hotshot.
Tais was born to me in the US at a time of change and promise. I was a happy go lucky first year foreign student in the early 90s. His mother, also a Sierra Leonean, was a senior in high school. She had fallen, as all young people do at one point or the other, head over hills for me and wouldn’t hear of anything than being with me.
Suffice to say she was thrilled that she was pregnant. But not so her parents, who had high hopes for their straight-A student daughter.
To cut a long story short, she got pregnant and was above the age of consent, which fact her father had hated then as he always used to say he would have had me arrested for statutory rape were she even 17 years and 364 days old at the time of intercourse. During a recent visit to Sierra Leone, this now old man and I were laughing in tears recalling how he used to ‘hate’ me. You know fathers have a special bond with or love for their daughters; the other side between moms and sons is well referenced.
Still very angry and obviously so upset with his daughter for falling pregnant, the old man put her out of the house. In the ensuing months to delivery, she came and stayed with me on campus from where she would go to school. During that period we discovered how difficult it is for couples to really make it. I wanted to see the world; she wanted just to be with me. I was young, gifted and black, and there were a whole lotta other women to explore.
Before giving birth, we had already separated. Disappointed by the two men in her life she would have killed or died for, her dad and I, she decided to put the baby up for adoption because “I didn’t think either of you wanted this child and I wasn’t in a position to take care of him.”
She left instructions that should the boy at some point in his life decide that he wanted to know his parents, we should be notified no matter where we were. Still a very brilliant girl (she maintained her academic prowess during those trying months we stayed together in that cramped up dormitory), she was able to warm her way back into her father’s embrace, went on to finish school, got married and birthed more children.
Imagine my surprise when she contacted me five years ago that our son wanted to get to know us. I hadn’t forgotten him, never did and always asked about him during those reflective moments when clarity is assured, curious to know. But then I couldn’t contact him if I’d wanted to as his mom had made reservations that he not be contacted but that the reverse be the appropriate scenario.
Why am I sharing this very private incident with my fellow Sierra Leoneans? Well, for a long time, I was convinced of two things: one, COVID-19 is not real, and two that if is real, it’s only meant for rich people in western countries.
Now, any logical thinking person would put holes in my argument. Over a million people have died in rich and poor countries alike. Sadly in America it’s mostly poor, black and sick people dying.
COVID 19 IS REAL.
Sadly, this kind of realisation only happens after a personal experience.
My country people, remember when Ebola hit? Now imagine of Covid-19 had hit us with the same intensity. Now imagine that and factor in our poor healthcare infrastructure. As a people of faith we could boast that with our low infection and death rates, God is sparing us because of what we had suffered during Ebola. But God also cares for all His other creation. And surely based on what we know about us, we are not a theocracy.
Please follow all precautionary COVID-19 measures without complaining. Good advice is surely from God.